Lunch With Gina

Gina is slang for the recreational drugs GHB and Meth used together. I've always considered Lunch With Gina a drug song.It discusses paranoia, addiction, avoidance, physiological effects, and all the typical drug stuff. Another brilliant Dan lyric.

Well, it's a simple tale where verse 1 and 2 details our narrator's trouble in avoiding Gina. Why he's avoiding here is not hard to figure out when he mentioned that she's barred from Nino's but was motivated enough to just wait for our hero to leave.

The bridge describes his panic attack when Gina called him at home, render him cowered in fetal position.

By verse 3, he's resigned to his fate and actually agree to a date with her, and she shows up late. But hey, the up side is that she's at least a knock out looker. You just have to deal with her psychotic tendency.

I love it when the lyrics of a tune can be seen overtly as referring to one thing, usually some sort of human relationship set of issues, but covertly has something else as its true subject matter, like is done here. I'm not a drug user, but I don't doubt for a minute that the comments from SpittingLama hold water. Great songwriting!

My take on the third verse is that it is chronologically out of order with the first two and refers to the very start of the forever lunch with Gina. The protagonist is saying to us, "So now that you know what's going on now, let me tell you how it all started."

Lunch with Gina…is forever, because this is a classic SD song about drug withdrawal, and the formidable symptoms following him everywhere he goes until he finally gets a hit. Nailed to the floor in the no-option zone. Gina, is a slang term for a drug. Sex Drugs Rock n Roll.

If this brilliant song’s narrative is meant to be taken literally, I picture the main protagonist to resemble Dennis Weaver‘s character in the classic Orson Welles film, “Touch Of Evil”.

More projections of cryptic drug use by people who use those drugs. The saying "To a hammer every problem looks like a nail" comes to mind.

Relationships in Steely Dan songs are commonly just that, relationships with people, though unhealthy ones. See, 'Rikki don't lose that number' which for decades was imagined to be slang for how to hide a joint when it always was just a song about hitting on a married woman who wanted nothing to do with Fagan (this was much later confirmed in an interview). See, 'Cousin Dupree' which is an infatuation, just with a poor familiar (literally) choice. See, 'Gaucho' where the protagonist has a relationship looked down on by certain mafioso types. See, 'Do it again' where the protagonist repeats the same mistakes in life, to include loving a wild one that brings only sorrow. See, 'Don't take me alive' where a crazy guy murders his own father.

Gina is a crazy hottie, and anyone that has dated a knockout might relate, that looks and crazy can go hand in hand. Gina herself might have the drug problem in this scenario, but the lyrics themselves do not make that clear enough to say for certain. If the main character has any issue expressed in the story it is that he lacks the strength to make a break, or is weak and wants to keep the hottie around for some limited purposes but doesn't want her to stay around.

He might wish he could 'lose his lunch' with Gina.. ie, the situation makes him sick.

[Edit: Typos]

She's a charmer like you never seen...

Yeah this is one of those kinds of women who is a horrible person but she's so fine that you can't stop letting her use you.

A would-be romantic hero has a date with a woman who's so beautiful he either forgets or doesn't care that she's a total psycho

Ah! Yet another mad woman inhabiting the Steely Dan universe. Gina, you're irresistible - and indeed user like GreyBlue Eyes says. One day you'll come to cry on my shoulder, and I'll have to tell you to drink your big black cow and get outta here.......

My friend Perry.