Stephanie Georgopulos

You tiptoe around it, you get back to the scripted version of your life. Where did we leave off, again? The scene where my emotions and expectations rest idly in a protective bubble, never to be contaminated by reality? I almost forgot my lines, what with all of that scenery crashing down around me. Let’s take it from the top.

Most of the ads were typical: “Wanna go skiing? I’ll provide, you host,” or “I just moved here, I’m really shy.” But it didn’t take long to find one that interested me, that actually excited me. He was looking for someone to exchange emails with, I think—I don’t remember his exact words but the intention behind the ad seemed innocent and not of the “blowing cocaine off of each other’s bodies” nature.

I recently got to know her on a much more intimate level in reading her memoir, The Last of the Live Nude Girls. In it, she chronicles the two years she spent dancing in Time Square’s infamous peepshows – a vocation that has, up until now, remained undocumented from an insider’s perspective. I met Sheila at a seedy bar of mutual acclaim to discuss stripping, dating, and what comes next.

Maybe there are no instructional pamphlets or illustrative posters to point out each and every one of the things we need to rid ourselves of, but there they are – lurking in the shadows of our subconscious. They are the people who make us feel like our lungs are in a vice whenever we see them. The humanization of our bad habits, walking and breathing and telling bad jokes.

Just eat a mid-sized meal every three hours until it’s time to go to happy hour. [Editor’s Picks: meatloaf; fried chicken; egg rolls; manicotti; several variations of fried rice.] Play Bejeweled on your computer to appear as though you are thinking and making use of your fine motor skills. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.

I’ll be pleased by Jack’s five o’clock shadow and the way his whiskey-soaked words tumble out of his mouth. I’ll see his mania as refreshing; he’s not the buttoned-up doctor I expected him to be. “It was a six hour flight,” I’ll think, “Of course he had a drink or seven.”

I always think the same thoughts when I see a blind person – what form do your dreams take? Do you not want to wake up from them, knowing you’ll face darkness when you do? Have you always been this way and if so, do you accept it gracefully? On a day that was just a touch too idyllic, do you lay awake at night and dwell on the one thing that can never be perfect? The thing you can’t change?

What I didn’t know was that Patti Stanger would royally piss me off almost immediately after I’d begun watching. If you’re not familiar with the crass wannabe Cupid, a common habit of hers is pressuring women into straightening their hair for myriad shallow reasons.

A year or two before it became a radio single, I had a scrambled, low-fi recording of “Hey There, Delilah” set to play whenever someone visited my MySpace profile. Of all of the songs in the world, I chose “Hey There, Delilah” as the song I wanted to be identified with. Living in a snap judgment, profile picture world, this seems like a bold – if not asinine – choice.

“It’s 1:30 a.m.” This announcement is met with groans and shivers. “We have to get home,” the littlest one says to the others. My adult alarm starts to go off. Children… must… get… home… me. Adult. You. Children. Must help children.

Feel immense gratitude for the following people: the person who called instead of texted, the person who sent you a card in the mail instead of wrote on your wall, the person who remembered your birthday despite not having a Facebook. You’re probably related to 2/3 of these people.

When I was twelve, my parents received a letter in the mail. It was from some boarding school looking for exceptional minority students to give scholarships to. I’d done pretty well on my citywide standardized tests, and we always circled both ‘Black’ and ‘Caucasian’ on any form that asked, so on paper I was very much what they were looking for.