You Love Me(You #3)(26)

I know it all, Mary Kay. I know that you had to “downsize” a few years ago—it’s all so fucking relative—and move to what Phil calls your sellout, suit-and-tie saltbox in Wesley Landing. He is pretty funny, I’ll give him that, but the privilege of it all! Like he deserves a Led Zeppelinesque castle in the woods because he has one song that some people know by heart. I’m so happy I’m not famous. And I have a whole new outlook on you.

You got together with Phil in high school. He was in a band. You were into that.

You got pregnant in college. He put a needle in his arm and penned the best songs of his life.

You were his muse and then when he couldn’t pull off the magic again, you were the one he blamed.

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