The Lives and Loves of Galatea George

2:75pm--Reform is less Boring: Week 2 (as Promised)

What have I been doing with my time?
You may ask, since I have not been up to my regularly scheduled shameless ho-ery, and I have obviously not been blogging.
Lemme fill you in.

I've of course had lots of time to ponder.
My ponderings include, but are not limited to:
1. Why are skinny girls wearing long-sleeved jackets and sweaters on the street right now? It's fucking hot outside! And I'm from The South; I don't throw that word around. What are these skinny bitches trying to prove? That they have so little body fat they're always cold? That the rest of us are sweating buckshot because we're so hopelessly obese? Bitch, please. Take that sweater off and behave like a normal human being in August! I kind of hate you. You look ridiculous and I'm taking it personally.

2. My new budget. Because, on a serious note, I've been living well beyond my means since I moved to Chicago two years ago. I act as if I have all the money in the world, when really I have...just some...of the money in the world. And last month the Prius needed a new windshield and I had to ask my parents to bail me out because I had nothing saved up for a rainy day. Just lots and lots of shoes. And those don't fix a windshield. And yes, in the words of our dearly departed friend Hailey, that's my money, bitch. But I should probably begin being a tad more responsible with it. I'm just sayin'.

3. I have a major crush on Marc Jacobs now, since reading a piece on him in last month's Interview, my fave magazine. This same interview has sent me into a major Andy Warhol phase as well, making it pretty much imperative that I buy the Warhol/Velvet Underground replica event poster that Urban Outfitters is selling right now. However, see #2 above. I don't have it yet.

 
I've been helping Edward out with a play he's working on.
It's just a small piece that he wrote and the guy directing it wanted an Assistant Director. Which is me. This is good, because I get to spend time with my long-lost best pal and work in an artistic capacity. This is bad because I work all day and then I'm in rehearsal until midnight every night. So I've been pretty beat and dragging ass at work, sleep-deprived and not eating as well as I should. But I took half a sick day yesterday morning and I feel better now.
And an interesting thing happened when I came into work yesterday afternoon.
Alex (who you will remember fondly) came up to my desk and we had this little (sarcastic) exchange:
Alex: Where WERE you this morning?
Me: I had a thing, dude.
Alex: Hey! There is nowhere to be but here.
Me: Oh please.
Alex: Your dedication to this company is slipping. You can't just take a half day whenever you want. I'm very disappointed in you.
Me: Weren't you out on Friday?
Alex: And Monday. All day.
Me: Well! I am FOUR TIMES as disappointed in you as you are in me!

And then Alex laughed so hard he doubled over and spit out the water he was drinking. This little story prompted Charlotte to ask me if I think Alex is in love with me. The answer to that is an unequivocal "no." But I'm glad we can joke around, after all that's transpired.

The Alex thing leads me directly into my next point:
Anyone Remember Joey?
Well, he started work at my company on the 11th, and he's been hardcore hot on my heels since then. He's wanted to go to lunch, etc, which is all good because he doesn't know very many people here and he needs to be introduce around. That's fair. But he also wants to hang out and make out and god knows what else after work, and I am TRYING very hard to be good here. Also, I mean, he now works with me. I could add him to my boy-tourage but...you know...you sleep with one guy you work with, that's interesting. You sleep with two guys you work with, and you're the office bicycle. Besides, the instant anyone picks up on his feelings, someone's going to open their big mouth about the Alex saga. It's an office favorite. And then he'd be headed for the hills anyway. So let's just nip this in the bud and say, "Thanks for the good times, Joey. Please keep to your side of the floor."

In other news, Grady has returned to the states after a several-months-long pot binge in Amsterdam on his parents' dime.
I got a text message from him two days ago asking to meet up.
I'm fairly certain I'm not up for this. He's a good kisser and I'm trying to stay on the wagon. Plus, I mean, what's ever going to happen between us? He'll keep being a total disappointment and bike messenger and I'll keep hoping that the fact that he's unreasonably hot will somehow make up for this. Pfft. Whatevs. Maybe I'll just go over there this weekend and smoke some pot and listen to the Velvet Underground with him and his roommates. But nothing beyond that. Do I actually want to hear about his trip, or have I just convinced myself that I want to hear about his trip? Old Gee would have no problem with this equation:
free pot + sexy boy > lame stories + lackluster personality
But new and improved Gee doesn't want to waste her time.
I smell internal struggle.

And speaking of struggles, here's another:
I have met the man I'm going to marry.
And I have met a totally hot actor in Edward's show that I want to bang.
This could get complicated.

I'll have to continue this epic entry later, howevs, as my supervisor is lurking and I need to do work at the current moment. Lurve you all!

9:07am--Welcome Back, Homeslice

Things I PROMISE to cover on my blog today:

1. I refuse to date Joey. Joey pesters me at work.
2. Everyone's favorite stoner bike messenger, Grady, is back in the states.
3. I have met the man I'm going to marry.
4. I have met the man I want to sleep with next, before I become seriously involved with the man I'm going to marry.

Sorry for the absence, Peaches.
Before I leave work today, you shall know all!

12:15pm--Moving Forward Using All My Breath

Okayokayokayokay.
As I prepare to go into my second weekend as a reformed shameless ho, I feel some sort of gameplan needs to be constructed. "Know thy enemy," the Good Book says, but I have met the enemy, and she is me.

Charlotte, my BFF in Baton Rouge, has been gently counseling me through this transition.
She's all married and settled and just bought a fence for cryin' in a bucket, so she's a better candidate for this job than, oh, say, Miss Ava, who is just as wayward as I am. Sorry, Puddin'. But you know this is all true. Char, for the first time since you got married three years ago, I actually care about what you have to say. Speak on.

The key to my new lifestyle, I feel, is going to be patience.

I've never had a whole lot of it naturally, so I'm hoping I can fake it till I make it, so to speak. My normal MO, as y'all will recall from blogs of yore, is a smash-and-grab approach; I see a guy, I ask him out, perhaps I sleep with him, I move on. The few times I have deviated from this system, *ahem*AlexandTyler*ahem* have ended in frustration and annoyance. No more. It might be nice to...I dunno...meet someone's mom? Or perhaps, maybe, celebrate an anniversary of some kind? I'm just throwing things out there, but as I type them they do sound nice.

How to accomplish this? We play the waiting game.

Maybe the new approach is see a guy, ask him out, and don't sleep with him. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but this is the only guess I can make. I don't sleep with guys on the first date or anything, don't get that impression, I'm not an easy catch. I'm just not in the habit of waiting an instant longer than I want to, because I have a healthy dose of self-respect and the guys I usually date aren't good for anything much more than a lay. So it doesn't matter if I piss them off or they stop calling; no feelings are involved and it's no great loss of mine. But maybe...just maybe...there is a guy out there worth talking to. Worth holding hands with. Worth waiting patiently for. I'm afraid of becoming jaded, but I feel it happening. I should probably give mankind a chance to redeem himself before I become a tanorexic, chain-smoking malcontent named Gloria who has press-on nails and cat and talks constantly about how all men should be put in kennels like the dogs they are, *hack*hack*.

My main concern with this line of thought has become that I don't remember how to wait for anything or anyone.

I pretty much live day-to-day, buying or scheming for what I need in the moment, eating when I'm hungry, bitching when I'm angry, screwing when I'm horny. What if I meet a guy and he seems all normal and groovy and worth my patience, and then I can't manage to keep myself in hand long enough to establish something real? What if I just bang him and blow him off, as per usual? This is Charlotte's major concern for me as well. I haven't had to practice restraint for quite a time. What if I've forgotten how?

Tonight is Bryn's birthday party.

Mark, her affianced, will be there and the whole office is invited. Which means Alex will be there, probably with his pseduo-whatever-girl. I have elected not to bring a date. I normally would find the hottest commodity I could, just to show Alex up, but I can't ask anyone out right now without leading him on, and I don't trust myself yet. I'd probably ask some hot acquaintance of mine, get shitfaced, see Alex walking around with that girl, and then jump all over my date in spite or a fit of loneliness. I know myself. And I'm trying to do better. So, in the interest of giving myself a fighting chance, I am going alone. I mean, I'll know pretty much everyone there, but I'm going without a shield made of boy.

The times, they are a-changin'.

10:00--Reform is Boring: Week One

Hello. My name is Galatea, and I am a recovering shameless ho.
I have been trying to be good for a week now.
Dude, this is boring.

I have always been one to pursue please for pleasure's sake. My motto has been "If it feels good, do it! Forethought is a waste of time." But recently I've been wondering if there's something I'm missing besides sleep, so for an entire six days now I've been rewiring, so to speak. I've been trying to see the world a little more calmly and conduct myself with slightly more restraint. The results are not yet conclusive, but from what I can tell, this is going to be the world's least exciting experiment. But nothing worth getting is gotten for free, and even though I'm a little fuzzy now on what I'm trying to accomplish, I've decided to give it more time before I call it quits with the good-girl bit. Because if it doesn't work out, bars and pot and loser guys and shiny dresses certainly aren't going anywhere, and I can just pick right up where I left off.

Herewith, the chronicle of my life on the B (for boring)-list thus far:

Friday
I should have stayed home all night and reflected on my new life path, etc, but instead I accompanied my long-lost best pal Edward to a swanky benefit for Vital Bridges downtown at the Peninsula Hotel. There was a jazz band and free food and drinks, and I got to wear a cocktail dress and actually spend some time with Edward. I'm not sure exactly how we scored tickets to this thing; my marginally-employed playwright best pal is not exactly "connected," but I think it might have been a connection through Likeable Lila, his sweet and quasi-interesting girlfriend. I didn't ask any questions when he called and said "can you be ready for a black-tie affair in 15 minutes?" Because the answer to that question is always yes, Peaches.

In true good-girl-angel-face form, I did not flirt (too much) with the ridiculously hot young chef who created my fave dessert of the evening, though he seemed to be slightly more than interested. In an older, wilder time, you'd be sitting here reading the story of how I got drunk on wine older than myself and ended up slinking out of Hot Chef's studio apartment on the Gold Coast early Saturday morning, still wearing a gold cocktail dress and four-inch Kenneth Cole Reactions. But this is the dawn of a gentler day. Christ on a Bike, I hope this blog doesn't get too dreadfully boring. I'm falling asleep just thinking about it myself.

Saturday
I went to a party on the South Side of Chicago, known to Jim Croce fans as "the baddest part of town." Now, I don't get down there much. I'm a dedicated Northsider, and it's pretty apparent in everything I do and say and wear and everywhere I shop and eat and drink. But I have no aversion to Soxland. I just don't have any reason to venture anywhere below Roosevelt Street, except for the occasional visit to Chinatown or the Court Theatre in Hyde Park. But there was a party to be gone to that involved, in some obscure way, some work folks, and I'm not one to pass up an invitiation. That'd be needlessly rude. So Lillie and Bryn and Mark and I headed down there Saturday night late, after I'd already been to a party and a BBQ earlier in the day. Apparently it's going to take my social calendar some time to adjust to my new outlook.

We got to the party and I encountered my newest nemesis: jello shots. Now, I've had these before. Shoot, in high school (when I didn't even drink) I made them all the time for parties b/c I was the only on in our group of friends who knew how to make jello. But I know for sure I haven't had one in years, and I guess I've never had, oh, like 14 of them in one night, while also drinking vodka and cokes. And I did mention I'd been to a BBQ around dinner time, where the only thing I could eat was some olives and a little bit of pasta "salad" (ie, mayo on bowties), since the hosts had not really considered providing a vegetarian option. But, I digress. Or maybe not. All this is to say that my body reacted badly to the jello. I imagine its inner monologue was something like this:

What is all this junk? It's not food. It's not booze. It's like...well...it's all jiggly and sugary and...DOES NOT COMPUTE! ABORT! ABORT!

Which pretty much explains why I found myself puking over a second-story balcony railing in the middle of a foreign geographical location at the social gathering of a stranger. It doesn't so much explain how I lost Bryn and Mark and Lillie over the course of the evening, but I'm sure that they asked if I were okay to stay and I shooed them off. I remember talking to a very cute rough-around-the-edges type for most of the evening, so I'm sure my friends believed I would stay true to my usual form and wouldn't be needing a ride home. Ultimately, it seems after my gastro-pyrotechnics the cute rough-around-the-edges Southsider (who turned out to be party's host) let me sleep in his bed while he took the couch, and I remember drunkenly willing myself to STAY THERE and NOT stumble out to the living room in order to find and grope him. I mean, it helped that I had not exactly covered myself in glory on the balcony a little while earlier, but it's not like I haven't done worse with more alcohol in my system. I could have tracked him down and sexed him up. But I stayed put. Perfect angel.

Well, maybe an angel wouldn't have gotten blind drunk and puked everywhere and had to be put to bed in a strange home to keep her from injuring herself, but I did my best. Baby steps, folks.

Sunday
I made my way home via Vi, my absolute dream of a roommate who managed to locate the sticky note at home on which I'd written the party address, and Google Maps her way down to the South Side in my car. I bought her brunch at Kitsch'n and proceeded to sleep and watch the Olympics for the rest of the day. Lee made some supper (that boy totally earns his keep), but I was too far gone to eat any. Eventually I rallied enough to venture out into Northalsted Market Days, which had been going on very loudly below my window all weekend. You know, just 300,000 of our gayest friends, street-fairing it up. I wish I'd had enough energy to get involved with the game of nearly-naked gay man Twister (see above), but luckily Ava was there to take that one for the team. Besides, WWGGD? (What Would Good Galatea Do?) Probably not get hot and sweaty in a game of nearly-naked gay man Twister. But hell if I know. I'm just making this up as I go along.

I feel this weekend was a step in the right direction.
By my count, I could've had sex with hot semi-strangers twice, and I refrained. Hey, I didn't so much as KISS them! I'm giving myself points for that.
This weekend is Bryn's birthday party. Let's see if we can cut out the drinking to distraction as well this go-round. But I don't want to try too much, too soon. Slow and steady wins the race (for a clean liver and the salvation of my soul).

4:20pm--Stone Cold Wrong

I SAID NO!

12:03--A Moment of Your Time, Please

Today marks an anniversary: two years ago today I moved to Chicago.

This milestone, coupled with my recent skank cancer scare, has put me in a very reflective state of mind.


What did I expect to find when I moved here?
I left a warm, huge, loving family, a climate and a culture that fascinates me, a boyfriend of four years I was nuts about and saw a future with, and a slew of friends who were near and dear to my heart. I had all good things, but I expected that Chicago would hold even more and better. Was this naïve? Was it selfish? What kind of sensible person abandons a perfectly good life mid-stream and just expects the universe to hand her another? Me, evidemment.

And now it's been two years.
Have I found whatever it was I left to find?
I'm so far from my family and I've lost track of many of my old friends. I'm immersed in a culture that still feels foreign to me at certain times and incredibly bland at others. The winters are long and cold, though snow is still pretty wondrous. I am not in love. I have a 9-5 job, something I swore I'd never succumb to, my credit card debt is monumental, and most days I feel incredibly drained by about 7pm.

I moved here to be a writer. Two years later I'm kind of a wreck.

But this is still only the beginning, Peaches.
The thing about my life now, the keyword, is potential.
I may not have everything I want, but I can see it all. I know it's out there.
I have the perfect apartment and the perfect best friend, check. I have a job that pays well and I work with people I (mostly) like a lot. My wardrobe continues to kick your wardrobe's ass. I have made new friends here who are eclectic and interesting and near and dear to my heart and, realistically speaking, they wouldn't have fit into my old life nearly as well. My family still loves me. I have my health, surprisingly, despite my best attempts to ruin it with alcohol, sleep-deprivation, and shameless ho-ery. And I do have a play that just made it into a short works festival in the spring. So I'm a writer with a tiny, tiny toe-hold.

And the boys. Yes, them.
When Paul cheated on me after four years and I left him, that broke my heart and his heart.
I've never experienced pain like that, before or since.
I can comprehend that instance and I don't pretend that any of the subsequent tiny romantic tremors I have experienced have matched it in majesty or devastation. But they do leave marks. Every time someone comes into my life and then leaves, there is a tiny sewing-up, and a tiny scar. I can't ignore it. And maybe twelve or so little fractures add up to a heart-break. I can't be sure. All I know is I'm tired of pretending there are no consequences. My life is fun and games and kisses and dances and sex and parties and dresses and compliments, but right now that feels...hollow...somehow. When Paul and I parted ways I thought that this life was what I wanted, and it WAS, it has been. Until now. Now I want even more.

I'm not joining the baby race or setting a marriage trap.
Saints preserve us, I'm not that far gone.
But I don't know if the girl I have been is the girl I want to be forever.
It might be nice to be...settled...for a while. I feel like I'm coming out of a phase.

Ava will destroy me when she reads this.
And it's entirely possible I'll go to one of these three parties this weekend and completely abandon all this philosophy, because I'm just having a moment now, and I never know what will stick.  I might read back over this on Monday and say to myself, "bitch, please."

I don't know what to do to make the shift at this point. Maybe just stay home and be good? Stop strategizing so much?  Stop stalking boys and acting like I don't care about them even when I do? Who knows? Not me. But, hey, I knew even less two years ago and here we are. Here I am.

Alone and happy, and with my fingers stretched out to grab so much more.

4:30pm--Sweet Relief

Cherished readers, innocent bystoppers, and most helpful Gorbykitty: please take note.

I DO NOT HAVE SKANK CANCER!


I do have a great job, fabulous friends, a loving family, two sensational homes, three parties to attend this weekend, and the faith of my fathers.

And the peasants rejoiced!!