Followup to New on the List

[Ted Jackson jr. 6L6]

>> From:          Nebosuke <Nebosuke at AOL.COM>
> Ted Jackson Jr. wrote:
>
> > The ambiguity's still there.  I think the guy's a stalker, not her
> >  boyfriend.  If he was her lover, he'd know for sure if the woman was
> >  being beaten up.  I think the dude is in love with her, and she
> >  doesn't know it, and he's just daydreaming about her...
>
> Whoa!  Killer insight!  This would explain a couple of things...maybe she
> isn't being beaten at all...the blood on her coffee cup is lipstick, of
> course; who drinks coffee while their mouth is bleeding?...and the marks on
> her hands are from who knows what, she scraped her knuckles or
> something...he's not about to believe her, though, she's lying to him (just
> like all the others!), and that bastard is going underground...
>
> -CB

I thought this reading made the song even more sinister, like the
husband would be killed for nothing!  You still don't know for sure
who killed him.  And of course the guy singing the song could just be
imagining that the wife is looking smug at the funeral while she
could simply be choking back tears.  Shirley gives a couple clues on
the bocfanclub page which may [or may not] refute my interpretation,
but I still like to think of it this way.  Shirley says that the guy
wants her to kill the husband, not that he's planning the murder
himself.  But Shirley does say that the woman is being abused...Oh
well...