Candy

My reading of it:

Candy is suffering due to her relationship with the narrator. He can no longer see her life improving with him in it. Possibly, he is much older than Candy, and thus it is socially shameful for them to be together. Or, he is in a position of political power which she is not. He refuses/cannot accept being the part of Candy’s life that she “doesn’t want to know” (pain, trauma, ostracism).

People call Candy a “baby” and a “whore” instead of shaming the narrator, and he can’t see any path of this rhetoric changing. He feels guilty knowing that he is ruining Candy’s life (no one else suspects except for him). Everyone else blames Candy. While she never admits it, Candy is suffering deeply in the relationship.

This is why the narrator has “got to go,” because he doesn’t want to be the reason that Candy must confront issues that she never planned to deal with in the first place (her identity, her worth). He can’t keep lying about their relationship all of the time, because lying creates a mockery of his love for her. Still, in the public eye, Candy must be painted as the “whore” in the wrong in order to preserve his reputation. (For some reason, their relationship is put on a Scaffold).

The narrator “knows” that Candy will find a man so much better, because they’re “easy to find” (or, he’s just easy to replace). It seems that the narrator is insecure about his “manhood” and the facets which make this identity due to the relationship, indicating that it must have been grounded in some strong form of cowardice (the most demasculinizing trait). He imagines himself losing his mind without Candy, which might be painful but not as painful as lying all of the time.

Reminds me in a lot of ways of Dimsdale & Hester relationship in The Scarlet Letter. Dimsdale literally just dips and is like “see ya Hester, gotta go” and then lives in extreme guilt with the fact that he abandons her (with the “right” intentions?), but in reality just leaves her to be shamed by society.

I feel like I should go away somewhere so I can slowly lose my mind in peace.

Candy, so sweet and so lonely

This song is so beautiful. And very catchy. I find myself singing it quite often.

To me it sounds like somebody who's in love with somebody with a career he can't handle her having, judging by the name a porno actress or stripper. (baby/whore being what she's called in her job.)

Candy knows the man doesn't agree with her choices, but she refuses to listen to how he really feels, and prefers believing the lies he's telling her about how he feels. (Can't be part of her life she doesn't want to know)

The man really loves her, and he feels as if he's unable to live without her. He thinks he can't be himself with anybody else, and that he'll lose his mind without her. Yet, he knows that he'll never accept the path she's taking in life, and he can't keep lying about being OK with it.

He believes she'll be able to find somebody else better suited, who's willing to support her in doing what she wants to. As he no longer see "the light at the end for her", where she'll quit doing it.