Trust me on this. I am tattooing I WILL NEVER HAVE SEX WITH YOU on my forehead and carrying around the following list with me everywhere:

“Things I’d rather do than have sex with you”
By Layla Halabian

1. Live in a world where sharks with legs exist. This would mean that not only could sharks terrorize you in the water, they would also have legs—as well as powerful lungs—to chase you on land. It’s seriously my nightmare.
2. Eat a kitten.
3. Shave off my eyebrows. As an Iranian girl, this is saying A LOT. It’s how we identify each other in the streets. If you’re walking down the street and you see a girl who has very thick, yet wonderfully shaped eyebrows, 200% chance she’s Iranian. Personally, I’m obsessed with my eyebrows and eyebrows in general. It’s the one of the first three things I notice when I meet people (the other two being teeth and hands). So yeah, I’d rather shave off my beloved eyebrows than proceed into the depths of sexual hell with you.
4. Be a Republican.

Anyway, the whole situation just made me even more home-sick than I already am for Emerson. Something this outrageously messed up would have never happen there. But the worst news from these past few days? Mariano, my “Myths, Icons and Invented Traditions” professor and the most stunning person I’ve ever seen in my life is GAY! Not just a typical gay guy either. He wrote an ENCYCLOPEDIA on being gay in Buenos Aires. You definitely have to have very gay and deeply immersed in a city’s gay life in order to write a FREAKING ENCYCLOPEDIA on what it’s like being gay here. Well, there goes my dream of us feeding each other medialunas and sipping Blue Moons in a trendy bar in Palermo. Right out the window.

Is it weird that I want to buy his encyclopedia so I could use it as a conversation starter? Just some light reading, you know, whatever, I am a scholar and we scholars enjoy reading encyclopedias on being gay in Buenos Aires. Just deal with it.

I want to apologize to my parents because after reading this blog post they both probably went in cardiac arrest and/or booked their flights to Buenos Aires to take me home.