What happened to teenage dreams

He was sitting on the central square in town and he sang a song I knew very well. “Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be” I knew all the lyrics by heart. It was the summer of 2001, but I wanted it to be 1991 because I was affected by Grunge fever.

I stopped and watched that guy play. With his ragged blue jeans, his bleached blonde hair and his Chucks, he looked a bit like Kurt Cobain. I couldn’t help but sing along. When he noticed me, he smiled at me with the most gorgeous smile ever. I was falling in love. As soon as he finished his song he came over to me and asked: “You really seem to love Nirvana, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” was all I could answer even though I would have wanted to tell him: “and I love you.”

He took the coins out of the guitar case right in front of him and told me: “I’m going to have drink; you want to come along?” So, I came along with him. We came to a run down shag in a field where some punks were selling the cheapest beer in cans. He bought a can of beer for himself and a can for me. Then we continued walking and he guided me to a stream at the end of the field. We sat down on the banks and he put his arm around me.

At first, we were drinking our beer silently. Then we started talking, or rather he started talking. He told me that he wanted to be a Grunge singer. He was ‘working’ as a street musician only until he had money to buy himself a ticket to Seattle. There, he would be discovered as a star and become famous. At 27 he would kill himself, just like his great idol Kurt Cobain had done, because all great musicians die at the age of 27.

When he finished his drink, he took up his guitar and started to play again. I was transfixed. He knew how to sing and play really well. I dreamed of giving up school and coming to Seattle with him. While he played the songs from Nirvana’s unplugged album, the sun was setting. Then he kissed me. It might have been the most romantic moment in my life.

But all the sudden he got up and told me: “I gotta go.”
“Why do you have to go?”
He answered me in a singing voice: “We are not in Seattle, dear, and I don’t want to get stuck somewhere with a girl until I made it to Seattle.”
I felt his voice piercing my heart and then I said goodbye to my teenage dream of dating a musicians who would write a love song for me.