Gimmie Back That Bullet

"I don't know how to tell you this Vince, but, shit, man..."

"What is it? Spit it out, Jason," I replied.

"Kurt is in a coma."

"Kurt? Kurt who?" I replied.

"Kurt Cobain man! He tried to kill himself. I just saw it on CNN before I got to school."

"Is he dead?" I replied.

"No, not yet. He took a bunch of drugs, a cocktail or something. He's in a hospital in Rome. That's all I heard. Jesus, I can't believe he did this..."

"At least he's in Rome. I mean, he's got to be better off then he would be here. Why the hell would he want to kill himself?" I replied.

"Don't you understand? We're doing this to him. All he cares about is the music. The media are killing him--MTV--ahh, what a joke. There are too many posers out there with their hands out."

"Yeah...well, I hope he pulls through," I replied.

"Shit, I've got to get to class. I'll talk to you later, Vince."

I guess that was big news for a fragile 13 year old. In the last year I had gone back in time two decades from discovering rock 'n' roll, (i.e. Aerosmith and the Scorpions) to quickly getting up-to-date with the 'now sound' of Grunge in the Melvins and Nirvana. Luckily for me, I was young enough to have skipped over "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and gone through my tweens to "Rape Me" instead.

I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to go on world tours. I wanted fruit trays ordered just for me, without anything from the melon family. I wanted to make a bunch of noise in an arena in Tokyo and have an orgy with 3, no, 4 Asian girls that didn't know any English. I wanted the sloppy, narcissistic wife I could do drugs with and have a semi-handicap love child with.

I wanted to try heroin. I wanted to overdose. I wanted to die.

I found a spiral notebook in my room a week prior to this revelation. I found it in the top of my closet buried under a bunch of board games and a wood burning kit my 15-year-old step cousin had ruined by trying to burn a pot leaf onto the hood of his dad's jeep. My brother had run away from home a year earlier, but the signs of his handiwork were there...sketches of the Joker, a semi-nude photo of his girlfriend Jackie, my brother holding a ceramic moonshine jug in one hand and one of Jackie's breasts in the other while Eddie looked on from an Aces High poster on the wall behind them, and finally, on the last page, written with some of the letters backwards (for effect I assumed): "Live Fast and Die"

He took out 'young.' No boundaries. No rules. If you're going to die why tack on labels like 'young'? Shit, die straight out of the womb if you want. I couldn't tell if he was a prophet or slightly and certifiably retarded, but I wanted what he was selling and besides water-downed Guns 'n' Roses' jargon it was a new way for me to live my life.

For the moment, however, I stood alone in the hallway, late for class, wearing a Pink Floyd shirt that the same brother had given me before he split town. It had a cow on the front and said "Atom Heart Mother" on the back. I had no idea what it meant, but my mom was adamant it pertained to an atom heart mother fucker of some kind, so I kept wearing it.

A month later, Kurt Cobain was dead.

I tried to watch his prayer vigil from Seattle on MTV, but the camera closeups of people wailing and falling down to the ground were a little more than I cared to be associated with.

A few days later I was watching 60 Minutes with my parents when Andy Rooney's end segment came on and boy, did he have some ripe words to say about Cobain. A textbook definition of a curmudgeon, Rooney seemed to have trouble identifying with young peoples' public mourning for Cobain.

"What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" Rooney said.

Footage was shown of a girl weeping at the vigil, "What's all this nonsense about how terrible life is?" Rooney quipped. "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours."

My dad laughed and as he usually shouted to no one in particular added, "Say it. People are idiots." I thought Rooney was a dinosaur, but he was right. I felt just as old and wise, but on the other hand, Rooney had been in World War II. What the hell did I know about living? I'd seen Deer Hunter enough times to know Vietnam was a time and a place I'd never want my ass to be.

A year passed and I was now fourteen, sitting on a bench outside the school cafeteria eating lunch with Jason. A group of kids from my grade came walking down the hallway and out into the courtyard. They were all dressed in black, two of the girls wore veils. The fatter of the two had a rose in her hand.

"Look at this shit," Jason said.

"What are they dressed like that for?" I replied.

"Don't you remember? It's the anniversary of Cobain's death."

"Oh. Jeez, it's been a whole year already?" I replied swatting a bee away from my Coke can.

The kids walked by. One of the boy's shirts had Cobain's face on the front. The picture made Cobain look like a sad, helpless puppy. On the back, in bold letters the shirt stated: "I knew he'd die."

I sat there with Jason eating my turkey and cheese sandwich and watched them walk further away--a disappearing funeral procession--march of the brainless.

"Ah, to hell with this," I thought.

I searched around on the ground for a decent-sized stone and tossed it into the air. I lost track of it in the sun but it landed in the dirt, just missing the fat girl with the rose. She turned around, I couldn't see her eyes under the veil, but I knew she was looking right at me.

Jason laughed, shook his head and said he was going back in the cafeteria to buy a Nutter Butter. He never came back.

I sat there, waiting for the bell to ring, trying to spot exactly where the rock had landed.

"People are idiots," I thought to myself.