JANE
Jane worked in the college bookstore—a place in which I had never before set foot. I truly believed, with a bitter
superior disdain, that I would never set foot in there because I had no use whatsoever for sweatshirts and book
covers; and less use still for any thing emblazoned proudly with the RPI logo. Consequently, when I walked by
the place, I seldom looked inside (though, admittedly, I liked the team colors.) On this particular day however,
as I walked past the bookstore, innocent as a fawn (innocent as a sneering, superior, knowing fawn), I noticed
the girl behind the counter in much the same manner as a compass might notice true North.
A more unlikely candidate for selling mugs to proud parents and sheep-like freshmen I cannot imagine. She
was so far superior to the task that it was criminal. My god, when will this world ever begin to recognize natural
nobility? Had I been in the position to place her, I’d have hired her for some more perfectly suited task:
stretching out languidly upon a velvet divan, in a pure white room with eighteen foot ceilings and marble floors.
The job would require her to sip from a very fine porcelain cup and, if she had the time, sigh occasionally. Or
maybe I could find a place for her lounging in the shade of a willow tree somewhere at the edge of a
river…shaming the beauty of swans. Whatever the job, a necessary part of her task would be to fend off men of
puffed up self-esteem as they flocked around. She’d have to ignore all the sidling, mincing and mewling,
bending and bowing and scraping; dismiss the promises of eternal devotion, and dedicated service with a kindly
laugh; kill the hope of any chance to impress her through carefully constructed, over-worked lies, with a
knowing glance. I think she could have done that.
Place Jane in any setting and the setting would take on a kind of elegance that it could not have held on its
own. In this way, Jane was like a cat. In this way I was like a mouse.
Jane was trim and fine with nobly chiseled features. (Some might say skinny; I would say, who cares.) She was
quietly, though not smugly, self-assured. She was self-assured in an open, playful way. She had dignity. She
had a posture of a type which continues to slay me—you could drop a plumb line from the back of her lovely
head and it would fall between her shoulder blades, just touching her little rump and continue down neatly,
uninterrupted, to the back of her heels. Dark eyes. Sparkling eyes. Elfish eyes that took delight in every goofy
child-like futile effort to dodge their knowing glance. (It’s not a complete sentence, but so much more than a
complete thought.)
Although it was not my habit, I found myself scoping her out, first from outside the bookstore, then from within. I
took up a position at a table, pretending to look through stacks of sweatshirts. Oh, they do have them in extra
large! Then, driven (drawn probably) by who knows what (and we can all surely guess), I approached the
counter and asked her some dumb question about some dumb thing which I don’t recall but didn’t really care
about anyway. She smiled, leaving me dumbstruck, and since no answer was really required, said nothing. If
stammering can be done in utter silence, I stammered for a while, as she looked at me. I looked at the floor, the
countertop, the walls of the store, anywhere but at her. When I did get the courage to look up, her eyes fixed on
me with the kind of sympathy any truly kind huntress might hold for any small helpless creature standing
dazzled before her. Willing victim, I stood there helpless and eager.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” she asked, “or just checking out the merchandise?” (Well, there
you go.)
The way she said merchandise I knew that she knew what I was there for. She knew more than that though. She
knew how to get to me; how to entrap me, to hold me, to make me jump. She knew things I didn’t know about
myself, hadn’t guessed, and, really, honestly, didn’t care to know…wish I didn’t now know.
As I staggered out the door that bright afternoon, my mind was short circuiting. “Wow,” I thought. And that was
pretty much the sum total of my thinking. As I stumbled out of that bookstore that very fine afternoon, wow was
the only thing on my mind. I couldn’t get beyond that single vibrant thought. It raced recklessly through my
system, bumping in to my heart every time it made the circuit. I had never met a woman like Jane before. She
was in complete control. She knew it. I knew it. We both knew it. We both liked it. At that moment there was
nothing else.
Now, forty years after the fact, my lovely wife is convinced that Jane had hypnotized me. I’m not sure.
Hypnotized? (That’s kind of ridicu…well, perhaps.) Why else would a shy, semi-ugly guy do what I was about to
do? Why else would a devoted guy—devoted to a lovely, sweet, wonderful and trusting Southern girl—do what I
was about to do? Jane was like cocaine to me; no matter how vulgar or stupid or wrong it was, it all seemed
really kinda, you know, OK. Can I have another little hit?
From the beginning, it was like one of those bad movies where the two are so much in love and so much is
understood between them that verbiage is unnecessary. When Jane did speak it had enormous influence on
me; on my thinking, on my actions. With Jane, I was like a puppy, trusting, eager to please, longing, aching to
be obedient. Pee in my hat? I’d be delighted. Put it on backward? Why not? Here are some of the most
influential words I can recall her using: “I get off work at 4:30, are you going to be around?” No natural force on
earth could have kept me from placing my head on that block. “I’ll be right outside that door,” I said —grinning
like the fool that I was--and at ten after four I was. That actually does sound a bit like hypnotism doesn’t it?
She got into my mind, my heart, my bed without the use of speech. Once inside, Jane taught me things—
strange things, frightening things--without uttering a word. If you can explain it to me, I’d be interested in
hearing what you have to say. For me, it’s like the pyramids: they’re there, they’re monumental, they’re a little
frightening sure, but oh so inspiring and who cares to know more?
When we first arrived at my room above the Laundro-Mat, I stammered my way through my most impressive,
rote, explanation of my paintings, as she looked on with bright sympathetic disinterest. Enough play. Shortly
she had me sitting cross-legged on the floor facing her. Then, she pulled a record from her large pouch-like
purse and placed it on my record player. I admired the grace of her movements, the cold lines of her body were
pleasing to my eye. When she settled on the floor directly across from me and closed her eyes, I reluctantly
closed my own. After several long uncomfortable moments of silence I began, at long last, to feel something
other than completely ridiculous. As best as I can describe it…this is what transpired. (I’ll try to get you through
this quickly because it sounds like such goddamned nonsense.)
I’d read Ouspensky. I’d read Allen Upward. I’d read Marie Corelli. I’d read Mr. Natural. I knew something about
esoteric, Eastern, and idiotic thought. And although I know these sincere people, each and every breathy one
of them, had been engulfed by countless glowing spheres, I had never been engulfed by a glowing sphere
before. I’d never been engulfed by anything that I could recall. I’d never even seen a glowing sphere before.
Nor did I have expectations of ever seeing one. So, it was new to me. When Jane came to my room this was not
what I had expected. I don’t know what I had expected, but having a glowing white sphere appear above me,
grow brighter, descended and engulfed me entirely, wasn’t it. (Insert raucous laughter here. But a word of
caution: withhold some knee-slapping for later.)
Then, of course, naturally, what else (naturally?), the sphere took me above my physical body. I found that I
could look down and see myself sitting there cross-legged like an idiot, inactive and inarticulate. It was a
perspective I’d never had before. I could see why people had always admired the waviness of my hair though. I
had a nice head of hair. I could see Jane sitting on the wooden floor across from me. Her hair was nice as well.
There I was hovering in this sphere of light a couple feet above Jane and my own shucked-out self, and feeling
quite properly, I suppose, disoriented. Suddenly I became flooded with fear. In the Spanish language they have
a phrase for what I felt—Aye-yi-yi-yi-yi! Immediately I (laugh if you will) snapped back into my physical body.
(This may sound like nonsense, but, like everything in this book, it’s nonsense of a 100% completely true sort.)
Jane was laughing (perhaps much like you are laughing right now) knowingly.
She was smiling in a Cheshire cat like manner (check a mirror to see what that may look like). I guess I looked
frightened; I was, actually, kind of. I didn’t know what to make of any of that. As said, I’d read about such stuff. I
knew what I thought about such stuff. I thought it was improbable at best, perhaps a kind of child-like wishful
thinking. After having experienced it, I didn’t know any more than I had going in (if IN was where I had gone).
“What just happened?” she asked, smiling nicely at me.
Not entirely a fool (and having read my share of detective novels), I replied smartly, “You tell me.”
Jane then described to me exactly (EXACTLY), point by point, what had happened. She described the sphere,
how it came down and gulped me up, how it rose taking me with it. She described me looking down and
becoming frightened. It was precisely what I’d experienced. Things were becoming even more interesting. There
was certainly more to Jane than those eyes, those eyes, those eyes, those eyes, those eyes and those lovely
eyes.
“How do you know that?” I asked astounded.
“I saw you. I was there. You didn’t see me?”
“Nope.” I was dumbfounded.
Going in, I felt, you know, like I’d never met anyone like her before but, now I knew, I had NEVER met ANYONE
like Jane before.
“…and when I saw you get frightened and come back, I thought I’d come back to comfort you, if you needed it.
Do you?”
“You were there?”
“Do you?”
“You were really there…uh…out there?”
“How do you explain it otherwise?” (Hypnotism, my wife whispers over my shoulder.)
“I don’t know,” I said. I was anxious to do it again, whatever it was that we’d done.
At the same time, I was also fearful of it. I’d only heard of such things before from the mouths of morons, and
not just common morons either, but highly respected morons; morons who had published many books and had
large devoted followings. Now, without making any declarations, I found myself a believer in the extraordinarily
unlikely but unquestionably real. Nonetheless, I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anybody about this…least of all
Joanie. Concerning that, Jane said, “You must realize that if you tell anyone about this, they won’t understand.”
That was pretty easy to believe.
Wherever it was I’d been, I wanted to go there again though. I wanted to see if the experience was reproducible.
That was the beginning. I had not yet cheated on Joanie, but I wanted to and I hoped to and I didn’t see what I
could do to prevent it. Given the chance, I wouldn’t do anything to stop the betrayal, I wouldn’t hesitate. I was
helpless. It didn’t even occur to me that I could either quit or turn back. One gear. No brakes. Worth whatever it
might cost.
We met two times more. The first went pretty much the same as before. This time she demonstrated seating the
tip of my tongue into the roof of my mouth. I did and attained the outward state readily. This time I saw a sphere
of light hovering near me and knew, or convinced myself, that it was Jane. When I came back into my body, she
was smiling. I was shaking with delight. I wanted to follow Jane where ever in this universe she might lead me. I
could hear cars outside driving along Harrison Street. I laughed out loud. “THEY think those cars are real,” I
said.
“Those cars are their reality,” she told me. “Ha ha,” I laughed, “poor them.”
I thought about what I had just said, and what it meant, in my own empty-headed way, and drew no conclusions.
I smiled knowingly though; it seemed like the thing to do. Again she cautioned me: “If you tell anyone about this,
they won’t believe you. What you now know to be true, others are incapable of understanding; they’ll say you’re
loopy or you have an over-active imagination or that drugs have overthrown your mind. You can expect that.” I
knew she was right, and I kept quiet about my meetings with Jane for many reasons, none of them pure.
On our third encounter I proved myself to be without ethics of any sort whatsoever, when Jane crawled into bed
with me. I was laying there, surrounded in white light, when there was a knock on the door. Joanie’s sweet,
lovely, lyrical voice called my name. Jane and I froze. We lay there rigid, frozen in complete silence. Joanie
knocked and called my name again. After a terrible and excruciatingly long silence she knocked again.
“Edward?” she said weakly, “Why won’t you open the door?” I said nothing. Jane said nothing. We held each
other tight, breathlessly. “Edward?” Joanie pleaded. I really wished at that moment that I’d be struck dead rather
than hear her sweet voice again. After a pause, Joanie took flight down the stairs. I heard Mrs. See open her
door on the second floor and look out and ask, “Bill?”
Jane and I had remained fixed, entwined, unmoving, listening, horrified as Joanie first guessed, then could no
longer deny, that the young man she’d allowed herself to love, to trust, at that moment, was in the very act of
betraying her. We listened to Joanie as she ran crying down the steps, then Jane got up quickly, dressed and
left as she had come, without a word. I never saw her again…never even caught a glimpse of her on the street
or anywhere else. It was as if she had removed herself from this planet entirely.
Unfortunately, Jane did not, like most hypnotists, have the courtesy to suggest to my malleable mind that when I
awoke from this nightmare all would be forgotten. I realize now—while writing this--that it never will be.