She wore black leather boots with spiked heels.

It was a cold night, but warm inside the crowd of people.  Every other young girl was a red head.  Gary asked if I thought it was a coincidence.  I don’t think that it was. 

I remember the days I wanted to be a red head.  1992.  Little Earthquakes came out the year before and a friend and I met every Friday evening to “practice” playing guitar for our “band.”  Mostly we would just talk and make plans for college and exchange lyrics of the songs we wrote.  I listened to Tori probably more than David Bowie that summer and if you read the lyrics I wrote back then, you would be able to tell.  But that phase died, along with everything else, and here I am, 10 years later, none the richer and I don’t think I will ever get that big break in anything. 

Suddenly, the lights dimmed and a beautiful voice rang out through the theatre.  Tori Amos emerged in a shiny silvery dress with flowing sleeves, blue jeans underneath  and a RED flower in her RED hair.  She shimmied over to the piano bench then belted out a song from her newest album, SCARLET'S WALK. 

And I’m so sad, Like a good book I can’t put this day back, A sorta fairytale with you…3 It was a fairytale.   That sound was only the sound of what one would describe as the wail of an angel.  Suddenly the memories of my brash youth, full of hope and inspiration, rejection and loneliness, flooded forward and collected in my eyes.  I had to grit my teeth to hold back the tears.  If they fell over, my thick black eyeliner would streak down my face, and, oh, what a sight that would be. Every finger in the room is pointed at me…4 No one would understand.  Yet, everyone would.  The passion of anger, joy, pain, sexuality, sensuality, and repression…what woman doesn’t know these feelings?