As some of you may know, I have red hair and pale skin, which means I go from zero to lobster every time I step into direct sunlight. I used to joke that I was a vampire because growing up I hated garlic, never slept, and every time I went outside I would burst into flames. I was also stalked by Sarah Michelle Gellar.

One summer a friend of mine asked me to sunbathe with her. I didn’t want to seem lame so I agreed, but secretly put on SPF 40. I laid down on a bench and read a book for about 20 minutes while my friend napped. As she woke up, I turned toward her. “Oh my god your face!” she exclaimed, before bursting into laughter. That’s not a phrase you ever want to hear. No one ever says “Oh my god your face! … is covered in puppies! Yay!” I pulled out a mirror and saw why: half my face was deep red and the other was still my signature shade of translucent. Apparently I should have rotated myself to cook evenly so that I didn’t look like a Batman villain. The only way to hide it was to apply make up that turned my entire face a uniform orange.

But my biggest sunburn fuck-up was when I didn’t wear sunscreen skiing. My logic was that it was “too cold” out to get a sunburn, as if temperature affected UV Rays. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Snow bounces the sunlight back up at you so even places that wouldn’t normally burn get exposed. ­­­­And so, in my first day of skiing in Colorado I got so badly sunburned that I had to go to a hospital. My entire face swelled and bubbled and cracked; I couldn’t open my eyes and I could only eat through a straw. But the thing I most regret about the experience is that I let my dad take my photo. To this day, it my biggest potential blackmail weakness, and the closest I think any human being has ever come to looking like Sloth from The Goonies.