Kurt Cobain is Alive, and Homeless in New York.

Despite Greta saying the pain would go away, the hole was still hurting after several weeks, but he’d forgotten how many. His tongue kept creeping to the gap, and lingering there. It was the third time he’d had his face kicked in. Should have stayed away from Wall Street, he knew that. He’d just been chancing it, that’s all. 

The sky crept across the sky, flickered, then was out, and he was awake again. He crouched for a while and focused solely on the dogs. They were very snooty, some of them very much like aristocratic cartoon dogs, the dogs of New York. Some people didn’t pick up their poop, just left it there. The smell of a Subway shop shooed him off, and he was on his way, slowly crossing the park. 

Sometimes he’d hear his own music, blasting out of a store, or in someone’s car. But it wasn’t his music anymore, it never really was: it was something he had done but it had gone, along with everything else. He saw photos of himself in store windows too. He avoided the whole twentieth year anniversary of the swimming baby album, because he wasn’t in the mood. Then he got in the mood again, and rued having missed the celebration. Boddah said it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. What did Boddah know? It was something to cling on to, like many other things. 

In the morning, in Washington Square Park, he sat and watched the people go to work, breath or cigarette smoke escaping from their wrapped faces. It was a frozen world. He never joined in with the guys strumming guitars: cheesy. He went his own way, didn’t talk much, and did a lot of thinking. And a lot of enjoying life. He was pausing to think, yes that was it. Then he’d get back on the saddle, but of course he would not. 

He coughed, convulsively, hacking up several mouthfuls of phlegm. The chesty cough had lingering for several months now. In defiance, he lit a cigarette. He didn’t miss smack: cigarettes had taken their place, they were even more addictive. 

He tried to keep up with his daughter’s goings-on, but the whole thing with Courtney still gave him a headache. He’d read in one of the free papers that she was living in Manhattan now, fighting with her landlords in the West Village. He chuckled at that. Maybe I’ll go and sit out there, see her coming in or out. 

But he forgot the address, he was always forgetting things. And he couldn’t just stop and ask someone with an iPhone to look it up, now could he? Or maybe he should. 

He’d stopped thinking someone would recognize him: he thought he looked the same, but then he remembered no-one had seen Cobain at middle age. He was definitely fatter too: a diet from the garbage will do that to you. But David Bowie had recognized him, coming out of a pastry-shop with white shiny tiles, called Falai. They’d locked eyes and immediately knew. 

“My goodness, look who it is,” said David. 

“The Man Who Sold the World – in person,” he responded, and they both chuckled. 

“Come up for a cup of tea – you’ve got to try these, they’re delicious,” said David raising the bag slightly. 

They walked a couple blocks, and went up to his apartment. 

“Iman and Lexi are out, I’ve got the place to myself,” said David as he fumbled with the keys. Inside, the apartment was a loft covering the entire floor, spanning the entire block from window to window. Crisp, clear sunlight lit up the polished wood floors and glass and copper shelves and fittings, all very steampunk. They sat for a while and it was very pleasant, tea steaming from cups, and the Italian millefoglie crumbling in his mouth like bone dust made of sugar. Boddah was bored, as usual. 

Sometimes the sky swirled, and months went by in a matter of seconds. Huge chunks of snow fell, then it was sweltering, like a tropical country. He wrote things down, poetry, fragments of memories of crossing the country back and forth with Boddah by his side chattering on about being stuck here and unable to go back to his homeworld. Then he lost the notebooks. One time he was with a woman, Emily, for several months, but she went off, upstate. 

His favorite thing of all was to sit by the Hudson, and watch the ships: the light opened up there, and you could see as if into the Earth.