The only one for me is you, and you for me

I don't know how many times I've heard the Turtles song "Happy Together" (one of radio's all-time most played tunes) without ever noticing that that line is a trick. The word order creates the illusion of reciprocity -- me for you, and you for me -- but in fact it really just says "you for me" twice.

I somehow doubt many of my readers -- mostly Christian, mostly musically sophisticated -- will be in the market for a Satanic-sounding remake of a lightweight sixties pop song, but one of the principles I follow on this blog is never to assume I'm the only one. (I have it on good authority that at least one other person enjoyed my discursus on the dead owl in the suitcase!)

Making a "dark" version of non-dark source material is the oldest trick in the book for the pseudo-profound -- but in this case I think they're actually on to something. Go back and read the Turtles' original lyrics, and it's pretty clear that the song (much like the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood") was dark all along.

Imagine me and you, I do

The relationship exists only in the narrator's imagination.

I think about you day and night, it's only right

To think about the girl you love and hold her tight

Given that they're not actually in a relationship, "and hold her tight" is decidedly creepy.

If I should call you up, invest a dime

If I should -- strictly counterfactual. He's never called her up, and the idea of doing so is as much a fantasy as everything else in the song.

And you say you belong to me and ease my mind

Because his mind is not at ease right now.

When you're with me, baby the skies'll be blue

For all my life

Notice the future tense. He's not talking about how he feels when she's with him (because she's never with him), but how he imagines he will feel when they're together (as, he feels sure, they are destined to be eventually).

The only one for me is you, and you for me

As I've already mentioned, this is just literally saying "You're the only one for me, and you're the only one for me."

So happy together

How is the weather

Is this just a random line inserted for no other reason than that it rhymes? Or is asking about the weather -- the canonical example of the sort of meaningless small talk in which perfect strangers engage -- the only real, non-fantasy, interaction he's ever had with this girl he's so obsessed with?