Stomach Pains (KURT COBAIN)

daughter

"motherfucker," i muttered, darting to the bathroom at a denny's. i couldn't even shut the stall door before bending over the toilet and emptying the contents of my stomach.

"you doing okay, sweetheart?" a concerned older woman asked me. i nodded a bit, not facing her.

later that day in my car, two dead milkmen tapes later, i was confronted with my anthem.
"at least i give a shit,
about the stuff i eat,
yeah i care about nutrition"

when i was younger my parents thought i was bulimic, that i could control my many vomit spells, that i somehow wanted to be like this. it resulted in many tear streaked nights screaming at my mother, insisting that something was wrong. this time i drove jodi to her doctors appointment, she was expecting her first baby.

i always loved hospitals, oddly enough. i spent a lot of time soaking in the bleach smells and white linen in my childhood. my mother was a cancer survivor and they could never quite figure out what was wrong with me, so we kept returning. what i loved most was the food. plain, non-offensive, like a school lunch but so, so much worse. we waited in the waiting room for a few moments before being escorted to a room in the maternity wing of the hospital.

she changed out of her clothes and into a hospital gown, getting under the blanket. her doctor came in and shook both of our hands. she was a smaller lady with long dark hair tied at the base of her neck in a neat ponytail, the rest was slicked down against her head.
"you are 20 weeks, correct?" she said, looking over at jodi. jodi nodded a bit.
"today we'll be doing a scan to find out the gender and if there's more than one in there," her doctor said with a large smile. jodi laughed a bit.
"damn, i hope there's only one!" she joked. jodi rolled up the gown and the doctor rubbed goo on her stomach from a tube, jodi waved me over to her side.
"mom and mama?" the woman asked, turning on the machine.
"oh no, i'm her cousin," i laughed a bit, holding her hand as she looked between me and the doctor, wide eyed.

soon the image of her unborn child was projected on a screen, she smiled so big.

the doctor pointed out the organs, and the child opened and closed their hands repeatedly.
"it's a she!" the doctor said, looking into jodi's eyes. jodi looked into the screen with amazement.
"she's getting so big!" the doctor added, so happy for jodi.

soon the doctor left the room and jodi changed back into her regular clothes, picking up the prints of her daughter.

"we should go out to eat to celebrate," jodi told me, getting in the passenger seat of my car.
we settled on a local hole in the wall diner where i simply got a bowl of mashed potatoes, jodi getting a burger.

i actually held down the potatoes, strangely enough.

kurt and i were due to meet at a coffee shop later that night, to sit through the hours of bad singer songwriters of open mic night. he sat at a wooden table with mismatched chairs, yellowish light accentuated his gold hair. he smiled, raising his hand in a half wave, bringing a small cup of tea to his mouth.

i got a glass of hot water with lemon and sat facing him at our corner table.

"hot water huh?" he asked, interested by my odd choice.
"my grandma would drink a glass of hot water every morning for breakfast," i said, laughing a bit. that wasn't a lie or a joke.

he nodded, not questioning it. a mousy girl with a shrill voice assaulted an acoustic guitar in the background, trying what i assumed was a joni mitchell song.