Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Timing is everything.
I mourned Kurt Cobain’s death just like everyone else. I spent the evening watching MTV and crying over the replays of his Unplugged performance.
To make matters worse, I had no way to reach Gabriel. He was already on the road, touring the US to promote his album, and I was gripped with this fear that he was never coming back.
As soon as he called me late that night from Chicago, I said, “You’re not allowed to die. Promise me that you won’t. Promise me you’ll live to a hundred and one, Gabriel.”
“No one has control over when they die.”
I argued that Kurt Cobain had total control. He’d taken his own life.
“Yeah, but we don’t know what he was going through,” he said. “And for all I know, I could get hit by a truck tomorrow and it’s lights out.”
“Just stay alive until I see you again,” I snapped. “Can you promise me that, at least?”
“I’m seeing you in two weeks. I’ll do my best not to OD on heroin and blow out my brains.” He thought it was funny.
“I’m hanging up,” I said. He was still laughing.
“No, wait. I need to tell you something.”
I didn’t really want to hang up on Gabriel. I hated going to sleep without hearing his voice, so I stayed on the line.
“I was up on the stage playing a Kurt Cobain song as a tribute, ‘Something in the Way.’ And this wave of sadness washed over me,” he said.
“I didn’t even know the guy but I was having a hard time making sense of it all.
I wanted to see what he’d do next, which direction he’d take his music.
But he was gone. He didn’t want to be here so now he’s not.
And I was just thinking, what’s the fucking point of it all? ”
“Gabriel,” I said softly.
He released a heavy exhale. “So after the show, we all pile into the van and I’m just staring out the window and I thought about you and I thought about us. How we are together. And that is the fucking point of it all.
“I never dreamed that I would find this kind of love. That I would find someone who just makes everything better. Not in that castles in the sky way or like a cheesy movie where they ride off into the sunset and everything is perfect but it’s all superficial Hollywood bullshit.
In the real-life way where I buy you a pomegranate and you act like I gave you precious jewels.
Or when you yell at me to go to the doctor because you care, and I’m pissed off, but I go anyway because I care about your feelings…
I could give you a dozen examples but hopefully you get my point. ”
“I do.” I smiled. “There’s no one I’d rather piss off.”
“There’s no one I’d rather drive nuts.”
We laughed.
“I think you’re the only person who really knows me and you still love me,” he said, sounding amazed that I would love him, flaws and all. “And if I have any say over the matter, I plan on sticking around for a long, long time.”
“Thank you. You could have led with that. And don’t ruin it by saying it’s not within your control,” I added.
“I won’t.”
We lapsed into silence. Sometimes we just liked to stay on the line and listen to each other breathing. I think that’s true love. Just being happy that the other person exists and feeling so incredibly grateful that you’re lucky enough to share a life with them.
“I can’t wait to see you when you’re ninety with wrinkles and gray hair,” he said. “Your face will be a canvas for all the experiences you’ve lived and all the tears and the laughter, the wonder and joy and the heartache you’ve endured…” He sighed wistfully. “That’ll be something to see.”
Only Gabriel would make a love declaration like that and sound wistful. “It’ll be something, all right.” I didn’t know whether to laugh at how ridiculous it was or cry over how sweet he made it sound. I did both, a combination of a laugh and a heartfelt sigh. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Crazy about you. When you’re ninety, I’ll still think you’re sexy and I’ll still write songs for you. You’re the only music I’ll never get tired of listening to.”
Gabriel said the most beautiful things. But I felt like that should have been my line. After all, he was the music. My music .
When Gabriel’s album dropped, at the height of grunge, America didn’t know what to make of his music.
His album languished at 189 on the charts for weeks and didn’t get much airplay.
The critics gave it mixed reviews. While some called it a “romantic masterpiece” and raved about Gabriel’s powerful vocals and emotional intensity, others claimed it veered into melodrama.
Sales weren’t meeting the record label’s expectations, and it didn’t help that producing the album had gone way over budget. But Gabriel said it was worth it. He didn’t want his legacy to be a piece of garbage.
There was his art and then there was all the noise surrounding it. For Gabriel, they were two entirely separate things.
He refused to be swayed by the major-label hype. He wanted to be a credible artist.
He wasn’t chasing trends. He wanted to create something timeless, and that kind of thing didn’t always take off right out of the gate so he stayed true to his vision, and he did things his own way.
“Look,” he said when I met him in Boston for the weekend, “you’ve gotta be willing to roll the dice and lose. I don’t have any problem with failure. People should be allowed to fail. The only thing that matters to me is that I’m doing work that I’m happy with.”
Which, in turn, inspired me to adopt the same mindset.
My grunge collection sold out in all three boutiques as soon as it dropped. But I turned down an offer from a major department store.
It would have been a lucrative deal but after meeting with the executives and hearing their plans to mass-produce and capitalize on the grunge mania, it sounded as if they wanted to increase profit margins by skimping on quality.
I decided that it wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in and left the money on the table.