You Love Me(You #3)(27)
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.
You are the shark inside my shark, you’re the second set of teeth
The roses ain’t in bloom, the thorns hide in the wreath
On my front door you bang and bang, let me in, lock me out
You hang me up, I twist, you shout
Eat me, bite me, slay me, spite me
Your body invites me and your fire ignites me and
Why are you the flame (the only one to blame, you and your game)
You swell and hide and now you lock me in this frame
Where I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I just die underneath
Cuz I’m the shark inside your shark, oh I’m the second set of teeth…
I kill the volume but I have no choice. I have to finish. I have to sing the rest.
You’re the shark inside my shark but I’m the shark inside your shark
You’re me, I’m you. What can we do? You’re me, I’m you
You gnash, I feed… you and your seed…
But do you want me in your dreams?
Do you love me when I’m clean?
Do you hear me when I—
(Cowbell)
SHARK!
It’s Rhyming for Dummies and it’s a jumbled mess of mixed metaphors but he was smart to end it with another displaced cowbell and I bet you knew that song was gonna be big. I look at your legs on his album. You want me to think you stayed for Nomi, but everything looks different now that I know about your rat. You like being a muse. You still wear your signature tights every day and his music comes from you. Just once I’d like to fall for someone who isn’t handicapped by narcissism, but it’s too late. I love you. I can’t kill his success, but I can pick up my knife.
Your rat he turns out the lights and walks down the stairs and there he is, thirty feet away, on the sidewalk. He leans against the building the same way he does on the cover of his hit single, posing for a camera that isn’t there and he lights a Marlboro Red like he’s James Fucking Dean, like his imaginary Philistans will summon the courage to emerge from the shadows. He blows smoke rings and watches them fade into the halogen mist and I don’t know how to blow smoke rings. Do you like that, Mary Kay? Are you into that kind of shit?
I slip Rachael up my sleeve and I’m ready but he pulls a rabbit out of his sleeve. His phone is ringing and he takes the call and it’s you.
“Emmy,” he says. “Babe, you okay? Why you up?”
I let the knife fall out of my sleeve. You’re awake. You were listening. I don’t call you Emmy and he says it too many times—Emmy Emmy Emmy—and he swears that he got a lot of sleep today—lazy fucker—and he tells you that he’s gonna go write through the sunrise—oh fuck you, Phil—before he hits a meeting. He swears he’ll pack his own shit for Phoenix—liar—and he chucks his cigarette in a puddle. “I’m down to two packs a day, Emmy. And now you want me to quit for a week for your dad? Are you trying to make me fall off the wagon? Is that what you want?”