Slit Skirts

(album: All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes - 1982)

I was just thirty-four years old and I was still wandering in a haze
I was wondering why everyone I met seemed like they were lost in a maze
I don't know why I thought I should have some kind of divine right to the blues
It's sympathy not tears people need when they're the front page, sad news

The incense burned away and the stench began to rise
Lovers now estranged avoided catching each others' eyes

And girls who lost their children cursed the men who fit the coil
And men not fit for marriage took their refuge in the oil
No one respects the flame quite like the fool who's badly burned
From all this you'd imagine that there must be something learned

Slit skirts
Jeanie never wears no slit skirts
I don't ever wear no ripped shirts
Can't pretend that growing older never hurts

Knee pants
Jeanie never wears no knee pants
Have to be so drunk to try a new dance
So afraid of every new romance

Slit skirts, slit skirt
Jeanie isn't wearing those slit skirts, slit skirt
She wouldn't dare in those slit skirts, slit skirt
Wouldn't be seen dead in no slit skirt

Romance, romance
Why aren't we thinking up romance?
Why can't we drink it up true heart romance
Just need a brief new romance

Let me tell you some more about myself, you know I'm sitting at home just now
The big events of the day are passed and the late TV shows have come around
I'm number one in the home team but I still feel unfulfilled
A silent voice in her broken heart complaining that I'm unskilled

And I know that when she thinks of me, she thinks of me as "him"
But, unlike me, she don't work off her frustration in the gym

Recriminations fester and the past can never change
A woman's expectations run from both ends of the range
Once she walked with untamed lovers' face between her legs
Now he's cooled and stifled and it's she who has to beg

Slit skirts
Jeanie never wears those slit skirts
And I don't ever wear no ripped shirts
Can't pretend that growing older never hurts

Knee pants
Jeanie never wears no knee pants
We have to be so drunk to try a new dance
So afraid of every new romance

Slit skirts, slit skirt
Jeanie isn't wearing those slit skirts, slit skirt
She wouldn't dare in those slit skirts, slit skirt
Wouldn't be seen dead in no slit skirt

Slit skirts, slit skirt
Jeanie isn't wearing those slit skirts, slit skirt
She wouldn't dare in those slit skirts, slit skirt
Wouldn't be seen dead in no slit skirt

Romance, romance
Why aren't we thinking up romance?
Why can't we drink it up true heart romance
Just need a brief new romance