I am feeling better, the darkness is lifting, so I could finally get back to depressing Netflix (or in this case, Amazon Prime) documentaries without tearing at the seams of my mental health. Saturday, it was Soaked In Bleach, an account of the death of Kurt Cobain.

2 things about this. 1. I didn’t sleep Friday night, so I watched this in the middle of the night while 2 wild cats in my driveway screamed and moaned. It was an awful, but somehow perfectly fitting soundtrack.

And 2. I told my oldest son about this film. He has “Come As You Are” as his ringtone because it’s the music of the best scene in Captain Marvel, and this beautiful boy of mine (who has been hearing about Nirvana and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Nevermind since he was in the womb), flesh of my flesh, asks me, “Who’s he? Is he a singer?” I am the worst father in America.

So. The voice of my generation committed suicide in 1994, or at least that’s what we were told. This documentary cast doubt on that, instead exposing many of the whispered rumors we heard that it might’ve had more to do with his wife, Courtney Love, a broken marriage and mountains of money. And maybe it did. Maybe she was involved, maybe it was a gross miscarriage of justice. There is certainly more to the story than an addict and a shotgun. One thing that hasn’t changed is what he meant to me. Maybe because of that, I should be more outraged than I am.

What I do want to talk about, and what I’ll explain to my sweet boy after he listens to the entire Nirvana oeuvre, is that honesty matters.

In the Filthy Epstein doc, Bill Clinton denied that he was ever on the disgusting island, when he surely was. Now, maybe he didn’t ever partake in the sex trade that was going on, but if he didn’t, why would he lie? It’s the muddy waters of his character that make me very suspicious.

In the same fashion, probably Courtney Love didn’t murder her husband. But why the mountain of lies that surround her? Her deception make me very suspicious.

The lies about phone calls and island trips themselves obviously don’t directly correlate to sexual abuse and murder, but in real life, it doesn’t take evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to cast shadows and destroy trust. If she doesn’t come home and says she’s with her friend…but she’s not…that doesn’t mean she’s with him. But it sure doesn’t help, and that sort of disruption can take years and years to repair.

Life and relationships are hard enough. Every day can be very difficult and take such a toll, we simply don’t have the reservoir of energy to spend repairing a misstep of dishonesty. That’s what I’ll tell my boys. But they’re not great listeners yet, and I suppose if I had the choice, I’d rather they hear that little bit about lies than the lyrics to “Drain You.”