Evicted

Evicted
I have been evicted
From a soul constricted
By the flameless fire
Can we all just go cold?

If you need a little cash you sell yourself
To everything
A dollar in exchange for failing hearts
So loudly say

Oh, how I surely know that frame of mind
Sleeping softly curbside
Comfortably abroad on a stolen ticket
None of this will last, all of this will pass
When bed sheets are broken glass
I know your hearts will skip a beat in empathy

If you need a little cash you sell yourself
To everything
A dollar in exchange for failing hearts
So loudly say

Oh, how I surely know that frame of mind
Sleeping softly curbside
Comfortably abroad on a stolen ticket
None of this will last, all of this will pass
When bed sheets are broken glass
I know your hearts will skip a beat in empathy

It’s just that easy, pick yourself up
And go give the world a great big smile
(Hey, hey, kid, hey, kid, get a job
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, kid, get a job)
Wash your mouth out, ditch those morals
Sleep your way right to, right to the top
(Hey, hey, kid, hey, kid get a job
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, kid, get a job)

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Ms Leading considers the difficult position she’s in — she’s found real affection for Hunter, and wishes to keep their relationship going, but fears it will collapse once he learns she’s a prostitute. She looks back on her life and resents how she’s come to be in her occupation, but also finds herself too poor and desperate to quit.

What’s in a name?
‘Evicted’, aka, ‘Forced out of your comfort zone’. Ms Leading has to adjust to the idea that maybe the world isn’t totally cold, and there could be worth in pursuing happiness in something other than the life she has now.

Whose viewpoint?
Ms Leading.

🌲🌲🌲

>I have been evicted / from a soul constricted / by the flameless fire
Once again we have a dramatic tonal shift as we return to Ms Leading’s gloomy world, though compared to before in The Church and The Dime, things now sound a little more melancholic than cynical. Well, Ms Leading’s life has had a significant change since then — she’s entered a relationship with somebody who loves her, and who has shown sincere care for her.

‘I have been evicted from a soul constricted by the flameless fire’. ‘Flameless fire’ is the feeling of anger and boiling contempt Ms Leading held toward the world back in the Church and the Dime, a mindset that she’s had for so long that it’s become her default approach to life. In other words you could call it her ‘home’. That she’s been evicted from it means she’s been forced to separate from it; she bemoaned in the Church and the Dime that the world is exploitative and that love has become sparse, but Hunter’s innocent affection has rattled that view.

She’s been enjoying her time with Hunter, accepts that he genuinely loves her, and knows that his investment towards her has zero ulterior motives — he seriously just likes her. That she says her soul was ‘constricted’ before her relationship with him is her confessing that the spiteful, cynical manner she regarded the world with before was making her distrustful, miserable, and hopeless. She could not see her life improving in any meaningful way from what it was. Now, despite herself, she is beginning to feel happy, hopeful, and excited at the prospect of a future with Hunter — or hell, even a current with Hunter. He just makes her happy.

‘By the flameless fire’ -> Since she’s been evicted from the flameless fire, we can figure that what she has now is a ‘fire with the flame’ or a ‘fireless flame’. Either way, there is a small but powerful light that partially severs Ms Leading from the City’s corruption, which Hunter has ignited inside her. It’s this flame driving the shift in Ms Leading’s worldview. She’s fallen in love with Hunter.

Narratively speaking, Ms Leading now ‘holds’ the flame.

>Can we all just go cold?
But, though Ms Leading recognises herself invested in this relationship, she’s reluctant to surrender her caution and chance herself on this love. Things would be much easier if Hunter were the same as any other client, somebody who doesn’t really care about her, so somebody she could dismiss. She knows he’s not, and she’s glad he’s not, but she can’t help being suspicious. Her newfound warmth and love is overriding her doubts, but they linger, and it’s frustrating her to see herself change like this.

Because, after all, there’s no way this relationship can work.

I envision this verse as her in her room after a fun day out with Hunter, blanket balled in her hands, finally forced to recognise that there might be something to this relationship.

>If you need a little cash you sell yourself / To everything / A dollar in exchange for failing hearts / So loudly say
Ms Leading recovers some of her usual edge as she reflects upon how she got here and what has made her so cynical.

Ms Leading views the world as mercenary in large part because she is mercenary: she’s given up any kind of principle, hope, or aspiration she had to instead entertain punters she loathes because flat-out, she really needs money. The world enabled this with corrupt actors as TP&P and the Dime’s clients, but ultimately she did decide to throw whatever other options she had away for those prostitution bucks.

Equally, she finds that love is rare because she’s in an occupation that presupposes there’s no real love. That is, to get the satisfaction of a lover without the commitment or responsibility is the appeal of a prostitute, so just as much as Ms Leading has enabled the withering of her clients’ relationships, she’s allowed herself to lose faith in love because she’s associated it so deeply with monetary transactions. If she finds love is cheap, it’s because she sold it for cheap.

We can figure that she isn’t charging Hunter for any of their bedroom liaisons.

>Oh, how I surely know that frame of mind / Sleeping softly curbside / Comfortably abroad on a stolen ticket
Though Ms Leading’s reflection of her choices and circumstances sounds accusatory, she can certainly empathise with how she got there, with a glimpse into her own past.

Ms Leading was homeless, living on the street, after illegally immigrating to the country where the story takes place (USA?) aboard a ship. Though it’s unclear what her life was like in her old country, she certainly seemed to have hopes of finding something better, or maybe safer, for herself in America. It also sounds like her initial time spent homeless wasn’t as oppressive towards her as the Dime is, or was somehow familiar; it was certainly not ideal, but not enough to make her bitter.

This makes Ms Leading another character who ended one life for another, and opens the possibility of her adopting a fake name (that of the person whose ticket she stole) to use to reinvent herself in America. I’m doubtful she did, though, because we never see her focus on her identity as a major thing, but it’s neat to see her as fitting in the death/rebirth cycle of new lives, personal reinventions, etc.

But the big takeaway from all this: Ms Leading was penniless when she came to the City, with no friends or contacts or guidance to help navigate her in this new world, having left everything behind.

>None of this will last, all of this will pass
This sounds like Ms Leading breaking out of her reminiscing to urge herself not to invest too much into Hunter; she is warning herself the relationship will fail as much as her new life overseas failed. She isn’t the rich cheery socialite Hunter thinks she is; she’s a bitter prostitute desperate for money, and once he realises who and what she really is, he’ll realise that she deceived him and leave her.

I can also read this as her mindset towards joining the Dime. She wasn’t massively keen to, but figured she wouldn’t be staying there long. Well, it didn’t work out like that.

I get the feeling this is an attitude she’s had towards a lot of things in general — her circumstances won’t last, so don’t get attached to them.

>When bed sheets are broken glass / I know your hearts will skip a beat in empathy
Continuing from the read of her expecting herself to leave the Dime quickly — she had the rather calculating thought that one of her clients would take pity on her situation sooner or later, and love her so much that they’d get her out of there. This didn’t happen. More generally, too, she expected to receive a lot more sympathy than she did for being so poor she had to resort to this.

This is definitely a thought she had around the time she joined the Dime, but it sounds like she’s repeating it to herself in denial in reference to Hunter despite knowing this isn’t how things worked out: maybe, when the truth comes out, Hunter will be understanding…?

>It’s just that easy, pick yourself up / And go give the world a great big smile / Wash your mouth out, ditch those morals / Sleep your way right to, right to the top
Aaaand there’s the moneyshot. How on earth did Ms Leading come up with such a strange, manipulative, and mercenary plan, whereby she’d get herself off the street and become independent by becoming such a compelling prostitute, everyone would fall in love with her?

The answer is that she didn’t. The Pimp came upon her, saw her vulnerable situation, and tempted her to think that prostitution would make her powerful, independent, well-loved, and rich. If she was lonely, many men would come to adore her, and if she was wanting for shelter or food, she’d have more than finances enough for that. She could absolutely succeed in the City — she just had to clean herself up, put on a good face, and be willing to manipulate men ruthlessly.

But of course, that never happened. Nobody fell in love with her, nobody pitied her, nobody really cared about her. ‘Her history is left behind’. She was only one of many interchangeable hookers. But now she was deep in it, and she wasn’t wealthy enough to change jobs. Moreover, she’d come to doubt that there was any point in trying for anything else. The world was cold and the people were ugly. Ms Leading, too, had probably let herself become rather ugly in how coldly she used people’s hearts.

As she looks back on all those amazing possibilities she thought she’d get through this work, she angrily curses herself for being so foolish, and the Pimp for being so slimy.

>(Hey, hey, kid, hey, kid, get a job Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, kid, get a job)
Driving in that this was the Pimp’s pitch to hire her, knowing she was desperate for work and somewhere to go. Also note that unlike Ms Terri, Ms Leading probably met TP&P in his Pimp guise rather than his Priest guise first.

>2:56 – 3:12 Instrumental
But her anger soon subsides as she clears her mind and sets to her day, having something to genuinely look forward to…

>3:13 – 3:45 Instrumental
…Ms Leading feels herself becoming more determined, and more sure, that this relationship with Hunter is bringing her happiness, and that she shouldn’t cast him aside.

Smiling Swine | Act II | Blood of the Rose