I looked out the dressing room door and saw the Japanese preliminary wrestlers taking down the ropes, beginning the process of putting the barbed wire around the ring. The wire they used was the real stuff: cold and uncaring, capable of tearing flesh in a hurry. I knew I had about 30 minutes before the wiring process was completed—a half-hour to undergo a drastic mental transformation. I took out my battered Sony Walkman and, after great deliberation, bypassed the obvious hard-rock selections. Finding solitude in a far corner of the frigid backstage area, I saw a cloud of my own breath as I pressed the play button. “Snow can wait, I forgot my mittens/ Wipe my nose, get my new boots on.”
“When you gonna make up your mind?” Tori Amos asked me inside that frigid dressing room. “When you gonna love you as much as I do?”
And then I realize I’m going to be all right. Head first, neck first, balls first—it really doesn’t matter. By the fourth listen, I know I’m going to tear that place apart.
