Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [226]
MARK ARM Getting a guitar of Kurt’s? It would make me feel like a vulture, I guess. I spent about a year putting distance between myself and them, so it seemed like a ruse on Courtney’s part somehow. Like she’s buying us off or something.
STEVE TURNER I ran into Courtney somewhere and she called me a few times and said she really wanted to give me one of Kurt’s guitars, how much Kurt looked up to us and all that kind of stuff. So I went over there and basically took some old, ridiculous guitar that wasn’t any guitar he played. Courtney seemed just kind of lost and crazy to me.
I kind of regretted it upon walking into the house. It seemed like total zoo chaos. Kurt’s mom was there, they had the baby, obviously, there’s nannies that were high on drugs. It was like a drug house, a giant mansion with fuckups wandering about. And the guards and the hangers-on and the people that were still trying to get something out of them—the sharks that were living there. I took some stupid guitar at her insistence, and I’ve never seen her since.
JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER I’d heard on the news that Kurt and Courtney’s house was next to a place called Viretta Park, which is in a neighborhood that I used to live near. So it struck me as odd that I had never heard of Viretta Park before. A couple of days after the suicide, I was driving past the area and I was curious: What’s Viretta Park? I was always a fan of out-of-the-way parks to smoke pot in.
I went to the park to smoke some pot, and there were these kids who were definitely sightseeing. They’re like, “Do you know where he lives?” Well, he doesn’t live there anymore. I knew the area pretty well, so I said, “Yeah, you know, I’ll show you.”
You could see their house on the other side of this hedge, and their windows were open, and the kids are talking really loud, just like tourists, and I said, “Have some respect, there’s a widow and child in there.” After a few moments, a security guy came through the hedge and said, “Hey, you guys need to keep it down. We’re not asking you to leave or anything, but out of respect for the family, you really should keep it quiet.”
A few minutes later, Courtney and Kurt’s mom come out. And this was weird—they both struck me as if they were on drugs. Kurt’s mom in particular looked really—the word I would use is beatific. She seemed very peaceful and okay with everything. She rarely talked.
I came to realize Courtney was just a media whore. Even though she’d just lost her husband to a violent suicide, she liked the fact that there were people coming to see her. She had some stuff, a sweater and a pair of rolled-up socks. Unlike the mother, she looked like she had been crying, she looked distraught. Courtney basically said, “Hey, I’ve got some stuff of Kurt’s, and I guess I won’t need it anymore, so if you guys want it you can have it.” In retrospect, I should’ve grabbed the sweater. The guy next to me did, and at that point, I’m thinking, Well, I really don’t want the socks. It just seemed disrespectful that she was giving away his clothes. You know, if you had a guitar pick of his, that would be nice—that would seem more appropriate. But, no, I don’t want a pair of rolled-up socks that was in his sock drawer when he blew his head off.
Then Courtney sat down next to a tree with the mother, and the kids sat in a ring. Courtney was saying things like, “You know, you guys really need to love each other and just appreciate the people in your lives.” What I eventually concluded was that she wanted a huge outpouring of kids in that park, that she wanted some kind of “don’t forget Kurt” movement to spring up around their house, and she was chumming the waters, basically: “Oh, yeah, if you go there at night, Courtney comes out and gives you some of his stuff.” “Really? Wow! Let’s get 100 of our friends and go there and chant Kurt’s name and