The Everlasting Cigarette of Chastity

Rock ‘n’ roll is typically paired with “sex” and “drugs” in the popular imagination, but it’s amazing how much of it is really about repression, especially when it comes to the sex part. 

Way back in 1964, it was Chuck Berry bemoaning that he “couldn’t unfasten her safety belt” to get some action in his car with “No Particular Place to Go.” It was by no means the first horny pop song, and by no means the last. 

“Strict Time” has a clever rhythm-based metaphor and a string of quotable lines; at the end of the day, it’s about sexual repression too. It’s hard not to also sense a dollop of Catholic guilt swirled into the mix, or at least, the consideration of Catholic guilt as a driving force behind the sweaty angst experienced around sex. 

I mean, it’s there in the subject line of the e-mail, but has there ever been a more apt metaphor for the Catholic attitude toward sex than “the everlasting cigarette of chastity”? It’s got the sensual imagery of sucking on the cigarette; there’s the inherent contradiction of an “everlasting cigarette,” something we’re supposed to believe can’t ash but which must eventually start to crumble as the fire licks away at the tobacco inside. Smoking is compulsive, which also fits the theme, as any red-blooded teenager will tell you. He’s tried, and he’s tried, and he’s still mystified; he can’t do it anymore, and he’s not satisfied. 

Stream “Strict Time” on the service of your choice.

The Other Side of Substack: At Roses in the Rain, we consider “You’ll Be Coming Down,” an album cut from Bruce Springsteen’s 2007 release, Magic.