This past week, my dad, Dennis, and I went into LA to see the VanGogh interactive exhibit and before the show, we stopped at a burger place down the block. Up above the bar was a TV streaming music videos from the way-back time (80s, 90s mostly). After a raucous stadium-show AC/DC “For Those About to Rock,” Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold the World” flashed on. Recorded in November 1993 live in NYC, it was a performance for MTV’s Unplugged series, which shockingly seems to still be a feature on the channel.

I nodded at the screen and said, “Ah. Nirvana.” My dad said, “Your old friends.” We both took a minute to watch, then I added, “I’m there. In the audience.” In the saying of that out loud, the absolute surreality of it settled in me. I mean, I’ve been hundreds of places where the song is playing and it washes over me without a thought. Sometimes, depending on my mood, I might get nostalgic. Have a moment about where I was on that particular day in both mind and body. But these flashbacks live in a fairly airtight space in me, so pretty quickly the memory will stand up, gather its things and step back into the back-then room, nodding and shutting the door quietly.

But this day I became a bit smitten with the weirdness of my 60-year-old self sitting in a restaurant in LA with my dad looking up at a place where the 32-year-old version of me was sitting in an audience watching a band that changed my life, made up of people I knew and cared about a lot. Thirty-eight years ago, almost to the day, I was in an aisle seat with my friend Chris. We were about halfway back, facing the stage and before the taping had started, Kurt had wandered into the space with a cup of tea. Heading toward us, he stopped, held out the white paper cup with green&blue swirls (standard-issue catering style), nodded, and said, “Penny-royal tea?” It felt like an offering rather than just a comment on what he was drinking, which wasn’t of the penny-royal variety but rather Earl Gray (I remember the paper tag saying so). I took it, maybe he smiled–in my memory he did–and I recognized it as a reference toward the song he would play later. The one that makes reference to distilling “the life inside of me” and asking for a Leonard Cohen afterworld in order to “sigh eternally.” His eyes were blue, his sweater green and mohair, his way shy but not. Sure but from a removed place. Friendly but don’t mistake that for friends. I thanked him, maybe with a touch of irony as if in on the joke, then handed the cup back and he went on his way, maybe offering the cup to a whole bunch of people. Who knows. He’d stopped in front of me and for the moment that’s where I lived.

The show started and by the time he’d strummed the final chords on Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?“, the last song of the set, his voice devastated by the notes he’d dug like a gravel pit, I was gone. Not in body, but all my insides: thoughts, soul. An agitation around “Please stop” and “never stop.” The former because his voice felt pure cracked pain. The latter because I wanted him to sing there always, even if it hurt. Him. I wanted to know more of what I thought he was giving us. A view into his interior? A don’t-you-see-how-it-can-rip-you? glimpse. It felt like voyeurism, yet he was offering. So I took. It’s strange to feel protective over someone you only sort of know, yet also greedy about wanting them to keep showing you things that are maybe painful to them. But Kurt wasn’t just showing that to me, he opened himself to hundreds of thousands whether through recordings or live. And again the question, was he really? Exposing himself that deeply? Or were we reading in?

Ultimately it doesn’t matter the did he/didn’t he scenario. As a channel for connection, I let myself go into the deep place inside of me. And I stayed there and learned things. And his lyrics, the band’s music, helped me get there and feel it all. Then he was gone. For real. And although I have a hard time still revisiting the place in me he opened, sitting in a burger bar 38 years later, my heart beating a bit quicker for the memory, I smile and want another sip of that tea.