I crept up from behind and leaned in.

“Sir, can I get you something—maybe some peanuts?” I asked in that pleasant, I’m-here-for-you flight attendant voice, crouching in the aisle to show my commitment to service. He snapped around, bugged his eyes, and whisper-shouted my name, ending the charade and joining in the coincidence of high school friends crossing the Atlantic on the same flight.

Coincidences. They’re astonishing or boring, benign or morbid, funny or yawn. They’re subjective, so you have to be careful when conveying them, lest your audience reacts the same way they would to “I had the weirdest dream last night…” or “Oh, you’ll love this…” Please, no. It calls to mind trapped animals who sometimes gnaw off their own legs for an escape. Just no.

They’re also hard to label. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, and Kurt Cobain are members of The 27 Club. Is it a coincidence that they all died at the same age or just weird?

A weird thing happened to me once, but the guy behind the register called it a “coincidence”, so now I do too. Except for what initiated it—that part was definitely weird.

I woke up early one morning in Berkeley consumed with a new life priority: I needed to buy a Kurt Cobain t-shirt.

The hell?

Big fan of his music and his penchant for railing against fame and entitlement, but why now? No dreams about him recently. No Nirvana songs on the radio recently. I didn’t own other band tees and wasn’t entirely sure where to find one. But it had to happen. Kurt might die if it doesn’t, a very superstitious person might think. But it was too late. He was already in the 27 Club.

I sat with my predicament while wolfing down a large bowl of cereal and half-listening to NPR, hoping the urgency would taper off. It didn’t. I was in my twenties, which meant I had excess energy to dedicate to frivolous pursuits capable of hijacking a young mind.

Minutes later, I was maneuvering my Schwinn beach cruiser through the cool morning air, coasting downhill towards Telegraph Ave—cultural lodestone for colorful characters with a huge variety of shops.

It felt appropriate to walk into Rasputin’s first. Grigori Rasputin was a charismatic mystic who wandered around the Russia “curing” people with his supernatural powers or scaring the bejesus out of them with his dark, ominous stare. Could he rescue me from my obsession? He was also known for getting drunk and having sex with prostitutes. Hopefully I was catching his ghostly presence on a focused, productive day.

Nirvana was still hugely popular, boosted by Kurt’s club entry, so I had a ton of shirt options. My only sartorial requirement was that it be 100% cotton; any amount of polyester was an invitation for sweat and stink.

I felt drawn to a light blue shirt featuring Kurt in pajamas and a bathrobe, holding a small guitar while gazing warmly into the camera. He was smiling—a nice counterpoint to his suicide.

I grabbed a medium and headed towards check-out.

I put the shirt on the counter, peeled my wallet open to count my cash, and looked up at the clerk. He hadn’t hit a single key and was staring at me. Not Rasputin-level spooky, but definitely eerie.

What is this?—is he having some kind of episode? He was silent for another second before asking, ”You know what today is, don’t you?”

I didn’t. “I don’t. What’s today?” I asked a little nervously.

“It’s the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death,” he informed me with considerable gravity. “Quite the coincidence, I’d say,” he added, not blinking.

I only managed a subdued “whoa” because I didn’t have time to assess how strange it was. As I biked home it sunk in more. I tried the shirt on again and stood in front of the mirror, staring at the purchase that had possessed me while Kurt just smiled back at me sweetly, despite being very dead.

Weird.

Also a little weird was my decision to start wearing the shirt to organized runs. I saw it as a protest against all the “high-performance”, stretchy spandex gear I was seeing at these events that could apparently also magically wick away all your sweat. I was clocking good finish times without it and wanted to say to the running community: You don’t need that crap to go fast.

I think iconoclast Kurt would’ve said, “Fuck Yeah!” in solidarity but probably also, “Running is stupid”. No matter. I’ve racked up a lot of photos of me and Kurt, dynamic duo, striding hastily in 5Ks, 10Ks, and the Queens Half Marathon.

That half was two loops around the old World’s Fair grounds in Flushing Meadows, with DJs littered along the course, keeping runners moving with eclectic musical choices. One DJ saw my shirt on the first lap and must’ve liked it—or the idea of it. The next time around, he managed to spot me in the herd and quickly threw on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

As I passed by, flashing a smile and thumbs-up, he cranked the volume and yelled:

“GO KURT, GOOOO!…WAY TO GO, KURT!”

Friends have praised me for fast running times, and I wave them off with an “Oh, please,” while also mentioning that I think I can push things too hard.

When I was I kid playing youth soccer, if our team was losing in the closing minutes, I’d run around the field like a maniac until I was hyperventilating, which feels very close to death. I harbor a belief that one day, out on an aggressive, hard run, my mind will compromise my heart and I will die.

I believe it just enough that I’ve chosen never to sign up for an organized run on April 5, the day Kurt died.

Me keeling over while wearing my Kurt death shirt feels like a coincidence Rasputin is conjuring up from beyond the grave.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Hopefully you didn’t gnaw off your leg. But if you did, and you’re female, might be fun to create your own coincidence/euonym by changing your name to Ilene. Peg? Too soon?

Something to make Kurt turn over in his grave: