Living in the Shadow of Death and Listening to In Utero
On the 30th anniversary of Nirvana’s beloved third album, Paste editor Matt Mitchell reflects on the ways it’s defined their personal relationship with chronic illness
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
It is 2014, and the brother of my girlfriend is doing weed dabs upstairs while blaring “Rape Me” on repeat. Their mom is downstairs smoking a cigarette on the couch, and I’ve got the stench of burning incense sticks from a hippie store mall kiosk lodged in every nook and cranny of my body. There’s a fight happening in the football field parking lot across the street while the varsity team runs the second of their two-a-day practices. My girlfriend and I just got to third base for the first time but now she is packing for a two-week vacation in Maryland and wants to break up. Her brother hates my guts and today—of all fucking days—I am wearing a Kurt Cobain shirt under my flannel. Whether or not the “You’re gonna stink and burn” thundering down through the ceiling is meant for me, I’m not quite certain. But I am certain that this, among all other things, is where I will finally die.
I don’t remember when I actually discovered Nirvana. They were before my time; Nevermind came out seven years before I was born. I suppose I came to them like any other Zoomer might have: falling down a YouTube rabbit hole in 2009 until I happened upon the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video and became equally haunted and mystified by grunge altogether. Actually, I think my first introduction to the band came via one of those 2000s VH1 specials—likely the special they did on the greatest songs of the 1990s. If I’m remembering correctly (I am), “Smells Like Teen Spirit” clocked in at #1, ahead of Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and Whitney Houston. Not to sound jaded about the instant gratification of online listicles (I write enough of them to get a pass, regardless), but there was just something so personal and intimate and exhilarating about watching a two-hour television special where a washed-up music network talked to aged-out rock stars about 20-year-old songs—and to do it in a countdown ranking style, no less.
In high school, I’d go to Hot Topic for their graphic T-shirt wall, not for their massive collection of assorted spiked belts and diet goth wardrobes and cartoon keychains. We’ve all had a phase like that, where every top in our wardrobe was screen-printed with the face of a musician we no longer love. I spent every cent I ever earned on Nirvana shirts, specifically—and, at one point, I think I had nearly 10 in my closet rotation. My favorite piece used to be a very retro-inspired shirt with a grainy picture of Kurt Cobain during the MTV Unplugged performance on the front of it. I wish I still had it, to be honest. When I combed through my profile pictures album on Facebook, I found at least five different Nirvana shirts—including a homemade one, where I wrote “with the lights out, it’s less dangerous” on a Hanes white tee with a black Sharpie marker.
My best friend when I was a teenager, Steven, used to look a lot like Kurt—at least to me. Everyone else would probably disagree. But he had the long blonde hair and the subdued, gentle attitude hidden behind a facade of despondency. We’d spend every class period playing a game we made up: taking turns writing band names on a notebook page or a paper bag textbook cover until we couldn’t think of any more. Sometimes, we’d try to draw their logos from memory; Nirvana’s smiley face was always the easiest to recreate. He was the first person to know I was queer, and he never admonished me for it. Whenever he said “Mitchell, quit being gay” when I’d start another argument about why Paul was the best Beatle, it was in an earnest way from a place of love—and I liked that. He made me feel like the “Everyone is gay” lyric in “All Apologies” could have been true. Maybe it was.
We cycled through numerous obsessions together: obscure B-movies playing on Turner Classic Movies at 2 AM; gospelizing the catalog of Bob Dylan; trying to get every person in our high school to watch Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up; repeating Mitch Hedberg’s stand-up comedy. But we had a particular shared affinity for Nirvana and, specifically, for their third album In Utero. I remember Steven could play “All Apologies” on guitar really wonderfully and, despite his best efforts to make his singing as angelic as possible, it always came out just as gritty and scarred as Kurt’s. It was a token of friendship that would probably look like a fleeting, insignificant moment to everyone else. But, to me, it was an extension of love I shared with the only person who ever let me be myself—which meant just existing without boasting a hyper-masculine heterosexuality into casual conversation. We could talk about flower imagery and mental illness and abuse openly; could fall asleep watching Barbarella in a backyard gazebo while talking about big-city dreams of becoming Hollywood big shots, about finally, someday, being happy.
I’ve never officially come out, nor do I have any interest in doing so. I grew up in a rural town that didn’t care much for guys who didn’t practice the convocation of being sex-hungry douchebags (the “I’m not like them, but I can pretend” line in “Dumb” sits perfectly here, unfortunately); when I got to college, I ended up in a friend group that was queer as all get-out and I just sort of fell onto that beaten path without having to make some grand extension of worthiness or validity. I was accepted and loved without a doubt and, when you live amongst a community like that for three or four years and share meals and secrets and copies of the Communist Manifesto and playlists and acid tabs, it’s easy to forget just how easy it was to make it there in the first place. Now, as an adult who pays rent, has a job and mountains of debt and is far removed from the melodrama of undergrad, I just exist and I write about what I am and who I like and where I’m going without considering whether or not a piece of me must remain hidden. I suppose I picked some of that up from Kurt, as I remember getting particularly emotional seeing him play a gig in a dress—and giving positively no fucks about it—for the first time. That was revelatory for me, especially when I would test-drive wearing skirts some years later in the comfort of a dorm room. I imagine I subconsciously pulled that attitude into my own bravery. I wish I’d put some similar courage into loving and caring for my body once my immune system started to corrode after starting hormone therapy.