Gigantic.30
Watershed
A lot of people wanted Denis Johnson as their thesis advisor.
The thought of endless individual consultations in a cramped office naturally didn’t appeal, so Denis devised something between a workshop and floating snack session.
We took turns meeting at different people’s houses. My apartment was small but somehow we all managed to fit one gray afternoon. I can’t remember where everyone sat or whose work we talked about. If it was mine, I probably didn’t take anyone’s advice.
After everyone left, Denis hung around a few extra minutes to help me straighten up. He was about to give me a ride to campus when the phone rang.
It was my friend Katie calling from London.
“I know it’s him,” she kept saying, “he’s dead, I know it.”
“Just breathe,” I said, advice I’d given on previous occasions.
Katie felt things deeply, sometimes to the point of hysteria. In this case, rumors were apparently trickling out over the wires that someone had been found shot in Seattle. Katie, convinced it was Kurt Cobain, was having some kind of para-social freakout.
What struck me at the moment wasn’t the unsubstantiated story, which really could’ve been anything, it was just that something had triggered my friend and she needed calming.
“I knew this would happen, I just knew it,” Katie continued, inconsolable, “didn’t I tell you?”
Denis, standing in the doorway of my living room, was starting to give me that “Are you coming?” look.
“Katie, I need to go, I’ll call you when I get back, I promise.”
I extricated myself from the phone and headed downstairs with Denis. We climbed into his pickup truck, which had an itchy Mexican blanket for a seat cover and smelled terribly from his dogs.
“Sorry bout that,” I said, “my friend was just really upset about something.”
“She okay?”
“Yeah, yeah… you know that band, Nirvana?”
Denis admitted that he wasn’t so much into them.
“Yeah, well, my friend thinks something happened to the singer,” I explained, briefly adding that I’d interviewed him once, which was probably why Katie was singling me out to connect with.
Denis reached for the radio, clicked it on. At that precise moment, the DJ paused and said:
“This is just coming in, Kurt Cobain has apparently died of a self-inflicted gun shot at his home in Seattle. He was 27.”
Not knowing what else to say, the DJ put on Come As You Are. The distinctive chorus-pedaled guitar wound its way through the cab of Denis’ truck. Despite not being a fan, Denis cranked it.
We drove across the gray, snow-slushed streets of Iowa City, enveloped in sound, nodding our heads, sort of to the music, sort of to something else. The ultimate irony was lost on neither of us when the lyrics concluded, No, I don’t have a gun.
We got to the parking lot behind the English-Philosophy Building. Denis cut the motor, but the two of us continued to sit there in silence.
I didn’t pretend to know Kurt Cobain any better than I did. But in the brief stretch of time since I’d spoken with him, his path had gone stratospheric while mine meandered. The extreme divergence honestly bewildered me. Now I didn’t know what to think.
A common theme in Denis Johnson novels goes something like this: one lives, one dies. I’m not sure this registered consciously at the time, but a reckoning was coming if I wanted to stay on the right side of this equation. I knew that Denis was one person who could relate. I broke the silence.
“I took someone to the hospital the other night,” I said.
We were all fucked up, I told him. My friend accidentally cut herself with a shard of glass, deeply. She didn’t want to go to the hospital. Finally I convinced her that we were just going to the bar, then, when we got within half a block, I put her over my shoulder, and carried her the rest of the way to the emergency room at Mercy.
A steady-handed surgeon, looking disapprovingly at our sorrowfully wasted conditions, stitched her up expertly, saving her hand if not her life.
The engine had been off a while, it was starting to get cold in the truck. Maybe we could see our breath. I don’t remember what Denis told me. More than anything, he listened. He understood.
I’m still figuring out how to write about drugs and alcohol in a way that doesn’t glorify them. That day in Denis’ truck was not a turning point, if anything I’d soon be further off the rails than I’d been before.
But it remains a defining moment which I think about to this day. Something I would point to later, once I had the resolve to make different choices.
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I'd love to read this story Rashomon-style. Including Kurt's spirit. But your take on it is great.
Thanks for sharing this story, I can feel the air in that truck. It's wild how "Where were you when you hear that Kurt died" has become a touchstone for our generation, like hearing about JFK or Elvis' passing (for the record I remember the latter, but for the first I wasn't born yet).