Remainder of Kurt Cobain’s Handwritten Note About Courtney Love Revealed

Yesterday, the Seattle Police Department released a handwritten note found in the wallet of Kurt Cobain at the time of his death… except they cut off the bottom half. So here’s what we all saw:

Which makes it look like Kurt didn’t think very highly of Courtney at the end of his life. In fact, what I wrote yesterday was, “unless [the note] has a Usual Suspects-style twist ending, it seems safe to assume that its contents are also less-than-flattering to Courtney.”

But guess what? It DOES have  twist-ending… although that ending is probably more akin to the surrealism of a David Lynch movie than the neo-noir twist of The Usual Suspects.

Mark Yarm, author of Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, has posted the full note on his Tumblr page. Ready? Here it is:

The word that’s blotted out, by the way, is “fuck.”

So, it turns out we did see most of the note — we were just missing the phrase “will you promise to fuck her at least once a week O.K.” Which some people are interpreting as proof that the note was written was a joke (others insist it’s not even Cobain’s handwriting — I’m not a graphologist, so I’m not gonna touch that one). But I’m not so sure. It’s natural to assume that fucking your wife at least once a week isn’t a bad thing, but there’s nothing here to indicate that Cobain thought it was a good thing, either — in fact, in the context of the rest of the note, I think sounds downright hostile. And the note was always “a joke” insofar as it was a satire of the couples’ vows — so it’s not like this one last gag somehow drastically changes the tone of everything that came before it.

So, if you ask me, this one remains a mystery. In fact, now it’s just a more confusing mystery. Again, we should keep in mind that it was either written by a very depressed and possibly strung-out Cobain, or by Courtney Love, and either way, being coherent was clearly not one of the author’s priorities.

Thanks: Jen