Many of you have thought so, but, ah, how very, very wrong you all have been...
Uh, legally speaking... no, they're not. Yes, Pamela Courson and Jim Morrison never really got married, but they were declared common-law spouses. Posthumously.
Yeah, that doesn't count as a marriage for me either, but legally speaking it does count. And given that he spent more time posing for photos with Pamela than he spent with Patricia overall...
Pamela Susan Courson called herself Mrs. Morrison, but she and Jim were never married. Jim told me they weren't married. Pam HERSELF told me they weren't married. It's a lie that has been perpetuated down the years by careless biographers and needy parasites and apologists with a personal axe to grind, usually on me.
"It's all about me! Everything said about their relationship is done by people who are focusing on ME ME ME ME! Anyone who says anything good about them is just showing their hatred for ME!"
... and by people who acknowledge that a court posthumously declared them to be common-law spouses. I'm not surprised that this was done, since Morrison left everything to Pamela, and she left everything to her parents. Obviously their lack of marriage meant that his will might be challenged, so Pamela's parents solidified everything by having their relationship declared a common-law marriage. I'd do the same in their place, honestly.
For my part, I have never denied Pam's importance in Jim's life; that would be stupid, and I don't do stupid...
... I just completely deny that he could even theoretically have loved her best, that she might have inspired him, and that their relationship had any validity. But I'm not denying her importance!
I merely wish their relationship to be seen in its entirety, for the co-dependent, enabling symbiosis it ultimately became as well as for the romance it certainly was when it began.
Yes, this is a wonderfully fair sum-up of a relationship that she only saw a few small snatches of, and was not present for most of.
Certainly he loved her, and she loved him: They had known each other from the days before the Doors, they had history, she was probably the first cute girl who had ever paid him serious attention;
... OUCH. That is a pretty burning thing to say about a dude you liked, that it took him THAT long to attract a cute girl with any real level of seriousness about him.
Also, having "history" and "knowing each other" from a few years back is not necessarily a basis for love. LOVE is.
they lived together on and off, they shared addictions and co-dependencies -- so much in common.
They both had affairs with other people but eventually came back to each other, they both cared about his art, they obviously had a strong bond...
Yes, funny how the "romance it was when it began" includes no actual positives except that they had... stuff in common.
He was no dolt; he knew all about it. But he was also absolutely smart enough to realize that the best of him was meant for me.
Specifically, his spleen, small intestine, frontal lobe and six of his toes.
As an old friend of mine who knew all three of us well recently commented, "Jim needed Pam to need him, and he needed you to need." Very Sixties, but also very true.
"Needed you to need"? I don't even know what that means. I guess I'm too young, since that was decades before I was born.
I say in Strange Days that Jim just had his first and second wives at the same time, maybe because he suspected he wouldn't be around long enough to acquire them sequentially.
... or maybe because he was a rock star in the sixties, which meant unlike most men... he COULD. Ah, rock'n'roll, full of huge manwhores. I mean, look at Mick Jagger - he's old enough to be my grandpa, and he's been whoring it up for more years than I can count, and with more women. Often at the same time. I mean, he cheated on THIS:
Why? Because he was a fucking rock star, and he COULD. And he could GET AWAY WITH IT. Why would Jim Morrison be a Keef instead of a Mick, if he could be and wanted to be a Mick?
So there's no deep meaning behind Morrison being sexually involved with more than one woman. It doesn't mean that he had some sort of subconscious knowledge that he would die young and couldn't marry Pam, discover she was horrible in every way, dump her and then marry the glorious goddess of smartyness, Kennealy.
Legally, of course, he never married either of us; neither Pam nor I was any more Jim's legal wife than Ray or John or Robby was.
.... and I'm sure, somewhere, a Doors slashfic was born. Someone needs to tell Ms. Kennealy about Rule 34.
But I do think, in a very real sense, he was married to us both, and the one does not diminish or negate the other. It was a case of both/and, not either/or.
... and yet she repeatedly tries to minimize the positive importance of Courson on Morrison, and the bond they obviously had.
Still, the facts about Pam are incontrovertible, if harsh, and they have been attested to by her own friends: She was a slut all during her relationship with Jim (so was Jim! I'm not letting him off...),
Yes, they both slept with other people. It's not like this was a secret or anything, especially since she was a rock girlfriend in the 60s. Marianne Faithfull did that too, you know. So did Angela Bowie. So did lots of girlfriends of rock stars. Clearly Morrison knew about this, and just as clearly it didn't bother him enough to end the relationship.
It's also a little funny that someone who came of age in the mid-sixties, rejecting Christianity and embracing sex and stuff like that, refers to a woman in an open relationship as a "slut."
and she became a hooker after his death.
That does not exactly say "ooooh, what a horrible person she was! How little moral fiber she had!" Kennealy is leaving out that Courson apparently had signs of mental instability and depression after Morrison died, that she was basically lost, and someone apparently took advantage of her by pimping her out.
That's a sad, sad story, and it makes me feel sorry for her. And I don't think that is what PKM intended.
Also, Kennealy seems to be the only one who has promoted this story, so it's kind of suspect.
And she gave him the heroin that killed him (she admitted this to quite a few people, by the way; I'm not making it up): heroin that he would otherwise not have gotten into.
Note the careful way that this is written. There are two distinct parts to the sentence
- The part about Pam giving him heroin that killed him, and her admission of this.
- The part about how he wouldn't have gotten into the heroin if she hadn't given it to him.
Now, your brain tends to mush that sort of content together and consider both halves just as credible as each other, but half of it is factual (at least, allegedly factual, since it's uncited) and half is OPINION. Kennealy is mushing those two halves together and expecting you to accept the OPINION as part of the FACTUAL.
If Pamela Courson said that - and I say "IF" because it is uncited, and a very serious thing to say - there are ALL SORTS of ways it could be taken. Lots of people blame themselves after a death, especially if they had any unwitting part in it. If you had been Dylan Carson, the person who bought the shotgun that Kurt Cobain used to kill himself, you would probably feel guilt and say something like, "I bought that gun, and if I hadn't, he wouldn't have died."
However, the "heroin that he would otherwise not have gotten into" thing is not something factual. It is what Kennealy SAYS, but you notice that it is not part of Courson's paraphrased remark.
Also, I have seen the Oliver Stone movie, and Kennealy herself is featured in the extras. You know what she says about him? "It was the alcohol that got him in the end." So what exactly changed her opinion?
Maybe I'm just being unreasonable, but, you know, that doesn't sound much like the actions of a loving wife to me...
You could easily say the same about Morrison as a husband. I mean, during the course of his and Kennealy's "marriage," he was off living with his longtime girlfriend, only saw her a few times, lived on the opposite side of the country and treated her like crap during the last time they saw each other.
So don't be mad at me, you little weenies, because I finally blew the whistle on her and shattered your pathetic illusions. That truth about Pamela Courson was long overdue in coming to the light.
...
...
...
Wow, quite the psycho, ain't she? I'm sure Jim Morrison was REALLY happy with her.
Yeah, this is the point in many of her longer FAQ comments where she pretty much goes apeshit and starts insulting her readers. I... honestly don't get it.
And while I think of it, her parents were NOT forced to sell the rights to her life story to Oliver Stone so that they could put a few crusts of bread on their table in their impoverished old age, as some delusionary Pam-heads have suggested elsewhere on the Net: Au contraire!
Uh... is she going to get mad about every rumor, argument or shred of misinformation that people bandy around on the Web? Because if so, she's going to be playing whack-a-mole for the rest of her life.
They held Stone up at legal gunpoint, demanding he stand and deliver a sanitized portrayal of little Pamela
Ah, that's part of what bugs her: the fact that Pamela was not depicted in the worst light possible. And I've seen the movie. It's not particularly sanitized, since it has scenes of her going apeshit, attacking Jim with a knife, and getting shot up with heroin. It's not ACCURATE, but it's not like she's little Miss Goody Two Shoes.
Gotta give Pamela credit: not many dead people can piss off the living so effectively.
According to Ray Manzarek, who should know, the Coursons, not Jim's parents, control Jim's quarter-share of the Doors, including song rights and the royalties therefrom -- hence Stone's need to bow to their will
Yes, they do. The point? Jim Morrison legally willed all of his possessions to Pamela Courson, including the rights to the songs. This is a pretty common occurrence - Courtney Love inherited a majority share of Nirvana's rights despite having not contributed a note to them, Yoko Ono still has Lennon's rights, Michael Jackson bought the Beatles catalogue, etc. If the inheritor dies, the rights go to whomever they will THEIR stuff to.
... which is probably what pisses Kennealy-Morrison off. It's not that they own the rights, but that her main love rival was the person who was Morrison's sole beneficiary.
and they are flourishing like the proverbial green bay tree, profiting from Jim's death even as we speak.
Just like every other person who inherits the rights to art! EVIL GREEDY BASTARDS!
Max Fink, the Doors' own lawyer, who defended Jim in Miami, declared in an unpublished (understandably) and ferociously actionable manuscript shopped around a few years ago by his widow -- which came into my hands, and which I probably unwisely shared with Jerry Hopkins -- that he considered Pam to be Jim's murderer, deliberately and premeditatedly; and he was even LESS charitable about the Coursons mère et père (especially père)...and this is a lawyer talking, and Jim's lawyer at that!!!
- Yeah, a lawyer. A lawyer who wrote an extremely "actionable" (in Kennealy's own words) book, including libelous comments about still-living people.
- A lawyer who failed to get a celebrity client off with anything less than jail time and hard labor.
- A lawyer who wrote a book that couldn't be published because he'd be sued.
- Clearly he wasn't a very good lawyer.
- And I'm not sure why his dislike of the Coursons is somehow proof positive merely because he was a lawyer.
- Also, please remember this passage later in the rollercoaster of Fucking Crazy Shit, because Max Fink is one of the MANY topics that Kennealy flipflops on.
So here it is, one more time, in little simple words that even the Pamheads should be able to understand:
Because nothing convinces people that you're right like insults! Why don't you punch them in the face a few times? That will REALLY convince them.
Pamela Courson had a piece of paper--which Jim may or may not have ever even known about, or cared about--
This was strange, because normally he cared about ALL the pieces of paper she had!
obtained by her in Colorado in 1968, an application for a marriage license, that said she and James Morrison could apply at some future date to get married should the mutual wish ever come upon them, and in the five years they knew each other Jim never did a single thing in that direction, never once asked Pamela to be his wife despite all the considerable pressure and ceaseless manipulation she brought to bear on him.
Again, she barely knew Pamela Courson, and she spent less than two weeks around Morrison. She is not saying that Morrison told her any of this... so how the hell would she know the long-term dynamics of their relationship or what Pamela did?
Also, for a professional writer, her style is HORRIBLE. This was her official site, and yet she launches into these rambling run-on sentences that just go on and on and on until my brain melts.
We know that this is so because she would have married him like a shot if he HAD ever asked her.
- Who is "we"?
- Again, citation.
- Is it just me, or is Kennealy-Morrison playing into the old "desperate li'l grasping gold-digger who really really wants the big strong man to marry her" cliche? Because that's kind of antifeministic.
- Yeah, she's the type of hypocrite who squeals "woman-haters!" at Christians, then turns around and attacks other women with antifeminist cliches.
Jim's own lawyer, Max Fink, said as much in his memoirs (in which he also declares his unequivocal belief that Pamela murdered Jim because she knew he was leaving her.)
Again, being the lawyer of Jim Morrison, who was in Paris because he was facing SERIOUS JAIL TIME, is not something to boast about. It means you sucked at your job.
And merely because a lawyer offered his viewpoint on someone else's relationship doesn't make it gospel truth, lady. Lawyers are human beings too, and they can be totally wrong. Given that she later craps all over said Max Fink, why should we believe anything he has to say?
(I know I said this a couple of screens ago but in my opinion it can't be said often enough...)
Yes. Yes, it can. Because the more often you say it, the more it seems like protesting too much.
a will, by the way, that makes NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of any kind of common-law marriage between Jim and Pamela,
... why would a will mention it? I'm confused.
And it really doesn't make any difference how Pamela Courson was credited in the will, because Morrison STILL left everything to her. Why would she try to change her status in the will if it made no difference in how she would actually be perceived? Because there would STILL be no marriage in place, common-law or otherwise, and the paperwork would prove it. Even if someone challenged the will, it would be on the basis of family relationship.
It's like there's a piece missing in this whole yarn.
which Pamela would later allege, in depositions filed after Jim's death (when he couldn't contradict her),
... which is kind of a hilarious claim, given that Kennealy-Morrison's ENTIRE SCHTICK is that she claims to be Jim Morrison's one, true and only wife... and she only made this public after his death. When he couldn't contradict her.
I don't think she realizes the irony of her accusations.
This will (the very one that Jim told me in a June 1971 letter he would be changing, to reflect our own new marital status, as soon as he came to me in New York that fall) was filed in February 1969.
Again, ALLEGATIONS. Kennealy is insisting that Courson TOTALLY lied and tried to depict herself as Morrison's wife after his death... but that's what she's doing.
and--with Jim lying dead of her own heroin down the hall--actually asked Jim's friend Alain Ronay if he thought she could get away with passing it off on the French authorities as her marriage certificate! When Ronay pointed out to her that the word `application' means exactly the same thing in French as it does in English, she decided not to attempt the scam,
Um, I actually read the article she's talking about, and Courson doesn't come across as someone trying to do an EVIL SCAM. She comes across more as ditzy and out of it from grief, doing random things. She also strongly implied that they had begun but not finished the proceedings of getting married.
And you know what else Ronay said in the same account? "She is practically his real wife." So... maybe not the best witness to use when you're trying to claim that she TOTES wasn't anything wifey to him.
In fact, it wouldn't even work as a scam, because no paperwork in the US or France would back it up. It would just be a blip that would be dismissed by everyone. If she had spent FIVE YEARS trying to find a way of faking a marriage with him, why would her "scam" be so completely missing in all legal substance? I mean, I can write in Wikipedia that I am Hugh Jackman's wife. It doesn't make it true, and nobody's gonna believe it unless I pony up the legit filed paperwork!
they actually altered the records at Père-Lachaise to read that Jim's plot had been arranged for in 1971 not by his "cousin" Pamela Courson but by his "wife" Pamela Courson!!!
... even though "wife" would be closer to the reality than "cousin." But clearly it was all just a conspiracy to discredit Kennealy! There's no other answer! LALALALALALA NOT LISTENING LALALALALA MY HAT IS TIN LALALALALALALA....
And given that Pamela Courson had DIED by the point Kennealy claims this happened.... why would they do it? I can understand trying to change records if it might make a difference with inheritance... but why would anyone just randomly try to claim that she was his wife when both people were dead, and there was no legal reason to do so?
It's like Kennealy simply forgot some essential part of this vast elaborate conspiracy she claims has been woven around Jim Morrison's death: a motivation for the people she claims are working behind the scenes. And no, "because they want to discredit ME" or "because they're stupid and identify with Pamela!" are not motivations.
The endlessly inventive and calculating Courson
Just a quick note: she depicts this woman as being a blithering idiot in Strange Days. I'm just sayin'. Not sure how she can be this smart AND that stupid.
had billed herself for the occasion of Jim's burial as his cousin (!), since if she had admitted she was unrelated to Jim in any degree they would undoubtedly have given her a hard time about her being allowed to bury him.
So... I'm not quite sure why this is a sign of villainy. Should they have just left him in the morgue instead until a family member showed up? Because I doubt the French officials would be impressed by Kennealy's "I was handfasted to him in a pagan wedding!" claims either.
Suspicions would have blossomed (and rightly so), and things like autopsies (which would have revealed the heroin in Jim's system)
Because there MUST be foul play if a rock star ODs on drugs! There's no other possible answer!
and her possible arrest on drug or manslaughter charges--if not an outright murder rap--were looming large just then in everybody's tiny minds;
And of course, the ONLY possible reason a person could be accused of drug charges or manslaughter charges is if they're guilty! HANG THEM ON SUSPICION ALONE! DAMN THE COURT SYSTEM!
And again, this was the early seventies... right after the sixties, when the police and/or media would actually conspire against rock stars. Google "marianne faithfull fur rug" for more information on that sorta thing. They literally might have arrested everyone even vaguely involved merely because they were connected to a rocker.
hence Bill Siddons hustling her out of France just as soon as Jim was safely in the ground, and then lying to the world about the cause of his employer's death--or at the very least perpetuating Pamela's lies.
Can I point out that Kennealy was NOT THERE? She claims to know absolutely what is and is not a lie in this whole thing, but she was not there, makes no mention of talking to the police or the other individuals who WERE there, and did not show up until after Morrison was buried and everyone else had left France.
And yet somehow she knows everyone's actions, motivations, reactions and what the outcome of an autopsy WOULD have revealed.... through MAGICAL CLAIRVOYANT TELEPATHIC KNOWLEDGE STUFF!
Let's face it: even if they had stuck around to deal with the police and have a proper autopsy, I suspect Kennealy would just accuse the cops of taking bribes or being swayed by the evil Pamela and taking part in her conspiracy of lies.
Hey, I couldn't INVENT this kind of stuff--and I'm a novelist!!!
Uh, why not?
No, I'm not saying that everything she's said has been fake or even partly fake, but considering she depicts there as being this far-reaching conspiracy to make Pam look good... with no real motivation behind it... yes, she could.
On the other hand, Patricia Kennealy has several pieces of paper--all witnessed, all dated, all signed by all participants, including a Presbyterian minister fully empowered by law to perform weddings in the State of New York, and most significantly and importantly of all by Jim himself, who was very well aware indeed of the nature and implications of what he was signing--that say she and James Morrison DID get married, seventeen months after they met, a month after he asked her to be his wife.
Still not legally married. She pointed out herself earlier in this same rant that legally, she was NOT married to him legally... so why would that be any more substantial than Pamela's longtime relationship with him? She spent her whole adult LIFE with this man, and that counts for something.
Also, a Presbyterian minister's involvement does not magically make it a legal wedding. Unless he filed the necessary paperwork, it would be as extralegal as two heterosexual dudes drunkenly declaring that they love each other while a priest is in the room.
I don't know if this is PKM's Catholic upbringing rearing its head, but that would make sense. Catholics believe that there are two kinds of marriage in the world: the sacramental, and the legal. A legal marriage is one that that has been established in the eyes of the state or the country, while a sacramental marriage is one in the eyes of God. A handfasting would count as the second variety... but without a legal basis, it's a very shaky to anyone not of that religion.
And if it's not a legal marriage... where did these pieces of paper come from? Why were they witnessed, dated and signed?
I'm no lawyer, so I don't know whether a legit will would be considered more or less substantial than ALLEGED (as in, where the hell are they?) pieces of paper that have not been notarized.
Can you say `grounds for posthumous lawsuit', boys and girls? How about `licitly married'--by mutual attesting and declaration in front of witnesses, and giving and receiving of rings? By the evidence of his own words and actions, Jim Morrison considered himself married to Patricia Kennealy,
Yeah, that would be the weak point in Kennealy's case - she would have to PROVE that he felt that way... and I'm betting there were plenty of people who would be willing to testify that he DID NOT. Including herself, in the past.
"... he was just one of those people who changed his mind a lot." muses Patricia. "You never knew where you were. There was no consistency, but inconsistency."
"He could be the unadulterated creep, the pig man of L.A. He could be incredibly cruel. I don't know how he made me happy."
"As soon as a relationship got trying, he would get crazy and run away from it. I used to think, when things got really hairy, `Well, doesn't he want to keep me?' Apparently not, if it means work."
"I think he was losing all sense of judgment at this point [SK: when he left for Paris]. Our relationship had gotten so weird with all this other stuff."
If Jim were alive today, would Patricia put up with all the stuff that Jim used to pull on her? "Never in a million years!" she answers vehemently. "No way. This wasn't any kind of liberating relationship! He called all the shots. And the worst part of being with him was that I never knew whether I was going to see him again. I never asked him, `When am I going to see you again?' I was afraid to hear what he might say."- Victoria Balfour, Rock Wives: The Hard Lives and Good Times of the Wives, Girlfriends, and Groupies of Rock and Roll
and Patricia Kennealy by her own words and actions considers herself married to him. At the very least, a case could certainly be established for me as Jim Morrison's only lawful betrothed, if not in fact his legal wife, at the time of his death and hence his rightful heir--not to mention deprivation of the connubial companionship that we had contracted between us or involuntary breach of promise resultant from the murder or manslaughter of my partner in that marital contract--and in the process I could very likely upset quite a few precarious and posthumously loaded applecarts.
Lawsuit of WHOM? I don't understand who she's railing against. Is she saying she wants to sue the parents of the woman she blames for Jim Morrison's death, even though there's no evidence of foul play? Because I'm pretty sure no judge would rule against them merely because someone who WASN'T EVEN THERE blames their dead daughter for something she MIGHT have done.
And again, he had a will. Even if she could establish that she was at LEAST engaged to Morrison, the will still would favor Pamela Courson. Would she have the possibility of challenging the will? Maybe, but thirty years afterwards, I don't think any judge would do so, especially given how much money the Doors still rake in and how complicated it would be.
Yes, actions do indeed speak louder than words.
Which is why Jim showed his mind-blowing love for me by living on the other side of the country with another woman!
Not only Jim's actions but mine: the fact that I will never take this to court--not because I fear an adverse verdict but because I do not choose to sully my marriage with the taint of legalistic maneuvering for profit, or grub for money in my husband's grave, or fight unseemly in the mud and muck with those who do.
That, and they might actually need more than YOUR WORD on the matter. They might actually want to see all those letters, poems, drawings, etc that you've been talking about for years and years. And assuming most of them even exist, they would have them examined by experts to see if they were actually written by Jim Morrison.
They also might bring up her notorious interview in Rock Wives, where Kennealy openly said that he didn't take the handfasting seriously. Expect me to do that a lot.
"... he was just one of those people who changed his mind a lot." muses Patricia. "You never knew where you were. There was no consistency, but inconsistency."
"He could be the unadulterated creep, the pig man of L.A. He could be incredibly cruel. I don't know how he made me happy."
"As soon as a relationship got trying, he would get crazy and run away from it. I used to think, when things got really hairy, `Well, doesn't he want to keep me?' Apparently not, if it means work."
"I think he was losing all sense of judgment at this point [SK: when he left for Paris]. Our relationship had gotten so weird with all this other stuff."
If Jim were alive today, would Patricia put up with all the stuff that Jim used to pull on her? "Never in a million years!" she answers vehemently. "No way. This wasn't any kind of liberating relationship! He called all the shots. And the worst part of being with him was that I never knew whether I was going to see him again. I never asked him, `When am I going to see you again?' I was afraid to hear what he might say."- Victoria Balfour, Rock Wives: The Hard Lives and Good Times of the Wives, Girlfriends, and Groupies of Rock and Roll
Patricia doesn't know how seriously Jim took the ceremony ("probably not too seriously"), but to her, going through the ceremony was "like being validated the way I wanted to be. It was a very private thing for me, a bond I wanted to make with this person."
- Victoria Balfour, Rock Wives: The Hard Lives and Good Times of the Wives, Girlfriends, and Groupies of Rock and Roll
And that, of course, is what they continue to count on...
So.... you're going to show them by doing exactly what they want?
The defense rests.
And its mattress is wonderfully comfy!
The Pamheads also conveniently ignore the indisputable fact (as they ignore so many others) that during the last two years of his life, while Jim and Pamela were having this allegedly so-perfect "cosmic" relationship, he was not only sleeping around (I know, I know, he was a slut; and so was Courson), and--by his own word to me, and Pamela's word to me also--not sleeping with Pamela, but HE ACTUALLY MARRIED ANOTHER WOMAN!!!
- And if you flip the situation around, her allegedly so-perfect "spiritual" marriage involved him not only sleeping around, but living with another woman.
- You notice something about PKM? She seems to think that EVERYONE either believes that SHE had this perfect cosmic relationship with Morrison, or Pam did.
- Me, I fall in the middle on Pam/Jim's relationship. I think there was real love, affection and connection that went beyond sex and romance there, but their relationship was badly flawed. I think eventually they would have had to settle down into a more conventional relationship, or it would have exploded and sent them into the arms of others.
- I do not, however, think he had a real marriage with Kennealy.
- Also, Kennealy seems shaky on the definition of "fact," and "indisputable."
And the week before his death, he was writing this only wedded wife of his impassioned letters from Paris about his return to her in New York and their "legal" wedding (which we were already planning for October 1971) and how much he misses sleeping with her, sending her lyrical and erotic love poems and declarations of his undying devotion, and spectacular costly gifts for the first anniversary of his proposing to her and their first wedding anniversary, confessing to his wife Patricia (and actually calling her his wife, in both prose and poetry--a validation Pamela never got from him) that he "went back to Pam like a dog returning to its own vomit" and how he will be changing that 1968 will of his leaving everything to Pamela "as soon as I get back to you in N.Y."
"... right before they arrest and jail me for that indecent exposure charge that wasn't overturned for forty years!"
Okay, there are a lot of problems with Patricia Kennealy Morrison's claims about Jim Morrison. But one of the biggest ones is that she claims to have giant quantities of poems, letters, gifts and various things he gave her during the months they were involved. She often quotes them as PROOF that Jim Morrison considered her his wife, had contempt for Pam, and his only intention was to come back and live happily ever after with her.
But nobody sees any of this.
We are supposed to believe a giant heap of evidence and/or proof that we cannot see, that nobody else has seen, and have not been verified by professionals.
Okay, it's hypothetical situation time! Imagine that a woman - we'll call her Nancy - announced sometime after Kurt Cobain's death that she had secretly wed him many years ago in an emotionally binding but non-legal ceremony, and that he had pelted her for years with love letters, poems and tokens of love in which he dissed Courtney and declared that he was TOTALLY gonna divorce her and go back to his REAL love. And of course, Courtney was completely responsible for his death, at least morally speaking.
(Yeah, I know this scenario is not perfect, since Courtney is still somehow magically with us, nobody really liked her, and a child was involved, but... that's the only big rock star to die during my living memory).
Now when Nancy says this, some people are gonna believe her because…. they're really gullible. But most people are gonna respond with: "Prove it."
They will want PROOF that this relationship took place, especially if the person making the claims is making such HUGE ones. They will expect to see that giant stack of love poems, letters and the like. They will want a professional to examine the handwriting to make sure that these items are LEGITIMATELY from the one-and-only Kurt Cobain, and that Nancy didn't mock them up herself (especially the really controversial stuff like... oh, say, comparing Courtney to a puddle of vomit).
And if Nancy doesn't do that to PROVE her claims, people are gonna come to the conclusion that she's a liar. Just insisting, "These things exist, I have them and they TOTALLY say what I say they do, so you should believe me!" is not going to convince anybody.
Now, by the Lord Harry, THOSE are actions! And words too!
Those are actions! Like painting the wall! And words too! Like "gerbil!"
All of them speaking VERY, VERY LOUDLY indeed! And the intent represented in those actions and words alike is that Jim did not marry Pamela and he did marry me.
On the other hand, it also speaks very loudly that he didn't marry her legally, gave no indications to others that he was planning to, that it didn't even OCCUR to him (especially since it would have given her legal rights in his life, and a binding attachment that could not be easily shrugged off if he chose). It also speaks loudly that he never left Pamela, and continued his relationship with Kennealy while LIVING WITH HER... and did not give Kennealy the same treatment.
Sorry, lady. A marriage is only as substantial as the people in it make it.
Why is it that you unspeakable jackasses continue to have such a hard time understanding and believing what those simple, self-evident words and actions are screaming out to anyone possessing more than the brain quotient of, well, Pamela?
Whew, somebody get that lady a massage and some pills. She needs them!
It's a good thing she's so smug about her neopagan beliefs, because can you imagine how she'd be as a missionary? She'd probably beat you over the head with a table if you dared to challenge her beliefs.
Or the fact that Jim REALLY MEANT THEM when he said them and did them, the glorious romance and passionate truth of them?
Patricia doesn't know how seriously Jim took the ceremony ("probably not too seriously"), but to her, going through the ceremony was "like being validated the way I wanted to be. It was a very private thing for me, a bond I wanted to make with this person."
"As soon as a relationship got trying, he would get crazy and run away from it. I used to think, when things got really hairy, `Well, doesn't he want to keep me?' Apparently not, if it means work."
- Victoria Balfour, Rock Wives: The Hard Lives and Good Times of the Wives, Girlfriends, and Groupies of Rock and Roll
No other comment needed.
Why do you prefer to believe instead that he and I are both despicable liars--he to me and I to you?
- It's not a package deal, lady. If YOU are lying, then that means HE didn't lie.
- If he DID lie, then you are not.
- If he lied to you by pretending he took it seriously, then you would have to claim he DIDN'T take it seriously in order to also be lying.
- And honestly, I have no reason to believe Kennealy. Look at the quotes above. Total contradiction. Clearly she was either fibbing or indulging in self-delusion one time or another.
- Also, Jim Morrison was a brilliant songwriter, singer and performer. But rock stars are not known for necessarily being truthful. I admire Jim Morrison as an artist, but he could be a colossal bag of dicks.
And why in every hell there is do you care so flipping much about the personal lives of three people you do not know and do not understand in the slightest,
A better question is, why does one of those people care so flipping much about other people's perceptions of the personal lives of the other two people?
two at least of whom you will never meet (and if ever you should be unfortunate enough to encounter the third face to face, she promises you that you will be the sorriest little bastards on this or any other planet),
... remember, this was on her website. A website that presumably catered to FANS. She's not just threatening her imaginary army of detractors, but anyone who reads this message and has even the slightest interest in what she has to say.
So she's just sort of flailing around, cursing and threatening anyone and everyone who even takes notice of her existence. Classy.
and none of whose personal lives are any of your goddamn business??? And then dare take ME to task for "not getting over Jim"!!!!!
As I write this, it is the mid-2010s. He died in 1971. That's more than forty years. Yes, she should get over it - not necessarily the death, but her obsession on it. Psychologically healthy people don't hang on to pain, rage, and personal preoccupations with people who died so long ago. They have sadness, a lingering feeling of grief, but not obsession.
Well--just because a jackass brays doesn't mean I have to pay attention to it...
... so she flies into a rage if people say things she doesn't like, both in print and on the Web, but she claims she doesn't have to pay attention to it. Got it.
There. I feel MUCH better now. (None of the above rant, of course, applies to those many, many thousands of you who have been perceptive enough and intelligent enough and sensitive enough to comprehend just what is going on here, and to take my part and Jim's in this matter. There is not enough gratitude in the world to thank you sufficiently for your support, belief and acceptance--but I thank you yet again, and so does Jim.)
Yeah, that disclaimer comes a little late. If I were a potential fan intrigued by her perspective... I would have quit reading some time ago, since her method of persuasion is to scream insults and threats.
And she takes the oh-so-mature approach of insisting, "Anybody who doesn't support me is an insensitive stupid poopie-head who doesn't support Jim!" It's simply impossible to be an intelligent and sensitive person who doesn't actually think that Kennealy was that important to Morrison. Disagreeing her immediately makes you a stupid asshole.
Listen. Whether you like it or not,
More like, "care or not."
For a woman who claims that her marriage was totes for reelz and she doesn't care what anyone else thinks, she sure argues hard with anyone who thinks she's not for real.
I am the ONLY woman who ever got Jim Morrison to stand before an altar of any sort for the purpose of going through a marriage ceremony of any sort, which has to count for something, and I have ever been the first person to say that our handfasting was not a "legal" ceremony--lacking a civil license as it did, though performed by a licensed Presbyterian minister in the presence of a witness, and though Jim and I both signed documents declaring that we were married.
Well, for all you know, it happened many times. If a marriage isn't legalized, there's really no way to know. Hell, Morrison could have gone through a "spiritual" marriage ceremony with every woman he ever screwed, and there would be no way of knowing.
Perhaps a duly constituted court of law might not be quite as dismissive of those signed, sworn, witnessed, unforced statements as some of my vile detractors are, should I ever decide to pursue the matter--and yes, that is a threat...if not yet a promise.
Who is she threatening? Is she trying to threaten every single person who ever said something she doesn't like? Is she threatening the Courson family?
And what precisely is she threatening? She's talking about how a court might not dismiss her statements... but what would she be doing showing them to the court? Is she suggesting she'd just march into a court, wave her statements and force the court to say, "Okay, sure, you're more married to the dead rock star than his dead girlfriend. Will you please go away now?"
But our handfasting was a valid religious ritual, sacramentally and morally and spiritually real.
That I do not deny. The thing is, if it's ONLY a religious ritual then you shouldn't expect anybody OUTSIDE your religion to accept it. They might, but don't expect it.
Which, I say also, and joyfully, Jim took very seriously indeed;
Patricia doesn't know how seriously Jim took the ceremony ("probably not too seriously"), but to her, going through the ceremony was "like being validated the way I wanted to be. It was a very private thing for me, a bond I wanted to make with this person."
- Victoria Balfour, Rock Wives: The Hard Lives and Good Times of the Wives, Girlfriends, and Groupies of Rock and Roll
So... which was it? What you said in the past, or what you say now?
and many times thereafter, including in a letter written just days before his death, not only did he call me his wife but he repeated his promise that we would have a "legal" wedding ceremony (as he put it, "since we've already done `for real' ") on his return from Paris.
Before or after his arrest for indecent exposure?
And again, she is trying to convince us that Jim Morrison totes meant the marriage for realz... by citing a letter that nobody except her has apparently seen, and thus whose existence is questionable.
So, at the very least, my legal status is incontrovertibly, BY HIS OWN DECLARATION IN WRITING, that of Jim Morrison's lawful fiancÈe.
Incontrovertibly.
Again, it is VERY deniable. Very much so. Mainly because none of us mere mortals have seen anything to deny. I could say, "Incontrovertibly, the sky is blue/water is wet/the Pope is Catholic/bears shit in the woods," and I could produce evidence to back up my claim.
Kennealy, on the other hand, is insisting that it is a proven fact, that it is INDISPUTABLE that Jim Morrison said those words... in a letter nobody except her has supposedly seen.
Though of course Pamela's self-entitlement as Jim's wife and her posthumous unilateral declaration of common-law status are both well known--he had to DIE before she could get him to "marry" her!
I'm starting to wonder whether Kennealy is hoping that people won't notice how easily her arguments apply to herself - even more so than Pamela, who didn't legally change her name and write a book about how she was TOTALLY married to Jim - or whether she's actually delusional enough to think that her actions are different.
I'd be interested to see a genuine attested reference by JIM to Pamela as his wife, where Jim himself, accurately quoted by a disinterested third party and not some after-the-fact revisionist lackey, uses the actual, veridical w-word of her.
.... should I repeat myself?
Jim had a very high regard for accuracy and truth, especially in his words, and as far as I know he consistently referred to Pamela, when he referred to her at all, as his `friend' (when speaking of her to me), his `girlfriend' or perhaps--it was the 60's--his `old lady.' Even as late as June 1971, he was using the word `girlfriend' of her, as recently quoted by a chance acquaintance who encountered him in Paris shortly before he died...)
... yes, okay. And I don't think that many people would dispute that she was not his wife in any but the purely legal sense; in my meanderings on the web, virtually all people referred to her as his lover, partner or girlfriend.
Yeah, there may be five or six die-hard people who totally insist that they were married. But there are about that many people who insist that the government is run by lizard people.
The fact remains, and I've said it many, many times in many, many places: Jim just didn't talk about his women.
And yet many people knew about them and a lot of the details, such as his affair with Nico, his flings with Joplin and Slick, and with various other women. And he really didn't HAVE to talk about Pamela, did he? She was his girlfriend publicly.
Even to those women.
... except, apparently, for her. She alleges that Jim told her many things about Pamela.
In fact, that legendary letter she claims to have where Morrison compared Pam to a puddle of vomit… what is that about if Jim didn't talk to his women about the other women?
So just because Jim, being a gentleman, didn't mention me to, say, the little dropout gofer at the office doesn't mean I didn't exist in his life. He never mentioned Gofer Boy to me--and really now, why should he have??? Yet Gofer Boy exists...
... yes, but Gofer Boy does not claim to be Jim Morrison's wife and soulmate. If he did, I'd expect proof.
People have claimed that Jim told every woman he was ever with that he loved her, and that his actions speak louder than his words, and all I have is words, whereas Pamela had actions...
Excuse me??? WHAT actions? The action that HE NEVER MARRIED HER, despite the fact that he had five years to do it? Plenty of time to have gotten his fanny down to City Hall--IF he had wanted to.
... and again, the actions that he never legitimately and legally married Kennealy speak volumes as well. Yes, he might have been intrigued by an occult handfasting, but as shown by the end of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall's marriage, it's done by people who don't wanna commit. Extralegal marriages are done by people who want an easy out.
And sadly for Kennealy, all she does have ARE words. She had the words in the handfasting, but his actions - not standing by during her abortion, spending maybe two weeks total with her, living with another woman, hooking up with other women in front of her, verbally abusing her, frequently avoiding her - do not speak of a real marriage or any kind of commitment. And hell, those are ones she ADMITS TO in her book. Who knows what other actions she DIDN'T mention?
Pamela? Well, they more or less lived together, he gave her whatever money she wanted/needed, and he even funded a SHOP for her. And no matter who they screwed around with, they eventually gravitated towards each other. Those ARE actions.
Instead, Courson made a pathetic trumped-up legal declaration after he's dead and can't stop her
Again, the hypocrisy is hurting my brain.
(and, only a couple of months after his death, TRIED TO SELL HIS STORY AND POETRY TO A HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER FOR MONEY--fact! get used to it!--
... citation, please?
while I have been branded Satan's concubine for writing Strange Days, for daring to presume to show Jim as a person, for offending the status quo by doing better for and by the true Jim Morrison than anyone else has ever done).
- No, more like offending the status quo by showing him as a whining manchild who needs the Strong Sexy Pagan GoddessWoman to take care of him.
- Hell, he seems less like the actual Jim Morrison, and more like a fanfic Gary Stu version.
- I mean, her version of Morrison doesn't even drink or do drugs. THE HELL?!
- Also, keep in mind that the WORST way to depict a person is by a solitary account. Usually the more personal accounts and viewpoints you have, the more accurate a picture it is. It's like a mosaic - the more little bits you have, the more detailed, intricate and accurate the picture you make.
- So if you have a book like, say, my personal favorite Break on Through which has dozens of people offering their viewpoints on him all through his life... it gives a much more "true" depiction than a single solitary account by ONE woman who knew him.
Well, a piece of legalistic dubiety, posthumously pushed through the courts when the principal isn't there to speak for himself, motivated by money and documented by an APPLICATION for a marriage license that quite possibly Jim himself never even laid eyes on, is not what I call marriage...and why other people insist on considering it marriage is just plain incomprehensible.
I agree. So do a lot of other people. Which is probably why most people DON'T consider it marriage. Google her, and she's usually referred to as a "companion" or "girlfriend."
With that in mind, I do NOT know why Kennealy is so fixated on this. Almost nobody considers Pamela Courson as having been Morrison's wife, but by talking about it, Kennealy is undermining her OWN case.
Man! And they have the balls to say I'M delusional!!
Yes, they do. And really, you haven't done anything to dispel that.
So, here it is, in little simple words that even you Pamheads should be able to understand:
Kennealy apparently subscribes to the Spanish Inquisition approach to debate: batter the opposition over the head until they agree with you.
Pamela Susan Courson had a piece of paper that said she and James Douglas Morrison were going to apply at some future date to get married, and for five years they never availed themselves of it.
Patricia Kennealy has a piece of paper--witnessed, dated, signed by all participants--that says she and James Douglas Morrison DID get married, seventeen months after they met, a month after he proposed to her.
... and they have equal validity as evidence of marriage and commitment. And the former means nothing without the latter.
The defense rests...
... are we in a time loop? I swear this was there before.
The Pamheads also conveniently ignore the indisputable fact (as they ignore so many others) that during the last two years of his life, while Jim and Pamela were having this allegedly so-perfect "cosmic" relationship, he was not only sleeping around (yeah, I know he was a slut; and so was Courson), and, by his own word, and Pamela's also, he was not sleeping with Pamela, but HE ACTUALLY MARRIED ANOTHER WOMAN!!!
It's not just me. She's actually repeating, word for word, the exact same arguments made earlier in the blog. Maybe it was an editorial snafu or something.... but hey, you would think she would edit this crap before flinging it all over the web.
And the week before his death, he was writing this only wedded wife of his impassioned letters from Paris about his return to her in New York and their "legal" wedding (which we were already planning for October 1971)
He was planning a clown theme, with lots of pudding and paintball.
and how much he misses sleeping with her, sending her lyrical and erotic love poems and declarations of his undying devotion, and spectacular costly gifts for their first anniversary (not to mention the emerald engagement ring, the aquamarine and diamond necklace wedding present, the diamond and sapphire heart, the opal heart with his handwritten message to his wife Patricia engraved on the back, the diamond wedding ring because the claddaghs weren't "grand enough", and all the other treasures), confessing to this wife of his that he "went back to Pam like a dog returning to its own vomit."
It's sort of like that episode of Star Trek where the Enterprise keeps running into a nebula and blowing up, and then the day starts over and everybody goes about their business until they blow up again.
Also, I admit to not knowing much about Jim Morrison's taste in jewelry, but none of that sounds very... him.
Hey, now THOSE are actions! And words too! Both of them speaking VERY, VERY LOUDLY indeed!
And the Enterprise blows up again. Sigh.
And why the hell would Jim be saying those things to me if he didn't mean them, if he had dumped me as the defamers claim? To keep me on the string?
Kennealy doesn't seem to quite understand the way this works.
If a person thinks that Morrison had dumped Kennealy, they probably don't think that he said those things either. Why would you believe that he dumped Kennealy, and then ALSO believe that he was pledging undying love to her? Wouldn't it make more sense to disbelieve the person you believe was dumped when they claim that stuff, especially when the dumper SHOWS UP DEAD and cannot disprove it?
Why would he bother doing that at all, why bother lying to me, if his life with Pamela was as flipping perfect as both she and the revisionists have claimed?
Who knows? Why did he screw around with other women at all?
And where did Pamela claim that her life with him was "perfect"? I don't remember that. In Kennealy's OWN BOOK, she openly admitted some flaws in it.
Jim didn't tell lies, as the people who really knew him will tell you; and the people who really know me will tell you that I don't tell lies either.
- Everybody lies, lady. We don't even think about it, but everyone does.
- Hell, you talked about times he lied IN YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
- For instance, the fact that he lied about his whole family being dead.
- Also, "my friends can tell you I don't lie!" is not a very convincing argument. If they're your friends, they're more likely to side with you automatically.
- And the very fact that Kennealy has contradicted herself in print means that clearly SHE doesn't tell the truth either.
Jim and I had a marriage ceremony BEFORE WITNESSES--isn't that a pretty unequivocal ACTION? And spare me the claptrap about how he didn't really mean it and it was all a goof...
Patricia doesn't know how seriously Jim took the ceremony ("probably not too seriously"), but to her, going through the ceremony was "like being validated the way I wanted to be. It was a very private thing for me, a bond I wanted to make with this person."
- Victoria Balfour, Rock Wives: The Hard Lives and Good Times of the Wives, Girlfriends, and Groupies of Rock and Roll
Yes, I'll copy that quote however many times I need to.
First, YOU WEREN'T THERE. YOU DON'T KNOW.
So there, poopie-heads!
I wasn't at your weddings, but you don't hear me saying that your husbands or wives were just goofing, that they were lying to you, that they didn't really mean it and were just stoned at the time (which, by the way, Jim was not, nor was I...).
Yeah, but here's the thing. If I got married but my husband didn't even want to make it legal, then ran off across the country to his longtime girlfriend whom he said he had dumped but really hadn't... I wouldn't think he had taken it seriously either. And I wouldn't be surprised if people assumed he was lying and didn't mean it.
I would never dream of making such a vicious hurtful statement about you when I don't know the facts; why do all of you feel so free to hurtfully do so about us?
And yet on the flipside, she claims to have the first, last and only word on Jim's relationship with Pamela, the dynamics, the emotions, and how he saw her... despite spending almost no time around the two of them.
Why is the fact that Jim wanted to marry me, and DID marry me, so difficult for you to accept?
Well, given that this one rant involves threats, open contradictions, insults and rivers of vitriol... I find it difficult to imagine ANYONE wanting to marry her.
AND WHAT POSSIBLE FUCKING BUSINESS IS IT OF YOURS ANYWAY???
Lady, you're the one who devoted half your website to this topic. Nobody MADE you do that.
And second, for sheer argument's sake, if he didn't mean it, he was the most cruel and vicious and contemptible lying rat bastard who ever walked the earth, and none of us has any business caring about him in the slightest 'cause an evil vile pigdog sadist like that doesn't deserve being cared about by anyone and he will fry in hell.
- So.... what, she's claiming that not taking a nonlegal ceremony seriously is worse than genocide or whatever? Because I think there are a lot of people who were crueler, more vicious and more contemptible lying rat bastards than guys who don't commit enough.
- Say, Stalin. Or Hitler. I think those guys were much crueler, more vicious and contemptible than a dude who
- Also, by Kennealy's own ADMISSION he didn't take it that seriously, and she was previously okay with this because she wanted it more for her own sake.
- And maybe it's just me... but I sense some resentment and anger in that statement. It feels like she knows he didn't, and her feelings about it are shining through.
But we all know Jim wasn't like that. Why would you care as loyally as you do about someone like that? Why would I love someone like that as passionately as I do for as long as I have?
- Because I don't expect my rock stars to be paragons of virtue. I can appreciate Mick Jagger as a great performer, but that doesn't mean he didn't act like a colossal douchenozzle.
- Similarly, nobody can pretend that Jim Morrison could not also be a massive douchenozzle. He could be charming, sweet, kind, generous and brilliant... but he was also a douchenozzle sometimes.
- And people care about artists because they are BRILLIANT, not because they are good or kind.
- As for why she's so passionately attached to Morrison... really, who knows? She clearly accepted his lack of "seriousness" back when she did the interview for Rock Wives.
Personally my theory is that she was enthralled by his charisma, brains and artistic ability, and she thought that they were soulmates - especially since she considered Pamela to be Jim's intellectual inferior. It would be the ultimate validation of her intellectual appeal if he wanted her more than the skinny California girl. But he didn't dump Pamela for Kennealy's witchy brainy self, and he died before she had a chance to do anything to try to get him back. So since she lost the chance to have him in life, she's spent the years since then trying to make him hers in death.
You can't have it both ways, people! Use some logic here!
Yes, actually you can. Because nobody is all sinner or all saint.
Therefore: JIM MORRISON MARRIED ME. He married ONLY me.
Well, he may have also married a bottle of whiskey, but nobody's quite sure.
He was alive when he married me.
That's generally required, yes.
He wrote about marrying me.... He called me his wife and himself my husband because he meant it.
Again, we have only her word for it. Nobody who knew him EXCEPT her has claimed any such thing.
And when you trash that marriage, you trash Jim, and Jim's reasons, and Jim's choice, and the only marital commitment Jim Morrison ever made--a commitment he made when he had every possible opportunity in the world to make another.
.... a commitment that, again, involved no real commitment. Not emotional support, fidelity, living together... even trust.
"As soon as a relationship got trying, he would get crazy and run away from it. I used to think, when things got really hairy, `Well, doesn't he want to keep me?' Apparently not, if it means work."
- Victoria Balfour, Rock Wives: The Hard Lives and Good Times of the Wives, Girlfriends, and Groupies of Rock and Roll
Some people--VERY much after the fact--have lately begun to claim all sorts of spirituality for Jim that they never bothered to claim for him before my book came out and I let them know it existed.
Sorry, but books came out before yours that explored the spiritual aspect of Jim Morrison's character. No One Here Gets Out Alive - a book Kennealy was interviewed for and which contained some of the same stuff as in Strange Days - does explore his shamanistic side and interests. So did Break on Through, which was published a whole year before Kennealy's.
Well, if he was so spiritual--and he was--why would he rack up such bad karma for himself by lying about how he felt about me,
- Again, that is assuming that he did lie, and that you did not.
- And come on, Jim Morrison did a lot of shit to rack up bad karma, including having a rotten temper.
- Being spiritual does not preclude bad behavior. Including lies.
- That's as much of a myth as "so and so is spiritual, which is better than being religious!"
and by marrying me in a spiritual ceremony more binding than any civil or Christian marriage there is? Again, by pure logic, you can't have it both ways...
I love it when people show their casual intolerance, apparently without even realizing it. Apparently her whole rationale for a neopagan handfasting being more binding than a civil or Christian (note she only downplays Christianity, not any other religion) marriage is... well, she believes in it, so it's totes more binding than a Christian couple committing to each other in front of God.
Ultimately any marriage ceremony - civil or spiritual - is only as binding as the people in it. The ceremony doesn't make the marriage.
Although sometimes it's an early warning sign.
And when you try to, you are calling Jim a liar.
... no, I'm calling YOU a liar. It's not the same thing.
I love how her argument is that if you imply that Jim wasn't as into the whole shebang as she was, you're insulting him.
And just what does that say about YOU? Yeah, that's right: that you're the most cruel and vicious and contemptible lying rat bastards who ever walked the earth...and all the rest of it too.
Yeah, that's going to convert a LOT of people over to her side.
And again, I am supporting my arguments ENTIRELY ON HER OWN WORDS. I am basing it off what she herself said. So by her own argument, she is the "most cruel and vicious and contemptible lying rat bastard who ever walked the earth," because she herself said that he probably didn't take it seriously.
One more detail: Before my HUSBAND left L.A. for Paris, we bought two sets (he couldn't decide which he liked better) of matching gold wedding rings,
Even the wedding ring shopping has to have excess. Ugh.
for us to use in the upcoming legal ceremony we were planning for October in New York.
Before or after he went to jail? Because he was still facing that.
I often wear one of the rings these days (in addition to the wedding claddaghs and a delicate Victorian eternity ring, the only one that fit my finger, set completely round with tiny diamonds, that I bought for our 25th wedding anniversary--and I didn't find out until I got home and counted them that there were actually 25 diamonds in the ring!--obviously someone had been given it, long ago, for her 25th anniversary, and it made me cry): a wide, heavy, solid, antique rose gold band
Good Lord, how many fingers does she have rings on?! And does she give the full story of each one to whoever she meets?!
that, as Jim put it in a letter from Paris, "will never let you forget for a minute that you're married to me."
As if I ever could, or would...
Honestly, I do not think that ANYTHING or ANYONE could make the word "Jim" stop buzzing around in her head at this point.
So don't talk to ME about Jim's actions; they do, indeed, speak much, much more loudly than the liars' words...
Yes. Yes, they do.
It's been interesting to see, though -- and it's only been over the last few years that this has been happening -- how references to me in the media have suddenly begun to describe me as Jim's wife, or widow.
... there are references to her in the media?!
scrolls back through google news archives
Well, there ARE some references to her in the news in the past few years, mostly because of the ridiculous decision to posthumously pardon Jim Morrison for (not) getting his dick out. Most of them say that she "claims" to have been married to him, "identifies" herself as his widow, and "says" she married him. They sound pretty dubious, don't they?
And guess how those mentions of her GOT to the media? She sent an email to the New York Times to complain about it. The most facepalmy part of it is that HIS FORMER BANDMATES are given second billing after Kennealy, apparently because their responses weren't as bombastic.
Sometimes, irksomely, with quotation marks around the words (though that's just legal journalistic caution, and though it annoys the hell out of me I am the first to admit the truth of the legality being pettifogged); but just as often not, and if Rolling Stone and the London Sunday Times and the New York Daily News and the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the London Daily Express and Playgirl and the Utne Reader and a bunch of other real (not-zine) publications, radio and TV shows can unqualifiedly describe me as Jim's wife, then that's gratifying progress.
Actually, the "not-zine" publications get shit wrong all the time. For instance, I often see Fran Walsh described as Peter Jackson's wife, when in fact they have never (to my knowledge) gotten married. They just act like they are.
Also... the Cleveland Plain Dealer? There are "zine" publications far more respectable and widely-read than that. Publication is moving on, and leaving the "real" journalism behind. That's why newspapers and "conventional" magazines are dying out.
But Jim himself called me his wife -- in letters, on letters, in songs and poetry and conversation -- and if he can call me wife, then that's the only best validation and verification I will ever need or want. And I've got it.
Well, we'll have to take your word on that... or not. Because frankly, there's a lot of reason to doubt that he did that.
So until "Nancy" Kennealy stops expecting people to accept her claims entirely based on the fact that she SAYS she has proof... sorry, no go. I remain skeptical.
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