By PAUL RESTUCCIA

I need some Icy Blue and Ben Gay. I need an Advil because I am in pain. And it’s all because of seeing Demi at my 25th high school reunion.

I really shouldn’t have gone, but curiosity got the better of me. I’d heard from Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory, who wrote about being seduced by Sen. Scott Brown, that Demi would be there.

So there I was, standing in a corner of the VFW hall in Jamaica Plain, nursing my drink when I saw her across the room. Demi, my old flame, short for Democrat. She was still the vision she was in high school when we’d gone canvassing together to reconvert those Reagan Democrats.

She had the pedigree - a perfectly sensible girl, daughter of lunch-bucket parents living in a rundown house off South Street, who proudly wore her Catholic school uniform. She was so open, so honest so pure in her convictions. And me, a strapping lad from Catholic Memorial. Oh, how we believed in our mission of local-level democracy on behalf of the average working man.

Our eyes met, and Demi headed toward me. She looked different. Her long straight hair was gone, replaced by a short curly do, but she could still turn heads. We began talking and the chemistry was still there.

“So much has changed,” Demi said.

“I’ll say,” said I, making small talk about the $600,000 condos on her old street.

“Well, I’m back here,” she said. “But JP has changed for the better, don’t you think?”

I didn’t. Sure it looked better, but the new breed was very different than when we had grown up there.

She told me about her life. She’d been out in San Francisco where she said she’d “liberated” herself.

“But you’re still a Democrat?” I asked.

“I’m even more of a Democrat,” she said.

I reminded her of old times. When she was saving herself for marriage and how she wanted three children, boy-girl-boy, become a teacher, and buy a nice house on Moss Hill.

She laughed. “Bear children? Demi doesn’t bear children, she adopts them, but only from foreign countries.”

How strange.

“So you never married?” she asked.

“I’m an Independent.”

“I’m polyamorous. Isn’t everyone?”

I didn’t quite know what she as getting at. But as we were both unattached and the reunion was boring, I suggested we go to one of our old spots, the 99 Restaurant on Route 1.

Her nose curled. “They serve hothouse tomatoes there,” she sneered. “I only eat heirloom.”

“But what about the specials we used to get, good food for a good price.”

“I have a better idea.”

We ended up at some fancy cocktail bar in JP center, where she proceeded to quaff a number of $15 organic martinis.

“Demi, you have changed,” I said.

“Please put this on your credit card,” she said. “I believe in debt. In fact, all I do is spend. spend, spend.”

“How do you pay your mortgage?” I asked.

“You don’t have to pay your mortgage,” she snapped. “You just call up ACORN and hold a vigil at your house if they to try to foreclose on you. Damn greedy banks.”

I reminded her of her old savings passbook, where she dutifully used to deposit the proceeds from her job at Woolworths.

“I max out all my credit cards now,” she offered. “It’s unsecured debt. The credit card companies will never get it. Besides, global warming is upon us. Jamaica Pond will overflow and only the rich on Moss Hill will survive. And meanwhile, the poor people left on South Street have no health care. It’s environmental injustice on an inhuman scale.”

She was hungry and we repaired to a sushi bar next door where she talked me into buying her $150 worth of sashimi.

“You always hated fish on Friday,” I said.

“I eat sushi every day.”

After three bottles of sake, she invited me back to her place. I was expecting a little house with those big picture windows she’d always wanted, so I was surprised to find that she lived in a bilevel loft with zebrawood woodwork, bamboo floors and woman-weaved countertops. The entire ceiling was cracked glass. It was a zero-net-energy loft, she kept reminding me.

“Nothing says more about you than your carbon footprint.”

Later I learned about her San Francisco experimentation as we descended to the lower level of her loft, past the meter that was giving back electricity.

“I believe in being totally open, totally transparent, but doing everything in secret” she said. “I love telling people what to do. And you will do what I say.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’re stupid. I know what’s best for you. You require a stimulus.”

“I do not.”

“You require pain.”

“But I hate pain.”

“You must suffer … for the greater good.”

“Oh, Demi,what’s become of you. What about free will? What about the American Dream? What about moving up from South Street to Moss Hill?”

“Flatten that hill. We are all equal.”

“What about the working people? What about our parents? What about their dreams?”

“They are nothing but racist obstructionists standing in the way of the gender-blind new world order,” she said. “It’s too late for them, but you must change. Together we can change. You must learn the misery of joy.”

“What’s happened to you Demi. You’ve become such an arrogant elitist.”

“I am enlightened and they are not. The new Demi is transcendent. The new Demi is not only in control, but all about control. You must submit, for your own good.”

I was far too drunk to move. So she had her way with me.

But what was a night of liberation for her, for me was pure hell. Hurting and dumbfounded by the new Demi, I crawled home the next morning, stung by her recriminations about how privileged I was.

“This is a teachable moment for you,” she had left me with.

Teachable indeed. The new Demi has made me blue all over.

Paul Restuccia is a member of the Boston Herald’s editorial staff.

This just in: Oprah has made it O-fficial.

In a major O-nnouncement that sent shockwaves from Chicago to Tokyo, Oprah Winfrey says she will end her groundbreaking talk show in 2011 to launch a TV network called OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network).

Some say Oprah’s popularity has suffered since she went political to get President O-bama into the O-val Office and subsequently failed to lure the O-lympics to her beloved Chicag-O.

But her show is watched by an estimated 42 million viewers in 145 countries, so she has unlimited O-pportunities.

A source close to Winfrey’s beloved iguana Dr. Phil said she plans to launch a satellite network called Radi-O Free Winfrey, star opposite George Clooney and Danny DeVito in “O, Sister Where Art Thou?” and make her Broadway debut in “Phantom of the Oprah.”

Stay tuned for details about her plan to clean up the O-ceans, save the O-zone layer and end America’s dependence on OPEC.

Hot on the helium-brained heels of yesterday’s mass-media “Balloon Boy” coverage, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News broke into their regular programming for dramatic live reports of a shocking story involving a young boy dressed in a wolf suit who had been kidnapped by ”Wild Things.”

When informed that the “Wild Things” story was actually a movie set to open this weekend, the media responded, “Oops. Never mind.”

Days after deriding President Obama’s pep talk to America’s schoolchildren as some sort of socialist plot, Republican congressmen heckled the president during a major speech on health care, lobbing spitballs and calling Obama a stinking, Nazi, big-government liar.

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson (right) and others responded to Obama’s appeal to join together for the good of the country by channeling a scene from “Animal House” — blurting out “death panel!” while pretending to cough into their hands.

Later it was discovered that GOP lawmakers had littered the floor of Congress with crumpled-up paper airplanes and used magic markers to scrawl “Obama loves Pelosi” and “Barack sucks” on the backs of chairs.

Though some Democrats slammed Wilson for his disrespectful outburst, key Republicans praised him for sucking up half the air time that might have been used to cover the actual speech.

Analysts say GOP reaction to the president’s speech proves his Republican foes aim are determined to turn one of the most important issues of our time into a political food fight.

Sunday was Sarah Palin’s last day as governor of Alaska, and now that the godless, East Coast liberal media has forced her to hand over her crown to the first runner-up, the former Miss Wasilla is aiming to become the first woman ever to claim a repeat title as Miss Communication.

WATCH: CNN iReport video of this story 

Palin’s natural flair for political pageantry endeared her to millions after John McCain crowned her Miss GOP Running Mate 2008, and the former Miss Alaska second runner-up strutted across that Bridge From Nowhere and wowed ’em with her lipstick on a pitbull hockey mom acceptance speech.

Critics dissed her as a dizzy diva, unqualified to run the country. But the popular Palin picked up several more titles out on the campaign trail, where she was crowned Miss Adventure, Miss Quotation and Miss Informed.

After the election, the glamorous governor continued to tout herself for the title of Miss Understood. However, sources say she missed the national spotlight in Alaska, where her hopes for fresh pageant glory seemed limited despite repeated nominations for Miss Behavior and Miss Conduct. 

The moment she announced her resignation, the foxy newsmaker was widely hailed as Miss Leader. And now that she’s quit, most pundits consider her a sexy, high-heeled shoo-in for Miss Calculation.

She can write those memoirs, keep posting bitter Tweet nothings on Twitter, and – if she plays her maverick cards right and gets more people to hate the socialist president – many believe that by 2012 she could earn the ultimate title … Miss Anti-America.