Why, Georgia, Why?

Last year, my best friend Annie lived an apartment across the street from mine with a bunch of weirdos she found on Craig’s List: one was a grad student at Boston University who was prone to wearing an exceedingly constricting, red woolen onesie at all times; one was a foreign exchange student who, although very sweet and totally innocuous, had a habit of talking so close to your face you found yourself inadvertently backing away as spittle sprinkled the inside of your nostrils; and one was an eighteen year old girl named Georgia, who, as we found out far too early on in our meeting of her, had been released from a mental health facility extremely recently and had a propensity to be overly noisy when it came to just about everything that occurred in her bedroom, which was, of course, just beyond the rice paper thin wall of Annie’s own room.

Georgia had a boyfriend named Derrick whom she had immediately told Annie about: oh, he was so wonderful and so talented and so hot. Exclamation point, exclamation point! “Spare me,” I grumbled, when Annie skeptically relayed this information to me. I was still, however, grudgingly intrigued, so when Annie invited me along to go see Georgia’s boyfriend’s band play at some empty bar in Boston on a Wednesday night, I acquiesced.

I saw Annie as soon as I walked in, and before I could even finish saying “Hey!” a girl who looked like a (more) coked out version of Michelle Trachtenberg was hugging me. “I’m a hugger!” she screeched and she pulled me in tighter. OK, let’s get one thing straight here: I am not a hugger. Maybe with people I know really well, but strangers? No thanks. Keep your myriad germs and your sweaty palms and your wrinkled clothing to yourself, please. So my hands stayed by my side while she squeezed away, as if I were being hugged to death by some overweight, alopeciatic relative. “I’m also, like, so totally drunk!” she said when she finally released me from her clutches. Like, awesome. 

Derrick was in the middle of his set. He wailed and whined about love lost, sang too close to the mic, and made stupid, screwed up, constipated faces as he riffed on his acoustic guitar, like a super-untalented Asian version of John Mayer. All the while Georgia closed her eyes and swayed along, chugging cheap beer and clapping and screaming in between songs, as if he really were the aforementioned Lothario. I was pretty certain each song, not to mention the evening in general, would never end. Ever.

But thankfully it did, and in the proceeding months, I constantly referred to Derrick as John, and spent many hours dissecting Georgia’s strange roommate behavior: she’d had Annie hide her stash of pot, broken up and gotten back together with Derrick more than a dozen times, and then mysteriously disappeared for several months, only to return and immediately and unabashedly inform everyone she came in contact with that she had just returned from a rejuvenating stay at the local mental facility. After that bomb was dropped, I dashed to the hardware store with Annie to buy a lock for her door and then noise canceling headphones, since now that Georgia was back, we could only expect a return of her roaring romantic rendezvous.

The year wore on, and Georgia’s behavior became more and more erratic, regardless of her “rejuvenating” stay at what was now referred to as “ The Place.” She proved to be a serious kleptomaniac as she continually used Annie’s honeysuckle scented shampoo, and proceeded to then drink an entire handle of vodka that Annie and I had bought in a failed attempt to create the ever elusive velon (pictured below). She denied ever having touched the shampoo, despite the fact Annie had taken careful note of its positioning in the bathroom, or having ever taken even a whiff of the vodka, even though it was found, entirely drained, next to her unmade bed. 

By the end of the year, Georgia had broken up with Derrick for good (and thank God, as I was uncertain if I could handle hearing his wheezy voice another moment longer: she played his basement-made CD on repeat), and had taken to parading through Annie’s apartment a line-up of men that seemed to have not much in common with one another except the fact none of them showered, and all of them shared her interest in stealing Annie’s stuff and wearing flannel. I was constantly perplexed how someone so nuts and so weird could manage to snag a dude--many of them, in fact--and I couldn’t. “Why is life so unfair?” I moaned to Annie who shrugged as she Skyped with her European boyfriend, Henry. But in May Henry finally came for a visit, and although I had hoped to gain another sidekick in the Anti-Georgia campaign, Annie and Henry’s lovey-dovey kissy-faces instead reminded me even more frequently that I was still single, and that even the likes of (literally) crazy-pants Georgia was able to rope in an unsuspecting boy.

One night, I pulled up in front of Annie’s apartment to drop her and Henry off: they had both somehow ended up in my backseat and were holding hands and stroking each other’s thighs. “Here we are!” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly. I put the car in park, and there, in front of Annie’s stoop, was someone bent over, vomiting up what sounded like perhaps a lung, or at the very least another large and vital organ. The three of us watched for a minute from the car, making jokes about stupid college kids who still got drunk off Smirnoff Ice and nips of horrifically flavored vodka (lemonade, cotton candy, etc.). But then the girl stood up and, steadied by a boy in flannel, the light from the vestibule showed the heaving girl to be Georgia. We all squealed with delight, until Annie realized her bathroom would soon be coated in puke. She sprinted for the stairs, hoping to overtake the intoxicated and stupid Georgia. Less than sixty seconds later Annie’s bedroom light went on and from the window Henry gave me the thumb’s up, holding Annie’s bottle of honeysuckle shampoo in the other hand. Mission Accomplished, he mouthed to me. As I drove away, I caught a glimpse of Annie and Henry kissing, and although I felt an odd twinge of something I could only vaguely recognize as jealousy, I drove home happy knowing that even after all those guys Georgia dated, she was ending her night night throwing up into her own hair and wouldn’t even be able to wash it without Annie’s shampoo, while I was heading home alone and happy and with Ocean Fresh smelling hair. So who says being single has any drawbacks, anyway?

Despite our intense online research, this little trick simply does not work.