You’re his mother. You’re his babysitter. You’re his enabler.
But tonight, I set you free.
It’s 4:00 a.m. and Phil’s awfully lonely—oh how he would hate that reference!—and I should get out of my car, walk inside, and end his life once and for all. I grip the handle of the knife.
I turn up the volume on Phil’s swan song—sorry, man—and my timing is good, Mary Kay. The poor guy is really going off the rails tonight, ranting about Lucky Kurt Cobain.
As always, his mouth is too close to the mic. “It’s true, man…” His voice isn’t what it used to be. “Nirvana is Nirvana because Courtney killed Kurt. And when you’re a guy like me, a survivor… well, we worship the dead. We put ’em on pedestals. Music just sounds better when the singer’s a goner and it’s the story of a lot of artists… you die, you’re not around to feel the love, and here comes the love.”
He talks as if Kurt Cobain wasn’t a star before he died and maybe I won’t have to kill Phil. Maybe there’s an angry mob on the way right now and I check the rearview. Nothing. And of course there’s no angry mob. I’m one of ten, maybe twelve, people listening at this late, early hour.
“Aw, man,” he says. “I’m not bitter…” Oh yes you are, man. “But there was this one night me and Chris were jammin’…” Impossible to verify. Chris Cornell is dead. “I had this riff… he riffed on the riff… and let’s just say, a cowriting credit on ‘Black Hole Sun’ woulda been nice…” I grip my knife because you do not speak ill of the dead, but then he growls. “Shut it, Phil! Don’t be a whiny little bitch!” He opens a can of beer. “Thing is, I’m not a pretty boy and if I looked a little more like cutesy-tootsie Eric Clapton…” Oh dear no. No. “Did you guys see that doc about him? I caught it this afternoon when I was half asleep…” What a good partner for you, Mary Kay! “Man, Crapton works that schoolboy charm hard…” True. “But the guy could be a real fucking dick…” Also true. “He’d get nasty and drunk onstage. He went after his best friend’s girl… and did people hate him for it? Nah. He rode the horse into hell, he couldn’t finish Layla, and Duane Fucking Allman rode into that hellscape like a white knight and he’s the reason we have ‘Bell Bottom Blues.’ Some guys, they inspire that loyalty in people. When it comes to me… well, no one ever bailed me out…” Oh dear. “Chris wouldn’t come by while I was trying to finish The Terrible Twos…”
I scroll down the Wikipedia page and there it is, the third album: The Terrible Twos. Don’t put the word terrible in your title, Phil. It’s just too easy for the critics to slaughter you.
He analyzes his fizzling career—a good marriage is a tough thing to write about—and I revisit one of my favorite interviews with Phil. Nomi was two years old. Phil was out of rehab, once again, withdrawing from the pink cotton wool （he stole that metaphor from Eric Fucking Clapton）。 Anyway, Phil compared you to his Gibson—you are not an instrument—and said he could stay clean for the rest of his life if he got to play with you every day. The reporter told you what your husband said and your response was telling: “It’s not what you expect when you’re a muse… but what can you do?”
Spoken like a true battered, trapped woman, and I read the lyrics from “Waterbed,” the fourth track on Moan and Groan.
I gave you what you want, it’s a waterbed
I’m seasick for you, will you gimme head?
Why take ’em off if you won’t give it up?
Why lay down if I’m not enough?
You weren’t his muse. You were his whipping post and you’re ashamed, aren’t you? You were young, Mary Kay. I made mistakes too—RIP Candace—but I didn’t marry my mistake. I know, I know. You were pregnant and he wrote his twisted love letters about his fear of commitment when he was young too. But then I turn his show back on and he’s digging deep into the past as always, blasting the pity-party dirge he calls “Sharp Six.”
Aw you got to do it, MAN
You mute her scream with a RING, they command
A Hustler… You want it
It’s at the newsstand…
Summer comes in like a FIRE and it goes
And where she WENT you don’t know
Her body… You want it
But now it’s out of reach…
The alarm cuts you UP at sharp six
You’re just another TOM, you’re a Dick
Your Philstick… It’s broken
She burnt your wick…
You wake up in a CRATE and you’re dead
She’s in a BARREL in your bed
A crate in a barrel… A barrel in a gun…
Remember… the summer…
The end of all the fun…
The barrel of a gun （Repeat 10x）
The song ends and he cackles. “Man,” he says. “Was I some kinda prick or what?”
Okay, so he regrets the lyrics. But he still plays the song. A Better Man like Eddie Vedder would bury those hateful, sexist words, but Phil is no Eddie Vedder and this most hateful album is also the most popular. “Well, Philistans, I gotta drain the lizard.”
He’s a liar and he doesn’t need to take a piss. He cracks a window and he smokes a cigarette—I bet that’s not allowed—and he stares at the building across the street and the playlist is a brainwashing exercise. He plays a go-nowhere Sacriphil B-side between bigger songs by Mudhoney and the Melvins as if we, the listener, are supposed to think Phil and his cronies are in the same league as those legends, as if we the listener are that fucking stupid.
“Well,” he says. “Phil’s back and ya know, every time I hear ‘Shark,’ I gotta give a shout-out to my girls at home. You all know that I’m nothing without them. Hell, sometimes I think, What if Emmy never got pregnant… I wouldn’t have my daughter or my ‘Shark.’？”
He “loves” you but you don’t love him. When you love someone, you scream it from the rooftops but you don’t even wear a ring and the Meerkat doesn’t talk about him either. Your friends don’t ask about him. You think leaving him would kill him, push him off the wagon, and you’re trapped in this codependent cycle of abuse and he sighs. “All right, Philistans. Fun fact…” Fact as in fiction. “First time I played ‘Shark’ for Kurt, he tucked his hair behind his ear and said he wished he wrote it. I got the chills, man.” BULLSHIT, YOU LIAR. RIP KURT WOULD NEVER. “Maybe that’s why ‘Shark’ is still burnin’ after all these years and ya gotta forgive me, my moon’s blue tonight…” Oh God. “I know Kurt’s a god. You know Kurt’s a god. He fell for a Courtney and I fell for my girl and… well, I’m still here. I got another ‘shark’ in me. You know it. I know it. Peace out, Philistans, and to all my NA brothers and sisters, I’ll bump into you tomorrow.”
He plays “Shark” at the end of every fucking episode and I hate that I love this song. In theory, it should suck, guitars on top of bass and I forgot about the cowbell and young Phil wails, before cigarettes got the best of his voice, singing at you, at me, at everyone on the planet.