Bruce Springsteen might seem like a weird subject for a column dedicated to philosophical themes in queer music, but I am prepared to defend this choice to the grave. Today’s subject of discussion is desire — that sweet suffering is vividly depicted in Bruce Springsteen’s song “I’m On Fire.” Just like any card-carrying queer, I have had my unfortunate crush on a straight man (Bruce Springsteen’s ass in the “Born to Run” album cover is nothing to sneeze at), and even though my immediate urge would be to snuff out this cringy cliché, there actually is some substance to this that I feel would be better explored than not. What does it mean to desire a person whose desires fundamentally do not include you? (Spoilers, it only makes things worse.)
To begin: a discussion of the contents of the song. It is no surprise that Springsteen is maintained as the iconographic masculine ideal; he is rugged, dirty, and his songs focus on girls who are “little” and cars representing freedom. Unfortunately, “I’m on Fire” doesn’t seek to break with this tradition, but in some ways furthers it (Springsteen refers to his beloved as “little girl”). The music video, however, tells a more interesting story — imbricating motifs of class upon the gendered dynamic. His object of desire is a wealthy woman who comes to his repair shop seeking help with fixing her car. This very act recalls two love theorists who I believe to be very important for understanding how Springsteen activates desire: bell hooks and Anne Carson.
Beginning with the latter, Anne Carson theorizes desire as a will to possess, motivated by the chase but activated by the impediment. Desire is both painful and pleasurable because the will to possess is blocked and maintained by the impediment. Thus, the joy of the chase is able to be maintained, while the beloved is not captured. To map Springsteen’s song onto this, what makes this song so appealing is that Springsteen desires this beautiful, wealthy woman, but is impeded by her marriage and his social class. Activating desire in this way allows the audience to both root for our rugged hero, but also feel the catharsis of his walking away at the end.
bell hooks’s theory of love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing … another’s spiritual growth” maps on to Springsteen’s act of service to his beloved. As the lover, Springsteen performs this act of service for his beloved, but instead of being reciprocated, he is left to wait, longing for her outside her home.
The denial of desire is a painful experience, especially when one has become limerent, towards their beloved. Dorothy Tennov, in her book “Love and Limerence,” theorized limerence as the experience of falling in love, and brought mainstream psychology to think of love as a serious object of study. For her, so long as we are able to believe that our desire will be achievable, our cathexis towards our beloved will be such that our every waking moment is devoted to that person. Springsteen, our limerent subject, describes his desire as a fire which, while eternally burning, never seems to take over, merely an incessant call to be fanned “only you can cool my desire / ooh I’m on fire.” What makes Springsteen so appealing as a masculine subject, in this moment, is that he is able to maintain his cool, detached air. He never allows himself to give in to this painful desire. The feeling of being denied by your beloved is wrenching, it makes you do unimaginable things, but for Springsteen, it just leads him to dejectedly walk away, his future undecided.
As a gay person, desiring a person who is straight is painful because it plays right into the desire’s hands, but also affirms our worst beliefs about ourselves. We live in a society where straightness is hegemonic, where everything else outside of it is juxtaposed with what is “normal.” Many people find the image of a queer person desiring the straight person as a will to normalcy, as homonormativity at its worst, but this is a misunderstanding of why it is painful. The fact is that desire flourishes most when it is impeded by a strong roadblock, and the fact that someone cannot and will not ever desire you is more often than not just a stronger invocation of that pain. The fact that the impediment, your beloved’s sexuality, also places them above you further affirms your beloved’s perfection, while affirming your otherness.
It has always been excruciatingly painful to sympathize with myself for feeling dejected for not being desirable to a straight person. But it’s comforting to know that it is not out of some inner pathology that I feel as I do, but rather inherent to the logic of desire. As much as the cliché is rather rote, it’s so impactful because it is such a common theme and so thoroughly devastating. To any other queer person who has beaten themselves up for feeling desire for a straight person, understand that you are not other, you are not pathological, you are not “weird” or “creepy” or “perverted,” but you’ve only had an essential experience of being a lover.
