After school, Veronica and I walked across the street to Steve's house. No one was home, so we sat on the porch for awhile, before going in the unlocked back door. For an hour or so we sat on his bed, poked through his drawers and chatted about whatever 14 year old girls talk about. I don't remember much of the conversation, only that we spent the better part of an hour sitting around. Veronica smoked, but this was long before I started.
I walked home in the late afternoon sunlight. It was after 5pm when I walked up to the porch, because I could see the television from the door. There was a clip of Nirvana playing, and the logo of KVUE evening news. My mother handed me the phone almost the moment I stepped in the house, and seemed rather irritated that it had been ringing and ringing. Lauren SW was on the line, asking me in high tones why I hadn't said anything at school.
So I learned from Lauren and the local news about Cobain's death. I spent the night at Erin's, and we watched MTV on the tiny TV in her bedroom all night long. I remember Kurt Loder looking directly into the camera and saying, "Don't do it." We ate take out Chinese for dinner and drank Dr Pepper that hurt my stomach. In the morning I bought a grey sweater at a yard sale, which has been lost over many moves.
It's hard to imagine that it has really been ten years. It's hard to imagine that I'm even really almost 24 now. I couldn't fathom that length of time before. But it's been more than a decade since the first Gulf War, more than a decade since I started buying music for myself and keeping a diary in one form or another. It's been more than ten years since the music scene exploded with things new and interesting and genuine. There are days when I really miss the music of my early teen years. All those tapes and records and cds that Erin bought at Sound Exchange, all gone with the passage of time.
Erin was my first love, and a complicated relationship. She influenced my tastes in music, in clothes, in food, in all things. Older than me, Nirvana's music hit her harder, and in a more personal way. Cobain's death wrecked her. For that, I suppose I'll never forgive him. It was hard and horrible to hear Courtney Love read out parts of his suicide note even though their life had been so unwisely public. I cried a lot that weekend. Somewhere in my mother's house I have a box that's full of magazines and newspapers printed in April of 1994 with pictures of Cobain and Nirvana splashed all over them.
Why did I care? Why do I care? It was so much a part of my world. Their music was the soundtrack of growing up and learning that life was so much darker and harder and crazier than I ever thought. Cobain's story is tied up in my story, as much as any artist or art can be tied into one ordinary person's life.
It still makes me sad.
