8 February 19 - 25, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents No Luck With the Irish A Dallas woman traveled all the way to Ireland to meet her boyfriend. He still cheated. BY ALYSSA FIELDS T here are lots of D words that have been used to de- scribe dating in Dallas: dismal, dumpster fire, damned, disheartening. We don’t need anecdotes to prove it’s a nightmare, though. Unlike many men in this city, the numbers don’t lie. So it’s not hard to understand why Theresa Rowley, a local comedian, trav- eled to Ireland to kiss her Prince Charm- ing, though he, too, turned out to be a frog. Once upon a time (spring 2024), in a land not far away (East Dallas), Rowley got the modern equivalent of a handwritten love letter: a flirty Instagram direct mes- sage sans fire emoji. The message from an Irishman across the country sparked her interest, and soon, the two were an interna- tional item. After a couple of months of constant communication, as much as you can possibly have with someone in a time zone five hours ahead, Rowley hopped across the pond to meet her situationship. “I was not about to be official with a man that I had never met before,” she tells the Observer. She also took a friend for enhanced secu- rity, because a first date with a guy from the internet is scary, no matter where he lives. But all went well, and with her new boyfriend’s permission, she posted a TikTok video about her soiree, and it immediately struck a chord. “[I did not think] that it would get any type of traction at all because it’s very differ- ent than my normal content,” she says. “It popped off, just went real viral.” Rowley is a comedy influencer with more than a million followers across sev- eral platforms. Her video amassed more than a million views, was the subject of a feature from the Washington Post and caught the attention of Tourism Ireland, which sponsored a second bae-cation back to the Emerald Isle. “It was a fairy tale,” she says. All Good Things Must End S oon, it was time for the Irishman to come to Texas. He spent Thanksgiving with her family and lived his cowboy dreams. Rowley was hopeful this was the be- ginning of forever. But then the poisoned apple came. A dreaded “Hey, girly” message paired with screenshots landed in her direct mes- sages just 12 hours before Rowley was sup- posed to board another flight so they could spend Christmas together in Ireland. She can- celed her flight and spent the holiday with her family in Amarillo instead. “It was a gut punch to read,” she says of learning her knight, and the people’s prince, was infidelious. “But also necessary because with the nature of our rela- tionship, you never know who’s messaging you and why they’re saying what they’re say- ing. But the proof was in the pudding.” Rowley, having shared their love story up to this point, couldn’t leave the shocking plot twist out of the fairytale turned horror story. That video sits at four million views. It sounds like a PR stunt, but the story is true, and Rowley said she doesn’t have any non- believers. “I always expect trolling, but it really was not that,” she says. “It was just a light-hearted story in a time where those are few and far between. People seemed to latch onto it as a beacon of hope, and I hated to let them down, but I didn’t want to keep up a ruse.” Rowley hasn’t sworn off the Irish forever, but she’s not exactly looking for her next Emerald Isle resident to come sweep her off her feet. “It’s so funny how the comments have changed, too, because in the first videos, when it was lovey-dovey, it was all like, ‘Irish guys are the best. You’ve got to go outside of America,’” she tells us. Now, the Irish (according to her comments sections, anyway) don’t have the best reputa- tion. But Rowley doesn’t want her tale to dis- suade the city’s other hopeless romantics. “I don’t want this to be a story that there’s no hope for women. Not all men are dogs, not all men cheat,” she says. “I have to hold on to that hope for myself... People make bad choices based on tough experiences that they’ve had in the past, and we can learn from that. We can shake hands, we can kiss on the cheek and we can move on.” So there you have it. Dating in Dallas is bad. But it may not be better anywhere else, either. C’est la vie. ▼ EXHIBITIONS IN THEIR OWN WORLD VISUAL ARTIST SHAMSY ROOMIANI AND MUSICIAN POPPY XANDER FIND THEMSELVES SPLASHING ON THE SAME FREQUENCY. BY SCOTT TUCKER S ituated just 20 minutes east of down- town Dallas, Mesquite Arts Center is an expansive venue, decked with an ar- senal of rooms and halls, featuring everything from a concert hall to a playhouse. For the opening of Luminous Frequencies, featured artists Shamsy Roomiani and Poppy Xander (who is an Observer contributor) snagged prime real estate in a hall just to the left of the venue’s breezy entrance. Although both artists are known in Dallas circles for their individual practices, this collaboration marks a new chapter in their creative relationship. Originally meeting in 2017 through pho- tographers Daniel Driensky and Sarah Reyes, Roomiani and Xander first hit it off when col- laborating on music videos and aesthetics for Xander’s musical project, Helium Queens. “Dan Driensky and Sarah Reyes did the first Helium Queens photo shoot and asked if I knew Shamsy,” Xander says. “After checking it out, I just became obsessed with her and her work.” After deciding to work together, it was decided that Roomiani would provide her unique creativity as the focal point of the Helium Queens music video titled “Sham- storia, 2020,” an eight-minute-long playful comprehensive survey of Roomiani’s work with botanicals, minerals and crystals, also featuring a sci-fi aesthetic and set in the eso- teric world of the Helium Queens. “We knew we needed to collaborate on something,” Xander says. “Shamsy makes these sham-stones, and we basically worked them into the Helium Queens’ lore revolving around fractals and interdimensional travel.” After several more years of friendship and further work around Helium Queens, in 2025, the two artists decided it was the right time to push their creative boats out further, but this time more into the realms of physical space. “At the beginning of 2025, we started working again, and it was interesting to see how our ideas grew over time,” Roomiani says. “We absolutely knew it was something special, and wanted to expand it into an ex- hibition and make it have a life of its own to travel beyond.” To help iron out their thought processes together, Roomiani and Xander rented a cabin in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, for a three- day think tank and brought along both phys- ical objects and their ideas for a show. “We didn’t know what it was going to look like,” Xander says. “By bringing our materials and getting together, we were able to get a vi- sual of what our world was going to be. We basically made an installation in the cabin, so the trip was imperative to the whole thing.” After much planning and with the help of the Mesquite Arts Center, the duo again cre- ated a marriage of music and art, but this time, to be experienced in real time. Lumi- nous Frequencies features 29 offerings of Roomiani’s naturalist art, deeply rooted in ecological aesthetics, set to a musical score Xander created under the moniker “Piscea,” tailored to each piece and its individual placement within the gallery space. The pieces emphasize themes of light, reflection, transformation and immersion in various forms. Sculpture, ink prints, botanicals, min- erals and crystals all work together in a med- ley of naturalism that’s aesthetically pleasing if not calming. Xander’s musical ▼ Culture Erin Leigh Scott Tucker Luminous Frequencies by musician Poppy Xander (left) and visual artist Shamsy Roomiani is on display at Mesquite Arts Center now. Dallas dating is so bad Theresa Rowley stamped her passport to meet a man in Ireland.
