When you really love someone, you have to offer yourself entirely to them. I’ve learned that the hard way, you can’t half-ass it. Thankfully it’s made easier to do by the fact that you really love this person. This line is about devotion.

When I was in high school, I DJ’d my own prom, which I attended with my cousin as my date. I was pretty happy just cranking out the tunes. We moshed pretty hard to Marilyn Manson. It was a weird night. But nine times out of ten… my back was against the wall. And I was way less sexually active than this guy.

This is a pretty straightforward reference to marriage and being married and how fantastic it is. “For better or for worse” is part of standard marriage liturgy. We stick together and love each other and have fun no matter what life throws at us.

When Alli met me I was a complete wreck, a barely-functioning human being in some respects. She met me and it was like a serious “lightbulb” moment. She saw through me to the good at the core. And I am very thankful for that.

The use of the word “schmuck” corresponds to the “schmaltz” in the song’s title: both are Yiddish words.

This is a reference to the lyric in the chorus of the song, which is similar to the lyric in Blue Öyster Cult’s “Burnin' For You,” which is, hands down, one of the best songs of all time (I'mma let you finish). I am a big fan of this “thinking man’s heavy metal band.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipqqEFoJPL4

There’s a pun on “consumed” and “consummated” that’s not too subtle, but basically what I did here was contrast the flames of passion in the first two lines of the chorus with a different sort of flame: this is a flame like a torch held aloft by someone that you know you’re supposed to follow. Moths follow flame because they’re supposed to follow the stars, and are consumed in the process. I follow my lover and “suffer” the same fate. But it’s not a bad thing: to be lost in something completely is beautiful, and this is an old metaphor of the spirit first alluded to by the Sufi mystics.

Again with the clichés… I think what I was getting at with “Where there’s smoke there’s fire” is a sense of escalation. I remember when I first met Alli, there was the “smoke:” the hint of what was coming on, falling in love. But I was tipped off to it right away, and later, when we fell in love, that passion was the “fire.” There is sensuality and passion in smoldering and burning for someone…

Here’s where the clichés take a sharp dive for the worse. “Scream and shout” may be different verbs, but in this context, they’re completely redundant. But fuck it, when the guy in this song sees his girl, he wants to scream and shout for joy, just for good measure. And she reciprocates.

It’s good to be able to hang onto that explosive feeling. My heart is exploding from beating so fast.