Captain Phil Harris Read online

  “I can’t have this shit around my daughter,” an enraged Mary told Phil. “This is crazy, not to mention the fact that I noticed you have a loaded gun hanging next to your bed. This is no place for my Meigon.

  “I’m going home. But before I do, I would appreciate it if you would pay me back the three hundred dollars you borrowed from me for that dinner.”

  With a look of chagrin, something Mary had never before seen on Phil’s face, he said, “I don’t have the money right now, but if you go out with me tomorrow, I’ll give it to you then.”

  “That’s blackmail,” responded Mary. “Just pay me back and we’ll call it even.”

  Though she didn’t get the money, Mary took her daughter and left. But, as she quickly learned, when Phil wanted something, he became obsessed. And he wanted Mary back.

  It was like he was wooing her all over again, but at an even more desperate level. Again came the roses to her door, this time enough to fill several flower shops. Again came the calls, this time every twenty minutes. She stopped answering the phone.

  So Phil decided to confront Mary in person. He would drive by her house day and night.

  When she didn’t respond, he came to the club. She sent word she was too busy to see him, but he wouldn’t leave.

  Finally, John, the club manager, came over and told Phil that boyfriends weren’t allowed on the premises, so Phil hung around outside. When Mary got off work, there was Phil, begging her to return.

  Instead, she handed him the gold nugget and chain he’d given her and told him, “Look, we don’t have anything in common. I’m a regular woman with two kids. Maybe I’ll meet a nice guy, get married again, have more kids and a nice home.

  “I’m not a drinker, drug user, sleazy slut, or anything like most of the girls who work here. I’m not even a good dancer. I’m just trying to get by and move on. You don’t want the same things that I do. You’re just too wild and all you want to do is party.”

  “No, that’s not true,” said Phil, all the fire and passion fading from his face, replaced with a look of sadness. “I’ve never said this to anyone before, but I love you. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you mine.”

  “What about your coke habit?” she asked.

  “I can stop,” he said. “I’ll change, I promise.” With a flash of his swagger, he proclaimed, “I’m worth it.”

  Phil handed the nugget and chain back to Mary and asked for one more chance.

  He got it. Mary filed for divorce, sold her house, and, just a month after they met, agreed to move in with Phil.

  He was overjoyed, even though he wasn’t going to be there. It was May, start of another crab season. Alaska and the lush fishing grounds awaited him.

  Phil would be gone for four and a half months, but, nevertheless, he wanted Mary to live at his place. He’d toss his two roommates out, he told Mary, giving her and Meigon some privacy. Mary’s son, Shane, was already gone, having moved in with his biological dad.

  “I’ve got eighty-eight thousand dollars in the bank, and you can have access to it,” Phil said. “You can do whatever you want to this house to make it livable for you and your kid. I hope you’ll be here when I get back.”

  “Are you insane?” said Mary. “You don’t even know me and you would trust me with all that money? I don’t believe you.”

  “Everyone told him he was crazy, that he had lost his mind,” Mary later recalled. “I was a dancer, for goodness’ sakes. They all told him that I would steal him blind.”

  Phil’s father, whose opinion he always sought, told him, “I wouldn’t advise leaving her with all your money, but it’s your money. Do whatever you want.”

  Phil depended on his instinct. That’s what had kept him alive on the Bering Sea. And his instinct was to trust her.

  But before opening his account and his heart to Mary, Phil told her there was one stipulation: she had to stop dancing. Phil said it made him too jealous.

  Fine, said Mary, but she had her own demands: “No more Harleys in the house, no more shooting guns in or around the property, no more coke parties, no more coke whores hanging around for drugs, no more drunks camping out on the premises overnight.”

  A deal was struck. The next day, Phil took Mary to his bank and put her name on his account.

  After Phil left, Mary assumed things would calm down, but it wasn’t long before she heard a motorcycle come roaring up to the house and found a gargantuan figure on her doorstep.

  Frightened, she called Phil on his boat and asked him what to do.

  “What does this guy look like?” Phil asked.

  “He’s about seven feet tall,” said Mary, “weighs around four hundred pounds, and he’s all hairy and stuff.”

  “Oh, that’s just Joey,” Phil said. “He’s all right.”

  • • •

  With Phil back at work on the Bering Sea, Mary went to work on the house. She had plenty of time; Phil’s prolonged absence would be the longest stretch they would be apart during their years together.

  First priority: the gun. Phil kept a .44 Magnum haphazardly slung over his bedpost. As a fishing vessel captain, Phil was rigid with safety procedures on his boat, but he was not the least bit careful when on land. So out went the Magnum, eventually winding up on Phil’s boat.

  Mary also moved the tools that Phil had stuffed in kitchen drawers into the garage and had the carpet ripped out, the wood floors redone, and ceramic tile installed. Then she topped the whole project off with a new paint job, both inside and out. The man cave was turning into a home.

  Phil may have been at sea, but his thoughts constantly wandered back to the girl he’d left behind. He called Mary so much from his boat that the phone bill averaged $750 a month.

  In those days, communication was ship to shore, and thus all the vessels in the fishing fleet could listen in while Phil was burning up the lines back to Mary. His fellow captains teased Phil no end about his new woman, referring to his ship as the Love Boat.

  While Mary loved the attention, she wondered if Phil would still be so lovey-dovey after he saw what she had done to his house. What if he throws me out like he did his ex-girlfriend? Mary wondered.

  As she drove to the airport to pick him up upon his return, she was nervous.

  She had made sure that she was looking hot, just the way Phil had insisted she appear when she picked him up. He wanted to see the guys stare at Mary so he could smugly tell them, “Yup, take a good look, pal, ’cause she’s all mine.”

  On the drive home, Mary’s nerves threatened to overwhelm her. All of her angst disappeared when Phil walked into the house and broke into a big smile. He loved what she had done with the place.

  Except for what happened to some of the animals from the taxidermist. Mary had taken them outside to dust them off and had left them there. Unfortunately, a neighborhood dog discovered them and left them in tatters. Phil had a burst of anger about that, but overall, he was delighted.

  When Phil went on a subsequent fishing trip, Mary continued her makeover, replacing the old fence that surrounded the property with a new one and adding lush landscaping. The change was so drastic that Phil, arriving home by cab, had the driver go right past his house. Phil hadn’t recognized it. Again, he enthusiastically approved the changes.

  Feeling she had some momentary clout in their relationship, Mary decided to undergo a personal makeover in the form of breast enhancement. Phil tried to talk her out of it, saying she was already beautiful enough and that enlarging her chest would only stir up trouble by attracting additional suitors. Flattered by his comments and touched by his insecurity, Mary nevertheless went through with the surgery.

  Once crab season ended, Mary became part of the Phil Harris whirlwind. They would ride the Harley to Mount Rainier. Phil enjoyed taking her on many of the winding mountain roads that cut through the picturesque countryside of the Pacific Northwest. He and Mary would often stop to enjoy picnic lunches and some spontaneous lovemaking. Mary was beginning to think
she had found true love at last.

  Phil and Mary would go camping, to home shows, car shows, car races, horse races, street fairs, swap meets, garage sales, rock concerts, boxing matches, football games, casinos, movies, pet stores, and zoos. They went to Reno, San Diego, and Hawaii. “If something was going on,” Mary said, “Phil made sure we were part of it. He got bored easily, so we always kept busy.”

  When there was nothing else to do, they loved to hang out in bars. He wouldn’t dance with her, never did in all their time together, although he did have rhythm, which he had clearly demonstrated in his days as a drummer.

  But Phil kept finding other ways to please Mary. He once took her to Waldo’s Tavern, a bar in Kirkland, Washington, just northeast of Seattle, where his friend’s band, July, was performing. Phil had them dedicate the Beatles’ tune “Getting Better” to Mary.

  It could have been an exhilarating night for her, but instead, it turned out to be a humiliating evening when Cheryl, Phil’s old girlfriend, showed up with some friends, one of whom dumped a beer on Mary’s head and tripped her when she got up, while screaming that Mary was “a whore, a no-good slut.” An infuriated Phil chased Cheryl and her gang away, but he couldn’t restore the shattered romantic mood.

  Mary had once again learned that, in Phil’s world, she could just as easily be embarrassed as excited.

  On one occasion, he insisted she join him at a peep show, where, for a mere twenty-five cents, customers could cram into a booth similar to those at amusement parks that provide instant photos. But these booths featured tiny screens where sometimes grainy, always trashy old short films would flicker. They were the porn movies of an earlier era, before the Internet, before DVDs, before VHS tapes.

  Phil had discovered the place during one of his nocturnal expeditions along some of Seattle’s less-traveled streets.

  “Come on in with me,” he told Mary. “Just for fun. We’ll check this thing out.”

  “No way,” said Mary. “I’m not going in there.”

  “We’ll sit in the booth together,” said Phil, making it sound like they were going to take a horse and buggy ride.

  Reluctantly, Mary agreed. But the minute Phil stuck a quarter in the slot, she regretted her decision as a woman came on the screen wearing only a thong.

  “Can you pick something else?” Mary said.

  “I’m looking for this donkey thing,” said Phil loudly. “The girl and the donkey.”

  Phil turned the channels, stopping at a woman and a dog.

  “Where’s the donkey?” said Phil, the volume of his voice still turned up. “I wanna see the donkey.”

  “Shut up,” said Mary, “you’re embarrassing me.”

  The more she protested, the louder he got.

  On another occasion, she came back there with Phil and Hugh. This time, Mary was drunk, as were her two companions. When Phil and Hugh finally stumbled out, they left Mary wedged inside a booth asleep. To her great alarm, she was awoken by another drunk, this one a complete stranger, who wanted to get better acquainted. Fortunately, Mary escaped unharmed.

  Phil loved to put her in embarrassing situations, like the time in Hawaii when he insisted she join him on a walk through an area known for prostitutes to see if they could find any cross-dressers among them. And anytime Mary objected, Phil had a standard line: “Come on, don’t be a prude.”

  “You couldn’t embarrass Phil,” said Mary.

  • • •

  Phil had been a wild stallion long before he met Mary, destined, it seemed to those around him, to always roam free.

  Mary changed that in one hundred days. After three and a half months of living together, Phil asked her to marry him. And backed it up the next day by buying her an engagement ring.

  Had the wild man finally been tamed?

  Just temporarily.

  CHAPTER 6

  STAGGERING TO THE ALTAR

  Phil and Mary were like fire and gas.

  —Joe Wabey

  For a while after their engagement, the chemistry worked. Mary kept the house in order and Phil maintained order in the house. The parties were shorter, less chaotic, and more sporadic.

  In the old days, when someone would break something and laugh it off, Phil would laugh along with them. Now, he got upset. When it got to be late, he would kick everybody out and, truly shocking Mary, would help clean up the mess left behind.

  She wasn’t very popular with his friends, who referred to her as Scary Mary or the Warden. They even had a T-shirt made up with the words “The Warden” on the front and howled with delight when Mary opened it one Christmas morning.

  When they were alone, she complained to Phil about his failure to stick up for her.

  “Who’s in your bed?” Mary said. “Who does everything for you?”

  Phil didn’t argue, but he also didn’t resist the influence of his friends. Gradually, the inmates began running the asylum again, the old patterns returning. The drinking became reckless, the drugs more evident, the parties rowdier, the guests weirder. Phil knew his stuff when it came to quality party favors. He was definitely a connoisseur, so the inventory of intoxicants was always in the elite class. Pharmaceutical-quality Peruvian flake cocaine and high-grade strains of cannabis were the way Phil rolled.

  The craving to live at a faster pace had been gnawing at Phil for some time. Mary had tried to rein him in, but Phil was a racehorse, born to run.

  He tried to hide the worst about his resumption of the party life from Mary, but that proved impossible. Especially since, whenever cocaine was involved, the coke whores were never far from the scene. With Phil’s appetite for the powder prodigious and his supply seemingly endless, the stream of chicks looking to get high with him was just as incessant.

  Mary would get in his face, but to no avail. Hating to argue, Phil would storm out, hop on his bike, and head for the boys in the bar.

  “I don’t have time for this right now,” he would say, “so love ya later.”

  Mary may have laid claim to him, but, in a tumultuous relationship that stretched to nearly fourteen years, the question of who was captain of their own home was never resolved. When Phil would become too demanding, Mary would tell him, “You’re not on your boat now and I’m not one of your crew.”

  Still, Phil was clearly the engine that drove the relationship, and drugs and alcohol were the fuel. Returning one night, Mary could hear music blasting from the house while she was still a block away. As she pulled into the driveway, one of the neighbors, standing outside, told her, “Oh, thank goodness you’re back. That same song’s been playing for four hours.”

  Playing a favorite song endlessly was not unusual for Phil. His addictive habits carried over to music and movies. At sea, Phil would often rock out as he roared over the waves, playing a song over and over, at maximum volume, for as long as an entire day—all twenty-four hours.

  “He was a guy who could kill a song for you, no matter how much you liked it,” said Jeff Conroy, a Deadliest Catch producer on Phil’s boat.

  Phil was the same way with videos. When Top Gun came out, he set up a top-of-the-line home theater and played the Tom Cruise pilot flick day and night, watching it more than seventy times. He even became hooked on the soap opera General Hospital. He would watch every episode when he was home and have them taped when he was gone.

  “Phil was like that,” said Russ Herriott, his business manager. “If he was having a good time, he just kept at it. If he wasn’t having fun, he’d be off trying a hundred different things until he found another source of enjoyment.”

  Phil could be obsessive, but the same song for four hours in a row in the middle of the night, with the music echoing down the street? Mary knew something was wrong.

  Going into the house, she found Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on the stereo, the repeat button in the on position, and Phil passed out on the couch.

  • • •

  Phil always seemed to keep the neighbors happy, though, no matter
how unruly he became. The keys to his success: his infectious charm and the twenty-five-pound boxes of crab he brought home whenever he returned from the sea.

  It was not unusual for Phil, upon returning after fishing for months, to knock on Hugh and Laurie Gerrard’s bedroom window at 3:00 a.m., shouting, “Good morning!” while hoisting a box of crab legs for his friends. When Laurie would catch a glimpse through her window of Phil wearing his Jack Nicholson grin, she would say, with a groan, “Oh no, he’s back.”

  Those around Phil were always kidding him about his sense of time and season. He didn’t have any. Day or night, early or late, hot weather or cold, Phil never seemed to notice the difference.

  He might hop on his motorcycle in the middle of the night in a T-shirt in the dead of winter and take off. After a few miles, it would suddenly occur to him that he was cold. So he’d head for the home of his nearest friend, Hugh or Jeff Sheets or Joe Duvey.

  “I’m cold,” he’d say. “Can I borrow a sweatshirt?”

  Phil’s return from a fishing trip also meant enough chemical enhancements to ensure a high-octane run of days, each filled with enough outrageous behavior to make Phil worthy of a reality show long before Deadliest Catch was ever conceived.

  Along with the drinking and the drugs, Phil also loved to gamble, and when those elements were mixed, the result could be toxic. His stubborn streak exacerbated the bad chemistry.

  He’d have Mary cringing as she watched him burn through mountains of chips during their casino outings. She witnessed Phil torch three hundred dollars every three seconds at many a blackjack table.

  Mary recalled pit bosses at a Lake Tahoe resort once urging Phil to keep playing even though he was in an alcoholic stupor. Phil’s losses mounted until the night culminated with him falling onto the table and knocking everyone’s drinks over.

  One of the strangest things about Phil’s gambling was that, at the same time, he was not a spendthrift. Phil’s friend Dan recalls that Phil would go to thrift shops to buy his jeans. He’d purchase a stack at a time, explaining that he wasn’t “gonna pay big money” for pants when he could get them so much cheaper. Then he’d head to a casino and blow five grand at a blackjack table.