NIRVANA SLASH ARCHIVE

Interviewer: At what point did it seem to you that he was not--can you describe the men in Aberdeen? In general?

Wendy O'Connor (Kurt's mother): No. [laughs]

Int: Well, Kurt seems very, like, different. At what age was it clear that he was not going to be a logger?

Wendy: Ok, I was thinking the other day about how I guess he thought at one point he might be gay, which is fine, I mean, it runs in our family, but I kind of felt that he was kind of questioning himself. He would ask me questions about girls. And trying to figure out how to get one, I think. That's what I thought.

And I think he was really kind of like, wondering--because he was artistic... and so I started thinking about this the other day, and he was really--he and I were really best friends. I mean, when he died I lost one of my best friends. We had so much fun talking about the world and politics and life and music and just everything. We talked all the time.

And he was very aware, especially when I was with three not-suited men, how that made him feel. He didn't like the way his dad talked to me. He didn't like the way my boyfriend after Don treated me. [...]

He and I were so close, and he was very respectful, he was very courteous, good, really good manners. I made sure of that. Because Don had none. [...] We were just really close, and I think that is what makes the difference in these roughhouse boys, you know, jocks--they're more bonded to their dads, I think, than they are to their mothers. I prefer men that love their mothers. They're just gentler, they understand women a little bit better.

And then just being an artist, he--everywhere in school, except for English and art, he felt like the jocks were--you know, I don't know. He never came home and said he was being bullied. Or that he was being picked on. He never said that. I just assumed that because he wasn't into sports [...] that Kurt probably felt a little left out that way.

And as he got older he got a little more shy. Just maybe less confident. When he was young he didn't care what people thought. And then as he got older he became aware that he wasn't like the regular guys. But it didn't mean that he didn't have guy friends, he had a lot of guy friends, but they were very much similar to him.

-2015, Montage of Heck film outtakes

"It's a gay publication, Kurt, so don't forget to tell them about the time you stole your tights out of your mother's drawer."

-Courtney to Kurt during his interview with The Advocate, 1993

Interviewer: Because people thought you were gay and you had gay friends, did you ever wonder if you might be gay?

Kurt: Yeah, absolutely. See I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl. Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all. They had really awful haircuts and fucked-up attitudes. So I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women. But I'm really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.

I mean, I'm definitely gay in spirit, and I probably could be bisexual. [...] If I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual life-style.

(The Advocate 1993)

"Yeah, things flipped day and night, so you had these hair metal bands and they had these really soft features and fluffy hair, but had this macho bravado. And so then grunge rock came out and we had like, facial hair and flannel shirts, but we had a feminine sensibility."

-Krist on the difference between metal and grunge, 7 Oct 2015 FOX Business Network Interview