A little over five years ago, a chapter closed. I'd been doing mostly nothing that day--which was usual. It had been three months since college graduation, and I hadn't found a job yet. Not even a crappy job. And I applied for a lot of those, too. Kinko's didn't want me, local bookstores didn't want me, mega-book/record/video stores didn't want me, nobody wanted me. There were no jobs for a guy who graduated with an English/Creative Writing degree. And it was becoming a problem, since I needed a job to pay rent and such.

But on the afternoon of April 9, 1994, I was doing next to nothing. I was making a mixed tape for my car. Not that I had anywhere to go, but when I did decide to drive around, I wanted different tunes to sing along to. One song I included was "Dumb" from Nirvana's In Utero album. I finished up the tape in a couple of hours and settled in for a nice night of TV. For some reason, MTV was playing an unscheduled Nirvana marathon.

After about five minutes, I found out why.

To say that it was surprising would be an overstatement. I think there was an initial shock, and then a sad, understanding nod. Already in the depths of my own self-loathing, it was easy to make the leap from why to why not.

Later that night I played a drinking game with some friends. We called it Cobain. No matter what card was pulled you had to drink. Not much of a game, just our way of commiserating over the loss of a guy we didn't really know--even though his music permeated our lives for a few years with amazing consistency and resilience.

Last week I watched "The Year Punk Broke," a little movie Sonic Youth made about being on tour in Europe with Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr. and a few other bands. It was shot just before Nevermind came out, and featured band members being goofy, a little loopy, but not very gloomy or sad. You see, they didn't have much money, but they were on tour. And that's exactly where they wanted to be.

And there was Kurt, jumping into drum sets, killing guitars, slamming his head into speakers and knocking himself out--all for the enjoyment of a huge festival crowd.

The screening of the video brought on an interesting rush of memories--and I just realized this morning that it was just a bit over five years since the suicide. April 4, 1994 (as decided by the investigators) was the day Kurt shot up a nice dose of heroin, stuck a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The world has changed in the last five years. I got a job (okay, I got a few of them), finally. Nirvana sold a bunch more albums, and punk finally broke with Green Day's "Dookie"--a fun, if not a bit more traditional kind of punk than the loose new wave punk Nirvana dished out. Courtney Love (who appears for a few seconds in the video) has become a celebrity, if not the rock star Kurt loathed to be. And all of us who grew into adulthood to the sound of Kurt's ironic sneer had to find other reasons to live.

It may seem a bit inconsequential to talk about a millionaire addict who couldn't find a reason to live--even as he lived a life millions of kids dream about. But Kurt's shadow looms over everything we do, because, in that strange way pop culture grabs hold of the hardest hearts, his music was everything for a while.

I graduated from college at the edge of a small recession, meaning there weren't any jobs waiting for most of us when we left the safe confines of higher education. And so a lot of us went into hiding and grabbed for scraps and tokens wherever they fell. We were literate rats, begging to be taken seriously and rebuked any time an original idea came out of our mouths. And through all of that, we had a common voice. Or maybe it was a common scream.

And it was good.

So maybe, after the mini-Nirvana revival that is currently taking place at my house has run its course, I won't hear that scream for a while. But every time work does its usual piss job on my head, or when the cops look twice to see if I'm wearing a seat belt, or maybe just when I'm feeling less than normal, I'll get a little spit and bile in my mouth and swish it around. The taste is familiar and comforting.

The taste of Kurt.

Matt Worley is on a plain. And he can't complain.