150 Years of Love & Lust, Seattle-Style
20 tales of mad love, bad love, and glad love, plus 7 sex and love gurus.
The Ballad of Kurt and Courtney
Kurt Cobain & Courtney Love
Even before Kurt Cobain killed himself in 1994, the flanneled masses cast Courtney Love as his Yoko: Blinded by heroin and misguided love for a lipstick-smeared outsider, he was oblivious to the weight of her combat boots on his coattails and indifferent to the wedge she drove between him and his Nirvana bandmates. But that cliched comparison missed a more apt analogy: Kurt was Seattle, and Courtney was every record executive, wannabe rocker, groupie, and hanger-on who wanted a piece of the city.
He was a gentle, gifted introvert from Aberdeen who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) come in out of the rain. She was the thrashing, whip-smart self-promoter who only landed in Seattle after failing to find success elsewhere. He walked with his chin tucked to his chest; she thrust hers out to announce her entrance to a room. For him, the world was too much to bear. For her, it was never enough. But when they met in Portland in 1990 and then again a year later (legend has it she greeted him with a punch), he found in her a peroxide blonde proxy, his mouthpiece and protector. Never mind that the barrier she built around him didn’t distinguish between friend or enemy and did as much to keep him in as keep others out.
In February 1992 they married in, of all places, Hawaii. Six months later they had a baby, settled in Cedar Park, and gave new meaning to “nuclear family.” The screaming (adult, not baby) was epic, and their jagged trajectory predicted an ugly end. But just as the city’s willingness to welcome a few industry interlopers forced the rest of the world to offer Seattle musicians a seat at the table, little Frances Bean proved that even a coupling so caustic could produce something that was—at least for a moment—pure. —Matthew Halverson
A Healthy Relationship
Bill & Melinda Gates
Not since Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile united Spain, expelled the Moors and Jews, launched Columbus and the Inquisition, and divided the world with Portugal has a marital union had such wide consequences. And Bill and Melinda French Gates’s impact has surely been more benign.
Their tale, in broad outline, is a classic one: Big-hearted girl from the sunny heartland and her hypercompetitive, frequently rude boss fall for each other. She unleashes his inner mensch. He softens and sets out to do good, not just make good.
The story’s more complicated, of course. As a successful Microsoft program manager pre-Bill, Melinda was no buttercup. And the Gates Foundation approaches its main missions, boosting global health and combating global poverty, with a Microsoft-like drive. Bill had long said he meant to give his money away, though he said giving was harder than making it. And his parents drilled in the idea that great wealth brings great responsibility.
But Melinda both kick-started and defined the mission. Before, Bill wanted to combat overpopulation. Melinda, a Catholic, converted him to the view that lifting the threats of disease and starvation will solve that problem, and save millions of lives. As parents, they again seem to be doing better than Ferdinand and Isabella, whose only surviving daughter went insane. Bill and Melinda raise their three kids in determinedly normal circumstances—or as normal as a $100 million mansion allows.
Published: February 2010
Credit that blend of outward amiability and interior impenetrability known as the Seattle Freeze. “It manifests in a lot of confusion that would be unnecessary if people were more direct with each other,” she says.
So true.