As Eisce points out, I have been going back and forth a lot on whether or not I want to post very directly about Rapid-Fire Tollbooth, for a lot of different reasons. As with the "Sgriska Self-Immolates" thread, there's a part of me that wants to use the excuse that these are not official lyrics, that I can't be sure what Cedric was really talking about in this song, etc. And, as with last time, I've got to admit, that's all just a bunch of bullshit. The point here isn't "objective truth", which can never ultimately be known, anyway. The point here is how this song is affecting me, what I am getting out of it. And, though I realize this opens up a huge can of worms again that have been resting nicely for a little while, I find myself feeling as if a gauntlet has been thrown down challenging me to address this song just as honestly as I did the last one, because once again I'm seeing a mirror.
What does Cedric intend? Have I had actual contact with him via this board? Am I just going through some kind of midlife crisis psychotic episode where I'm ready and willing to accept poseurs as truth in order to deal with guilt in the hopes I can learn and grow from the experience? Who the hell knows, and in the end, it doesn't at all matter. But, in "Rapid Fire Tollbooth", I am seeing a lot that seems to be pointing back at me, and though I can talk myself into or out of just about anything, I think the best way out is through.
I don't want to get very deeply into all the back story on this again. If you want to know what I would say about it all, look at the "Sgriska Self-Immolates" thread, and that says it all. The bottom line is that, like Josef K in Kafka's The Trial, I was approached at a particularly vulnerable juncture of my life by someone accusing me of something left largely undefined -- spreading secrets. What secrets? In the beginning, I had no idea. But, similar to Josef K, the more I've followed the various leads, the more I've come to be convinced that I am, in fact, guilty as hell. At the end of the novel, a year to the day after he was first arrested, the same strangers reappear in his bedroom, and lead him out silently through the streets of the city, into the desolate outskirts of town, and into an abandoned quarry, where they give him a dagger with which he is supposed to eviscerate himself. He can't bring himself to do it, and so they lie him down with his head against a stone and stab him in the heart. He dies, "like a dog." But, it seems I had more guts than Josef K, and even before being summoned, I did the deed myself, all over the aforementioned thread -- spilled my guts and came (mostly) clean.
However, I never did confess to exactly what it was I did. I skirted around that issue with vague statements about objectification and so forth, but never really admitted to what I had actually discovered was the crime for which I was most likely arrested. The stranger who visited me had, in one of their very first posts on the board, made mention of members discussing the penis lengths of various band members. That stung a little bit, because I know I have been guilty of just that on this very board. But, he couldn't be talking about me, because I deleted that post a few minutes after I'd made it. I distinctly remembered doing so. I do things like that a lot -- act impulsively, then think better of it and try and fix things. But, what I forgot in the time since it happened is that I was unable to cover my tracks that time. I wasn't yet a global mod, and had no power to alter the posts of other members outside of Shrouded in Veils. Someone had quoted my post, and so it was still sitting on the board, clear as day, with my name quoted at the top as the source.
Why did I do it? I don't really know. It was a gossipy thread, at a time when things were really slow. Somebody I was chatting with off the Coma, who has been fan since back in the days of the old ATDI forums, had copied and saved some various gossip about this particular topic, and passed it onto me. The topic of discussion came up, and I passed on what she had passed me.
Should I have known better? Oh yeah, of course. Hell, it was only a few months after I had met Cedric, and he had been so nice to me, he had seemed so real. But, somewhere in the interim, he went back to being a mythological creature again, dehumanized, objectified. And, I jumped right into the middle of the exact sort of shit that would devastate me if the shoe were on the other foot, and became "one of the others." In retrospect, of course, I'm ashamed and rather horrified at my actions, and that is the guilt that was driving the "Self-Immolates" thread.
And, now, this. Rita Oden-Gonzales and I had a little discussion a while ago about love songs. I don't typically like them, although that day I was in a hyperbolic mood and declared that there's only one love song I like at all, being Frusciante's "Mascara." This is more or less bullshit -- I'm not crazy about the genre, but there easily several dozen other love songs I do like, though I think the bulk of them are generic, banal, and irritating. I even went so far as to post that if Cedric took to writing love songs, "I'm outta here." And, of course, that's absolute bullshit, too, as we can easily see by my continued presence on this board. She had suggested I listen to Rush and Led Zeppelin, among a few other bands I'm forgetting right now, and I had replied that these were precisely the kind of crap I can't stand. And, this wasn't exactly true, either. Zeppelin is a guilty pleasure of mine. I was immersed in all that stuff when I was in high school, because it was ubiquitous at the time, and I did and do enjoy a lot of it. IN SPITE of the fact that I look at those types of macho, womanizing, excessive bands as representing in some ways the epitome of male privilege. If you got me drunk enough, I'd probably even admit that I've always found Jimmy Page extremely sexy.
I see an indictment of all of the stuff I've just talked about in this here song, right down to the fact that I find myself confronted with a Zeppelinesque love song, and predictably, I'm not going anywhere. Why? Well, I suppose it's blatantly obvious.... Ol Blue Eyes. I'm crazy about him. I just am. He could re-write Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" or some such shit and I'd still find a way to see it as a brilliant, shining example of pure genius. Thankfully, he doesn't do that. And, even though he's done a Zeppelinesque love song, it really is special to me, even if it forces me to look at aspects of my own behavior that are really embarrassing and shameful. I was tempted, before deciding to just play it straight, to explore the piece as playing with the genre's conventions as handed down from the playful braggadoccio of traditional blues songs, in a similar way to that in which Asilos takes the traditional vampire conventions and turns them on their heads to go someplace new. And, yeah, there IS some of that in here, but that's intellectualizing as a means of avoidance, which is my usual dance, so I'm not going there.
The title will make a lot more sense once I go through the rest of it, so I'll address it at the end.
Might I remember how to sleep in the back?
I do remand you with that
I cut off the hand that was promised to me
That men would shape all the earth
The first two lines are unclear -- keep going back and forth on the first two between a couple of alternatives, but as I said above, the point is how I'm taking them, not what they actually, literally are, so I'm settling with this version for the sake of discussion. The point being made seems to be that the narrator has abdicated his male privilege, and knows very well what being at the back of the bus is all about. Convicts are remanded into custody following being found guilty in a trial of law, and I'm taking it as meaning that it is this -- the fact that we're actually on the same side of the fence -- which ultimately incriminates me. He's not the enemy, though I treated him as if he were.
Cuz, baby you can't hide all the feelings that swelter
They fold down your hand
Discard your ???
In the fake green tile
You're loving every lady with
There is a word I cannot for the life of me make out here, even vaguely, and the next line makes so little sense to me that I'm sure it's wrong, but the rest of it seems clear enough. I acted/am acting the way I am because I'm unable or unwilling to deal with the reality of my basic attraction to men. It bothers the hell out of me, because of all kinds of crap in my past that I really don't want to get into, but the bottom line is that I get freaked out when I'm aware of their desire for me. And, this is at the root of my eating disorder -- I am the size I am in order to avoid all of that discomfort of wondering what they're interested in me for. It also serves as a filter, that weeds out everybody -- the ones who are only after good looks naturally want nothing to do with me, and the ones that are left, that ARE interested in me, I can easily dismiss as a bunch of chubby-chasing perverts. Like Groucho, I would never want to be part of a club that would have someone like me as a member.
And, since on a purely physical level I find both women and men attractive and desirable, I just avoid the whole mess by loving the ladies. But, the point being made here, which will be made repeatedly, is that denying this desire just leads to a lot of really fucked-up behavior, such as that which we see here.
And your drive-through breath
That smelt of health
That smelt of a core so sweet
Though with every word your tension
Rides my frog like a scorpion
"Drive thru breath" relates to the imagery of the title, which alludes to the scene in The Godfather where Sonny Corleone is ambushed while stopped for a tollbooth. He thinks he's gonna get through it, but he has no way to know that vengeance is about to be sprung on him. And, the big key to understanding the whole song, really, is the reference to the fable of the frog and the scorpion. For those of you who, I don't know, might have been raised under a rock in a swamp somewhere and don't understand the allusion, here's a link explaining it:
http://allaboutfrogs.org/stories/scorpion.html. No good deed goes unpunished. Cedric was nice to me, and how did I repay him? Well, ultimately self-destructively. What I was after was connection, friendship, and I blew that all to hell by falling back on my fucked-up bullshit and acting out in the same way as always freaks me the hell out when it lands on me. I seemed so sweet, but he had no clue what kind of crazy crap is going on inside. And, of course, it all comes down to this sexual tension that just poisons everything I touch.
You been large on queens
Well, won't you touch my brain?
I really want it now
Baby, put a knife through me
I wanna touch your mane
Very direct, this. Yeah, I'm "large on queens". Almost all of my favorite artists have been queer men. On the one hand, I feel a comraderie in shared outsider status with them, and since queer men in our culture have a much harder time of it than queer women do (since straight and bi men frequently fantasize about lesbians, and many insecure straight men feel threatened by similar thoughts about two men together, so lash out), I tend to see those who excel despite this stigma as fantastic underdog stories, and I really love the little guy coming out on top. Makes me feel like I might come out on top, too, someday. So, Oscar Wilde, Caravaggio, Robert Mapplethorpe, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Federico Garcia Lorca, and so very many others, are all my big heros.
But, there's another side to this: just like the straight and bi guys that get-off thinking about lesbians, gotta admit I have plenty of man-on-man fantasies. Bottom line is, I find sex sexy, no matter which combination of genitals happens to be involved, and in this particular case, I can allow myself to fantasize about men who are no threat to me, because they wouldn't want me, anyway. And, this is the point here. The brain is the sexiest organ there is, and it's not one I've ever had a problem with. In fact, the men I have been with, it's always been their mind, their genius, that drew me to them, and of course it helped that they were either closeted gays or else completely asexual, so there was nothing scary coming back at me in return. Blood from stones. Frustrating as hell, but safe. And, of course, the last couple lines here are very pointed -- "So, crucify me, why doncha? I like you!"
When I peeked inside your roof
Through that bossy, bitter rock
Said the male inside of me
Would have to take this trooper on
Well, nothing like a challenge to pique interest. But, I think the point is, I throw off a lot of anger, and that brings out the more or less natural male reaction to want to conquer.
Then starting to chance
Every word, cigarette
Every work that you put, a tease
Cry me a river barge, little darlin',
I'll just keep it where you'll always reach
I'm guessing the cigarette reference has something to do with the cliche of smoking after sex, only this is after every word. And, of course, my words are saturated with innuendo and teases, even though I hate to admit it. The picture I gave him, the "work" in question, was absolutely provocative. No doubt about it. Of course, I had it rationalized into all kinds of other things in my own head. I didn't allow myself to admit to this, at all, not even to myself. But, gotta admit, when he said he was gonna hang it in his bedroom, one of my first reactions was, well, that's exactly where it belongs. Can't very well hang it in the living room. It's a very sexy, fiery, naked woman wielding sharp weapons, for Christ's sake! Haha! So, yeah, I was sort of half-consciously aware this was a tease. And, god knows, if there's one place I'm always reaching...
Though I guess you don't get
Cuz I know you'd forget
If I go into the rebirth of a Beat
Now that you're sorry with your Baptist rape
I do believe you 'bout your mama's belief
Refers to the former "Howl" and "Haruspex" threads, in which I ranted for a while about my anger at the church for what I termed a "brain rape", and in which I explained the image I had given Cedric as relating to my own aspirations for the kind of woman I would like to be able to be, which is also kind of scary to me, because both good and bad aspects of that critter go back to my mother, who no doubt is a very strong, powerful woman, but she's also so blinded by her own wrath when it rises up that she's physically and verbally abusive. So, it's the kind of power I'd love to embody in a light sense, and also all the darkness I know lurks inside me. And, the point here is that he sees where I get it from. The first three lines also explain why his writing style is so different here from his usual cut-up Burroughs routine -- he wants to be sure I get it, and I'd miss it unless he's really direct.
You been large on queens
But won't you touch my brain?
I really want it now
So, baby, put it naturally,
I wanna touch your mane
I know the buzz came 'round
But why's your back to men?
"The buzz" that "came 'round" I'm guessing is the gossip that I participated in, which I shouldn't have. But, what he's saying is that the bigger point here is what the hell do I have against men, when I act just like everything I purport to fear and despise about them? And, that's of course it -- my back is ultimately to men because my back is to my own reflection in them.
You play hard to please
You wanna touch my pain?
I really want it now
Yeah, baby, put it naturally,
I wanna touch your brain
I know the buzz came 'round
But why's your back to men?
"Play hard to please" really hits home. Goes back to the fact that I have Carol Post gagged and bound in my basement. I have these warring tendencies inside me, between wanting to be perceived as a "good girl," and resenting the hell out of the fact that men want me to be a "good girl." And, hell, this all goes back to my mother, who on the one hand is a very vocal and forceful feminist, but on the other hand, dutifully does all the grunt-work expected of a Fifties sitcom housewife, though she bitches the whole while about how she's the only one who does anything around here, and we'd all be lost without her. But, who the hell is always the first one leaping in to clear the table and scrub the bathroom, before anybody else has a chance? And, though I take after my father in not giving a shit if the laundry ever gets done, because there are books to read, music to listen to, art projects to do, I find other ways to play the same game of jumping into the mindless, subservient role, and bitching all the while about being shoved there.
A rather amusing situation happened the other day. I had recently signed up for Patti Smith's mailing list, because every time she's in town, I wind up hearing about it the day afterwards and missing the show. She's been posting a little blog thing called "The Coffee Break Page," where she posts all the kinds of stuff you'd expect Patti Smith to be posting -- poetry she's written, homages to beloved artists and friends who have died, musings about the state of the world, etc. But, one of her first posts ended with her mentioning that she had to go clean the refrigerator out, and that it really is true what they say -- if you put an opened box of Arm and Hammer Baking Soda inside, it really does cut down on odors. And, I must have stared at those words for ten minutes with my mouth agape. Patti-fucking-Smith, my feminist heroine, posting about cleaning the refrigerator and giving helpful household hints that would make Donna Reed proud! Fuckin-A! But, you know, it hit me -- you clean the damn refrigerator, too. Maybe not as often as you should, because you resent the hell out of it, but you do. And, if Patti doesn't clean the refrigerator, who's gonna do it for her? The ghosts of Fred and Robert? Hahaha! It was so stupid of me to feel disappointed, but it said a hell of a lot about my own attitudes towards "woman's work," stupid as they are.
Baby, I'm a woman!
Of course, this not a literally true statement, but the point being made is, if men are the enemy, he's not one of them. He's not the one I should snap at and sting for no reason, just for being a decent sorta guy and friendly towards me. No way to repay kindness.
I have a lot of feelings come up with regards to this song. On the one hand, I find it funny, because he's clearly going out of his way to make me uncomfortable, and he did say he would "get [me] back". Hence the revenge of the title -- both my own directed wrongly against him, and a little character assassination of his own. And, I'm the sort of person that laughs when she's scared or uncomfortable, when facing big dark feelings. Defense mechanism. But, then, other times I listen to this and get hit with the same deep regret and sadness I felt when I wrote the self-immolation thread. It's still there. Haven't forgiven myself yet, and wouldn't probably accept or believe forgiveness from anybody else if it were offered. Not yet. Maybe someday. But, nevertheless, there is something funny about this band doing a Zeppelinesque love song with lyrics so completely out of character with their usual offerings, something that makes me laugh really hard. Is this the new direction we'll hear on the next album? I doubt it, but it's certainly different from anything that's come before. And, I can't help but find myself thinking I'm on the receiving end of some of the merciless humor I've heard them talk about that they use between themselves, which Omar says helps them to see their own foibles and grow as people. This has that kind of feel for me.
