You're so vain. You probably think this song is about you.

Vanity. It's an evil beast. While I will admit that going to the gym six days a week has significantly improved my mental and physical well-being, and how I fit into my favorite pair of jeans, there's always that little voice in the back of your head saying, "If only I didn't have that extra jiggle on the inside of my thighs. If only I were a little firmer, a little leaner." Health clubs are filled with mirrors to help you watch your form (and the forms of those around you, let's be real here) and to catch a glimpse of your yoga instructor when you're contorted into some crazy position where you're actually seeing her through the reflection of the mirror that you can sort-of glimpse between the bend in your knee and your elbow that's planted there.

I've been pretty good about going to the gym. I bought the right shoes and the right clothes and met with a trainer to set up a routine. I've cut down on processed foods and have been eating lots of greenery as of late. Very little alcohol (except for a very well-deserved visit to the Tap Room last night) in general and enough water to fill the Chestnut Hill reservoir. I aim for six days a week, most of the time I make it but some weeks I only make five. With the show running the way it is, I usually have my whole morning and early afternoon free. No excuse to stay home from the gym. Yesterday, I cut myself some serious slack and loafed around the house, munching on strawberries and peas and carrots and watching reruns of "Saved By The Bell." So today, when I was still in my jammies at 3pm, I decided to go to the gym and kick my own ass.

I walked in, checked the class schedule and, lo and behold, there was a cardio kickboxing class starting in ten minutes. I say to myself, "this could be fun, and a lot more interesting than your usual 45 minutes of interval hill-climbing torture on the elliptical machine, why not?" One hour later, fully nauseated and unable to breathe normally, having turned the color of a well-cooked tomato, lungs aching and pride smarting like hell, I limped up the stairs of the gym and out into the wonderfully cool evening air. I AM SUCH A SHITHEAD. I have no idea what possessed me to think that I could just walk into a cardio kickboxing class. I lift my weights, I push my reps and I sweat plenty. I up the resistance on the elliptical machine. I take the stairs, all four crazy flights, up to the opera office. I try to walk as much as possible and, generally speaking, I feel that I am more fit now than I ever have been. But I tell you this, dear friends - cardio kickboxing is for the criminally insane. And with that said, I'm going down the street to the Tex-Mex place to eat some pulled pork quesadillas and have a blood orange margarita. Because momma is hurting, and this might be one of those situations where tequila actually makes it better.

Excuse me, but can I be you for a while?

I woke up at a reasonable hour this morning, contemplating all the things I have to do (mental checklist of Easter brunch food supplies, daily trip to the gym, go to the bakery, feed the dog, kill the ants invading the kitchen) and after eating a yummy breakfast of toast and strawberries and a latte, care of the marvelous espresso machine that lives in my host family's kitchen, I trotted downstairs to get ready. I flipped on the radio in my room - I like to listen to NPR sometimes when I'm getting ready - and I guess the housekeepers must have dusted the radio because the dial was all askew. So I'm diddling and waiting for the radio to find a signal and it finds some amazing 80's music. I'm content, I begin to make the bed. And then, reaching out of my high school years of obscurity and confusion comes Tori Amos from the speakers, winding her tendrils around me with that song I listened to I can't even say how many times (probably had it on repeat for a couple of weekends in high school and college) and pulls me back in time. Now I'm a romantic, if you couldn't tell already, and I think my memory is heightened by my quirky knack for memorizing song lyrics, but I could describe to you that beautiful day in my junior year when gorgeous Kevin (my first gay boyfriend) wound his fingers into mine and started singing this song to me (we were walking from dinner back to the dorms, I was wearing a t-shirt with a dolphin on it and a broomstick skirt and my birkinstocks, huge silver hoop earrings and likely purple eyeliner) and I found it just as arresting then as this afternoon. Tori Amos always takes me back to that time in my life - those last two years of high school where everything was so uncertain that we clung to each other as if every day were our last. For some of us, it was - it seemed like my friends were getting expelled left right and ceter - and we cried and drank by the river and smoked behind the library and played truth or dare during the ice storm and made out on blankets behind the stadium (okay, sometimes there wasn't a blanket) and went to the Texaco station for push-button capuccino and pints of Ben & Jerry's and ate Jell-O and grilled cheese sandwiches made from a sandwich machine and tried to break as many rules as possible without getting caught. Glorious days they were, learning to read Shakespeare, really read it, cooking mac & cheese in the hotpot and having 'bring your own mug' night with little packets of hot cocoa, watching Dr. Aiken throw his little bag of colored chalk across the room and draw the vector off the chalkboard and over the door and into the hallway. The vector keeps going, yes, we get it Dr. Aiken.

My romance with this particular song hit me pretty hard today. I told my friend Alex on the phone the other night that his moving to a new city and taking a new job would be a great adventure and opportunity for him. Every time I moved, I said, I felt like I uncovered another piece of me that was hidden or repressed. Every time I moved, I felt like another piece of the bullshit facade was chipped away. Lately, I've felt it creeping back. The desire to please, to get along, to make nice - they get in the way of saying what I need to say as an individual and as an artist. "Don't comment on the action, just do the action," Peter's always saying. When we comment on our lives instead of living them, when we comment on the risk instead of taking it, are we lessening our potential for happiness? What amazing things could we share or experience, if we just took the risk of being honest? How long must we shortchange ourselves, just to be as inoffensive as possible?

What if I'm a mermaid with these jeans of his with her name still on it hey but I don't care cause sometimes I said sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here, silent all these years.

I think I do hear my voice in there, between the social graces and the insecurity. I just need to stop telling it to sit down and be polite, people are starting to point. Let them point. And, if you'll permit me to appropriate one other song that makes me smile from high school, this baby's got sauce. She ain't that sweet.