Fill her up

There’s this Sting song on Brand new Day called Fill her up which sounds kind of annoy­ing because Sting does this imi­ta­tion of an Amer­i­can accent, but it tells a sto­ry which real­ly res­onates with me.

It’s about a guy who works at a gas sta­tion in the mid­dle of nowhere and some city slick­er shows up in a fan­cy sports­car tak­ing his hot babe fiancee to Vegas to get mar­ried («yeah, that’s a real dia­mond»). The teller of the sto­ry resents his boss and starts dream­ing of steal­ing the cash­box and run­ning off to take his sweet­ie some­where. As the city slick­er dri­ves away,

See those tail lights head­ing west
I got no mon­ey to invest
I got no prospects, or education
I was lucky get­ting a job at this gas station 

He wants to be a big shot him­self, and comes up with a plan to take the mon­ey and run. But as he’s going through the woods on his way to pick up his girl, with the mon­ey in his hands, a voice reminds him what he’d be doing to the girl, that he’d be «fill­ing her up» with sad­ness and shame and mad­ness and blame. Does he real­ly want to impress her by giv­ing her the life of a thief on the run?

It’s a reminder that I can’t make myself more attrac­tive by my schem­ing and plan­ning and play­ing the big shot. Or worse, that per­haps I can, but that my self-destruc­tive actions affect oth­er peo­ple as well, and that I would be hurt­ing those clos­est to me by sac­ri­fic­ing my own sense of right and wrong.

I think maybe I’ll change my han­dle to «Lenny Nero».

The cool thing is that the song goes on to say «you’ve got to fill her up with» spir­it, grace, heav­en. Sting does­n’t both­er to tell us whether the atten­dant brought the mon­ey back.

It’s rain­ing out now. I’d go out and run naked except that I’m in Oak­land and I’d prob­a­bly be arrested.