I scanned the menu of the dimly lit Thai restaurant where we had chosen to have lunch. It was really breakfast, being our first meal of the day. It was still only 11:30 in the morning.

My tongue ruminated on memories of peanut sauce and bean sprouts, quickly tasting each dish with which it was presented and re-shelving the phantom platter for a later craving. When my eyes came to rest on the Spicy Green Curry, I knew my mouth had found what it wanted.

Something in me was telling me that this was the dish I should order, despite the warning label under the menu description advertising this as a “very spicy dish.” Or maybe precisely because of that label.

As I barreled my way through that burning sensation that was my breakfast, I wondered why on Earth I was doing this to myself. There was so much spice that I could barely taste anything else. There were hints of coconut milk here, and eggplant there, but mostly my mouth was a wasteland of curry on fire.

That got me thinking about my whole relationship with spicy food. I can’t say that I really like how it tastes. So why do I love eating it? Read More »

In my group of friends, I’m one of the few people without any tattoos, not because I don’t want one, I do, but because I just can’t think of something I really care enough about to get scarred into my flesh for the rest of my life.

I can’t stomach the idea of having a cutesy fairy tattoo or, god forbid, a dolphin tattoo, and honestly I can’t understand why girls get tattoos like that in the first place.

I realize that tattoos have become sort of a rite-of-passage for teens when they come of age, right along with buying a pack of cigarettes and going into a porn shop. I get it, it’s about rebellion, or asserting one’s adulthood. I just fear that in everyone’s haste to use tattoos as a symbol of maturity, or badass-ity, or whatever, that they don’t really think about the lifelong implications of a tattoo and what said tattoo really says about it’s owner. Read More »