When Halo recently came to meet the family, I noticed that he has a green ring around his eyes. In over a year, I’d never noticed that before. All shocked, I blurted out, “Dude, you have a green ring around your eyes!”
 

He made a You so crazy! face. “Yeah.”
 

I’d been telling myself that his eyes were whiskey brown, but they are in fact mostly hazel and some green, which apparently he has told me before.
 

“Sweetie, I’ve told you this before.”
 

“Oh. Well, I think it’s because the light is directly shining in your eyes,” I blamed it on the blinds in HotROD’s guest room.
 

After we got out of bed, I mentioned the fact to HotROD herself. “Halo’s got a green ring around his eyes,” I confided, like I’d just found out that he has a sixth toe.
 

HotROD laughed at me. “Yeah, I know,” and she’d only just met him.
 

This is why I’m not winning any girlfriend awards.
 

The eye thing is kind of like the blonde thing. When I was convinced that Halo had brown hair and light brown eyes, I was reminded that he was part Spanish, and somehow in my mind, that made him a step closer to people of color and less White. It doesn’t make sense, I know this. The Spanish were the White folks who came over here and started fucking shit up. I know. I’m not writing about history here, but about emotional non-logic. It’s just funny, the things we hide in our brain to make us more okay with our choices. Some of those things have to be examined and rooted out.
 

Like for example, Halo’s dubious blonde-ness freaks me out because I’ve always had an aversion to blonde guys. In general, they don’t attract me, because I couldn’t see myself walking around with a really White guy, as though being blonde makes them Vikings or something. And that’s just wrong of me.
 

Or the other day, I was watching a TV special about fitness in the South. Three fine Black guys were promoting their gym, and of course, they were all ripped and deliciously plum and young. And I thought, They are selling memberships like hotcakes right now. If I lived in that town, I’d be up in there all the time.
 

And then I realized, I’m love with a White guy. In my mind, that realization always sounds like, “I’m In Love With A Stripper.”
 

The silver lining of these little epiphanies is that I don’t have them often, which means that most of the time, I don’t see color between Halo and me.
 

But sometimes, I’m terrified of waking up next to a green eyed blonde. Just sayin’.