Rock on Steroids

In central Illinois in the 1990s Seattlest was a wee little college freshman exploring the twin wonders of new music and new drugs. Nirvana, for example, was making some music we got really into, so much so that we learned of Aberdeen, WA, even though we'd never been to the West Coast, much less the Pacific Northwest, or Washington, or Seattle. At nearly the same time we encountered our first vanity steroid users. Some guys in the dorm--non-athlete guys--worked out a lot and then sat around in front of mirrors with their shirts off. "Steroids" they whispered to one another, "I'm starting a cycle." It went around the building like a bootleg tape. "So-and-so's hooking me up." And by second semester there were a lot of little, big men lurching around, popping zits and raging from time to time.

"Don't tell anyone, but that cycle I sold so-and-so was water." Huh, that's weird because we've seen so-and-so shoot this water into his ass on his way to the gym and he came home declaring it money well spent. Nirvana, or at least our exposure to Nirvana, was actually a year or so before this, and by the time we got to college even the wanna-be steroid guys were rocking out to it. The one and only time we ever showed our face in a central Illinois gym Nevermind was playing. A year later Kurt Cobain would kill himself, largely, we believed then, due to these same meatheads.

Little did we know at the time, but Aberdeen, Washington, would one day move from being the center of our rock universe to being the center of the steroid universe. Funny, that.