The alien meets Kenny Rogers

I have a buddy who’s an alien. I don’t mean an “illegal alien”. I mean that he’s not from this planet. You can picture him as tall and green-skinned, but if you do, just know that “green-skinned” is kind of a racist way to picture an alien. In this case it happens to be true. I’m just saying it was rude of you to assume.

I’ll call my buddy Allen, not because it’s his name (although it is) but because it’s almost the same word as “Alien”. Allen has studied English and developed a pretty good vocabulary. He’s having a harder time getting a grasp on our culture. He visits periodically in his spaceship, which used to be silver before he watched “Barbie” and got the idea of painting it bright neon pink, and he picks some bit of media he’s absorbed and asks for my help to understand what it’s about.

He’s rather methodical about this. He wants to understand everything. When it’s a movie, we sit down to watch it together, and he has questions about nearly every scene. When it’s a song, we pick it apart line by line. Though he understands the words, it turns out that’s not nearly enough to understand what they mean.

On his most recent visit, he was all fired up to better understand the Kenny Rogers song, (You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me) Lucille.

Don’t ask me how he makes his selections. He might have a process, but I suspect it’s entirely random.

So first, we sat together in my living room and listened to the whole song together. Then we started working our way through the lyrics.

Allen: “‘In a bar in Toledo.’ A bar is where people go to drink alcohol, usually. Toledo, now: That’s the name of a town, right? But there are several. Kenny Rogers is American, so I’m gonna guess it’s one of the American cities, not Spain or Brazil. The one in Ohio maybe?”

I had to confess that I wasn’t sure, but I told him it probably wasn’t a critical point.

Allen: “Fair enough. ‘Across from the depot’, is that important? You store food there, right? Or weapons? There’s a hardware store that–”

I told him it most likely referred to a bus depot.

Allen: “OK, but why did Mr. Rogers make a point of saying that in the first line?”

I blinked a bit at “Mr. Rogers”, but decided not to get sidetracked. I said the reference to a depot might simply be part of establishing the setting of a country song. Country songs were rarely written about affluent people. They most often concerned humble folk of modest means, and it was unlikely that any of the characters depicted in the song had driven to the bar in an expensive car. Perhaps the song’s protagonist, or one of the other characters, had taken the bus to reach the bar.

Allen: “Got it. ‘On a barstool, she took off her ring.’ I don’t know who ‘she’ is yet, but Rogers is introducing a female person to the story, and barstools are seats so I guess she’s sitting on one. A lot of Americans wear rings, often on their fingers. It never looks comfortable to me. Maybe her fingers were getting sore and that’s why she took it off?”

This took a few minutes to clear up. I started by explaining that a lot of rings were wedding rings. Did taking it off mean that the woman was no longer married, then? No, not exactly. Depending on the circumstances, taking off a ring could have no particular significance, but then it probably wouldn’t be worth mentioning in the song either. It could be a way of signaling that she no longer wanted to be married. Given the setting in the bar, it likely meant she was signaling to the people around her that her married state was not going to prevent her from going home with somebody. This led to a further digression about the phrase “to go home with someone”, and the secondary purpose of bars as a place to “hook up” with people – and I immediately regretted using yet another euphemism for sex. But fortunately Allen had learned early on that Earthlings think about sex an awful lot, and have a lot of terms for referring to it.

Allen: “All right, it’s a song about sex, sort of. Which I’ve noticed is true of a lot of songs. The next two lines: ‘I thought I'd get closer so I walked on over, I sat down and asked her name’. Well, the ‘I thought I’d get closer’ is not predicting that the song’s singer is going to get closer to the woman; I think it means he is deciding to walk over. Asking for her name is a way of starting a conversation with a stranger. He could just be looking to meet new people and pass the time chatting, but if this is a song about ‘hooking up’ in bars, I’m going to guess that’s what he’s really doing?”

I commended him on his understanding.

Allen: “Great! ‘When the drinks finally hit her’. I’m picturing a half-dozen glasses of water with little arms, running up to her and smacking her in the face. Something tells me that’s not what’s happening.”

No indeed. I explained that the patrons of bars were most often there to drink alcohol, and as Allen knew, alcohol has a particular effect on humans. This was not the first time Allen had encountered the idea of intoxication, although he was still grappling with the idea that people would do it to themselves on purpose. I told him in this case, being slightly drunk tended to lower people’s inhibitions, and this was part of why bars were a common place for ‘hook-ups’. The woman in the song was not there to drink water, or soda. Definitely alcohol.

Allen: “OK, so with removing the ring and getting intoxicated she’s improving her chances of a successful ‘hook-up’. Next line: ‘She said I’m no quitter, but I finally quit livin' on dreams’. I know what a ‘quitter’ is. ‘Living on dreams’? Isn’t that the sort of thing people say when they want a career in Hollywood or something like that?”

I had to admit that was true, but told him the woman was not likely an actress. Some of this would become clearer from the rest of the song.

Allen: “OK then. `I'm hungry for laughter and here ever after, I'm after whatever the other life brings’. Obviously she’s not talking about hunger for food, here…"

He looked at me for confirmation. I nodded.

Allen: “Yeah, I didn’t think so. My understanding of human anatomy says that eating and laughter are separate functions, mostly, except possibly when they’re drinking milk. I meant to ask about that, but let’s save it for later. I’m not understanding ‘the other life’. The woman in the song is alive, because she’s sitting in a bar and drinking and talking. Is there some other… way of being alive?”

Hmmm.

I explained that the ‘living on dreams’ suggested the woman had committed to a life that involved some risk of failure, perhaps of long-term poverty. Given the earlier reference to the ring, this was not likely a commercial venture she was talking about, like trying to break into Hollywood. It had more to do with her choice to marry… whomever it was, although the song had not yet introduced that person or told us anything about him or her.

Being “hungry for laughter” suggested that the woman didn’t laugh very often. That meant that the risky choice she’d made hadn’t paid off very well. She, and her spouse, had most likely had a run of bad luck, encountered difficulty or even tragedy. Perhaps the two of them were indeed poor. By “the other life”, then, she was talking about escaping that difficult life, and finding one of prosperity, maybe even wealth.

Allen: “Huh. So this song isn’t just about sex, it’s about money too. The arrangement of the words is clever. First he says ‘here ever after’, meaning ‘now and in the future’, and the next line contains ‘after whatever’, except ‘after’ now refers to what she’s chosen to pursue. This Kenny Rogers is a formidable songwriter.”

Yes, he’s popular all right.

Allen: “Excellent, let’s move on. ‘In the mirror, I saw him, and I closely watched him’. We’ve switched to a male pronoun, so we’re no longer referring to the woman; and the song is in first person. Is it a real mirror, or is the mirror a metaphor? Is the singer looking at himself?”

I told him it was a good guess, but no, that wasn’t it. This was definitely introducing a third person to the story. Many bars had mirrors in them. The singer mentions the mirror because he’s not looking directly at the other man.

Allen: “So this third person is male. Don’t know much about this person, yet. Why watch him in the mirror, instead of turning to look directly at him?”

This took a bit of explaining as well. I told Allen that sometimes, looking another person directly in the eyes is uncomfortable. If two people just don’t know each other, looking directly at each other is the normal, neutral thing to do. People who are on good terms with each other will look at each other and probably smile warmly as they do so. But if there is discomfort or strife between the two, particularly if one of them has done something to slight the other, the guilty party might find it tough to meet the other’s gaze. Lowering one’s eyes is a way of signaling this discomfort, perhaps even shame.

It’s a good bet that the two people in the song, the protagonist and the other man, have not met before. When the protagonist looks at the other man in the mirror rather than directly, the significance is likely that the singer feels like he may have done something wrong by talking to the woman. The later lines support this idea.

Allen: “By talking to the woman – not just talking to her, but trying to ‘hook up’ with her.”

Quite so.

Allen: “So from this, we can assume the man and the woman do know each other. Oh… wait, is this the woman’s husband?”

Yes. The singer doesn’t say as much, but from context, he must be her husband.

Allen: “OK! You can see why this is difficult for me. You Earthlings don’t make it easy. Moving on: ‘I thought how he looked out of place’. How could he be ‘out of place’? Aren’t all three people together in the bar?”

I told him that “out of place”, here, meant the man was obviously uncomfortable. It was a fair bet that he was deeply unhappy about the interactions between the singer, the woman, and the man. It aligned with the earlier, subtle hint that the singer might be feeling guilty. The singer and the woman have wronged the man.

Allen: “OK then. ‘He came to the woman who sat there beside me. He had a strange look on his face.’ Is he disfigured somehow? Maybe his nose–”

No, this refers to the man’s expression, and adds to the idea that the man is under emotional distress. Probably a lot of distress. Sometimes when people experience something really intensely negative, what might be called ‘gut-wrenching’, it can take them a moment to process and come to terms with what has happened. During that time, their face muscles may contort and produce an expression that reflects their pain.

Allen: “Human faces sure are interesting. My species conveys emotion more straightforwardly, with the positioning of our flibbers, but I understand you don’t have those, so you have to make do with what you’ve got.”

I acknowledged this with a gracious nod.

Allen: “Now this next bit really has me puzzled. ‘The big hands were calloused, he looked like a mountain. For a minute I thought I was dead’. First… this other man doesn’t literally look like a mountain, right? I’m smelling metaphor, here. Is this just a fancy way of saying the other man is large for a human?”

Pretty much.

Allen: “But, why is this description important here? And why does the singer think he is dead? Do humans go around feeling unsure whether they are dead or alive?”

I admitted that while this happens on rare occasions, it’s not at all what the singer is getting at. “For a minute I thought I was dead” really means “for a minute, I thought the other man was going to kill me”. Or perhaps just “do me grievous bodily harm”.

Allen: “Oh, so the song’s now about intoxication, sex, money, and violence. This is a clear recipe for success in human culture.”

I declined to comment.

Allen: “I mean by putting all those things in the song. These are the topics of a lot of songs, and a lot of movies, and a lot of books.”

I had to grant him that.

Allen: “So this other man, he’s physically large, and he has big hands with calluses, and people get calluses from hard work. So he is likely someone who works hard and has strong muscles. If he decided to attack the singer, he might do a lot of damage, and the singer is probably feeling scared.”

Very good.

Allen: “Great. Next line: ‘But he started shaking, his big heart was breaking’. I guess if the man is big, his heart is probably big too. Now… the song says nothing about the man getting injured, like being hit by a car – which would be unlikely since they’re all inside a building – so… this isn’t about his heart literally getting damaged. It’s this concept of ‘heartbreak’ that I keep hearing. And why does he shake?”

I confirmed the heartbreak concept. I’d had previous discussions with Allen after watching romance films, so he understood that human sexuality often, though not always, coincided with forming strong pair-bonds. When one member of the bond chose to end the relationship while the other wanted it to continue, that terrible, painful emotion was called “heartbreak”. In this case, the man’s emotions were so strong that it manifested not just in the expressions he wore on his face, but also in his body physically shaking.

Allen: “I may never know all the ways humans express emotion. I keep encountering new ones. All right, so this man is very, very unhappy because the woman, his wife, is ending the marriage. Taking off the ring really did mean she wanted to stop being married so she could have relationships with someone else. She thought she’d be happier, but in the process she’s making the man, her husband, miserable. Why that mention of the ‘big heart’?”

I explained that although we’d established the man’s great physical size – and his heart was indeed also large to match – that having a “big heart” had another meaning here: someone who loves others strongly. This heightens the tragedy of his wife deciding to leave him. He loved her powerfully. Now he’s experiencing the combined negative feelings of losing this love that has defined his life, probably for many years, and the betrayal of her abandonment.

Allen: “Intoxication, sex, money, and violence, and also betrayal and heartbreak. And we haven’t even reached the chorus. This next bit might be the hardest for me to understand. ‘He turned to the woman and said: You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille’. This is the first name mentioned in the song, in fact it’s the only one, and since he’s talking to the woman I presume it’s her name. But… what makes this a ‘fine time’ for her to leave?”

I asked him if he had encountered sarcasm before.

Allen: “Erm, yes. It’s a difficult mode of communication for me. Sometimes, people say the opposite of what they really mean. I’ve also got something in my notes… ah yes… that sarcasm can be detected based not on the words, but on the inflection, on the emphasis or possibly the expressions the speaker is wearing as he or she says something. I don’t think that helps me here, though. Is Kenny Rogers singing these lines in some sarcastic way? If so, I can’t hear it.”

I told him that in this case, the only way to reach the conclusion that the man was being sarcastic is through context. He goes on to talk about “four hungry children”--

Allen: “Yes, this is also the first mention of children. Are there children in bars too?”

No, children aren’t allowed in bars. The best explanation for why the man is talking about children, is that he and his wife had produced four children in their marriage. They weren’t in the bar, so they are presumably back at home. It’s unclear whether anyone is there to watch them. The exact timeline of events, leading to the woman being in the bar, and the man finding her there – perhaps only after the singer started ‘hitting on’ her (another expression for ‘hooking up’, Allen) isn’t known.

Allen: “So, ‘four hungry children, and a crop in the field’. The man and his wife are committed to raising the children. If the wife is going to leave, presumably she will stop caring for the children, and the man will have to do it by himself. And the ‘crop in the field’: The man must be a farmer. Right? He works hard and has calluses because he operates farm equipment all day, and at the time of the song, they have a crop that has been planted but not yet harvested. All of that, the child care and the crop harvesting, is going to be a lot of work, and the woman is saying she’s not going to do any of that.”

Which adds to the betrayal. She isn’t just causing the man heartbreak by abandoning their relationship; she is also sabotaging him financially.

Allen: “Whew. And ‘I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times, but this time your hurting won't heal’. He’s comparing this with the hardships they’ve lived through together, and saying that what she’s done is worse than all of that. The ‘hurting’ isn’t a physical injury. We’re still talking about the heartbreak. He’s saying he isn’t going to recover from that.”

Yes.

Allen: “OK. I think we’re through the trickiest bit. ‘After he left us, I ordered more whiskey’. The singer has been drinking alcohol too, which makes sense since he and the woman are both trying to ‘hook up’. Then, ‘I thought how she'd made him look small’. He’s so big, he looks like a mountain, so… help me out here.”

I told Allen that this was yet another metaphor. Just as having a “big heart” could mean “having the ability to love someone strongly”, being made to “look small”, or to be “diminished”, was another expression of emotions. To feel “small” is to feel powerless, or defeated. The woman “made the man look small” because what she did had hurt him so badly, he felt defeated. He may even have expressed this feeling through body language by allowing his shoulders to slump downwards.

Allen: “Huh. And ‘he left us’ is not like the woman ‘leaving’ the man. I think here, we mean that he physically walked out of the bar and went home to his four kids.”

Right.

Allen: “‘From the lights of the barroom, to a rented hotel room, we walked without talking at all’. I’m aware of hotels. Some people live in houses they own, some live in apartments they rent, and hotels are like rooms that are rented for a short time. I think we’ve established that it’s unlikely any of these three people are rich. They wouldn’t live in mansions. Maybe they’re homeless? Is that why they’re going to a hotel room?”

No… it was unlikely that the singer was homeless. The singer and the woman are planning to consummate their hook-up, and they need privacy. The woman had a home, but having left her husband, she can’t bring the singer back there. The singer might have a home, in fact he probably did, but there might be other reasons why taking this woman there to have sex would create problems. Perhaps it’s just messy and he’s embarrassed. Perhaps he, too, has a family, and this hook-up is a betrayal of them, of which they’re unaware. That explanation would fit better with the rest of the song.

Allen: “Bars have bathrooms…”

I admitted that was true, and sometimes people did have sex in there, although it was frowned upon. That sort of hook-up didn’t appear to fit the mood of the events described in the song, though. It’s more likely to happen when the two people are feeling quite passionate, so much so that they can’t bear to wait long enough to go someplace more appropriate. But as the later parts of the song make clear, the singer is not feeling so enthusiastic about the hook-up any longer.

Allen: “So they go to the hotel room, and Mr. Rogers makes a point of saying that they aren’t talking to each other. What’s that about?”

I guessed that each of them, the singer and the woman, were lost in their own thoughts. The singer was thinking about what the man said to the woman, and may have been having misgivings. It wasn’t clear what the woman was feeling. But the fact that they weren’t talking to each other meant that they hadn’t formed an emotional connection with each other. If they went through with this hook-up, it was going to be just sex they were having, not love.

Allen: “Right, OK. ‘She was a beauty’, that’s clear enough: he finds her desirable, attractive. ‘But when she came to me’: This is vague, but it must mean she’s approaching him and trying to get the sex started. Which is funny, because the second verse said 'He came to the woman who sat there beside me', but that 'came to' is different from this 'came to'. The husband wasn't trying to get sex started in the bar." I nodded. Allen: "Then, ‘She must have thought I'd lost my mind’. Perhaps he left it back at the bar?”

I just looked at him.

Allen: “Sorry, I was just messing with you, I know that’s not what it meant. The woman thinks the singer is… insane, or crazy, though in this case I think it’s not literal mental illness under discussion – right?”

Right. The last two lines convey that the singer has made a decision, which the woman finds surprising, perhaps irrational. She can’t understand the logic of it.

Allen: “And that is, ‘I couldn't hold her 'cause the words that he told her kept coming back time after time’. And by ‘hold her’ – I must admit on the first hearing I got this confused with the drinking. There’s an expression about ‘holding one’s drinks’, and the woman and the singer are both full of drinks by this point, and intoxicated people sometimes have trouble standing up, much less picking up another person. But on reflection I think this has more to do with the sex than with the drinking.”

Spot on. The singer decides he can’t go through with the hook-up.

Allen: “He finds her attractive, though, right? And the other man, the husband, he’s big and maybe scary, but he’s gone home to the four children, so he’s not at the hotel. The words the man said keep 'coming back', but he's not there repeating them, which means the singer is remembering them over and over. The two have their privacy. But the other man’s words ‘keep coming back’. So even though he's not there, he's in the singer's mind.”

The singer might not have realized it right away, but he was moved by the other man’s plight. During the walk to the hotel room, with no conversation to distract him, he’s had time to mull it over. Were there no complications, he’d have sex with Lucille, but now he’s encumbered by guilt. He doesn’t want to join in Lucille’s betrayal of the husband, whom we know to be hard-working, a father, and a loving person.

Allen: “Although if you think about it, whether he goes through with it or not, the jilted husband might not ever know. So it wouldn’t affect him at all.”

We’re speculating now, but it could be that they chose a hotel room because the singer has a family of his own. He might be thinking not only of Lucille’s spouse, but also of his own, and perhaps he too has children. We don’t know any of that for sure, but if it’s the case, he could be thinking about how they would feel if they discovered his infidelity.

We know from the beginning that this guy, the singer, doesn’t have terribly high standards. He saw Lucille remove her ring, and then decided to approach her. If fidelity were high on his list of values, he wouldn’t have done that in the first place. This turn of events at the end of the song, that so surprises Lucille that she deems him crazy, may have surprised him as well. Perhaps he has just learned something about himself: that he does, in fact, have a limit to how far he will go for a hook-up.

Allen (ruffling his flibbers): “Boy, you humans are weird. I may never completely understand you.”

Ain’t it the truth.