I personally envision a guy sitting there, smoking cigarettes, magazines lying around, and basically he's a mess. He wants to make his life work with this person, but he's basically a bum who is worthless -- "this could be perfect if I wasn't worthless"-- And he wants a life with someone but he can't leave his lifestyle for some reason or another. In the end, he's still investigating all this, but still a bum just 'watching it burn to his fingertips', meaning, not really doing anything about what he is investigating upon - "a perfect love" and "a perfect life with you"
I personally envision a guy sitting there, smoking cigarettes, magazines lying around, and basically he's a mess. He wants to make his life work with this person, but he's basically a bum who is worthless -- "this could be perfect if I wasn't worthless"-- And he wants a life with someone but he can't leave his lifestyle for some reason or another. In the end, he's still investigating all this, but still a bum just 'watching it burn to his fingertips', meaning, not really doing anything about what he is investigating upon - "a perfect love" and "a perfect life with you"