I'm a freelance journalist and creative strategist with a decade of experience in client-facing sales, marketing ideation, and communications across fashion, hospitality, construction, and real estate.

Read my words in Business Insider, WIRED, HuffPost, Vice, Men's Journal, Observer, Reader's Digest UK, Fast Company, the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, Penguin Random House UK, and many more. My articles and essays have been republished in over 100 newspapers worldwide, translated into five languages, reached the number one trending story multiple times, and generated millions of views. 

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The Sex Appeal of Dating a Plant Dad

Last summer, when my brother dropped off two giant plants for me to babysit while he moved to the middle of the jungle in Colombia for two months, I warned him it wouldn't be my fault if they died. I didn't care for children or animals: the closest I'd ever come to having a pet as an adult was my collection of leather bags. But as the days passed, I was caught off guard by the feelings I developed for those plants.
My god, how wrong I'd been to dismiss plants as an unnecessary responsibility tha...

Love at first lust: A young writer explores a lasting love denied… or is that deferred?

Jared’s profile read 34 years old, six foot one, and muscular. As he opened the door, I saw an honest person. I didn’t fall in love with him immediately, but every visual detail indicated that I could. He looked beautiful in the most masculine ways: broad shoulders, full hair, a confident presence, immaculate posture and a seductive half-smile. At 19, I didn’t understand love—I usually hid from it—but I could still pick it out of a lineup. “He’s the one,” I thought immediately.

Once I Came Out, Dating Suddenly Became So Hot... And Complicated

Now, it appeared to me that gay men would rather entertain sex without chemistry than the grueling burden of getting to know each other. This was new for me. Being closeted had made my pursuits of vaginal intercourse gradual, to say the least. Usually, a girl would have to throw herself on top of me. I never felt like I had the option to say no then, and to a certain extent, I didn't now.

I wasn’t opposed to casual sex, but I wanted romance, too. I craved everything: the white picket fence with a sex swing inside the house.

I was a luxury proposal planner. I felt more like the secret service than cupid

‘You don’t think a scavenger hunt is romantic?’ asked my client Michael*. He’d just suggested sending his girlfriend on a wild goose chase across Manhattan, retrieving clues from his exes in the order he’d dated them – I was horrified.

But as a proposal planner, my role was to focus on logistics rather than acting as a gatekeeper of perceived ‘romance’.

Luckily, most men (and a few women) who came to my company for help weren’t married to their own ideas and I was usually able to provide them

‘You could feel the energy like an earthquake’: Argentina’s World Cup win offers welcome optimism for visitors

During the World Cup, you could hear the screams of Argentines from every block in Buenos Aires on match days. You didn’t need to watch Argentina play to keep track of the score.

I am not a sports person – what felt to me like mob mentality, rooting for your colour, has never appealed. But my Porteño (Buenos Aires local) friends threatened to exile me if I didn’t participate in what I hadn’t grasped was history in the making.

The first time Argentina were declared World Champions was in 1978 o

I'm a quadruplet - my brothers and I couldn't be more different

‘Bro, you’re just using being a quadruplet to get your five minutes of fame,’ Pablo complained.
‘And three days of luxury in a chateau!’ I added quickly.
It was May 2024 and I’d been trying to convince my three brothers that appearing on the Vanderpump Rules spin-off, Vanderpump Villa, was indeed a good thing.
I argued we’d be ‘guests of honour’, mere spectators to any drama in the show – unlike the hotel staff who were on the payroll for the plot – and that it was an obvious opportunity.
‘I sug...

I avoided all-inclusive resorts for years until I unknowingly stayed in one. I hate that I loved it.

For years, I viewed the term "all-inclusive" as a travel red flag, signifying an overpriced experience that would be sacrificing quality for gluttony.

When I'd think of all-inclusive resorts, I'd picture a generic space filled with plentiful (but just OK) amenities for the masses and travelers binge-eating at bland buffets or slamming back enough cocktails to get their money's worth.

To be fair, these were my assumptions mostly built on stereotypes. I'd never been to an all-inclusive because I...

"Raw Dogging" a Flight Can Be Meditative If You're Not a Dick About It

On the internet, a particular breed of bros specializes in two things: convincing others they've mastered the mind by conquering self-imposed challenges and then patting themselves on the back for doing said performative tasks. It seems the sky's the limit for arrogance, and recently, TikTok's enlightened vikings have been singing their own praises for sitting still on long ass flights doing absolutely nothing. The endurance! The mental power! The masculinity!
Dubbed "raw dogging," this travel t...

The Everlasting Appeal of The Real Housewives

I used to be cynical about watching The Real Housewives until I unexpectedly found myself inside New York’s Sonja Morgan’s hotel room for her Halloween party at the Kimpton in 2018. Her hairstylist invited me, as Morgan embraced a more-the-merrier mentality for gays.

I was shirtless, and Morgan quipped about my nipples, managing to partake in several conversations simultaneously. Production made every extraneous person sign a release waiver before a crew member yelled, “Action!” Countess Luan d

Finding power in (small) numbers at St. Croix Pride

While snorkeling on Buck Island in St. Croix, I followed a school of blue fish, propelling my body toward their sphere, but I couldn’t infiltrate it.

Having never snorkeled before, I faced the wrath of the red-faced, blonde female captain of Caribbean Sea Adventures, who scolded me for not disclosing my inexperience before it was time to don the gear and plunge into the turquoise sea. I bit my sassy tongue, determined not to spoil my first encounter with a woman at the helm of a boat.

I was pl

I don't like dogs, and it's messing up my dating life

I used to pretend to like people's dogs. From a young age, I learned it was socially unacceptable not to want to rub their bellies and tell them they're "good boys." Unfortunately, I wasn't talented at feigning interest in humans — nonetheless, four-legged animals. But I didn't expect my ambivalence toward dogs to be a dealbreaker in my adult dating life.I remember dating a guy, who I had noticed on Grindr for a while and manifested into messaging me. I used to suck at hitting on people first. Lon...

The Evolution of Pope Francis’s Stance on LGBTQ Rights

Pope Francis acknowledges my gay identity more than my own grandmother – a surprising contrast, considering they are both devout Catholics of the same generation. Somehow, a childless monarch of the Vatican City State has been more accepting than a woman who helped raise me.

My grandmother loves me unconditionally but never utters the word “gay.” I’ve always interpreted her silence on the matter as a casualty of faith. Catholicism’s condemnation of homosexuality feels deeply ingrained in histor

I Thought Coming Out Would Fix My Life — Then Came My Alcoholism

There's a popular gay movie trope about the douchebag who relentlessly drinks himself into oblivion because he can't accept his sexuality. Oh, how badly I wanted that to be the case for me. In 2014, when I was 20 years old, I sat with my arms crossed and back slouched against a plastic chair in a dimly lit room in Perry Street Workshop in New York's Greenwich Village. Rows of people faced a podium where a frail, elderly Asian man with tiny, circular glasses recounted a life of self-destruction t

In Praise of AI-Generated Pickup Lines

We're at the height of a global technological revolution, and yet this is the modern state of dating: You swipe left, swipe left again, and again, and again—in fact, you mind-numbingly swipe left so many times that when the app finally lands on a person you deem worthy of swiping right, you accidentally swipe left on them, too. You continue swiping.

My thumbs are bloody with disappointment that dating apps, once the face of innovation, have become relics of the status quo. But I've seen the lig

The Met Gala celebrated flowers. It forgot about the environment

Considering that tickets cost more than a down payment on a house, it was understandable why people were disgruntled last year when climate protesters temporarily delayed the entrance of several celebrities. And yet, this year’s dress code—The Garden of Time, to accompany the museum’s exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”—seemed like an opportunity for sustainable fashion to permeate the red carpet. There was the usual sprinkle of celebrities who slipped on vintage gowns or vocaliz
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