Flesh Guitar

KURT NEVER SLEEPS

‘Hey Kurt, where are you going with that gun in your hand?’ Jenny Slade asks brightly.

Kurt spins round. Kurt, a dishwater-blond in a lumberjack shirt, mascara’d eyes blinking at the vision. He’d thought he was alone in the room, alone with a head full of storming emotions, a suitcase full of pharmaceuticals and a few choice weapons.

‘I ain’t going nowhere,’ he says.

‘Well, that’s a blessing,’ says Jenny. ‘And how the hell are you?’

Stopping to pose, to let his words carry their full cargo, Kurt says, ‘I’ve hurt myself and I want to die.’

Jenny chuckles politely. ‘That’s my Kurt, ever the master of irony.’

We are in the apartment above the garage of Kurt and Courtney’s Madrona home, up in the eaves in a long thin room, triangular in section, one wall mostly glass. The place is a mess. Jenny wonders why he doesn’t employ a house cleaner, spread some of that money around, create a little trickle down.

The books and the CDs and the video tapes have all been carelessly cast aside. Who would have thought Kurt was such a big reader? Bukowski and Burroughs and Beckett and Burgess. Burgess? Anthony Burgess? Yep — he’s one of Kurt’s main men. The dog-ears and the split spines testify to Kurt’s attention. But then everything has a well-used look around here: wine stains on the rugs, a cigarette stubbed out on the scratch plate of a vintage Fender Jag. Only the weapons and drugs get treated with any respect.

Kurt’s guns include a Taurus revolver, a Baretta semiautomatic, a Colt rifle, a Remington twenty-gauge shotgun. His drugs of choice are heroin and Valium; a narcotic cuddle, oblivion with fluffy edges.

‘All this loading up on guns and drugs,’ Jenny says. ‘Tell me about it, Kurt. Do you think it’s clever? Do you think it’s funny?’

‘Well, it makes me laugh.’

He turns his back on her and shambles his way over to a desk by the window. There’s a writing pad and a few pens set out. The page is filled by a red scrawl, an earlier draft. Kurt picks up a pen, holds it poised in his left hand, then gradually changes his grip till he’s holding it not like a pen but a dagger. He slowly stabs the page a few times, making a row of deliberate, calculated gouges. Then he just sits there, blank as a sheet of listing paper, Mr Catatonia.

Jenny lets a few minutes pass before she says, ‘Hey Kurt, here I am, entertain me.’

Kurt doesn’t smile so she says, ‘What are you trying to write anyway? Another chart-topping hit? Another teenage angst-ridden smasheroo?’

‘A suicide note if you must know.’

‘Cool,’ she says, and then, having mulled the matter over, adds, ‘It’s funny the way we need rock stars to die on us every now and then, isn’t it? Like it wakes us up a little. It purifies the tribe, something like that.

‘Of course it probably wouldn’t happen if you were English. The English really don’t have that martyr tradition, not for rock stars anyway. They have a tendency, not necessarily a very attractive one, to keep on living, unless of course they’re John Lennon and they meet someone like Mark Whatsisname.’

‘Yeah, well I’m not English, OK?’

‘Fine.’

‘And I’m going to do it just as soon as I finish this damn letter.’

‘We could be here all night,’ Jenny says, but not loud enough for him to hear. ‘I don’t suppose anything I say will make any difference.’

‘Dead right.’

‘And I suppose there’s no point in asking you to think about Courtney and the kid.’

‘They’ll live through this,’ Kurt snarls.

‘Probably,’ Jenny agrees. ‘But you couldn’t exactly call it responsible parenting, could you now? It can’t be exactly what the therapist ordered.’

Kurt turns back to the page, sorry to have wasted time talking. Jenny decides to be helpful. He stares at the paper till his eyes cross and go out of focus.

‘When in doubt you could always use a quotation,’ Jenny offers.

‘Maybe,’ says Kurt, ‘but I wouldn’t want to quote from some old fart.’

‘It’s a strange thing about people who like popular music,’ Jenny says. ‘When they’re twenty-one they think the best music in the world is made by twenty-one-year olds. When they’re forty they think it’s made by forty-year olds — sometimes these are the same people they loved when they were twenty-one, but not always.

‘Of course, for people who like classical music it’s different. They think the only good music is made by dead people.’

Kurt looks at her with narcotic confusion in his eyes. This stuff is hard for him to follow.

‘What I’m saying,’ Jenny simplifies, ‘is that this is what pop music is for, surely, to provide a series of shorthand expressions that convey and describe various generalized, uncomplicated feelings.’

Kurt blinks at her in quiet surprise. Well yeah, what she says sounds true if a little fancy. Maybe she’s right. Maybe somebody’s already said all those things he wants to say.

‘How about “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”?’ he says hopefully.

‘I don’t think so,’ Jenny replies. ‘Dylan’s too easy. And before you say it, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” is too easy as well. How about, “Come On, Do The Jerk”?’

‘No,’ Kurt says. ‘I was never much of a dancer.’

‘Then how about “Waiting For The Man”? But no, I can see that wouldn’t work, the man’s already been and gone. How about “Boom Boom”?’

‘Hey, are you taking me for a fool?’

‘Not me, Kurt. Any thoughts on what you want to have done with your ashes?’

‘Nah, I won’t be around to worry about it, will I?’

‘So it would be all right for Buddhist students to turn some of them into figurines, and for Courtney to carry the rest of them around inside a teddy bear.’

‘Oh sure, like that’s really going to happen,’ he says, and Jenny doesn’t disabuse him.

Suddenly he shouts. ‘I know. I’ve got it. What I need is something from Neil Young. I mean, he’s the godfather of grunge, right?’

‘I like it,’ Jenny agrees. ‘Go for it, Kurt. What’s it going to be?’

Kurt picks up the guitar, strums a few easy, unamplified Neil Young chords, then says, ‘Yeah, I got it. I got it.’

‘Great,’ Jenny says enthusiastically, and she watches as Kurt takes up the pen again and writes across the page those immortal words ‘I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold — and I’m gettin’ old,’ and signs it with a flourish.

‘Oh come on, Kurt,’ Jenny says irritatedly. ‘I know your brains are scrambled but you can do better than that.’

Kurt shivers. The room is suddenly cold and the desk looks as big as a pool table. He doesn’t think he can do better than that at all.

She feels sorry for him, and takes his hand and guides it as it writes down a far better Neil Young line, the one about rust and fade. Kurt looks at the words on the page and feels pleased with himself. Jenny seems pleased with him too. She looks out of the window. She can see water, trees, hedges, a well-kept lawn. It’s OK here. A young couple and their baby could lead a very comfortable, privileged life in this place if they had a mind to.

‘Hey, I think I’ve got a better line,’ she says.

But it’s too late. Behind her the shotgun goes off and Kurt turns himself into a sort of hero, a member of the stupid club.

Jenny shrugs, looks at her watch. It’s still early. She wishes he’d hung around and at least offered some advice to the aspiring guitarist. She wishes he’d at least waited until she’d told him to use a better Neil Young line. ‘Got mashed potato. Ain’t got no T-bone.’ That’s what she’d have recommended. But maybe Kurt wouldn’t have liked that so much. He never looked much like a T-bone kind of guy.