By Ryan Shoemaker

Featured Art: Delta Bloom by John Sabraw

“Bruises on the fruit, tender age in bloom.”
— Kurt Cobain, “In Bloom”

“He walked out the back door of Exodus and climbed the six-foot wall … over the next two days, there were scattered sightings of Kurt.”
— Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

Thursday, March 31, 1994, my eighteenth birthday. That was the day Scotty and I helped Kurt Cobain out of a tight spot and then jammed with him in my basement. I know what you’re thinking — I’d have thought the same if it hadn’t happened to me. But it did. This was back when I played guitar and Scotty drummed, back when we had this crazy idea, like a million other kids drunk on the grunge zeitgeist, that all we needed to be rock stars were some ratty jeans, a thrift-store cardigan, three guitar chords, and enough repressed angst to pen the next great teenage anthem. But that was years ago, six days before Kurt put a shotgun in his mouth, before Scotty really did become a rock star, and before I stopped caring about all of it. That day I met Kurt, that changed everything. 

***

It happened like this. There we were at Tower Records on Sunset Strip, Scotty and me, free from Burbank for a couple hours. Soundgarden’s “Spoonman” pounded through the sound system, Chris Cornell’s raw-edged screech lifting our spirits as much as any Mormon hymn we’d sing at church on Sunday. And all those albums spread out before us! 

My fingers flew through the CDs. Alice in Chains. The Melvins. Mudhoney. Nirvana. Pearl Jam. “Someday,” I whispered to Scotty, “our album will be right here.”

Scotty took a breath that could have sucked all the air out of Tower Records. “Yeah,” he said. “Right here. Our album.”   

And then we heard this slurred voice rise above Chris Cornell’s vocal blast. A wasted butt rocker, a relic from another era, in a denim jacket and tight, acid-washed jeans, was ragging Shaun, the cashier, about the music.

“Man, all you play now is this grunge shit,” the guy griped. “What happened to Mötley Crüe, man? What happened to White Snake and Twisted Sister?”

“What happened?” Shaun said, throwing us a wink. “They’re all in rehab, dude. They’re all fat. They’re done. Look for the reunion tour at the county fair.”   

Scotty and I laughed at that, what a lame-o, all while sneaking a glance at the cute hippie girl down the aisle from us in a black Pearl Jam T-shirt and Birkenstocks. Golden hair parted down the middle, ten perfect toes painted a bright aquamarine.

Then this other girl showed up, a round blush on her cheekbones, panting as she said to Pearl Jam Girl: “Callie, listen. This guy who works here said he just saw Kurt Cobain. Swear to God. The guy said Kurt just left, like a second ago.”

Pearl Jam Girl grabbed her friend’s elbow, dropped the CD in her hand, and they both shot out the door onto Sunset Blvd, their heads twisting east and west. Then, maybe, I saw a mess of long, ratty blond hair float past the far window and round the corner of the building. The girls must have seen it, too, because they screamed and ran.

Scotty eyed the door, his dark eyebrows rising like they were on strings. “You think?” he said.

We had heard the rumor that Kurt Cobain, at that very moment, was in a Los Angeles drug rehab.

I grabbed a Melvins album. On the cover, a couple of creepy cartoon kids smiled and fawned over a two-headed puppy. Sure, I felt the itch, too, to rush from the store, to hunt the parking lot and alleys — because perhaps it was Kurt Cobain. Just to see him, just to bask in his rebel aura and get his autograph, would be the chance of a lifetime. But it seemed so desperate, so pathetic, so uncool. “No,” I said. “There’s no way it’s him.”

***

Fifteen minutes later we were back in my Ford Taurus station wagon, my mom’s old car, squinting at the blurred figure on the cover of Soundgarden’s Superunknown, my newest purchase. The silver Casio on my left wrist chimed. We didn’t want to leave. But my dad would be pissed if I wasn’t home by six thirty. He’d promised pizza from Tony’s Bella Vista and a Porto’s mango cheesecake for my birthday.

I turned the key and then cranked up the A/C. The car’s interior had a tropical humidity, with a hint of mildew from a pile of damp blankets in the back seat we’d thrown on the grass a couple weeks ago at Valhalla Memorial Cemetery. A goth girl from AP English, Kami Boswell, claimed that at midnight on a full moon the spirits of the dead roamed the cemetery. She swore that she’d seen her grandmother there. I didn’t believe her, or hardly believed her, but I had to try.

“You smell that?” I asked Scotty, catching a whiff of cigarettes in the car. And then from the backseat, there was the rustle of fabric and a low thump against the passenger side door. I caught Scotty’s eyes as I turned to look, an electric tingle blitzing across my neck. The scuffed toe of a black, low-cut Converse poked out from under a blanket, and one blue, blood-shot eye glared at me through a gap in the folds. I was ready to bolt from the car, my mind filled with dangerous characters. 

But then Pearl Jam Girl appeared at the passenger door and pounded a fist against the window. She panted, her part crooked, a hundred loose hairs lit by the sun. Moist stains bloomed under her armpits. 

A muffled voice leaked from the blankets: “Don’t tell them I’m here. Please.” That voice! Unmistakable. A voice we’d heard a thousand times in MTV interviews, its cool, monotone bravado railing against the music establishment and sell-out bands, a voice that turned to gravel when screamed through a microphone.

Scotty cranked the window down. Pearl Jam Girl leaned in, her eyes wild, her breath coming in gasps. I could smell it, something like ammonia and saltine crackers. Her friend stood behind her, scanning the parking lot and bouncing up and down like she had to take a huge piss.

“Kurt Cobain,” Pearl Jam Girl gulped. She had tears in her eyes. “He just ran by here. You see him?”

Scotty looked at me. For a second his eyes angled toward the pile of blankets. “No, didn’t see anyone.” He tipped his head until it touched the seat rest. “You see Kurt Cobain run by?” he asked me.

Pearl Jam Girl looked at me.

I tapped a finger against my chin, a casual gesture, an authentic gesture to suggest I knew nothing. “I wish —” 

Pearl Jam Girl didn’t stick around to let me finish the sentence. She and her friend were racing back through the parking lot toward Sunset Blvd, little wedgies from their jean shorts riding up their butts.

Scotty and I just stared through the windshield, not wanting to turn around, as if this whole crazy, unbelievable moment — Kurt Cobain hiding in the backseat of my car — might vanish. And then that voice again, pleading: “Get me out of here.”

I shifted the car into drive and inched through the parking lot, stopping to wait for a break in the traffic on Sunset Blvd. Pearl Jam Girl and her friend were on the sidewalk, cheeks wet with tears. We could hear them through Scotty’s open window, inconsolable as they gushed to four other girls, the contagion of mania. I recognized that hysteria. I’d seen it in the old black-and-white newsreels of rabid teenyboppers ready to tear John, Paul, George, and Ringo limb from limb. I felt a sudden righteous zeal, a clear-eyed vision: saving Kurt from them, carrying him to safety.     

As we idled there, the traffic rushing past, the seconds ticking by, Kurt, in an explosive rush of air and movement, threw the blankets off. Scotty and I flinched. Kurt was at the window, rolling it down. The girls looked at him with dumb doe eyes and then with a recognition that settled in their jaws like a heavy weight, pulling their mouths open to show all those perfect teeth. They screamed, a deafening industrial shriek, bodies convulsing, fingers pressed to their faces.

“Hey,” Kurt said, half his body out the window. That shut them up as they waited for him to say something. Instead, a low, fleshy sound churned in Kurt’s throat. His lips and nose quivered for a half second. Then a spray of yellow mucus shot from his mouth and splattered the girls. Kurt flipped them two stiff middle fingers. “Pearl Jam suck!” he yelled.

I stomped on the gas and squealed onto Sunset, hunched forward, hands knotted to the steering wheel. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to see those girls’ stunned faces.

Kurt took a huge breath, like a free diver surfacing from deep water. His forehead was slick with sweat. “Fucking parasites,” he said.

I gave a casual shake of the head, like I agreed, though my heart smashed against my T-shirt so hard I thought Scotty might see it. “It’s cool,” I said, as if this were nothing; another day, another rock star saved from an adoring mob. But my thoughts were troubled by that image of Kurt, his sudden anger, his cruelty to those girls.

“No worries,” Scotty said. A nervous vibrato rattled his voice.

Kurt laughed, a slow, easy chuckle that shattered the strangeness of the moment, a laugh dripping with sarcasm that eased my dark thoughts.

“I’m Toby,” I said. “This is Scotty.”

Scotty turned to look at Kurt. “We’re in a band. I drum. Toby plays guitar. He’s a lefty like you.”

I cringed, as if Kurt Cobain cared about our band or that I was a lefty. We didn’t even have a bassist.

“You play any shows yet?” Kurt asked.

The heavy traffic crawled along on Sunset Blvd. A woman in a black bra and lacy underwear, nine stories high, gazed seductively down at us from the side of a glass and steel apartment building.

“One.” And then I hesitated to add: “Some high school battle of the bands thing.”

Kurt leaned forward. He looked awful, worn out. There were dark crescents under his eyes and scabby red blotches on his forehead and cheeks. The watch on his wrist, the dial a man’s grinning face, caught the sun and cast a point of white light onto the car’s ceiling. Above the watch was a white plastic wristband, the kind hospitals give patients.

“Was it awesome?” he asked.

I shrugged. “We just played two songs. We only have two songs.”

Kurt licked his dry lips. “But was it awesome?”

Our two songs were me screaming into the microphone and playing amped up, sped up, shorter versions of whatever I was learning in Guitar World. But there was something special about playing, if only for our friends in their ripped jeans and oversize plaid shirts, as Principal Thorton tried to break up the mosh pit. Up on stage, the strike of those chords, Scotty’s steady beat — there was a rush of euphoria. “Yeah,” I admitted, “it was awesome.”

Kurt reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. “Fuck yeah,” he said, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth. “We once played in front of a grocery store, once in a RadioShack. Those were my favorite shows.”

Smoke swirled through the car. Scotty and I looked at each other.

Kurt tapped the cigarette on the thin edge of the open window. “I need to get to North Hollywood.”

***

We drove up Highland, past the Hollywood Bowl, and onto Barham. KROQ-FM oozed from the radio — the Gin Blossoms, Blind Melon, the Lemonheads — but the breezy silence sucked dry the music’s electric cheer. Kurt sat there, hands crossed on his lap, a cigarette between his fingers.

“Shit,” Kurt said suddenly, looking up at the Oakwood Apartments, a sprawling complex whose pitched rooflines seemed to hover over the tops of the thick trees edging Barham. “We used to live right there,” he said, “that window on the corner. Dave and Krist and me. We recorded Nevermind just down the road.” Kurt’s lips curved into a pained grin. “There was this guy,” Kurt said in a dry whisper that was almost lost in the rush of air through the open windows, “who lived a couple apartments down from us. Fucking annoying. Always knocking on our door, wanting to hang out, never shutting up about this kids’ show he did in the seventies and how his parents stole all his money, and then some new, bullshit TV deal he was working on that would make him millions. All day he’d wander the hallways looking for someone to talk to. We wouldn’t answer the door. We hid in the bushes if we saw him coming.” Kurt stared at his hands. Smoke leaked from his nose. “That kids’ show he did, I’d wake up early every Saturday to watch it. But I never told him that.”

Wind whipped through the car’s open windows bringing in the smell of eucalyptus and French fries and sewage. And then the San Fernando Valley opened before us, a brown haze pressing down on a tree-lined grid in full springtime bloom — a polluted Eden.

I couldn’t believe the strangeness of all this, Scotty and me and Kurt Cobain. Yet Kurt was different; not the rock star from all the MTV interviews and music videos we salivated over. None of that aloof, anti-authoritarian hipness, none of the crazy antics with Krist and Dave, no hamming it up with fake French accents and silly faces.

“Fucking corporate radio,” Kurt said, flicking his cigarette through the car window. “Why don’t they ever play Mudhoney and the Melvins? And more fucking Nirvana?”

“Yeah,” Scotty said. “More fucking Stone Temple Pilots, too.”

In all the years we’d known each other, I’d never heard Scotty use the F word.

Kurt glared at him. “You’re shitting me, right? Stone Temple Pilots? They’re fucking boilerplate commercial rock, Nirvana rip-offs.”

Scotty wilted, his shoulders shrinking, his head bending forward.

Kurt picked at a purple scab on his chin. His hand shook. “I need a fucking phone,” he said.

We were coming up on Burbank Blvd and Hollywood Way. I made a quick right into a 7-Eleven. Kurt had the door open before the car even stopped. He walked to a payphone and yanked the handset from the cradle.

Kurt shouted into the phone, his fisted right hand hammering the air like a tyrant making a speech. He stared down at the sidewalk, his back curved, his lips moving quickly. 

I turned the radio down to catch a word or phrase.

Then Kurt dropped the handset, leaving it to dangle above the sidewalk. He slid into the back seat and grabbed a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. “Laurel Canyon Blvd and Saticoy. You know where that is?” he asked, squinting down at the paper.

“I think,” I said.

I pulled onto Burbank Blvd and drove west. Beck’s “Loser” played on the radio, that buzzing sitar and final blast of distorted guitar over the repeating chorus, and then a second of silence before the first ringing notes of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” filled the car.

“Hey,” Scotty said, pointing at the radio. “Nirvana.” He eyed Kurt like he’d pulled a rabbit from his ear. “How’d you do that?”

Kurt grinned. “When you’re a big fucking rock star, you just make a call.”

***

I turned right on Laurel Canyon and drove north, the car suddenly rattling over potholes and seams of patched, uneven asphalt. We passed through the twilight of a graffitied underpass crowded with shopping carts and shadowed figures, the reek of piss wafting through the car. Scotty fidgeted in his seat, his upper lip coated with sweat. This was a world we’d only caught glimpses of from the I-5 and the 170, a blur passing at seventy miles an hour.

“Here,” Kurt said, pointing to a gray, white-trimmed apartment complex at the dead-end of Saticoy. One side bordered the 170, and though I couldn’t see the traffic, the sound of it was like the steady rush of the ocean.

Kurt opened the car door and stepped out onto a patch of dirt dotted with dandelions and crabgrass.

“We can wait,” I said. “It’s no problem.”

“Cool,” Kurt said, but he was fixed on the building, like he could see through the white cinder block. 

He walked to a rusted metal gate and pressed a button. Unable to stand still, those black Converse shuffled over the cracked sidewalk. The gate buzzed. Kurt pushed the door open, walked toward a dim hallway, and then vanished into darkness.

“You think it’s true?” Scotty asked. “The drugs and all that?”

“That’s the story,” I said.  

The hum of the freeway filled the car. Scotty stared at the spot where Kurt disappeared. “I thought he was in rehab.”

“Maybe he was.”

I thought of Rome. It’d been all over MTV for the last month: painkillers and champagne. Kurt in a coma. Some said Kurt was a junkie. Some said Rome was a suicide attempt. It made no sense. A rock star wife. A baby daughter. All that success. I didn’t want to believe it. “What now?” I asked.

Scotty chewed his bottom lip, still looking at the dark hallway. “We take him to your house for dinner.”

I laughed. “No way.”

Scotty turned to me with a sly, crooked grin. “I’m serious. What a story we’ll tell everyone on Monday.”

“And my dad?” I said. “What would I say?”

Scotty had a look, something wild and hungry. “It’d be hilarious. Tell him that Kurt wants to be a Mormon.”

I looked up at the building. Behind it, twilight filled the sky, a soft, luminous glow.

Several minutes later, the gate opened and crashed shut, and then Kurt was standing at the passenger window, drumming the roof of the car with his open palms, hips swaying, his silver wallet chain striking his belt buckle. He leaned into the car, his elbows resting on the open window. “Hey, rock stars.”

I didn’t know what to say. Scotty looked at me and then jerked his head in Kurt’s direction.

“So,” I said, tracing the raised Ford logo on the steering wheel, “it’s my birthday today.”

Kurt gave a euphoric smile. “Hey, man, happy birthday.”

“My dad’s getting a pizza,” I said. “Just him, Scotty, and me. No biggie, but you want to come? Or not. We can take you wherever you want.”

“Yeah, cool,” Kurt said, with a smile that looked ready to slide from his face, and pupils that were black specks in the center of those blue eyes.

***

By the time we got to Burbank, crickets were trilling from every front lawn and under every bush. A few points of starlight leaked through the golden-blue light of Hollywood that illuminated the pale night sky. I was late.

“Didn’t I say six thirty?” my dad asked as we stepped into the entryway. A Book of Mormon open on his lap, he sat on the living room couch, still in the beige Carhartt work shirt he wore as the manager of a small factory in Van Nuys that made bumpers for cars.

“This is Kurt,” I said.

Kurt stood between me and Scotty, hands clasped together in front of him. I wondered if my dad recognized him, but I saw nothing of recognition on his face, only concern as he absorbed Kurt’s stringy hair and torn jeans, this strange adult with his son. 

“Hi,” my dad said, a little cold around the edges. He closed the Book of Mormon. “Toby, can I talk to you in the kitchen?” Kurt’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes went wide, one of those you’re-busted faces. My stomach jerked. I had this awful image of my dad throwing Kurt out of the house.

 We stood in the semidarkness of the kitchen, facing each other, the refrigerator humming, the microwave blinking the wrong time. My dad’s thick arms crossed in a perfect knot over his broad chest. “Who’s Kurt?”

I explained Tower Records and that Kurt was in this cool band and how he needed a ride, and because it was my birthday, I thought it would be nice to invite him over. And then I played Scotty’s card: “And I think he wants to be a Mormon. Not that he came right out and said it, but maybe he’s a little lost, like, spiritually.” And I said it with a straight face, a gloomy note in my voice.

“Really?” My dad’s head swung toward the lit entryway, where Kurt and Scotty stood. For the past six months, since my mom died, my dad had thrown himself into church, a newfound devotion, mumbling scriptures as he walked through the house, devouring thick religious texts by long-dead Mormon prophets. Now he was a ward missionary and greeter, grinning madly and shaking hands each Sunday at the chapel doors.   

I felt bad about the deception, but then looking from the dark kitchen to where Kurt stood, at his pale blotchy face, I felt something unexpected claw my throat.

And then we were all at the table, a Tony’s Bella Vista pizza box open between us.

My dad wiped his mouth with a napkin and then looked over at Kurt. “Kurt, Toby tells me you’re in a band.”

Kurt laid his half-eaten pizza slice on the paper plate in front of him. “Yes, sir.” There was a formality in his voice, in his gestures, in the way he dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “It’s kind of a loud, high-energy rock band,” he said. “I play guitar and sing. We’re really hoping to make it big.”

My dad leaned forward on his elbows. “And it’s full time? It’s your job?”

Scotty let out a little snort, then clamped his hand over his mouth. My dad looked at him, puzzled, and then back to Kurt.

Kurt stared thoughtfully at the pizza’s wilted pepperoni. “Yeah, full time. Me and the guys. Nose to the grindstone and all that. We want to be famous. But if rock doesn’t work, we’ll try country. If not country, maybe reggae or opera or Inuit throat singing. And if that’s a bust, I’ll give up music for something stable, like being a sushi chef or maybe a garbage man or a logger.”

“I see,” my dad said, though I could tell he didn’t know what to make of Kurt. Then: “Toby says you’re interested in Mormonism.”

Kurt looked at me, a narrow-eyed, I-got-this-dude look. Nine years between us, more than half my life, but a complete adolescent understanding of teenage lies and half-truths passed like telepathy across the table. “Yeah,” Kurt said. “Totally. Like to be born again and all that, but with the Mormon Jesus, and the bread and the wine and the fish and the loaves.”

My dad’s lips opened, but Kurt went on, his right hand stroking the stubble on his dimpled chin: “I think I had a Mormon friend in junior high, or maybe he was Amish or Quaker. I can’t remember. But what totally interests me about your church is all the wives, not that my friend’s family was into that  — only one mom  — but that life really appeals to me: all the wives and kids. I’ve always wanted a big family. And don’t you believe that you can become gods with all these superpowers?”

“Well, yes,” my dad said, “but —”

“I’m totally behind it,” Kurt said, “the long beard and the white robe, a throne with all my wives and kids around me. So cool.” Kurt took a bite of pizza, chewing and speaking. “But not celebrating birthdays or Valentine’s Day or Arbor Day? I don’t know if I can commit to that.”

“Kurt,” my dad said, gripping the edge of the table with both hands, “the Mormon church doesn’t practice polygamy anymore. That was almost a hundred years ago.”

Kurt chewed his pizza and considered this. “You think they’ll bring it back? I know a lot of guys who would join your church if they could have a few wives.”

My dad’s shoulders sank. The righteous zeal drained from his face. “Probably not, Kurt,” he said. 

Silence. Then Kurt’s eyes drifted up to a painting that hung on the wall next to the table, a still life of a terracotta pot bursting with yellow poppies. It’d been there as long as I could remember, a relic from another life, a hobby my mom had, a distraction, she used to say, from her broken mind. Almost every wall in the house had one of her paintings: bowls of oranges and speckled red apples, vases spilling over with white tulips and pink carnations as big as my hands. I couldn’t look at them. 

“I like that painting,” Kurt said.  

My dad’s jaw clenched. He gazed across the table, in my direction, but I knew he couldn’t see me but something from long ago. “My wife painted it,” he said. “Toby’s mom.” He smiled, a smile from another time. “Painting. She called it her therapy.” My dad stared down at his plate. “She passed away in October.” 

As if something had called to me, I turned from the table to look into the dim living room where six circles, the size of half dollars, were pressed into the beige carpet. I’d tried to smooth them out with my hand, comb them out, run a vacuum over them, but they stayed: the imprints of the hospital bed where my mom lay for the last two weeks of her life. 

I’d read something in my ninth-grade English class about how the mind’s a dark forest. I guess that’s how I made sense of it: that my mom got lost somewhere in her mind and couldn’t find her way out. Worn down and scared for so many years, she just gave up and let herself waste away, even as my dad and I pleaded with her to take some water and a little soup —because that’s all she needed to save her body. But she wouldn’t. 

It’s hard to say “suicide,” but I should probably call it what it is, even if there wasn’t a bullet or a handful of pills or a crushing fall, and even if it took years of hospitals, psychiatrists, LA County social workers coming and going. There would be long stretches when she seemed like a normal mom, but always the eventual backslide, each time a little deeper into that forest until she wandered off, farther than she ever had, and never came out.

And where did all her pain go? As far as I could tell, she left it behind for me and my dad. I guess that’s why I’d tried not to think about her.

I looked at Kurt. He had one elbow on the table, his chin on his palm, that white plastic bracelet touching the tattered edge of his shirtsleeve. He’d followed my gaze to the carpet, and then he smiled, like he could see right into me.

And that look never left Kurt’s face as he sang “Happy Birthday” along with my dad and Scotty and as I blew out the candles and my dad dropped huge slices of mango cheesecake onto our plates. And that smile was still there when we finished the cake, when Kurt said, “We should jam together.”

I felt a rush hit my brain. “Can we?” I asked my dad.

I looked at Scotty. He was practically panting.

“I don’t know.” My dad frowned at his watch. “It’s a school night.”

But then I played another card. “I thought maybe on my birthday it would be all right. Just this once.”

My dad’s arms flopped to his side. “Okay,” he said. “But not too late.”

***

We led Kurt down a narrow staircase to a room in the basement where we stored our Christmas decorations. All our equipment was down there: Scotty’s drum kit, my Fender Squire and Epiphone acoustic, two Peavey amps, and a mic duct-taped to a wobbly stand we found at Goodwill. 

“This is it,” I said, knowing Kurt might appreciate the yellow linoleum and the bleak bone-white of the overhead fluorescent lighting, all in hilarious contrast to the fake Christmas tree and 40-inch plastic Santa Claus in the far corner of the room. 

Kurt raised up onto his tiptoes and poked a water-stained ceiling tile. “The shittier the better,” he said.

I lifted my Fender Squier and held it out to Kurt, hoping that something of him might absorb into the guitar. “You working on anything?” I couldn’t help asking.

Kurt reached for the guitar and eased the strap over his shoulder. I flipped the amps on.

“That’s what everyone wants to know,” Kurt said into the microphone, his amplified voice filling the room. “There’s some rumor about a blues album, but that’s bullshit. You want to know something?” Kurt twisted the guitar’s tuning pegs, smirking with some secret knowledge. “Truth is, I’ve written one song in the last six months, one depressing little piece of shit.” Upstairs, a toilet flushed. Water rushed through a pipe somewhere above the stained ceiling tiles. “You want to hear it?” he asked, not looking at us, like he thought we might turn him down.

Scotty and I nodded dumbly in unison, feeling stupid and pathetic, like we’d synchronized it.

Kurt started strumming, a fast up and down in a minor key that sent a sudden shiver across my chest and down my back, that eerie feeling of peering into empty rooms or at old grainy photos. I leaned in, hoping for a key change, for Kurt to tap the fuzz pedal and lift the song from its sad groove. I waited for the stinging lyrics, something quintessentially Nirvana, the shocking, incongruous images, the railing social commentary against the phonies and the wannabes. 

Then Kurt stepped up to the mic, his voice groaning out of him, like a deep ache as he sang, something about a son who’d tried again and again to make his parents proud. I looked at Scotty, his faded navy Vans tapping time with the downbeat, his smile until, absorbing the words, his foot slowed and then stopped. He slumped into one of the lawn chairs we kept in the room and stared down at the pattern of dizzying loops and swirls in the yellow linoleum. And I was hunched over in one of the lawn chairs, too, though I couldn’t remember sitting. My right hand covered my mouth.

Kurt let the final chord ring until the strings stopped vibrating. Scotty swallowed hard and then stood up. He looked at me and then back to Kurt.

“Next album?” is all Scotty could say.

Kurt ran his hand across the short stubble on his cheeks. He didn’t look at us, but at something above our heads. “No, that one’s just for me.”

The three of us stood there. The amps buzzed. Kurt shook his head. “Fuck,” he said. “It’s your birthday.” He struck a major chord. “Let’s play something.”

Scotty didn’t hesitate, reaching his drum kit in three long steps. I was at my Epiphone acoustic in two, throwing the strap over my shoulder. And when I brushed my pick over the strings and they sounded right, I looked at Scotty, his two raised fists ready to lay into the snare drum and hi-hats.

“How about ‘Smoke on the Water’?” Kurt said. “Or ‘Wild Thing’?”

“How about ‘Teen Spirit’?” I said.

Kurt groaned. “Oh, God, aren’t you sick of that fucking song?” He looked over at Scotty and then at me. Scotty’s hair was wild, his eyes swelling from the sockets. I must have looked about the same.

Kurt smiled. “You two look fucking pathetic.” He played an F minor, the song’s first unmistakable chord. “You know it?” Kurt asked, and I laughed at that because not to know it — not to have strummed along a thousand times with Kurt as his voice wailed from the speakers in my room —  would have been unforgivable to anyone at school who played guitar.

A thin blush rose through Kurt’s patchy scruff. “Okay,” he said. And then he counted to three, and together we played those first four chords, and it was like hearing the song for the first time, when its gravity pulled me toward the radio, a sound I’d never heard before, the wrecking ball that toppled all those stupid eighties hair bands. A clean electric sound filled the room until Kurt tapped the fuzz pedal with his right foot and a booming static erupted from the amp. That’s when Scotty, right on cue, laid into the snare drum. And I was right there with Kurt, my left hand a blur against the bronze strings and black pickguard. I looked at Kurt and, in an instant, he’d become what I wanted him to be. Not that pissed off, worn-out rock star chain smoking in the back of my car but the Kurt Cobain I’d meticulously studied in all that MTV concert footage, that slight straddle, his whole body swaying forward and back, soaked through with the pure thrill of the music. And right before Kurt stepped to the mic and I lost his face behind that curtain of blond hair, he looked at me and smiled, a benevolent, big-hearted smile.

***

It was past eleven when we drove Kurt — conked out in the backseat, head against the window, arms hugging his body — to LAX. I didn’t want the radio on. Whatever KROQ was pumping out at that hour would only dilute the raw sound looping through my brain, Kurt’s voice, its energy. I wanted to savor it before time grabbed it away.

I looked at Scotty, an outline in the darkness momentarily illuminated by the towering lights above the 405, his lips moving but with no sound, this strange moment like a sweet, fleeting flavor on his tongue.

Kurt didn’t stir as we pulled to the curb in front of the airport terminal. “Hey,” Scotty whispered, shaking Kurt’s knee. Kurt’s eyes snapped open. He squinted up at the glaring terminal lights. A few stray hairs were smeared across his damp forehead, and two thin lines of snot leaked from his nostrils. 

“Well,” Kurt said, flashing that sly rock star smile, “you think anyone will believe you, the fucking night you hung out with Kurt Cobain?” He was fighting for that smile. Whatever he had surging through his veins earlier was almost used up.

Kurt pulled the crumpled directions to that cinder block apartment from his shirt pocket. “You got a pen?” He tore the paper into two ragged halves.

Scotty dove for the glove compartment, pushing through CD cases and wadded Kleenex, until he pulled out a dull pencil.

Kurt scratched his name on the two halves and handed them over the seat. Scotty held his, absorbed in tracing Kurt’s signature with his finger.

Then Kurt unclipped the silver chain from his wallet and belt loop. “Happy birthday,” he said. 

The chain swung from Kurt’s thumb, the same chain I’d seen bouncing on his hip in concert footage from The Paramount and Live and Loud. It seemed too personal, an extension of his body. I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“Take it.” Kurt took my hand and dropped the chain into my damp palm.

I held it, hefting its cool weight, and before I could stop myself, I asked, “What about you?” I was really asking about the hotel room in Rome and the cinder block apartment and the plastic bracelet on Kurt’s wrist. “We can take you back.” I held my breath. My heart pounded. “If you want.”

The skin around Kurt’s eyes tightened, the briefest flash of annoyance, Kurt’s rebel spirit rising. But then his eyes softened. “No, I’m a fucking hopeless case. Always have been,” he said, opening the door and stepping onto the curb. He turned and leaned into the car. “Hey, your mom’s paintings,” he said, “they’re pretty awesome. Beautiful. It’s cool she left them for you.”

And with that, Kurt walked into the terminal, the light there as bright as the noonday sun, and when I blinked, I saw Kurt’s thin, white outline against the black backdrop of my closed eyelids before the image burned out.

“I’m framing this,” Scotty said, stroking Kurt’s signature with his fingertips.

I leaned forward until my head rested on the steering wheel. I thought of all my mom’s paintings, and how I couldn’t look at them without seeing her shrunken face against a white pillow. I suddenly knew Kurt was wrong. Where was the beauty there? I didn’t see it.

I opened the car door and walked into the terminal. I heard Scotty through the open window. “Hey,” he shouted. But I didn’t turn. The terminal doors opened with a blast of warm air that shot down on me. I was moving quickly toward Kurt, my steps strangely loud in the near-empty terminal.

“Kurt,” I said. He turned. I was suddenly self-conscious. He was no longer part of my world but had returned to his, the rock star on the cover of Rolling Stone,the subject of a thousand rumors, the rebel voice of a generation. Three screens above us, all those arrivals and departures, cast a yellow light onto the polished floor. A man and woman studying the rows of departing flights, not much older than Kurt, both in red flannel shirts, torn jeans, and Doc Marten boots, looked at us. A soft gasp squeaked through the woman’s lips. She leaned toward the man and whispered in his ear.

“I’d rather have her than those paintings,” I told Kurt. My voice slipped. “All that pain she had, maybe she thought she’d take it with her.”

Kurt didn’t say anything. He didn’t move, and his face at that moment — framed by his long, greasy hair, his eyes almost in shadow — is forever fixed in my mind. He looked at me, but I wasn’t sure he saw me or something else, maybe some scene playing out in his mind. His stubbled chin dropped to his chest, and he twisted his head away from me until I couldn’t see his face. Then he turned and walked away. 

“Is that Kurt Cobain?” the woman asked. She wore a black Stone Temple Pilots tour shirt under the unbuttoned flannel. The man stood at her side, licking his lips, waiting for me to say something. His red flannel shirt had an ironed crease running up each sleeve, and the black Doc Martens didn’t have a scuff or mark on the leather, like they’d just come out of a box. In six months, in a year, they’d be wearing something else, listening to something else. 

“Stone Temple Pilots suck,” I said, and walked away.

In the car, Scotty sat there, still mesmerized by Kurt’s autograph. “I’m bringing this to school. I’m showing it to everyone.” He raised the thin scrap of paper to his nose and sniffed its edges. “What’d you say to him?” 

I gripped the steering wheel, the engine’s idle vibrating through my arms.

Deep in my right pocket, I felt the weight of Kurt’s wallet chain. “I don’t think he’s all right,” I said. But Scotty didn’t hear me. He was humming something, tapping his heels against the floor mats, still staring at Kurt’s signature as I pulled away from the terminal curb.

The 405 and 101 swarmed with an absurd midnight traffic as we crawled toward Burbank. My dad would be pissed. So would Scotty’s parents. I’d probably lose the car for a month. But I didn’t care. As the exits ticked past, I tried clearing my throat a few times and looking over at Scotty. I wanted to talk about what happened, to make sense of it. But Scotty never looked up, his eyes fixed on Kurt’s signature, never saying a word, even as I pulled into his driveway. He opened the car door, heaved it shut, and disappeared into the house.

That night a space opened between us until we drifted apart at the end of the summer, me to Brigham Young University and soon after to a Mormon mission in Chicago, and Scotty to start a band with some guys from Burbank High. Within a couple years, they built a following around Los Angeles. KROQ featured them twice as a New Pick of the Week, and then they were playing the Whiskey and the Troubadour. And then they had a record deal, appearances on The Late Show and Conan, and last I heard they were opening for The Shins. But before all that, I don’t think Scotty ever forgave me for how I acted that Friday morning he showed up to school with Kurt’s autograph in a cheap black plastic frame and a story so incredible that our friends laughed to tears.

“It’s true,” Scotty said. “We jammed with him. It was awesome. Ask Toby.”

“Dude,” I said in front of all our friends. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

The truth is that something profound happened that night, yet its meaning that Friday morning hovered just beyond my reach, and to even bring it up felt wrong. But Scotty never understood that. All he saw from that night was a story.

---

Ryan Shoemaker’s debut story collection, Beyond the Lights, is available through No Record Press. T.C. Boyle called it a collection that “moves effortlessly from brilliant comedic pieces to stories of deep emotional resonance.” Ryan’s forthcoming story collection, The Righteous Road: Stories, will be available in 2024 through BCC Press. His short fiction has appeared in Gulf Stream, Santa Monica Review, Booth, and Juked, among others. Find him at RyanShoemaker.net. A longer version of “Come as You Are” was previously published in Made in L.A. Vol. 5: Vantage Points (Resonant Earth Publishing, 2023).