My mother is 100% Italian. My father, a 100% Irish. My brother got my mother’s olive skin tone: the two of them could sit outside for hours, lathering up in baby oil and bake to a beautiful golden brown. I was the fortunate one (insert sarcastic undertone here) who got my father’s Irish skin. The two of us can’t go to a windy afternoon baseball game without using SPF 45, unless of course, we want to find ourselves covered in sunburn and blisters.

Last summer, I thought I was invincible when it came to the sun. My friends can get tan with SPF 4 or 8, so why couldn’t I? On two various occasions, I felt the effects of not listening to the realistic side of my brain in terms of summer sunshine. I spent a week in June in San Antonio, Texas, where it was roughly 95 degrees every day. As this was a more family-oriented – go out to dinner, do family related things – sunbathing took a back seat, until the last dreaded day, when I thought it was appropriate to lay at the pool, for three solid hours, with nothing – and I mean, not a drop of sunscreen – on my body. Read More »

I get looks a lot. That shouldn’t really strike me as surprising; everyone gets looks. Amused looks, horrified looks, heartbroken looks, enamored looks…I’ve gotten them all. Still, nothing was quite the punch in the gut as the look my mother gave me when I told her I was going out with a girl.

I’d been dating Megan for something like six months around the time I finally talked to my mom. For six months, I was horrified at the concept of telling my middle-aged, old-fashioned African-American mother that her daughter, the girl she had been a father and mother to for twenty years, was very much in love with your typical Irish girl (sans fiery-red Weasley hair).

I had told my mother that I was bi before, but it was some six years ago and I’m pretty sure that she just passed it off as me being dazed after being hit over the head with puberty. I was almost certain that she’d forgotten (she hadn’t, the old elephant), and when I told her, a look of terror and disgust would follow suit.

It didn’t, and I still can’t decide if I’m grateful for that or not. Read More »

A few years ago, Match Point was on HBO. Having nothing better to do, I began watching it, and noticed a pretty hot guy I’d never seen before.

That hot guy turned out to be Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and although I ended up falling asleep before the movie ended (something about self-absorbed people and Woody Allen dialogue works better than Lunesta for me), I couldn’t forget that Irish accent and those awesome lips.

Flash forward to one odd magazine cover and a few movies later, and you’ve got someone who’s not only no longer attracted to JRM, but has developed a strange fear of seeing his face anywhere.

I don’t know what happened. I’m not sure if he lost weight, got plastic surgery, or if my taste in men has just changed drastically, but seeing the recent pictures of JRM makes me want to stay away from his new movie August Rush (even though the adorable Keri Rusell co-stars) purely because his face makes me so damn uncomfortable. Read More »