Tori

Driving home I skipped an Eminem song and my iPod shuffled to Tori Amos. My boy, who was protesting some four-year-old melodrama in the back seat, fell silent. My car felt warmer for a moment and my heart vibrated. I had been 12 years old when I first heard this album.
               
My memory drifts to sitting in the back of a truck screaming the words to Cornflake Girl with my friend, Michelle. It was her dad’s truck and he was driving me home. She had played it for before we were about to leave, and like little girls do, we listened to it five times before we left. It was her sister’s CD so she couldn’t loan it out, but I vaguely remembered seeing that name on my dad’s shelf before. When I got home I asked my old man if he had any Tori Amos. Of course he did, which reinforced my interest. So I discovered Under the Pink in its entirety.

It must have been around that time that the woman my dad was dating, Laurie, invited us up to her mom’s place in Alexandria. The place was on hill overlooking a lake. It was made entirely of logs and had ceilings up to heaven. A cozy little loft that was open to look over the living room was the kid’s quarters.  It must have been fall; there was a chill in the air and the warmth of the place made it feel like Christmas. I don’t know how long the music had been playing, (it might have been playing for an hour, or all day, I really don’t know) before I looked up and asked who it was. Again, it was Tori, this time Little Earthquakes.

A few months after Boys for Pele came out. I remember it being the soundtrack to my chores that summer. My sister and I would play it as loud as we could so we could sing a long over the vacuum cleaner.  

Fast-forward 2-3 years: I was sitting in the pool hall talking to a girl I’d never met, who had never met me. I have no idea what we were talking about, how it came up, or why she seemed like such a bitch. One way or another it came up that we both like Tori Amos. She pronounced it with the long O sound, and I pronounced it like Amos and Andy. Maybe that’s why she had been so snobby about it.

Keeping in mind that this was well before I had any concept of sell-out albums, and for all the Tori Amos I liked, I was by no means a FAN, she ROLLED HER EYES at me. She says “Let me guess, From the Choirgirl Hotel.”
I hadn’t heard of that one, so I told her, “Well I only have Under the Pink and Little Earthquakes.” She didn’t really look pleased with this either.

I hadn’t realized that she might have meant to belittle me until after she had walked away.  And when I did realize it, I thought it was interesting that anyone would think to belittle someone else for the albums that drove them to like an artist. I found it interesting that she had an idea of what a Tori Amos liker should look like, act like, and dress like, and that I wasn’t meeting her criteria.

So I pulled into my driveway and turned off my car just as “Crucify” was ending. I hate that I love it because that one girl made it look so pretentious, and yet it is anchored in my memory as one of those things that I’ll probably still enjoy hearing when I’m fifty.