"Met her in a hotel lobby, masturbating with a magazine"
It suddenly occurred to me yesterday that this is not only ambiguous about the use of the magazine, it's also ambiguous about whether it refers to Prince (the speaker) or Nikki.

For example, in the sentence:

"I ate a sandwich on the train, holding onto a pole"

obviously the second verb "holding" is referring to "I" and not the train.

However, in the sentence:

"I saw her in the supermarket, fixing her hair"

obviously "fixing" refers to her and not I.

But what if it had said:

"I saw her in the supermarket, checking out the mangoes" - the second part could equally refer to "her" or "I"

i think it was her who wos wanking.

muirdo said:

that was the impression I got from the song

I think you have some dangling modifier issues

muirdo said:

yep Nikki

well, how was she masturbating with a magazine? OUCH!!! wouldn't she get paper cuts???

perverts

I masturbate with a magazine. No paper cuts.

wasitgood4u said:

I have always wondered that also. Whenever I ask someone, they think I am an idiot. They seem to think it is obvious that the masturbator is Nikki. But, it could just as easily be Prince. I guess we'll never know…

Too bad Prince didn't write a song about the freak working the front desk enjoying the show.

gmcb said:

Maybe the hotel lobby is masturbating!?

Its fairly obvious its Nikki, it serves to illustrate the previous line in which she's described as being a "sex fiend". The whole song is about innocent little Princey being used by the sex mad hornbag Nikki. Prince talking about tugging himself in public would tend to undercut that, don't ya think?

Context, people, context!

Tipper Gore loves this song!

"Innocent little Princey" lmao

Yeah of course I always thought it was Nikki, but it suddenly occurred to me that it could just as easily mean "Prince" (or the "I" character in the song). That possibility does fit in with the context - Nikki is the sex fiend and Prince is inexperienced and hung up. He might be masturbating with a magazine when he sees Nikki and she suggests he tries the real thing...

(Actually, I'm probably pressing the point too hard, it does seem to be Nikki who's masturbating. So let's go back to the age-old question: what exactly is she doing with the mag?)

This definitely needed a thread of its own!

wasitgood4u said:

I always thought that nikki was looking at the mag ..... but now ..... you a bunch of pervs lol

oldpurple said:

ME TOO! To me it was obvious she was looking at the mag while masturbating (ya know like the fellas do when they do it)