Cobains' Eyes

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1.

Joseph found Kurt the day he shut the door on Alice.

She’d been in the apartment when he came home, sat on the corner of the bed crying. She looked up and for a heartbeat he wanted to sit with her, say nothing had changed. Life could go on as before, Ikea trips, friends for dinner, holidays in Western Australia and that distant maybe of children and a mortgage but a rush of teeth and bloody foam bought everything back and Joseph felt his lips pull away from his teeth.

“…the fuck are you doing here?” he hissed.

“I just wanted to…” she wept and Joseph swore deliberately loudly.

“You didn’t think I’d be home did you? That’ll be on your fucking gravestone. She never thought he would be home.” His tone was mocking.

She had a bag on the floor and Joseph caught sight of a few paperbacks and pictures from their six years together.

“Joe, please…” Joseph flinched at how like his mother she sounded.

Then the image sank its teeth in again.

His best friend, the empty bottle, cigarette stubs, and discarded clothing. No one noticing as he came home a day early.  The three times she cried Yes as he stood watching them coil and sweat in front of the gas heater.

Then came Oh Shit and Oh God Joseph and the embarrassed naked separation and the police arriving shortly after the window and a nose had been broken.

“It was a stupid mistake,” Alice said again. “It was alcohol and stupid conversation, it was nothing. It was…oh Joseph please can’t we…?”

She moved towards him.

“You can’t afford this place on your own. What are you going to do? Please Joseph let me be a part of...”

His fist slammed into the bathroom door, breaking skin and denting wood. He saw blood and felt the pain explode in his hand. Alice screamed and they heard the thunder of footsteps from the unit above along with the muffled cry of “I can call the police at any moment you know.”

“There’s no problem Jan” Joseph shouted back, “Alice is leaving.”

Alice stared at her feet, one hand on her stomach, inhaling slowly. She flinched and then stepped forward, kissing Joseph once on the cheek.

“Goodbye” she said walking out as Joseph looked at the blood on his hand.

*

Later he was reeling.

He’d sat on the headland with a bottle of wine smoking cigarettes, music screaming in his ears. He stood and scooped fifteen butts from the grass and carried them to the bin before upending the bottle and swallowing three long pulls. He considered throwing the bottle over the cliff top but instead stumbled to the recycle bin and tossed it in.

He crossed the road without looking and stopped thirty metres from his house. A pile of discarded furniture and boxes of belongings lay at the side of the road. A tenant must have skipped on their rent leaving their cheap sofa and mattress. Joseph pushed a cushion aside and looked into a box of books, seeing the usual airport novels. He saw a wooden dish rack, chipped mugs, plastic forks and a dented saucepan thick with grime. Leant against a tree, he saw a large picture in a frame. It was turned away so all he could see was the back, a number scrawled in marker pen and the wire and bent from where the picture had hung.

He turned the picture around and saw Kurt Cobain, straddling a speaker, eyes screwed closed as he howled into a microphone. It was black, white and beautiful. The picture was taken from within the crowd, heads filled the bottom of the image before the edge of the stage one third of the way up and then the speakers with Kurt perched at the top. A film of dust covered the glass and Joseph swiped at it, expecting to find a crack in the glass or mould eating the image. Instead he found the silhouette of Krist Novoselic in the background savaging his bass and a red smear of felt pen on the glass where someone had started writing something that looked like a name –Don t… with the rest unintelligible. Don the what? he wondered. He rubbed at the lettering and it faded immediately.

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