How I met Kurt Cobain

So today the boys at work were cajoling me to keep at the blog to write down my previous exploits in "Worst Case Scenario Karma" by assembling a list of their favorites snippets. Apparently, I can't shut up because there was quite a list. A new member of the Hallway Gang (due to downsizing space, my colleagues and I work in a hallway) was actually quite concerned and taken aback that I was not martyred yet to St. Munch, the Patron Saint of Gravity. Exposed as he was to the glee in which the others did the old "no, even better, what about the time..." I wondered if he felt more disturbed by my tales, or the serious morale boost it gave the rest of the team.

In the meantime, I have resolved to tell a tale that I have not told at work before to give the cyber-vultures something new to add to the arsenal.

How I met Kurt Cobain.

So this goes way back to the eighties and the very cusp of the beginning of the grunge scene in Seattle. But to set this up right I need to go even further back. Back into the depths of Hell, I call High School. So I had this friend Dave. Dave and I were best friends and this was sort of the way it was. Neither of us was terribly popular and if you asked us at the time, we would have told you how glad we were for it. We had nothing but disdain for our fellow classmates, who were all posers and morons. We were not quite Columbine-ish, but had we trenchcoats...

Well Dave had a desire to write music and be in a band. I had a desire to be an artist of some kind but not having any musical talent whatsoever, I scratched "band" of the list. We were motivated by the same driving force - to get chicks.

So Dave, and I am not kidding you, was at the forefront of grunge. Not that anything springs out of thin air and it is all cultural evolution, I swear to you, he was doing the flannel shirt over a t-shirt, holes in his jeans and a well-developed stink-eye in '83-84 and was writing angry boy angst to low tech, four chord music by '86. I was there. He had the sound down. As Seattle bands started to congeal around this new (old) sound, Dave could sense the chick lottery coming. He had the look, he had the anger, he had a beat-up guitar and knew Howlin' Wolf and Husker Du cold. He eventually even had a band. He was just missing one ingredient to making the mega-jump into fame and winning the hottie-stakes. He couldn't sing. In a person that demands to write and sing his own music, the lack of singing was, shall we say, a detriment. God knows that for singing to be a deal breaker in the grunge scene it had to be bad.

It was.

It was so high pitched that it contrasted badly with the dark low grungy sound. Sort of Alvin and the Chipmunks do Pearl Jam.

So that's Dave. Now we go ahead a few years (still in the 80's but towards the end) and he calls me to tell me he is getting married. Wow, I think. Married? I didn't even know he was dating. He wanted me to meet the vision of loveliness and I happily agreed. So I swung by his place one afternoon to meet the gal and was she something. Jabba-the-hut something. Now I am not weight-phobic, this had more to do with her demeanor than looks, but I swear the light bounced off of her yellow, slimy skin and her huge tongue flicked menacingly as she chortled "Ho ho ho, Solo..." but memory does play tricks...

"What do you think?" he asked after she slithered away in her bathrobe that was being tasked way too unkindly for simple cotton.

"Well, Dave," I said repressing my gag reflex, "It's not what I think, that matters, it's how you feel."

"Well, you'll have to come to the wedding this Saturday."

"So soon?" I was somewhat surprised.

"Yeah, we're going a tad non-traditional. We're having it at midnight in Volunteer Park and then we are going to consummate the wedding on Bruce Lee's grave if we can find it."

Did I mention that I think drugs were starting to take a toll on Dave?

"Um, yeah. Count me in." Like Hell. I was going to be anywhere but there.

Sharing this story with several of my friends, they all demanded that I had to go. They just had to know how this would turn out. I invited them all to come with me, but they refused. I had to be the one, but no way would they be caught doing it.

So I resolved to go. Saturday night rolls around and I drive up to Volunteer Park and at the Main gate is Dave standing there.

I cannot believe what I am seeing.

Dave is dressed in a cowboy outfit that you'd get for a little kid, but adult sized. It was all red. Red hat, red picnic table cloth shirt, red jeans, a gun belt and boots with spurs. I was regretting folding to peer pressure, thinking it could only get worse.

He sees me and comes over. I roll down my window and we exchange "heys". He informs me that the wedding has moved down to his apartment due to potential rain. Guess the grave thing was off too. I think this might not be as bad as I feared. So off to the apartment I went.

I arrive and Jabba is there hosting a group of people I do not recognize. I make my way to the beer and start downing it as fast as I can.

Dave shows up after a bit and pulls me aside sheepishly and says he forgot the camera and would I sketch the wedding for him. Bombed as I am at this point, I am not sure I could tell you what end of a pencil was the drawing end, but I agreed.

I went around "drawing" things and people for a while. I drew a tray of color-sorted pills. I drew a mangy dog. I drew people who were more messed up than me. Then I got to this quiet, glaring guy.

"Hi, can I draw you?" I asked.
"Why?" he asked. I told him and he said okay.
"What's your name?" I asked making conversation as I sketched.
"Kurt"
"Cool, " I replied as I finished my scribble.

Then the "priest/reverend/transvestite" comes in looking a like cross between Heath Ledger's Joker and Holly GoLightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's". The buzz was starting to overtake me. I don't remember much after this other than the first line of the ceremony "Life is like a trailer-hitch..."

I woke up in my car the next morning.

Sometime later (couple of years perhaps) I was watching MTV and saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and recognized the quiet, glaring dude, Kurt, from the wedding. I assume the chick he was with that night was Courtney Love, but it was blissfully dark in the apartment both inside and outside of my head