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provocations without taking them personally. So there are upsides. But the downside means sometimes you can let entire months of your life ooze by without eating anything except microwave soy burgers or making human connections or realizing that you are ignoring a few of the and suddenly s lurking under your couch. You are becoming inviolate, which is a sad fate for anyone.
    So what turned out to be my Jennie Garth? What was the vixen that chased me off the couch and out into the world? What forced me to say “yikes, this is what and suddenly looks like” and run for my life? Karaoke.
    The first time I sang karaoke, what startled me most was that it turned me into the sleaziest villainess you could ever encounter in any Lifetime movie. It brought out my pushy, slutty, noisy side like nobody’s business. Where does all my good sense go when I sing? Out the window, that’s where. And karaoke rooms don’t even have windows. The sensible shoes I wear when I’m walking the line in my mind, they turn into stilettos, kicking holes in the walls I’ve gone to so much trouble building. Within a few songs, I go from being the Lifetime heroine to the Lifetime psycho. I might start out like Josie Bissett in Deadly Vows , or Nicolette Sheridan in The People Next Door , or even Hilary Swank in Dying to Belong . But hand me the microphone and I turn into Rose McGowan in Devil in the Flesh .
    The first time I made that leap, it was a Tuesday night in the East Village. I was dining with my friends Nils and Jennie at a fancy restaurant, Craft. I wish I remember what I ate, because people always talk about that place, but I have to admit I can’t recall a single thing I ate during the meal, not a single condiment or garnish, yet I remember every Natalie Imbruglia song I sang later that night. (Two of them! Two different Natalie Imbruglia songs! Yes, “Torn” and another one! Her second hit, “Wishing I Was There.” Google it, bitches!) Hey, we all have our different relationship to different sensual pleasures, and as much as I enjoyed the dinner, what jumps out of my memory is that we ended up going for karaoke afterward, when someone observed that we were merely a block from a (now-defunct) Japanese karaoke bar.
    This place was swanky but no fun—the martinet karaoke drillmaster was just not giving our table any love. We waited for more than an hour for one of us to get a turn, but no matter how many pricey cocktails we ordered, there was no “Piña Colada Song” for us. The tingle of our turn coming up (our song! maybe next!) turned to rancid adrenaline in our stomach. Different karaoke jocks have different ideas about crowd control, but this house style was apparently to make one table sing for twenty minutes at a time, then exhaust another table, instead of bouncing around. It was fun watching the table in the corner do “Good Morning Starshine” and “She’s Not There,” but we didn’t even get thrown a piña-colada-flavored bone.
    Nils had obviously set his mind on karaoke satisfaction, because he rose to his feet abruptly and announced, “We are leaving .” He whisked us off to a place in Koreatown where we could get a private room, and we stayed until ten the next morning, rampaging through the songbook. There were mirrors all over the walls, a white shag carpet, brass candelabras, two vinyl couches, and a big glass table, giving off a Boogie Nights ambience of shabby indulgence, except the only drug was music—I had never sung so hard for so long in my life and all I could think the next morning, as we dragged ourselves down Sixth Avenue to our respective subway stops, doing the walk of Commodores-induced shame, was that I wanted more.
    The next afternoon, I woke up and retraced all those steps in my head, writing down the title of every song I could remember singing. Some of these were songs I’d sung to the bathroom mirror for years; others were songs I had just fantasized about singing. I sang David Bowie’s