Part 3/3 of 'I Know How To Live': The Life of Kristen Pfaff (volume 1)

Pfaff joins Janitor Hole, meets Steve Albini, and having tussled with joining Hole she shares her insights on Kurt Cobain and the wildness of life in the Hole / Nirvana camp

Pfaff’s ‘complex and beautiful’ personality were apparent even to those who worked with her at The Upper Crust in Minneapolis around this time. People such as April Obey (then April Smith) who got in touch saying she wanted to share her memories of Pfaff. Obey describes herself as having at the time ‘Manic Panic Fire Engine Red dyed hair’. Obey recalls, ‘The staff was mostly female, though there were also a few men. At that time,’ Obey says, ‘there were a lot of hardcore feminists who,’ (in Obey’s view) ‘went a little over the top in their beliefs. The consensus was that all sex with men was a form of rape and that they would never date a man who had not had sexual experiences with another man. It was a given that women should also have experience with other women. Kristen did, at least to some degree, agree with some of these ideas,’ she recalls, adding, ‘When I first started working there most of the women, including Kristen, were rather snotty to me because I a) was married; b) voiced my opinion with regard to their odd standards; b) did not back down from my stance that not every person must be bisexual as a rule, though I understood that if you fell in love with someone who happened to be of the same gender then that's simply love, rather than fulfilling a requirement.’