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We stumble upon a man-made swimming hole. "We're going in, right?" she declares. Neither of us has a swimsuit. I strip to my skivvies. She dives in fully clothed. Talk turns to relationships.

She insists that she's ready to love somebody, but lets it slip that she's never been in a positive relationship before, citing examples of dalliances with older men who were "emotionally unavailable" to her.

"How will you handle it the next time you get dumped?" I ask.
She immediately responds, in all seriousness: "I'm never going to get dumped again."
She intimates that the last good time she had in bed resulted in bruises up and down her arms.
"Hickeys?" I hope, worrying that the sex might have taken an ugly turn.
"Hickeys, bite-me's. It was great."
"So what happened to him?"

"He's coming back. Definitely." With that, she inverts herself in the water and lets her legs finish the conversation.

Not until I rejoin her in Toronto do I uncover Alanis Morissette's dark secret. None of her press people have been particularly forthcoming about her first two albums, the 1991 Canadian platinum Alanis and its 1992 near-gold follow-up, Now Is the Time. No one carries them in the U.S. As soon as I land in Canada, I'm praying I can find at least one of her previous releases at the local mall. Unbeknownst to me, the time I spend hunting down these rarities coincides with our scheduled interview session. I am embarrassing her and pissing her off simultaneously. Would you forgive me, love?

I know I can't mention to her the exact nature of my disappearance when I get a look at the cover of Alanis, from which a younger version of Morissette, still swaddled in baby fat, pouts defiantly. Inside, she sings of "party boys" and "supermen," and sassily exclaims "My name is Alanis / I'm a white chick singer / The drums are a-smokin' and so's the bass." It's as if her high school yearbook picture came to life and made an album designed to haunt her forever. Sometimes cheese is Velveeta.

"There are certain mistakes that you make when you're 16 because you're ignorant," she demurs the next morning, realizing I'm in on the musical make-over that has made Canadians skeptical of Morissette's newfound alternative status. No wonder she refers to Jagged Little Pill as "my debut album," and lowers her head in shame when referring to her two dance-oriented, teen-spirited chartbusters. Alanis was the Debbie Gibson of Canada.

When her contract with MCA Records ex-pired, the 20-year-old HI-NRG queen exiled herself to Los Angeles. "It was kind of a blessing that it was over," she muses, "because I wanted to start out with a clean slate, not only personally but career-wise, too. It left me sort of naked. Leaving Toronto to go to L.A. gave me a severe dose of disillusionment that was really necessary. I was finally in a position where things weren't working out. And it was good for me. It made me realize that certain people I'd blindly trusted let me down. My intuition was saying 'Don't trust these people, don't work with these people,' and I went against it."

She keeps her bitterness over her early career in check, though.

"I've had people cheat me out of a lot of money. Let's just say that I'm still paying for the mistakes I've made. I think of it as my tuition for The College of Music Career."

Still, everyone resembles their high school yearbook picture a little, no matter how much they mature. It's worth noting, therefore, that most of the love songs on Alanis-"Jealous," "Walk Away"-consist of diatribes against unfaithful or unsuitable lovers. Even a 16-year-old Morissette crackles with angst, in sharp contrast with the peppy Paula Abdul-esque computerized backup. "Feeling lost in a world full of lies / I can't help thinkin' that love is just passin' me by," she moans in "On My Own," a song for which Morissette retains a reasonable amount of respect, probably because it describes her lack of control over the final product. How ironic that Jagged Little Pill producer/collaborator Glen Ballard, who rescued her from MIDI hell, has also helped trap Paula Abdul and Michael Jackson there.

Ballard brought Morissette to the attention of Maverick Records, playing "Perfect" for A&R whiz-kid and Freddy DeMann-protege Guy Oseary. Though the 22-year-old Oseary denies that the song touched off a synergistic prodigy vibe between the two, he tends to stress Morissette's precociousness. "She and I are about the same age, and people are always so amazed that we've accomplished anything since Generation X-ers are supposedly not ambitious. We're showing people we're as ambitious as anyone else." Oseary, who also inked Candlebox to Maverick, has yet to see or hear Alanis' first two albums, though. "I don't even want to," he says.

Morissette downplays it, but this evening's Toronto show means a great deal, as much a vendetta as a homecoming. "It feels good to have a country understand and appreciate my growth as opposed to questioning it," she declares. With two wildly successful albums' worth of ripe cheese to live down, Morissette's trying to pull off the entertainment business's toughest trick: the Janet Jackson/Tori Amos/Ron Howard how-ya-like-me-now. As the young and underpaid hoser who sold me her previous releases quipped with more admiration than scorn, "She's a trend-jumper."

The sold-out show, at Lee's Palace, has a much friendlier vibe than the exciting chill of the Pontiac bloodletting. It's the first show after a week's vacation. She spent it in Ottawa with family, catching up by taking long walks down train tracks with her brothers, who thankfully never discuss her career with her. "We couldn't be more different," coos Morissette, "but I feel closer to them than I ever have." She takes care to explain that her parents aren't phased by hearing their daughter refer to oral sex and fucking to the cheers of an enthusiastic throng. "A lot of people ask my parents, 'Aren't you embarrassed that your daughter speaks like that?' and they say, 'No, she's been that way her whole life, she just wasn't doing it publicly. And we're glad she is now.' " Morissette laughs. "My mother's raunchier than I am."

Old friends from her Toronto days drop in, including former roommate Mike Levine of the Canadian cheese-metal band Triumph. Her parents come down to see the show. Even old enemies from her mallrat days, busily promoting the opening act, have shamelessly appeared.

"Right now is pretty pinnacle-ish," she tells me when I ask about her goals. "I went to the beach just the other night and I sat on the same rock I sat on when I first moved to Toronto, which was probably the hardest time in my whole life. I remember sitting on that rock in such major pain. And then I sat on it the other night-same rock-and I just went, 'Man.' "

That's why it looks strange when she squints a little and arches her back during "Right Through You," sternly indicating the band as she growls, "Hello Mr. Man / You didn't think I'd come back / You didn't think I'd show up with my army / And this ammunition on my back." After the show, she tells me that she spotted in the audience some of the same record execs who inspired the song. Her eyes light up. "When this one guy approached me backstage," she whispers, "I looked him in the eye and said, 'See you on the way down.' "