The Pimp and The Priest
(Take me to the river
Take me to the river)
The pimp and the priest pounce on quickened cats’ feet
For the freshest young blood, innocence for the feast
The book will then brew what the sinful commit
While the pimp and priest prey quietly where the precious sinners sit
Confess, oh, confess
In the chapel or brothel where we suffocate stress
We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch
(We’ll conquer your sins while she screams on her back)
Faster, save me
How the sins remain hostage
Harder, I can’t breathe
Now the priest and the pimp are already equipped
With an enigmatic frontage posts “we welcome walk-ins”
So we corner our pace and make quick for the door
To be pardoned and passed from the bed to the floor
Confess, oh, confess
In the chapel or brothel where we suffocate stress
We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch
(We’ll conquer your sins while she screams on her back)
Take me to the river
Take me to the river
Faster, save me
How the sins remain hostage
Harder, I can’t breathe
Sing softly, sing ’em to the lake
Sing softly, bring ’em to the lake
Faster, save me
How the sins remain hostage
Harder, I can’t breathe
🌲🌲🌲
What happens?
While Ms. Terri continues working at The Dime, we are given a glimpse of the establishment’s proprietor and the story’s main antagonist, The Pimp and the Priest, whose greedy MO is divulged.
What’s in a name?
The Pimp and The Priest. Here’s our main villain. But isn’t that two people? No! It’s yet another single character with a dual persona, as is prolific in the acts.
Whose viewpoint?
Omniscient and/or Ms Terri.
🌲🌲🌲
>0:06 – 0:23 Instrumental
SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAZE!! That’s the word to describe TP&P whenever his little theme here comes up. This is not an honest person or an honest environment that we’re going to be dealing with, here…
>(Take me to the river / Take me to the river)
After a hard day of work at the Dime, Ms Terri makes the same miserable request of TP&P that she always does: arrange me transport back to the river, so that I can go home to the lake and to Hunter.
Or taken more generally: ‘get me the hell out of here!’, a sentiment likely shared among many workers of the Dime.
Though she goes, we stay at the Dime, to get a peek at its scummy proprietor.
>The pimp and the priest pounce on quickened cats’ feet / For the freshest young blood, innocence for the feast
Great lyrics and singing from Casey all through this song. Just getting that out of the way first.
Anyway, so here’s our villain, and aside from his dual professions, here’s the first thing to know about him: he is an opportunist who thrives by exploiting the innocent. The more innocent they are, and hence more vulnerable and exploitable they are, the better. Given the way he pounces upon such marks, with sly grace and initiative, we surmise he’s extremely practised at what he does and more than happy to do it. The specific aspect of soiling the pure, too, seems to give him a kind of satisfaction, like a pig gorging on delicacies. In other words, he’s a conman, who targets those who’ll trust him.
But before getting ahead of ourselves. He’s a pimp and a priest… geez, not a very coherent resume. But there is a thread of commonality here. These are both fields that give an individual incredible authority over others, with the Priest guise able to shape a congregation’s moral character (and self-worth, and trust, and guide ‘righteous’ action), and the Pimp guise able to lead the vulnerable or desperate to ruin themselves for ‘easy’ money. Someone who’d pursue both professions is a moral hypocrite and a two-faced Machiavellian, drifting naturally to positions where they have the power to destroy and control others.
There’s more to say about TP&P being a priest specifically as opposed to say, a generic life coach or a politician, due to the weighty element of religion. But I’d principally take it as a warning that immoral people can and sometimes will place themselves as moral authorities, to enable their immorality.
>The book will then brew what the sinful commit / While the pimp and priest prey quietly where the precious sinners sit
Aaand here the dual meanings begin! Hokay!
‘The book’ is both the Bible and a pocketbook — the Bible determines the actions of sinners by codifying what are sinful acts, while the pocketbook determines the actions of sinners by how it guides TP&P. That is, TP&P is motivated by profit, and has found substantial profit to be made in selling vice. Thus, he has entered the sex industry, and will drag others into it, too.
TP&P both ‘prey’ and ‘pray’ in the church, as he both has a predatory nature and… well, is a priest, but is also dependant upon the existence of these victims to sustain himself. Were he to lose the veneer of legitimate authority that leads people to fundamentally trust him, he would quickly be destroyed. That’s his vulnerability, and that’s the one thread of weakness that might lead him to pray. I don’t imagine he’s much of a believer in what he preaches, otherwise.
Hence, sinners are precious to him, as he is only able to get away with his con, and sell his product, when the moral character of the society he victimises is weak. By the fact he is the city’s Priest, though, he himself is the one able to dictate whether visiting the Dime is morally excusable, and encourage the demographic that should most loudly call for its closure (those concerned with doing the morally right thing) to say nothing at all. He quite actively uses his position as Priest to encourage his followers to act sinfully, and excuse sin, while strengthening his own position.
Also note that he doesn’t see his congregation as misguided people of virtue, but as sinners, zeroing in on their flaws. If he’s devout about anything, it’s probably about being judgemental.
Can envision this shot as him standing at the pulpit, hands in prayer amid a sermon, as he looks analytically over his congregation.
>Confess, oh, confess / In the chapel or brothel where we suffocate stress
TP&P calls for you to confess to him. He very desperately wants that — to hear your most intimate secrets, your most wicked thoughts, your most shameful deeds, your most sensitive doubts… so that he can use them against you, of course. He’s a blackmailer.
Why on earth would anyone tell their deepest secrets to someone as sleazy as the Pimp! Well a lot of people do, routinely, and there’s two good reasons they would.
One: he’s the Priest. Moreover, he’s a Catholic priest. That is to say, his church practises the sacrament of the confessional. He naturally accrues overwhelming blackmail on his congregation from the things they confess to him in the confessional. This is the confession in the chapel.
Two: he’s the Pimp. People are much more liable to say (and do) compromising things when they figure themselves in equally compromised company, or when they’re bedding their favourite mistress and their guards are dropped to zero. Such information then filters to the Pimp. This is the confession in the brothel.
‘Suffocate stress’ — great phrasing. A visit to a brothel or a confessional principally is meant to feel good, as a release from the burden of holding on to a sin, or as a release in a more physical sense. But since the confessional is really a blackmail booth, and TP&P doesn’t guide those who have sinned to stop, visiting it is really a way to get a cheap hit of moral rectitude before you sin again and inevitably wind up back in the booth. Equally, visiting a brothel feels good, but isn’t a long-term solution to whatever discontents may be going on in one’s life, and rather adds the baggage of knowing you’ve done something bad or shameful. The stress in either case is never resolved, just suppressed.
This is the principle of how addictions work. The high initially feels good, but eventually one’s body becomes so accustomed to the aroused state that the hyperarousal becomes ‘baseline’. The actual baseline, which is your body in absence of the arousing stimulus, then feels wrong. It’s escaping this wrong feeling of unease, withdrawal, or stress that drives the addiction, and though probably not as intensively (or even intentionally) as would a proper drug, TP&P has set up a cycle to yank people in and out of stress states in a similarly self-perpetuating manner.
Finally note how carelessly he appends ‘or brothel’ on this line — whatever method suits you suits him, as long as he profits from it.
>We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch
‘We’ll tend to your needs if you pay us’. The framing of TP&P offering an exclusive service, as though it’s so desirable you need to be booked into it, begins here with the implication that said service is greatly beneficial. Simultaneously, it’s callous: TP&P won’t waste a second on your ‘needs’ if you won’t front up and pay him. ‘Got time, got time’.
>(We’ll conquer your sins while she screams on her back)
Through your sin you will be a saint! That’s the kind of backwards world TP&P is selling. Specifically, go rail a whore in the Dime, come be absolved in the confessional, and know in the end you’ve made your effort and have your licence to do it all again tomorrow. If you hadn’t committed the sin, you wouldn’t be absolved now, would you?
>Faster, save me
Great juxtaposition. This line gets reprised a lot, and for now probably represents Ms Terri back at another day at work, while also generally representing the contradictory, whirling cycle of the Church and the Dime. ‘Save me from sin, quickly, hallelujah’ but also, ‘Fuck me faster big boy! (Oh my god, get me out, let it end!)’.
>How the sins remain hostage
The sins people commit at the Dime will never be absolved because there is no legitimate Priest who could do so. Instead, there’s just TP&P, who enables and encourages people to continue in their vices, then controls them with addiction and blackmail. Equally, once he has led someone into vice, it’s extremely unlikely they’ll ever get away from sin or corruption. A ‘hostage’ is how it feels to be in TP&P’s orbit.
>Harder, I can’t breathe
Same as faster/save me, but harsher. The strength Ms Terri had in Inquiry has broken down considerably by now, especially when she’s mid-work. TP&P’s whole regime is suffocating. First appearance of the breathing motif around sex.
>Now the priest and the pimp are already equipped / With an enigmatic frontage posts “we welcome walk-ins”
The position of ‘priest’ and of ‘pimp’ is now flipped. Call him a Priest moonlighting as a Pimp or a Pimp daylighting as a Priest, either way’s arbitrary.
‘Enigmatic frontage’ alludes to like four things at once. One: when acting as the Pimp, TP&P wears a mask, concealing his identity. Two: even when he’s acting as the Priest, and not wearing a mask, his true thoughts are hard to read. Three: The outward facade of the Church conceals the corrupt nature of the Priest. Four: The outward facade of the Dime does not make it immediately obvious that it’s a brothel.
Same for we welcome walk-ins. Referring to TP&P, it means he projects an accommodating, friendly demeanour to basically everyone he comes across. Referring to either establishment, it simultaneously means he doesn’t turn anyone away (welcoming everyone as a potential mark/patron), while also inviting passersby to try either establishment as a therapeutic option for solving what ails them.
>So we corner our pace and make quick for the door / To be pardoned and passed from the bed to the floor
TP&P’s MO is stated explicitly: he encourages people to patronise the Dime as the Pimp, then forgives them for doing so as the Priest, so there is no moral safeguard against indulging obsessively in vice. This, of course, gives the Priest great blackmail and makes his profit margins shoot up.
>Take me to the river / Take me to the river
This repetition is likely more than Ms Terri going home: everyone caught in TP&P’s schemes is thinking, ‘get me out of here!’.
>Sing softly, sing ’em to the lake / Sing softly, bring ’em to the lake
A general plea for those caught in TP&P’s schemes to find a better future, and for a good end of the story with TP&P defeated, but maybe also Ms Terri mentally soothing herself in the midst of (and after) getting railed by detaching herself from the scene and reminding herself that this is for Hunter’s future. Sounds a bit like a lullaby, and given that Hunter reprises it later, she may have sung it to him.
空劫罰 祟りネコ | JP -> ENG / TDH 