d***@bellsouth.net
2009-08-19 16:18:12 UTC
Cuckolding a man yet caring about him? The touching story told by the
song In Some Room Above the Street By Denise Noe
I find the song In Some Room Above the Street, especially as sung in
the inimitable vibrato of the late country singer Gary Stewart, to
have an extraordinary emotional power. Part of the reason for the
song’s power is that it ends on an unexpectedly poignant note.
The song begins by telling of a rather commonplace activity: a couple
who meet in secret, in a hotel or motel room, to engage in sexual
activity. Both of them are secretive because both are married to
someone else.
The narrator speaks of himself and his lover as being “like thieves
and beggars when we meet.” These stigmatized terms are appropriate.
Each is stealing the comfort and pleasure that has been sworn to
another and stealing from their own spouse’s. They feel like beggars
because their relationship has the “low,” embarrassing quality
attached to begging.
Despite their guilt and sense of shame, they continue the affair
because their feelings together are so very “sweet.”
However, the narrator ends by singing, “If he should want your love
tonight, don’t turn away, don’t hurt his pride. Close your eyes and
think of me in some room above a street.”
What is striking in the above passage is the narrator’s concern and
empathy for the man he is cuckolding. This might not be as strange as
it seems. Both the narrator and his lover take care to keep their
illicit activities secret and probably believe – or at least hope –
that what his wife and her husband don’t know won’t hurt them.
The narrator knows that his lover may be tempted to turn away from her
husband out of a feeling, however irrational, that she should be
faithful to the man whom she really loves or at least really desires.
But the man singing also knows that while the husband may not be hurt
by an affair he doesn’t know about, he will inevitably be wounded by a
wife’s rejection. The narrator does not want their affair to cause
another man such a psychic injury. Our singer feels for the husband as
a human being, since humans of both sexes are hurt by rejection, and
specifically as a man since men are usually the ones making advances
and therefore the ones disproportionately apt to be rejected.
Does the man’s lover no longer desire her husband because he has lost
the physical characteristics that once attracted her? That is a
possibility. Another is that the passage of time and the familiarity
of a long marriage have caused her passion for her husband to dull.
However, her lover urges her to do something that a person of either
sex can do: use an illicit passion to rekindle the fires of a marital
one. It neither condones nor excuses adultery but it is an odd irony
of life that extra-marital erotic stimulation can be brought home to
the marriage bed. In Some Room Above the Street is a song that
displays a sense of wisdom and caring even as it tells of a situation
that is fundamentally sordid.
song In Some Room Above the Street By Denise Noe
I find the song In Some Room Above the Street, especially as sung in
the inimitable vibrato of the late country singer Gary Stewart, to
have an extraordinary emotional power. Part of the reason for the
song’s power is that it ends on an unexpectedly poignant note.
The song begins by telling of a rather commonplace activity: a couple
who meet in secret, in a hotel or motel room, to engage in sexual
activity. Both of them are secretive because both are married to
someone else.
The narrator speaks of himself and his lover as being “like thieves
and beggars when we meet.” These stigmatized terms are appropriate.
Each is stealing the comfort and pleasure that has been sworn to
another and stealing from their own spouse’s. They feel like beggars
because their relationship has the “low,” embarrassing quality
attached to begging.
Despite their guilt and sense of shame, they continue the affair
because their feelings together are so very “sweet.”
However, the narrator ends by singing, “If he should want your love
tonight, don’t turn away, don’t hurt his pride. Close your eyes and
think of me in some room above a street.”
What is striking in the above passage is the narrator’s concern and
empathy for the man he is cuckolding. This might not be as strange as
it seems. Both the narrator and his lover take care to keep their
illicit activities secret and probably believe – or at least hope –
that what his wife and her husband don’t know won’t hurt them.
The narrator knows that his lover may be tempted to turn away from her
husband out of a feeling, however irrational, that she should be
faithful to the man whom she really loves or at least really desires.
But the man singing also knows that while the husband may not be hurt
by an affair he doesn’t know about, he will inevitably be wounded by a
wife’s rejection. The narrator does not want their affair to cause
another man such a psychic injury. Our singer feels for the husband as
a human being, since humans of both sexes are hurt by rejection, and
specifically as a man since men are usually the ones making advances
and therefore the ones disproportionately apt to be rejected.
Does the man’s lover no longer desire her husband because he has lost
the physical characteristics that once attracted her? That is a
possibility. Another is that the passage of time and the familiarity
of a long marriage have caused her passion for her husband to dull.
However, her lover urges her to do something that a person of either
sex can do: use an illicit passion to rekindle the fires of a marital
one. It neither condones nor excuses adultery but it is an odd irony
of life that extra-marital erotic stimulation can be brought home to
the marriage bed. In Some Room Above the Street is a song that
displays a sense of wisdom and caring even as it tells of a situation
that is fundamentally sordid.