“Lunch with Gina”—eighth song on Everything Must Go (2003)

One of my favorite songs from the “later,” (final two) Steely Dan albums—it’s energetic, funky, danceable—good playing all around, horn section—and I even like the synth solo. And lyrically, it’s especially up my alley. Depending on how you interpret it, it’s either pretty funny or pretty disturbing. But like I said before, song lyrics, or any other piece of writing, do not have to mean exclusively one thing—they can comfortably mean two, or countless things. That complexity is what separates us from the beasts—and I’m probably underestimating the beasts. On one hand, this song is the sad tale of an annoying woman named Gina, who the narrator finally comes around to, once he has sex with her. On the other, it’s a valentine to the drug GHB (which both “Gina” and “Lunch Money” are slang terms for). I’m figuring it’s metaphorically around half about one and 50% about the other. And why not, they kind of go together like a Fez and a penis.

I’m not exactly a drug guy, so I only know the drug slang by reading about it—but my second-hand and incomplete understanding of GHB (often known as the “date rape drug”) is that it’s sometimes used to heighten sexual arousal, sometimes unbeknownst to the drugged, or sometimes (arguably in the case of this song) self-administered and very much on purpose. Personally, I don’t particularly need something to make me want to have sex—it’s just kind of always there, like a floating bikini bar in a tropical pool. Not totally true—but let’s just say a half-my-age, fictional version of myself. The idea of manipulating either one’s, or someone’s, sex drive is nothing if not problematic. Though—it strikes me what a funny expression that is: “Sex Drive” – it makes me think of membership drive, or paper drive. Do kids still do that? Organize a paper drive to raise money, where you collect people’s old newspapers and recycle them? It’s a quaint blast from the past. Idea for a screenplay: A bunch of enterprising kids get together and organize a paper drive, and then, against all odds, they raise enough money to buy new uniforms for their high school marching band and majorette battalion. Why aren’t I in Hollywood? But I digress, sorry—what’s the name of that drug that’s supposed to keep you “on point?” I suppose they could have named this song “Sex Drive”—but prefer the approach taken here. I suppose if your song is kind of built on a pun that engages a sex drug that goes by a woman’s name, and that drug is also a date rape drug, it’s advisable to have a backdoor where the song is also about a woman named Gina and some less problematic activity, like, say, lunch.

—Randy Russell 5.12.21