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Jane was the polar opposite to Katlyn.  Where Katlyn was Jewish, Jane was Irish Catholic.  Where Katlyn was provincial, having been born and raised in Milwaukee, Jane had been all over the world.  Where Katlyn’s father had been a doctor and raised his children in a vertical world of information, Jane’s father was a professor and introduced his children to a broad selection of arts and culture. 

The first day I met her, she was just sitting in the living room at the co-op, smoking a cigarette, and staring out the big bay window.  There were a lot of people coming and going so a strange face was, well, nothing strange.  But she seemed so comfortable, so pensive; I just walked up and introduced myself to her.  Her name was Mary but she preferred to be called Jane, which was her middle name.

It turns out this ordinary looking girl had led what, to me, was an extraordinary life.  She was from Ann Arbor.  Her parents lived just a few blocks from there.  But she had been everywhere abroad and across the country.  At the ripe old age of 20, she had already been to England, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Germany.  She had spent six months, living in Cleggan, County Galway, Ireland and another six months in Paris, places I could only dream of.

She had just returned from spending six months in Eugene, Oregon, working in printing shop, making posters.  When asked why she had gone there, she simply replied because she wanted to.  I think there was a boy involved, going to or getting away from but I’m not sure.

Maybe it appealed to her to have somebody so fascinated by her stories.  Maybe she just liked to tell them.  But for whatever reason, over the next days and weeks, she told me tale after tale of her adventures.  I was in the process of breaking up with Katlyn and the time I spent with Jane was counter-point.  My world had been, up to that point, narrow and limited.  Hers truly was the world. 

And… best of all, she liked to play Ping-Pong.  Our co-op had a table down the basement that nobody used.  We used to sneak down there and play at all hours of the night. We got closer and closer.  I didn’t even consider her girlfriend material until the day I discovered I preferred spending time with her over Katlyn.  That summer, I stayed at the co-op and she moved home, which was all of three blocks away.  She’d invite me over on Friday nights to watch TV.  When it got really hot, we’d take a ride in my car and just sit down at Burns Park, with the engine running because it had air conditioning, which her house and my co-op did not.

A remarkable thing occurred.  The more time we spent together, the more beautiful she became to me.  Not just on the inside but physically as well.  It was as though our friendship transformed her into something akin to a model.

She was there for me when I was so down in the dumps over Katlyn and she was there for me when I broke up.  I really had strong feelings for her and in the early spring of my junior year, I felt I had to say something.  She may very well have been the first woman I ever loved.  All the females I had been involved with prior to her had been girls.  I don’t know whether it’s the age or the experience but at some point, the transition occurs and I think she was there.  I made up my mind that I was going to talk to her and lay it all on the line. 

I chickened out.  Instead, I wrote her a poem that was sad and self-pitying likening myself to a rock at the bottom of the ocean.  But she got the point. One of things that I loved about her was that she always told it like it was.  She never pulled any punches. And she didn’t do it this time, either.   She explained to me that while she liked me a lot and might have even have had feelings for me, nothing was ever going to happen between us.  Even though her Irish-Catholic ancestry didn’t have as much impact on her as it did her parents, she loved her parents very much and told me she could never end up with a Jewish man. And that was it. I had to choose: friends or nothing.  I chose friends.

I loved her so much that if I couldn’t make her happy, then I would find somebody for her who would.  It just so happened that my other best friend, a fellow named Bill, who lived in the room next to mine, was Irish-Catholic.  He was the right age, too.  Bill was sort of a recluse and even though they lived all of 20 yards apart, Jane and Bill’s path never crossed.  I made it my mission to put them together.

Unfortunately, I succeeded.  They hit it off famously.  They fell in love almost immediately.  Pretty soon, I was odd man out.  Before I introduced them, I had best friend girl Jane and best friend boy Bill.  I spent a lot of time with both.  Now I had nothing.  They spent all their time together and that left no room for me.  I could have kicked myself.  No good deed goes unpunished.

What brought this to a head was the famous Trip to Toronto.  As part of the International Co-op Council, we were invited to a summit in Toronto. It was supposed to be meetings and discussions but mostly, it was an excuse to go to Toronto and party.  All three of us went and we were going to have a great time together.  Once we arrived at the hotel, I didn’t see them again.  In fact, I think they left early leaving me to figure out what to do.  I had fun but it made me regret that I had introduced them, at least for a while. 

Incidentally, on the way back, we got stopped on the American side by Customs and searched.  I had really long hair at the time, everybody did, and we just generally looked like hippies.  They took me into a room that looked suspiciously like a jail cell and I had to strip down naked and had a full cavity search.  They found nothing nor was there anything to find.  I knew better.  But the whole experience traumatized me so much that I vowed never to go to Canada again.  Or if I did, I wasn’t coming back.  I had to break that vow years later when my mom made me drive her to Kingston, Ontario to pick up some asthma medicine that wasn’t available in the U.S.  Going there wasn’t bad but on the drive back, before we went through Customs, I curled up in the back seat in a quivering ball and told my mom to only speak to me when it was over.  Nothing happened and I have since been able to go to Canada and back, even sitting in the front seat.  I’m still not ready to be the driver yet.

Back to Bill and Jane, eventually, when the passion cooled just the tiniest bit, they let me back into their lives but it was pretty lonely there for a while.  Eventually, they got married and had two beautiful girls together.  They’re still married to this day.

The only other thing I can tell you is one time, many years later, when my first wife and I lived in Wilmette and Bill and Jane lived in Chicago, we went out to dinner with Kristy’s parents and Bill and Jane.  We all had a great dinner.  I sat next to Jane and we talked and talked the whole meal.  Afterwards, when we got outside, Kristy’s father pulled me aside.

“Why didn’t you marry that girl instead of my daughter?” he asked.  He seemed almost angry.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.  Kristy’s father was a lawyer and had always been a keen observer of human nature.  Was I that transparent?  I’d have to find some way to apologize to him and try to explain my friendship in a way that didn’t make him mad.  But I never got the chance.

“Because she’s obviously in love with you,” was his reply.

I was dumbfounded.  I always thought Jane had the strength of will to turn it off and keep it off.  It never occurred to me that she would allow herself to have those feelings for me. Why hadn’t I noticed?  To this day, she is still my best friend.  Maybe that’s the way love should always be.