To the friends that cut their eyes to the side, who avoid the rude questions, yet silently wonder what has happened to me... to my family, who know me as stoic, grounded, practical, and now shake their heads at my bizarre behavior...to those who ask me "What has gotten in to you, why would you devote such time and effort to a stranger, this celebrity, this man you will never know?"......

To all those people, I offer this humble explanation, this attempt at illumination, this tiny insight into the mind of a woman who has stumbled out of her old skin to rush headlong, with wild abandon, into an unabashed worship of the fascinating Gabriel Byrne. But before I begin, it must be said, I don't live in this space alone. There are many like me out here, women who share this madness, who will nod their heads in steadfast agreement and whisper, "that is just how I feel", as they read these words. We all want to come out of hiding, to be accepted, we all want our friends to know why we do what we do. But most of all, we all want to be finally and irrevocably, understood. We want you to see him as we see him. That's what we are truly hoping for. So I endeavor here, to describe the beauty that shines on him, around him, and through him, to craft this prose in such a way that the unaffected can feel his effect, to paint a vision so that the uninitiated can see him through the eyes of the women on this forum.

In other words, I am going to try to describe the colors of the rainbow to the blind.

First, a word of caution: this could prove harmful. His smile can buckle your knees; his soulful sadness can crack your heart, it can reach into your insides, coil around your epicenter, and knock you flat on your back with no effort, no effort at all. With the sly lifting of his one sided grin, the downcast, shy glance, the squinting of his uneven gaze, your breath can halt, your limbs can weaken, your mind can scrambe into incoherent thoughts of confusion and helplessness. Many learned and accomplished women have been driven to total distraction when pondering the man I will attempt to describe here. Cars have been driven through red lights, dinners have been burned. The novice should tread carefully through this doorway, and try not to stare too long at the sun, especially through our lens, because this can be a very difficult club to exit once you have spent some time here.

My description starts at the top, begins with his hair, a thick mane of black, then salt, then pepper, a shining mass of dishevelment, begging to host your fingers as comb, as brush, calling your digits to entangle there and bring order to its randomness. It frames his face with two unmanageable tendrils, shaped into the perfect letter "C", they dangle rakishly over his forehead, pointing to the delicious features that lie beneath them. His face is a collaboration of the imperfect, a gumbo of crooked angles and wrinkles that combine to form an inexplicable work of jaw dropping beauty. It is hard to pull your eyes from it. It holds your gaze and demands to be stared at, wide-eyed and unblinking. Close your eyes and its image is burned into the backs of your retinas. Beneath the silky strands of wayward hair, his bedroom eyes lift slowly, peeking upward to reveal long black eyelashes framing pools of aching, questioning, bittersweet blueness. Those eyes shine right at their target, projecting a lethal beam of hypnotic, gut wrenching emotion. They carry you with them on their quicksilver journeys, from dizzying heights of childish mirth, to heart breaking depths of lonely anguish. His eyes can cut through skin and bone and if you aren't arrested by his gaze, if it doesn't stop you in your tracks, you have no soul. You are simply an empty vessel.

His nose is large. There is no getting around it. Its size creates an awkward topography, it is bent in unusual places, has been broken several times. A most prominent feature, it anchors the middle of his marvelous face, creating a commanding, Roman profile that could have been an inspiration for Michelangelo's finest statues. It looms crookedly above his plump, pink, pointed appetizing upper lip. One could go mad watching him absent mindedly touch his tongue to those lips, a mind blowing mannerism of raw sensuality he tosses out, casually, from time to time. When he smiles, sometimes, those lips lift higher on one side than the other and always reveal a wide and toothy kilowatt grin, shining brighter than the sun, lighting up all that surrounds him.

His body is average height and weight and sometimes, he doesn't stand up straight, but his shoulders could hold back the burdens of the world and a girl could rest her head forever encircled tightly in his embrace. His clothes range from "dandy" to "absent-minded-professor", but regardless of his adornment, he manages to pull off the suave and debonair. His hands belong to an artist, they are immensely expressive. They move with purpose and strength and punctuate the delivery of his velvet phrases. And those phrases drip with a razor sharp wit; he weaves poetry into his everyday speech, whispers sonnets as he orders his dinner. His voice has a low and peaceful tone, laced with that Irish accent; he paints the air and delights the ears with the mossy greeness of his beautiful sing-song brogue.

But those descriptions of his physical attributes only sketch half the picture, they don't give the full measure of the man, don't speak to his talents, don't features his heart. He is an accomplished writer and poet. I tried to write this description without using the word, "poet", I fear I use it too much. But I couldn't do it. The word describes him, it speaks to his lyrical, introspective Heathcliffian persona. You cannot truly describe Gabriel Byrne without using the word "poet". He is also an award winning actor who brings an astonishing level of realism and insight to any role that he plays. But he is a quiet man, sometimes too quiet. He is thoughtful and reflective and his loneliness seems to lie right below the surface of his skin, it gives him an aura of sadness and vulnerability, makes one want to cradle him in a protective embrace and keep the world's treachery from his doorstep. He is a man without a country, still searching for his home, he's created a life here in the land of his children, but his heart still pines for the Ireland of his youth, a place that he admits, no longer exists. He is a lover of people, and a truly kind and generous soul. He dedicates time and money to charitable causes here and abroad and he cares deeply about the world in which he lives. He has a depth and breadth of character that one rarely sees in a handsome Hollywood actor, or even in the average American male, and we women want him, we want someone like him, and we are tired of apologizing for it.

And that is why we do it. That is why we spend time watching his movies, reading his autobiography, why we spend money on tickets to his plays or his charitable events. We've discovered a man that gives pleasure to our eyes and our minds. He awakens our childish instincts, our lover instincts, our mothering instincts, and he inspires us all to read more, write more, think more and care more about the world around us. He never ceases to delight us with his words and his actions and he is one of the most intelligent and beautiful men we have ever seen. While we may have managed to get back into the swing of our normal lives, integrating our passion for Mr. Byrne with common activities: eating, drinking, working and living, we never fully leave the "club". We pop back here from time to time, to bask in this sisterhood, to catch up on his activities, to opine about his films or to report a rare live meeting to the eager women waiting to read about it.

We hope those friends and family that cannot share our passion can, at least, understand it better and sympathize with our little diversion.

But more than anything, we hope, that wherever he is, Gabriel Byrne will get a sense of our adoration and know, that to the women of this forum, he is truly an inspiration and a treasure.