I have a secret. It’s really embarrassing.  Sometimes this secret hits me and I blush. My heart races. My palms sweat. My knees buckle. I look around in crowd and a strong sense of panic threatens to topple me. I feel so sure that somebody knows and will expose me. The thought of this is torture. This secret is a threat to my identity. I should be aloof and poised. Dignified. Respectable. But it’s a burden I just can’t stand to carry any longer.

I like Taylor Swift. No. I LOVE Taylor Swift.

I’ve been listening to that over and over again tonight. It’s playing in the background as I write reminiscing about Nikolai Gogol and reading about “Fair Game.”

But, really, I sort of wish I was in the passenger seat of my best friend’s car blasting “Forever and Always” and singing along at the top of our lungs. I’ll spare him the humiliation of exposure.

I find her so charming. When I was first exposed to Taylor, I was just so sure she was just another wholesome pop star with what I assumed to be a truly vile personality. And yet I listen to her and am sort of refreshed and charmed by the combination of earnestness and melodrama with which she renders her innocent and adolescent experiences. She’s got to be the only pop star I am relieved to know my little cousins are into.