To Be Alone

This song is surprisingly ambiguous. The reading I'm going to give is far from the only possible interpretation, but hopefully the reasons I prefer it will become clear as I go through the song.

Never feel too good in crowds, With folks around, when they're playing, The anthems of rape culture loud, Crude and proud creatures baying.

All I've ever done is hide, From our times when you're near me, Honey, when you kill the lights, And kiss my eyes, I feel like a person for a moment of my life.

Disliking people being jackasses ("baying"), and responding with a desire for escapism ("hide"). While he's with his lover, the exposing light of the world is darkened, his eyes are kissed, and he doesn't have to see the lewd and cruel actions of his fellow man any longer. For the brief moment of time that he doesn't see the disgusting aspects of human behavior, he can feel like a part of the human race ("like a person"), rather than his prior state of revolted alienation.

You don't know what hell you put me through, To have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you, To feel your weight in arms I'd never use, It's the God that heroin prays to...

It feels good, girl it feels good, It feels good, it feels good, It feels good, girl it feels good, Oh, to be alone with you.

While having sex, if foreplay and teasing are protracted, the desire for consummation can become intense enough to produce actual, physical pain ("hell", "skin that crawls from you", reading "from" as "because of"). The "kiss" is likely a euphemism for the release of intercourse. After orgasm, one tends to feel lethargic, satiated, and disinclined to do much other than hold one's partner ("your weight in arms I'd never use"). For a heroin addict, waiting too long between indulgences produces emotional turmoil, intense cravings, and a good deal of physical discomfort, including skin that quite literally feels like it's crawling off of one's body ("hell", "skin that crawls"). The "kiss" here would be the act of using the drug. While high, one tends to feel lethargic, satiated, and disinclined to move ("arms I'd never use"), a heroin user also quite literally feels like one's limbs are heavy while high ("to feel your weight"). Having sex and using heroin are being set up as parallel, possibly even equivalent, experiences.

There are questions I can't ask, Now at last the worst is over, See the way you hold yourself, Reel against your body's borders.

In this reading, one of the two lovers is a heroin addict. Now, when an addict says they need enough opiates to "hold" them, what they mean is that they intend to use enough to keep the physical sickness away, but not enough to be high. My understanding is that's still an uncomfortable state, but it at least keeps them from vomiting all over the floor and lets them function. He doesn't ask what she's doing, or why, as she's getting and using drugs. "The worst", the sickness, is over when she uses. "See the way you hold yourself,/Reel against your body's borders" can be taken here to indicate she's used much more than she'd need to just hold herself, she is reeling. There's a nice bit of punning if one presumes this interpretation: Instead of having him hold her, she is "hold[ing] herself" by taking drugs, and gaining the pleasure that physical interaction could bring alone instead of with him.

I know that you hate this place, Not a trace of me would argue, Honey, we should run away, someday, Our baby and her momma and the damaged love she makes.

She's just used. He says, "I know that you hate this place". Consider how the song begins: Voicing a desire for escapism. Now consider the proposed equivalence between sex and drugs: They are both methods of escaping unpleasant realities. He concludes that in spite of sex being available, she clearly needs another escape, because she just used one. Hence, he points out that they both "hate" and need to escape "this place". Positing them both escaping together offers her another escape, as well as allowing him to continue to share something (their need to escape) with her while she's escaping him (by getting high). This while voicing a desire to find a place or time when neither of them will need to run away anymore. Another little ambiguity: There's no conjunction between the last two lines of this verse. It could be read as him acknowledging that he needs to run away from or with his lover and child. (I err towards with, but I like the pall of doubt the absence grants the line.)

But I don't know what else that I would do, Than try to kiss the skin that crawls from you, Than feel your weight in arms I'd never use, It's the God that heroin prays to...

The differences between this verse and the previous iteration are huge. Instead of being kissed, he is now "try[ing]" to kiss her. Instead of being in a hell that will soon be ameliorated, he is uncertain what he should do ("I don't know what else"). Helplessly, he tries to kiss her skin. But her skin's already crawling from her: a withdrawal symptom this time, rather than the pleasantly painful sensation of the first iteration. "To feel your weight in arms I'd never use" I read here as "to hold you with my arms even though I can't use them to make you feel better".

It feels good, girl it feels good, It feels good, it feels good, It feels good, girl it feels good, Oh, to be alone with you.

One of the reasons I like this interpretation is that it allows for so many ways to be alone. When they're alone together, they're apart from the rest of the world. When she's using, she's alone because she's escaped even from him. At that point, he tries not to be alone by focusing on what they share even when she's high: A desire to escape and hide from the world. When she's withdrawing at the end, she's even more alone, because she's in a hell he isn't experiencing. At that point, he is finally inescapably alone, because she is suffering, completely disconnected from him, and there is nothing he can do. All the connections are broken, one by one.

It's pretty.