“Oop.” The sound of a man caught in the act, but there’s no hint of shame on his face. They’re playing a game. She looks back at him to say, “You crossed the line there,” and he acknowledges that without letting her chiding stop the play. This is what they both want: she wants to be in control, to say “No”, without that “No” stopping him from doing what he wants to her. The psychology underpinning this is well-understood by everyone involved. She’s accepted she’s a ho, and she knows he knows this, and so they dance.
This is not an easy game to play. The contradictions are countless to the point where if you don’t know it’s a game, if you don’t “know ball,” the entire thing seems ridiculous. “It’s just a lazy, vulgar rap with a comical music video,” you say, as if him being cartoonishly small and ill-proportioned isn’t part of the game. “Oh, look at me, I’m so harmless,” meanwhile harbouring a voracious appetite to consume her flesh.
Kanye doesn’t stop the story once the game is over. After testing the waters and validating her protests, he knows the coast is clear and the floodgates open, unloading a filthy verse of pure id. There’s no poetry, no filter, no courting. They can finally do what they came here to do.
She says, “Should we have orange or pink napkins?” You say, “Pink, obviously.” She’ll go, “Well, I like the orange.” You say, “Absolutely right, orange. We need orange napkins. We don’t want pink napkins. We want orange napkins.”
She wants you to engage. She wants you to make the decision, when in fact she’s really making the decision.
Both men see the same thing. She wants all the power and none of the responsibility. However, they have come up with very different strategies for satisfying this desire. Tucker’s strategy is far more practical. It works reliably. Even if she can tell what he’s doing, it doesn’t actually matter. He’s shouldering the responsibility regardless, which is what she really wants. He can never turn around on her and say, “Hey, those orange napkins were your idea!”
The cost of this strategy is a complete sublimation of the self. His desires and preferences are no longer relevant or important. If he really wants this or that for dinner, he can’t just say that and make it happen. “I wanna go to the Italian place.” “I hate Italian. I wanna go Chinese.” “Italian’s disgusting! We’re going to the Chinese place.” Happy wife, happy life, as they say.
Kanye’s strategy suffers no such indignity. “I’m a sick fuck. I like a quick fuck.” He plays the game but does not deny his own self. He wants to fulfil the feminine desire without being consumed by it. It’s a challenging game to play. He wins in the song, but in real life, he’s already had one divorce, and his personal life has far more turmoil than Tucker’s. Perhaps that is the price to pay for keeping some of your self.
For Tucker’s strategy not to seem like a greatly unfair arrangement, the woman also has to suffer the same self-abnegation. One might imagine that in Tucker’s time, such a thing existed, and that these are just different strategies for different times. But his parents divorced when he was young; he is Episcopalian, one of the most liberal denominations of Christianity; and Tucker is only 8 years older than Kanye. So it’s probably more accurate to say his strategy was already past its expiry date by the time he adopted it.
Either that, or this unfairness is simply the way things are and ought to be, and Kanye’s striving to keep his self is a foolish errand. He should just accept his lot. “You’re a sick fuck. You don’t get a quick fuck.”