SharpNose's Journal: Jane Husain

That was her real name - Jane Saba Husain. I feel a bit safe in going ahead with it because she is no longer alive.

It was true that Elvira took up a lot of my effort and attention in college, but there was one other woman who was noteworthy in that she flat out told me to leave her alone.

This was one of these cases where I saw someone and had a deep and immediate attraction that could not be ignored. She was very pretty. She looked Middle-Eastern, as her last name suggested, but I never found out anything about her background other than that she was from a backwards lesser city in a Southern state. She had long, kinky/wavy, dark brown or perhaps even black hair - a marvelous big pile of it, too - and olive-toned skin. Largish nose, very intense dark eyes. Somewhat exaggerated figure from the waist down.

As was often the case, women who caught my eye would get the Lt. Data treatment - I'd store all kinds of facts about them in my head as I came upon them. She lived in a dorm way off in the corner of campus and she'd often pass by my window going up the steps that wound up and around between the dorm behind C dorm and the dining hall.

As it happened, Jane was in a Physics class with me one quarter and I tried to take advantage of this by sitting near her and chatting her up before class. A few instances of this and she told me to buzz off. I was caught so unprepared that I didn't know what to say and I really don't remember what I said, if anything. But, my shrunken ego and I backed off.

Naturally, I told my friends the story. Some time later, the Peruvian Peckerhead and a friend of his came up to the room from the dining hall and they told me that they had just seen something that might have explained her vociferous disinterest in me: she was sitting at a table in the dining hall next to her roommate and they were holding hands under the table. Oh. My. God.

I could have surmised that the PP was shitting me or that what they saw didn't necessarily mean that Jane was a lesbian, but sometime later during one of my frequent late-night campus walks I did see Jane and her roommate some distance away from me, walking arm in arm.

I probably should say that my reaction to this was not like what it would be now, but I should also point out that I probably wouldn't have come off as such a jerk as I probably did in the first place, either. Had I been smoother and less acting out of desperation, who knows what might have happened and how her relationship with and interest in women might have figured into a relationship with me (a shot at a three-way?). In any case, I was left with this ugly combination of longing, disgust, and rejection when it came to Jane.

There was really only one other development involving Jane and I think it was some months on - I don't think it was a whole year or more later. On Friday and Saturday nights, there was an auditorium on campus where they'd run movies - generally cult films or series like James Bond, Dirty Harry, or Clint Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars. I typically went to these movies alone, being who I was. Anyway, one movie I trudged up to see was The Hunger, which was a neo-horror flick about vampires. That film is famous for a really erotic lesbian thing between Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve. When the movie ended and I got up to move towards the aisle of the auditorium, I was surprised to look up and see Jane coming out of the same row but on the opposite side of the aisle. Our eyes met and I remember kind of wordlessly acknowledging her. She was by herself.

I knew that to go back to our respective dorms, we had to go the exact same direction because her dorm was effectively behind mine, so as the crowd left the auditorium and thinned out, Jane and I wound up on the same sidewalks but I hung back a respectful distance. When we started to get near my dorm, I sped up slightly so as to time an intercept just before getting to my dorm. I did say something small-talkish to her but I didn't stop walking nor did I really try to engage her very much - I wanted to communicate somehow but I didn't want to "trap" her or even really give her a reason to be as rude as she had been that time before Physics class.

Over the next few days, I thought about the encounter and I felt like I would make one more try, but the try I made wasn't that of the desperate jerk - it was more heartfelt. I wrote her a letter, and in it I said that I seemed a shame that we should both be going to movies by ourselves. I apologized for having bothered her before and I just asked her to contact me if she wanted to. She never did, and eventually the day came when I never saw her again.

Just a few years ago, after having received my first ever alumni directory, I was surprised to see a dagger printed next to her name. Deceased. I called the registrar's office and found that she had apparently died just a few years after graduating; there was no information other than her family's address. I did send a note to that address saying that I did not know Jane well but that I thought she was very beautiful and I expressed my condolences. There was never any response.

I don't think about Jane very often but I've been remembering her recently because I am in the process of applying to grad school right back in the same place. Jane was an architecture major and back then, the joke was that you never wanted to date a girl who was an architecture major because you'd never see her. They practically lived in that building. And, as fate would have it, the program I am applying to would put me right into that building - the place where Jane wound up spending a significant fraction of her waking life.

I sold all but my last college yearbook, and it happens that there are a couple of pictures of Jane in it - in one, her class picture, she is pretty but it doesn't really show how pretty she really was. In the other, which I only saw for the first time tonight, much to my shock, she is sitting in a classroom next to some guy and her face is in profile. She is wearing a denim jacket with a t-shirt with the name of her dorm on it. I am very glad I found this picture because this is just as I remember her, with her dark, intense eyes peering out from the shade made by her hair.

Much as I learned how to honor the memory of the college student that used to be me, I honor the memory of a woman who couldn't stand him and who apparently found comfort in and love with other women. I still wish there were a way for me to speak with her friends and family, but I don't know who or where they are and, given Jane's less-than-positive impression of me, that's probably just as well.