Notice that each verse in this starts out with what is often called a "confessional" approach - Anne Sexton was a great exemplar of this type of lyrical form, and there is a resemblance in style. The very next portion after that is invariably a reference of harsh corporal punishment - get the belt - which results in a distressed and disturbed girl - "pee-girl". Then the milk recitation comes.
"Milk" is commonly understood as the essential nutrient for healthy life. Her constant reference of this deals with her fundamental needs, how they were met in a peculiar way, inadequately and not satisfactorily at all as to results. "Sour"? Unsatisfying and inadequate. etc. "Milk" having a "dick"? She met her needs through prostitution at one point in her teen years, until her dad kicked her out of the house for it. "Dye" - hiding herself behind the punk hair and make up she used in teen years. I suspect "old milk" could refer to genuinely mature parental figures, people who worked with her to change her behavior for the better or "mind", she encountered when she was in Oregon girl's reform school (which was actually, in the era she was resident there, a therapuetically oriented place, not like the nasty reform school girl prison exploitation movies would suggest).
Ultimately, this song is about self-realization of what she herself needs to acknowledge about herself - both emotionally and in self-image. "I tell you everything" is referring to private thoughts and allowing them back into her conscious awareness, allowing herself to feel what she is seeing clearly in the privacy of her thoughts - her heart touching things. People who have suffered from abuse might not be able to do this, to trust themselves to know what they really feel even, for a long time, until very late in life sometimes.
People who become teen prostitutes have a lot of very thick internal walls to be overcome at some point in life. She was doing this here, I think, and the song meaning is obscure to people who haven't been subject to extremely abusive and disturbing life events when young, as someone who becomes a "teenage whore" has, because they have not the experience of overcoming extreme internal cellularization or "walling off" of what they feel and how they view themselves. That's why it sounds so strange to many.
Notice that each verse in this starts out with what is often called a "confessional" approach - Anne Sexton was a great exemplar of this type of lyrical form, and there is a resemblance in style. The very next portion after that is invariably a reference of harsh corporal punishment - get the belt - which results in a distressed and disturbed girl - "pee-girl". Then the milk recitation comes.
"Milk" is commonly understood as the essential nutrient for healthy life. Her constant reference of this deals with her fundamental needs, how they were met in a peculiar way, inadequately and not satisfactorily at all as to results. "Sour"? Unsatisfying and inadequate. etc. "Milk" having a "dick"? She met her needs through prostitution at one point in her teen years, until her dad kicked her out of the house for it. "Dye" - hiding herself behind the punk hair and make up she used in teen years. I suspect "old milk" could refer to genuinely mature parental figures, people who worked with her to change her behavior for the better or "mind", she encountered when she was in Oregon girl's reform school (which was actually, in the era she was resident there, a therapuetically oriented place, not like the nasty reform school girl prison exploitation movies would suggest).
Ultimately, this song is about self-realization of what she herself needs to acknowledge about herself - both emotionally and in self-image. "I tell you everything" is referring to private thoughts and allowing them back into her conscious awareness, allowing herself to feel what she is seeing clearly in the privacy of her thoughts - her heart touching things. People who have suffered from abuse might not be able to do this, to trust themselves to know what they really feel even, for a long time, until very late in life sometimes.
People who become teen prostitutes have a lot of very thick internal walls to be overcome at some point in life. She was doing this here, I think, and the song meaning is obscure to people who haven't been subject to extremely abusive and disturbing life events when young, as someone who becomes a "teenage whore" has, because they have not the experience of overcoming extreme internal cellularization or "walling off" of what they feel and how they view themselves. That's why it sounds so strange to many.