I had a songwriter once give me some unsolicited advice about this song. He said I needed to decide if it was a song about a first kiss, or a song about telling somebody off. He wanted it to only be about the kiss. For him, the “stick it up your ass” comment was way too over the top. (I refrained from suggesting that he might find it offensive due to the possibility that he could have an undiagnosed stick up his own ass. Sometimes restraint is a good thing. ) Oh well, you can’t please everybody.
I immediately threw that advice into the wastebasket at the Hall of Judgement. First kiss songs are a well covered genre. I would prefer to write a song that’s less conventional, even if that means it appeals to fewer people
This could be categorized as a “revenge song”. The narrator delivers it (best served warm this time) in the last verse. It certainly has that element going for it. This is a form of the French expression “espirit d’escalier”, the wit of the stairs. It represents coming up with that snappy comeback after having left the room and thinking of it afterwards while going down the stairs. In this case, that comeback arrives several years down the stairs.
For me, that comeback is much more significant than the story around the kiss. Although the story behind the song is entirely fiction, the emotional part is truer than true. I have a whole laundry list in my baggage of these kinds of things people have said to me in the past; words that diminish. They come from the Not- Enoughers. Comments that make you feel not good enough, experienced enough, talented enough, bright enough, skinny enough, etc. And even though I know that these remarks say more about the speaker than they do about me, it still surprises me how difficult it is to let those comments go and leave them behind. I suspect they remain with me to try and remind me to not be careless with my own comments. Or maybe I carry them around as grist for the song mill.