Nobody in your family is hungry, but you’re rummaging through your purse. You pull an Ani Katz book out of your purse—I told you to read that one!—and you pause. You’re thinking about me. You want me. And then you shove it back in your purse and I feel guilty because you must be constantly worried about what happens when the book is out of the bag, when I find out about your life, when Phil finds out about me.
Your rat groans. “Emmy, stop it already, man. We’re not starving to death.”
“No,” you say. “I know I have a candy bar. It’s in here somewhere.”
You and I are the same, aren’t we? We sacrifice our feelings and our desires for the people we love. The Meerkat is annoyed—Forget it, Mom—and Phil is disinterested—Em, I’m gonna eat with Freddy. But you’re still looking for it, determined to provide for your family, and then you prevail and wave a 3 Musketeers bar in the air.
“Got it!”
It’s impossible not to love you right now, the sheer joy on your face, the win. You bite the wrapper of the candy bar that you knew was in your purse and you are the girl who dreamed up the Empathy Bordello. You care about everyone and that includes your rat husband. You tear the candy bar in half and I love you for the big things and the little things, the pleasure you take in sharing. But there’s a fine line between selfless devotion and self-destruction and you give one half of your 3 Musketeers to Nomi and the other half to Phil and what’s left for you?
We disembark and I stay out of the way and let you and your family cross the bridge into the city while I take the stairs down to the street. I watch Phil wave goodbye to you and the Meerkat and of course this rat stayed with you—who would leave you?—and you couldn’t leave him. He’s too pathetic, exposing his legs so that everyone can see his Sacriphil tattoo. You stayed because it wouldn’t be fair for Phil to fail as a rock star and a husband.
And I didn’t see any of it coming.
I got soft when I moved here, trying so hard to be “good” as if being good is ever that simple. Life is complicated. Morals are complicated. I wouldn’t even be here today if I hadn’t bent the rules. I slip into a tourist trap restaurant—I really do prefer our small-town life—and I order a cup of coffee and begin my work. Your husband’s band is in shambles but he “works” nights hosting his own radio show called Philin’ the Blues—ugh—and if he’s up all night, well, I bet you haven’t had sex in a long time.
He doesn’t care about you, not really. The man lives his life for his fans—they call themselves Philistans—and he encourages these loud, lost losers to keep on rooting for a Sacriphil comeback. Our world is fucked—Phil has fans—and your life is fucked—Phil has you—but now that I’m indoors, on my own, I don’t feel so bad about any of it. I’m happy that the jig is up. We’re not teenagers and I have no interest in love triangles—never did—and I’m a New Yorker, Mary Kay. I’ve dealt with rats all my life. It’s nothing personal. I don’t “hate” them. But rats carry diseases and you’re in luck because I know how to get rid of them.
I go to the rat’s YouTube channel. I only know the song about the shark, Sacriphil’s legitimate hit. But it’s time to get into the liner notes, the deep tracks that tell your story. The first song at the top of the page is ten minutes and thirty-two seconds long—gimme a fucking break—and it’s called “Dead Man Running,” and oh Phil, my man, don’t you worry.
Your time has come.
9
In the sixth grade there was this kid in my class named Alan Brigseed. Obviously they called him Alan Badseed and he was portly. Walked with a limp because of an issue with his bones. Wore football jerseys to school every single day and was determined to be a quarterback for the Giants. Real life isn’t Rudy and back then I knew that poor Alan Badseed would wind up working at a Dick’s Sporting Goods in New Jersey—I was right—and two years ago, poor Alan Badseed died in his mother’s basement while he was jerking off.
Your husband reminds me of Alan, Mary Kay. I spent the past thirty-six hours learning everything there is to know about Phil DiMarco. I read every profile. I watched every ancient on-screen interview where he talks over the other guys in his band. I dug into the Philin’ the Blues archives and I went on his Twitter—he doesn’t understand hashtags and writes Peace# at the end of every tweet—and most of his followers are aging dope whores—apologies to dope and prostitutes—and they tag him in pictures of their implants and sometimes he likes those pictures and do you know about this? Or did you just stop caring a long time ago?
Like Alan Brigseed, Phil won’t give up the dream. And like Alan Brigseed, Phil would be better off dead. He doesn’t work. He makes pennies hosting his graveyard-shift radio show—it’s a glorified infomercial—five nights a week and okay, so he does make good money on royalties, it’s one of his favorite subjects on the Blues, but it’s a little less every year. There are few things more tragic than a man hell-bent on becoming something he just can’t be. You probably expected more “Sharks” to come along, but like so many artists, that was the best Phil had in him.
He was famous for a second. And fame is poison.
Rock star fame is especially vile. It’s a drop of food coloring and one drop—one innocent hungry shark in the water—is enough to turn all the clear water red and make it stay that way. Every Sacriphil album is less successful than the one before and it’s some Edgar Allan Poe shit, Mary Kay, the slow demise of his falling, rising star, the way he fights it every night on the air, gaslighting Philistans, raging against the industry, thanking you for saving his life as he blames you for domesticating him. He plays his part well, claiming that he put his “art” in the backseat so he could throw his soul into being a dad. In reality, Phil just fucking failed. The turnover rate in his band is high—scary high—and if he managed a Dunkin’ Fucking Donuts he would have been fired because of his inability to play well with others.
I turn on the heat in my car. It’s cold tonight and I’m parked outside of your rat’s recording studio. I bent the rules for us and bent rules are meant to be broken. I brought two Rachael Ray knives and Phil’s untimely death won’t tarnish Bainbridge’s reputation as a safe haven. He’s just famous enough to be a wild card and when an early morning jogger finds him on the street tomorrow, it will seem like the work of a Philistan gone crazy, karmic payback after years of getting close with his fans, following them back on Twitter, encouraging them to pop by and hang. The cops might also think it’s a drug deal gone bad because I’ve also learned that your husband is in recovery. I listened to every song he ever wrote and I’m sorry to say it, but you are nothing compared to his true love: heroin.
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 s
urvivor… 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.
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?”
I don’t know what you’re saying. He doesn’t know either because he holds the phone away. But he must be able to hear a little because he takes a deep breath and cuts you off.
“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy. Relax. For the nine millionth time… it’s a show. It’s an act. The label likes my attitude and Nomi’s friends… they’re not up listening to me. Stop caring about what other people think…” I wish I could hear you. “Emmy, Nomi doesn’t give a shit if I go to Phoenix and I told you, I’m going. You win again, babe!… What is with you, lately? What is it?” Me. It’s me! “Christ, woman, I’m missing a whole week of shows and still you’re bitching at me. What the hell more do you want from me?” You might be crying. Or apologizing. He rubs his forehead. “Emmy. Baby, come on. Don’t do that. You know I love you too.”
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