A Self-Loving Tribute To Tori Amos and Under The Pink
Written by: Ron Bricker
When Tori Amos’s Under the Pink album came out in 1994, I was pretty much full-on lonely and, that said, full-on horny. I was a junior in college and relationships with women was an utter travesty for me (I had yet to meet the baritone-playing, feline-loving, doobie-smoking fiancé that was to break up with me soon after which was an utter travesty as well, to almost suicidal proportions). So my nights were spent with my roommate Ben in our dorm room watching episodes of Seinfeld.
Sometimes we’d open up our window to the street below and say retarded things to passers-by like “I’m a retard.” Perhaps, thinking back on it, saying things like “I’m a retard” was one of the reasons I was devoid of sexual contact with the opposite sex. The closest I got to losing my virginity and having sex in college with a woman (before said fiancé) was sitting next to a girl who was in the Delta Delta Delta sorority (from what I could gather from her endless wearing of Delta Delta Delta Ts and sweatshirts all filled out with her DDD bust) in my communications 101 class and having her say to me once while we were quietly taking notes, “You have, like, freakishly thin arms.”
What did I do then, you’re thinking, when Ben wasn’t in our dorm room? Masturbate. Geez, did I masturbate. That was my only release, I’m afraid, from all those hormones raging through me. Honestly, I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to my discovery of what my penis could actually do. I got my first boners in middle school but didn’t think much of them other than thinking them slight nuisances in gym class when Janice Parker stood nearby. Janice was a hottie and my penis got all hard and my shorts were all twisted and stretched and, well, I’m glad I had large T-shirts that covered that area when we were playing floor hockey. But, you know, even with the big T-shirts, I’m guessing Janice noticed that I had a boner for her. Perhaps she didn’t. I have a very small penis.
It wasn’t until eighth grade or so when I realized something actually came out of my little friend and made me go all spastic crazy. I just broke down one day when I was housesitting at a middle school teacher’s house (friend of the family). The dog was fed and sleeping and so I had some quiet time to myself and so I was looking at my boner in a full length mirror (after a quick viewing of the Kelly McGillis/Tom Cruise love scene in Top Gun) and just began pulling on my penis and it was feeling better and better, me pulling and, lo and behold, something came out of it that I had never seen or felt anything like it before. What a revelation! But what the heck was it? I had no idea. Like I said, I was a late bloomer.
High school for me was a bit better, sexually speaking, in that I had a steady girlfriend for quite awhile named Samantha and she was having hormonal things going on as well and she was a bit unsure of the whole sex thing also and so we, before marching band practices, would go into one of the band room practice cubbies and touch each other here and there and most everywhere. I remember having my hand up her skirt once. She was wearing panty hose. She said, “Oh, they’re old. Just rip a hole through them.” I did with my trembling hands and I felt her get moist. What a revelation! Moist! MOIST! Geez, Samantha knew how to get me all bonered-up with all that moistness. Most of my days I tried to get at that moist spot on her and get all bonered. Me and Samantha never had sex though. However, we did get arrested shoplifting a pregnancy test at Top Foods. Why a pregnancy test when we never had sex? Long story.
Anyway, what does this all have to do with Tori Amos’s song “Icicle”? Well, for one thing, it’s full of masturbation! Here, watch it live:
She sings, “And when my hand touches myself/I can finally rest my head/And when they say take of his body/I think I'll take from mine instead.” Wo! Did I hear that right? I played the tape over and over again hearing that song, hearing that phrase. “Getting off/Getting off/While they’re all downstairs.” Is Tori Amos masturbating? Geez, that got me hard, and quick, because, really, is there any singer more sexy, more exotically tantalizing than Tori Amos? God no! That’s why I had all her music. It was good, sure, the music itself, but Tori! That fiery red hair! That look in her eye! Her carriage! Holy moly my penis got hard over that carriage.
So, when Ben was in his theatre class, or wherever, I was on my bed, listening to Tori Amos sing about masturbating with me thinking all the while about Tori Amos ACTUALLY masturbating and then, thinking about all that, masturbating. What a crazed masturbation cycle it was. How perfect! “Feel the word/Feel the word/Feel the word,” she sings. I feel it Tori. I feel it! I FEEL IT!