Bang Bang

20 years ago tonight, Seattle experienced the mini-version of the riots in L.A.. After the verdict in the Rodney King case had been read & news of the reaction in L.A. had reached Seattle, people were breaking windows & looting, but mostly the city was conducting business as usual.

I had stepped outside the restaurant where I was the weekend manager to drop some bags of garbage in the dumpster. I heard a sound like a child’s cap gun go off followed by a quick bright sound & the sting of metal. A car drove away down the small curvy side street.

I looked a few inches away from where I was standing to discover a small dent in the dumpster. I leaned over & picked up the bullet, still warm, & held it in my palm. It all came together in brain, I had just missed getting shot by a few inches. I still have that bullet. It is in a display case along with arrowheads, pins, shards & assorted jetsam & flotsam from my life.

My little case of treasures is in the middle foreground in this shot of my work space

I feel that I have used up my quota of personal violence, having experienced being mugged, shot, shot at & fag bashed during my considerably long life. None of those events compare to the freight induced by the release, 35years ago, of You Light Up My Life, recorded by Debbie Boone, which stayed at #1 for 10 weeks & became the most successful single of the 1970s. That was personal violence that I can still not recover from.

Sing The Sad Song Of Kurt Cobain

"Don’t tell me what I want to hear

Afraid of never knowing fear

Experience anything you need

I'll keep fighting jealousy

Until it's fucking gone."

I was living in Seattle when Grunge happened & young people around the globe embraced the “Seattle Sound” of sludgy guitar sound, fuzz & feedback. I became aware that the city was becoming the center of American culture for a decade. The look of angst & the raw sound jumped to the fashion world & a lifestyle of thrift shop flannel went international with the huge success of Nirvana’s album- Nevermind.  Amazing, this was 20 years ago.

Kurt Cobain’s music reflected his fractured childhood & disconnection from the world.  Kurt Cobain befriended a gay student at Aberdeen High School, & suffered bullying from straight students who concluded that Cobain was gay. He claimed that he liked having the identity of being gay because he didn't like people & when they thought he was gay people left him alone. Cobain: "I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn't". Cobain claimed that he was "gay in spirit" & "probably could be bisexual." He also stated that he used to spray paint "God Is Gay" on pickup trucks in Aberdeen. Cobain: “I am not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off homophobes.”

The Husband & I passed through Aberdeen, 2 hours from Seattle, each time we went to our favorite spot on Washington’s Pacific beaches. Aberdeen should be, at a first easy glance, a touristy town with plenty of Victorian homes, or even an arts center with period, boarded-up warehouses & loft space. But the town, named for a dreary city in Scotland, has a perpetual grey, mist cloud of sadness hanging overhead. In 2005, a sign went up at the city limits, paid for by the Kurt Cobain Memorial: ‘Welcome to Aberdeen – Come As You Are’.

For a lot of the young people I supervise at my place of employment, Nirvana was the first music that they purchased. Nevermindcontributed to a period in music that, for a certain person of a certain age, has come to have lasting significance, because what was happening in Seattle in the 1990s.

Cobain was found dead at his home on Lake Washington on April 8, 1994, just a few blocks away from The Husband’s restaurant- Plenty. I was working there that day & we heard the sirens & the whirl of helicopters all day long. The staff were arriving in tears, some unable to work. Cobain’s ashes are scattered in the Wishkah River. He has no grave, fans visit Viretta Park  which borders the house where he lived with Courtney Love.

This world was just too much for tortured Kurt Cobain. He would have been 45 years old today.


I love this song. I would like to cover it. I believe it would translate well into a heartfelt saloon song:

What else should I be?

All apologies.

What else could I say?

Everyone is gay.

What else could I write?

I don't have the right.

What else should I be?

All Apologies.

In the sun

In the sun I feel as one

In the sun

In the sun

Married!

Buried!

I wish I was like you

Easily amused

Find my nest of salt

Everything is my fault

I'll take all the blame

I'll proceed from shame

Sunburn with freezer burn

Choking on the ashes of her enemy

In the sun

In the sun I feel as one

In the sun

In the sun

Married, Married, Married!

Buried!

All in all is all we are

Cobain

1990

One Degree Of Separation From Matt Dillon

I worked with him twice. He was every inch the gentleman, never mentioning our special moments together to the press. He could have chosen to have a special lunch in his trailer, but chose to sit with the other actors & the grips at a big table. He stayed to feed me his lines for the reverse shots, a generous gesture. He is funny, good looking, & gives off a true sexual heat.

 I might have wished to give the readers of my little spot on the Internet, some spicy anecdotes from my experiences of filming Drugstore Cowboy or Singles, but this is my most treasured Matt Dillon story: In the early 1990s, The Husband was working at an awesome antique store in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, repairing furniture & making displays. I had stopped in to visit & the Husband was gathered at the large front desk with the shop’s owner & a collection of assorted acquaintances. As the group made small talk, in strolled a solo Matt Dillon. Heads snapped & there was a low chatter of: “Oh my God, that is Matt Dillon! Really? I love him! Should we say something to him? What is Matt Dillon doing here?”

The Husband remarked: “Yeah, that’s him. Steve knows him, you know.” The hangers-on retort: “Yeah, right… sure he does." Dillon continued down one aisle & as he turned down the next & moved toward our group, when his head came up & we make eye contact.

Dillon smiled a crooked, come-hither, toothy grin, pointed at me & announced: “Yo, Steve!”. Heads whipped from Dillon to me & back to the actor. I attempted to be nonchalant as I crossed the store to spend a few moments chatting with the star. I then left him to shop on his own, then stopped by the front of the store to say good bye. The circle of Seattleites stood open mouthed as I made my exit with Matt Dillon tossing off: “Remember what I told you, Steve!  See ya soon, dude”.

I cannot reveal what he said to me & I have never encountered him again.

The never married Matt Dillon but he still looks yummy as he turns 48 years old today.

In the really terrific- About a Boy (2002), Hugh Grant’s character wears a black leather jacket that he liked to think made him look like Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy when he goes on to meet his love interest. My favorite Matt Dillon film is Wild Things. If you have not seen this gem, I simply insist that you put it on your Netflix queue. It is a wicked little film with lots of twists & turns & full frontal Kevin Bacon in the shower. Be sure & stay with it through the ending credits.