damage is the word that this song first and foremost brings to mind, deliberately, crafted specifically for its audience. perhaps a little heavy-handedly, it creates what is today almost a cliche of circumstance to form our most important secondary character -- and the only one for which a new singer is brought out. Mary.
the song begins with a low, rippling drumbeat, falling with a guitar down into a series of arcing progressions, not all ending lower, but implying sinking and feeling turbulent. these resolve, the drumbeats speed up, and the narrator takes over the momentum with an almost cruel, lascivious tone.
She always brings me what I need
Without I beg and sweat and bleed
When we're alone at night
Waiting for the call
She feeds my skin
the first impression is that it's something sexual... until you remember that Nikki is a heroin addict, and that he is being given some (other?) drug to control him. without his drugs, he goes into withdrawal. "she feeds my skin" is less a sexual reference -- though it is almost drawled, or even growled, as if it were -- it's all about the drugs.
but "she" brings him the drugs. she is involved somehow with a dealer, or a dealer herself? she is perhaps involved in The Cause? many questions immediately taking form with this one. they are alone at night, waiting for the call -- this is the "wait by the phone" of the title song. Nikki is waiting for another assignment, and he's using his addiction to pass the time.
he's in deep, both in The Cause and in his own substance abuse. given the "just say no" 80s, this is also a deliberate challenge to the government / dominant paradigm / establishment to "put your money where your mouth is." addiction is even today (30+ years later) seem as a moral failing on the part of the addict, not a disease, not a compulsion, not a symptom of unmet needs. more and newer studies are showing that this is one of the reasons for our drug problem continuing -- that we attack the wrong aspect. all that has succeeded is the overpopulation of our jails and the creation of career criminals. he needs this drug in his "skin" and his centers of feeling and sensation, not just as a concept. it means that he has unmet basic needs that are being self-medicated with things that artificially create the natural positive or high that so many other people take for granted.
it's not a coincidence though that it's a carnal, base desire confusing the issue here. "feeds my skin" is what this song is really about... including how it affects out characters and their past.
Sixteen and on the run from home
Found a job in Times Square
Working Live S&M shows
Twenty-five bucks (a fuck)
And John's a happy man
She wipes the filth away
And it's back on the streets again
every New Yorker hearing this song today will say the same thing: "hey! Times Square isn't bad anymore!" and that's another calling card of the times. back then, it was the center of seedy.
"sixteen and on the run from home" -- young, scared... fleeing something? we know nothing of her before this, but if this is an acceptable alternative to going home, then what was it like there? it's one of my major criticisms of using such a song for quick character establishment -- this isn't light material, but she's an accessory to Nikki, so her complicated backstory only sees a slight flash where it's needed to establish the complicated morals and underlying immorality of the plot. she's equal parts character and device... but the same can be said for how Nikki, in his broken and needy way, treats her.
the wording here is interesting. "filth." again... she is disgusted with the work, with herself, with everything here. but it's better than going home.
as an overview... she becomes a hardcore live-pornography performer, and a cheap prostitute, and gets no rest. just to live, she needs to become a device for the base carnality of others. the "feeds my skin" line is right at home here.
Spreading the disease
Everybody needs
But no one wants to see
the 80s oversat the AIDS epidemic (back when it was GRID, when it was unknown to many but devastating to certain communities, back when the government turned a blind eye to the outsiders in society when they needed help. the most vocal criticisms i've heard of Reagan usually start at Iran-Contra but segue pretty quickly to AIDS. it wasn't even until an old friend of the president (Rock Hudson) was diagnosed that the White House had any real reaction at all... and then it was more of a "too little too late" kind of situation.
so using "disease" in conjunction with sex is not only indicative of the times, but also a harsh wake-up call much like many had in the 80s.
the advent of birth control created (or heavily contributed to) the sexual revolution. but the proliferation of unprotected sex brought back a large volume of STIs. by the end of the 80s, those who had parties a little too hard in the 70s were seeing consequences for their actions, and the aforementioned moral panics of the religious right were brought to bear again.
but it's not just any disease. it's the disease "everybody needs"
i'm usually just as cautious about a piece (whether it be a song or a poem, movie or short story) using the words "society" or "everybody" or any other blanket term. broad generalizations have a way of being inherently wrong. but it's an indictment of the media-fueled 80s culture. the disease everybody needs is their own pleasure, and really that's just the aggrandizement and validation of their own selfishness. still, it's a private thing -- so regardless of how common, it's not supposed to be talked about or acknowledged.
Father William saved her from the streets
She drank the lifeblood from the saviour's feet
She's Sister Mary now, eyes as cold as ice
He takes her once a week
On the alter like a sacrifice
introduction of a new character. in four lines we go from seeing nobility and heroism to utter disgust, from the public face and known deeds to being no different (or perhaps worse).
The priest "saves her" and she joins the church. this means she no longer has to do what she did before, no more "filth" -- except now it's less cheap prostitute and more kept concubine. he treats her as his -- a man of the cloth, a man sworn to celibacy (and she as well if she actually is "Sister Mary" in all ways).
the important line here is "eyes as cold as ice." it's not just playing on the stereotype of the severe nun. she is profoundly damaged, distant, cold. she's got all the hard edges and all the distrust of someone who had suffered severe abuse. and it's continuing.
even with supposed consent, abuse of a position of power -- particularly a double one where there is a perceived debt and a potential parent-figure -- removes the ability to give consent properly. this supposedly celibate holy man is, in effect, semiconsentually raping a trauma victim who had taken a vow of celibacy under the trappings of his office and his religion.
if that does not make your skin crawl, if she's the agent delivering the drugs to Nikki, it implies that perhaps the priest -- her superior and the only other character she is mentioned in connection with -- is the dealer. think of the damage to families that drugs like heroin do, and the crime both the abuse and the trade propagate... and remember that groups like AA and NA have an inherently religious basis, and are often run out of church meeting halls. junkies in need might come to their priest as a first line of seeking help. abuse of that kind of authority changes all these pathways, and gives the dealer access to more prey.
Spreading the disease
Everybody needs
But no one wants to see
the spread of hypocrisy, of corruption, of that aforementioned "filth" all wrapped up in its varied forms. no-one wants to see that. it's disturbing. we'd rather such things were not a part of the world, and the chorus comes up again, drops in tone, and resolves in a low, almost tom-tom drumbeat. when the vocals join in again it's almost whispered, spoken... a chant... another assertion by Nikki, the dogma he's been stewing in as he's waited for the phone to ring... the litany that has conditioned him to be okay with the hit-jobs he now routinely takes on. the whispered chant has the feel of a secret truth, the truth "no one wants to see" being exposed to the light by the heroic warrior doing his duty.
Religion and sex are powerplays
Manipulate the people for the money they pay
Selling skin, selling God
The numbers look the same on their credit cards
Politicians say no to drugs
While we pay for wars in South America
directly equating religion with sex is interesting. both in that they are nobody's business but yours, and that in the 80s they became politicized and divisive. saying that both are "power plays" and "manipulating" reduces (what to some people are) the most private and important aspects of life into a great trick. not that they are inherently corrupt, but their usage in the modern era and the people who use it against you are doing so in order to take advantage of others.
pretty sure there are plenty of megachurches that can be viewed this way. i know that the adult entertainment industry is often seen as such. with the advent of the televangelists coinciding with the introduction of affordable cable tv, maybe the capitalist media-domination of everything might be an easy-to-reach conclusion. how different, really, is it from the youtube pastors and their ridiculous assertions, the cable tv news, talk radio, and the cesspool of internet news comment sites, "manipulating people for the money they pay" is a pretty safe declaration that once might have sounded profound or shocking.
easier to draw a parallel here after the Ashley Madison scandal -- an internet site built on the supposition that men want to cheat on their significant others, who offered for a premium degrees of privacy they did not actually provide, who were hacked and their clients list (90% of non-employee accounts were male, most of the women on the site were fictitious accounts maintained by staff, making it a legal scam) was leaked to the internet. they promised secrecy. there were congress members, a notable christian reality tv figure who had just been involved in a scandal after it was revealed he had molested his sisters, and plenty of others.
they were manipulated into paying for a service that never lived up to its hype. they were sold skin, privacy, and fantasy.
how different is that, really, from our politicians funding drug cartels in their attempts to undermine hostile governments, then turning around and telling us that the real fight against drugs is on us?
Fighting fire with empty words
While the banks get fat
And the poor stay poor
And the rich get rich
And the cops get paid
To look away
As the one percent rules America
were one to fight a fire with empty words, the charred corpse would be the answer of effectiveness. only, we're the ones in danger. those who are supposed to protect us put us in harm's way when they allow empty words to be their sole reaction to danger. if the words are empty because they want us calm, but they want us to not fight the results of the danger, it makes the problem worse.
occupy wall street was a direct response to the financial institutions that created the financial crisis having made billions off of the situation, then having a safe way out as regular americans were losing their houses. "the banks stay fat" is not the problem, it's when the bans prosper at the expense of everyone else. the relfection here is "and the poor stay poor" -- that the banks are able to prosper despite others not having the same opportunities. this leads to the third -- "and the rich get rich" -- seen as a result of the other two, meaning that the rich are effectively taking from the poor, either money or opportunity.
and what was their rallying cry? "i am the 99%." just as here, it is declared that "the one percent rules america" while the cops could enforce the law fairly and at the same level, but are paid not to.
sadly, it's not just the one percent today. opportunity is assumed by a select group. other groups might be unaware of the opportunities they are missing, only that they are chronically unable to easily rise to the top as others are.
Spreading the disease
Everybody needs
But no one wants to see
The way society
Keeps spreading the disease
what exactly is "the disease?"
it's what Alfred P Doolittle would call "middle class morality" -- the assumptions and expectations of the dominant culture's expectations. that you do not talk about certain problems. that you are expected as a guy to chase women. that you are expected as a girl to resist, to flee from sexuality or be branded "one of those girls" and given even less respect by the men. that you are supposed to graduate, go to college, and get a job after you get your degree despite all the pitfalls that might actually happen. that Mary never had a shot, because whatever she was running from was still not worth going back to, and that kind of lack of support (to outright damage) comes as a package deal with other problems.
it's the hypocrisy of being conditioned to want and being ashamed of those desires, of judging people for certain choices or activities and then finding out the full story, of inserting onesself into a bad situation and forcing other essentially good people be forced to judge you for it...
in other words, inescapable when there are double standards and different levels of expectation set for different classes.
i will say, just as Times Square has cleaned up, so have many of our other institutions. perhaps "cleaned" is not the right implication here, but opened up. people are more likely to talk to other about certain things left secret before. a bad fanfic-based faux-romance novel was turned into a major motion picture including its bdsm bent. and multiple studies showing a link between the availability of pornography and lowered sexual assault incidences. though we have less crime than the late 80s anyway, the media reporting belies that fact. we came out of this feeling, entered into it again with the bush 00s, and have come out of it again.
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