Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – September 9, 2004

I heard the most colourful booty call song this week. It wasn’t Nelly and it wasn’t Britney. It wasn’t even Justin Timberlake who wants to rock my body. It was most hysterically, from goth-rock band, The Cure.

Yes, that big fat British drunk guy with the pasty face, rat’s nest hair do, and MAC red lipstick named Robert Smith packs a lot of pussy into his tunes and he made a comeback with his Curiosa tour this summer, which didn’t come to Ottawa.

I’m convinced this Mr. Smith is disguising his libido in romanticism that hints at the poet Shelley, but stinks of Keats on Viagra. Even though his lyrics are more creamy than an oozing Laura Secord truffle up my bum on a hot day, I can see through them. Yes I can. I’m about to blow your cover, fat man.

The song I’m talking about here is “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” off their 1992 Wish album (remember Friday I’m In Love?). You remember it. It starts with cryptic guitar screeches, tambourines and then tumultuous drums all building to an epic sex trip. He begins wailing in desperation:

Every time we do this
I fall for her
Wave after wave after wave
It’s all for her
“I know this can’t be wrong I say,”
(And I’ll lie to keep her happy)
“As long as I know that you know that today I belong right here with you, right here with you…”

It sounds like longing but Robert Smith is actually complaining about having to give the girl so many ‘waves’ (read: orgasms). But then, for the rest of the song, Fat Bob goes on to wish he could just stop fucking her, not because she’s a little selfish cunt who doesn’t divvy up the bloodrushes, but because he knows another moment will break his, wait for it … heart. Precious.

Yeah, not to mention rip out the soul of the chick who has gotten so intensely wrapped up with Mr. Smith that her head’s on fire.

(Thank god it’s her head on fire and not her pussy. I was beginning to believe dude gave her a lot more down there while deep “C—” diving, if you know what I mean.)

And so he goes on crying but he lies, again, and says it’s the rain.

Yes, yes, boys don’t cry.

The two of them there are both getting liquored and totally stoned and there’s some praying and crying happening but he’s still fucking her when she asks: “why why why (three times, dear reader!) are you letting me go?” and, naturally, his cock goes soft and then she does a striptease in front of him and, woops! they fuck some more.

This isn’t The Cure I know; it’s a typical Friday I’m Still Banging My X song! I thought this was the kind of shit that went on in dance or rap music and not in my “alternative” music, thank you very much.

In truth, any pathetic rebounding sex couple should have a soundtrack, every tragic romance its anthem, and so I give The Cure unto you because it’s quite the production and it’s taking over my goddamned column when all I really wanted to share with you is the benefits of my new superpower for seeing through bullshit, thanks to a) sobriety, b) getting totally fucked over by love in the past year, and c) revisiting my mother’s K-Tel collection called “Decade of Love.”

See, Mum got divorced in ’79 and moved to Vanier and K-Tel apparently documented this transition over a double vinyl set through Bonnie Tyler, Charlene, Minnie Riperton, Starland Vocal Band, and of course, Ann Murray.

But I’m convinced the tunes screwed with mom’s head.

On the same album as Charlene’s Never Been to Me pro-marriage song was Dr. Hook’s sexed-up medley, Sharing the Night Together that ENCOURAGED middle-aged chicks to greet the morning together with him or, call him up, because like James Taylor in the preceding song, he’s a “Handy Man” who can fix broken hearts.

And speaking of spending the night together, our Cure dude “watches the sun come up from the edge of the deep green sea.” We know what he was up to all night.

Explains the hair.

Now, a song about taking so many rides on the Rebound Highway should be called, simply, “From the Edge”. No pretty green sea. Just plain old fucking on the edge of a cesspool of sweat, bad feelings with the only greens here being the vomit of your drunken Seaman in the a.m. and the follow-up envy of the sea Queen as buddy replaces you with a new siren.

The cure for sex is not a booty call.

Do not drink and dial, people!

The cure for rebound sex is in effect, the disease. Are some of us in Ottawa so plagued by loneliness that we have become the next Cure video? Until you start seeing things in a different light, you may just go on singing the same old tune pal, without really knowing what the hell it means or, what you can make it mean.

Jaded? Maybe. Just you make sure to keep those shades on when you’re going through your next total eclipse of the heart so you can see clear enough to do a little dance out the front door, instead of making a little self-destructive love on the floor in the stick of your own AquaNet, man!

– Sylvie Hill