I dropped by my tracks for Cris to mix and master today.  He said he thinks he can work with what I gave him, and that I should have my album mixed and mastered in a week or so.  One song, "Hockey Goon of Love," has the lyrics, "But if you want to shit on me/ 'cause word came from above/ I'll have my say about it/ I'm the hockey goon of love," and, "I'm called the enforcer/ I just do just what I can/ truth to tell, most weekend nights/ I use the palm of my right hand."

There's this radio announcer on the local classical station who specializes in music from the Baroque era and earlier.  Several years ago she announced that she took a position in Europe to do a deep, scholarly study of a Baroque era composer she helped elevate and champion, and that she would leave Austin and the station, for good, very shortly.  A few months later, I tuned into the station, and she still had her position, but she had a new surname.  That's all I knew of that matter.

Yeah, if I had someone in my world who seemed to just want to relegate me to some diminished, demeaning role, but I suspected that I meant more to them than they let on, I'd throw down some ultimatum too, but only if I really cared for them.  If this person worked at a business I patronize, and I finally had an opportunity to invite them to some nice, daytime, low-commitment event that I was a part of, but I also wanted them to know that this was it, I'd give them fair warning before the opportunity came to invite them to this event.  I'm just thinking, "What if?," out loud here, understand?

The fair warning would consist of me stating that I'm totally willing to patronize another  business that offered the same services if things didn't come off, and I suspected that things didn't come off because they just want me to play some bullshit role in their life.  I'd totally give fair warning about that.  I'm not talking about marriage here, understand, just invite them somewhere where they'd only have to hang out for a little bit etc., and if they wanted to split soon after they arrived, okay.

Understand, I think I treat my love interests as well as I can possibly treat them.  I think an appropriately expressed ultimatum, given how I often manage to keep things viable for quite some time with no real acknowledgement from the other party that, no, things haven't totally gone to shit, thanks in large part to me; I think a courteously administered ultimatum would at least allow me to move on if the other party blows it off or otherwise flouts it in some way.  Yeah, I'd do that to settle things once and for all.

Oh, and one more thing.  Sometimes I'm out for a walk or at a coffee shop, and some attractive woman will say something, something that I can hear, like, "I love him too much." I hate to say it, but my grandiose way of thinking can find succor in such things, and I can take them out of context and apply them to my own situation somehow and....and.  Who do I complain to about this stuff?  The Universe? I can be swayed by that kind of stuff to give a frustrating love interest ONE MORE CHANCE.  I admit it.  Yep. Mental illness.  But, there will come a time when I just walk away, and attractive young women at coffee shops or on my walks can say whatever the hell they want, and it will make no difference.

Oh, and this person, let's say they work at a business I patronize. Let's just say that for the sake of argument.  If they call in sick to work during the week that I want to throw down this ultimatum, they'd better really be sick.  And, I'd want to know about it in a timely manner, AND they'd better be prepared to make amends for letting this opportunity blow by them, or I'm gone, gone, gone.  

Oh, and one more thing, if I were to find myself in such a situation one of these days, I constantly maintain and improve upon a very well-constructed Bullshit-O-Meter that can detect the first sign of total bullshit from such a party as the ones that so concern me so frequently.  If such a party wanted to try to get anything past this well-oiled Bullshit-O-Meter, THEY'D BETTER DO A DAMN GOOD JOB OF IT.

So let's talk about how a mister regards his mistress, typically.  One can check out The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray.  Pay attention to the part where Fred, playing the part of the mister, gives Shirley, the mistress, a hundred dollar bill to buy herself something nice for Christmas.  You see, he won't be spending Christmas with her, and he didn't have time to pick out anything for her himself, and well, she understands, doesn't she?

In my last post I pointed out an analogous dynamic between myself and quite a number of young women these past seven years, starting with that virgin girl at that one business I go on and on about.  At that same business where that virgin girl worked, a later incarnation of her shit looked at me with goo-goo eyes a couple of times as I went about my day there.  Naturally, I then looked her up on Facebook and saw pictures of her and her two kids and her fiancé.  Naturally, that ended the deal for me, but she acted so rudely towards me after that, as if she believed I made some deliberate effort to deprive her of the romantic attention she felt so entitled to having.

Have I ever really signed on for one of these deals at this business since the days of that virgin girl in 2014?  Define signed on.  I've certainly slowed things down to my speed quite a number of times.  I've certainly done the math over, and over, and over in my head in my efforts to slow things down to my speed.  As of this writing, thanks in large part to my willingness to slow things down to my speed,  I've always found the ability to pick my spots to gain some wriggle room and free myself, eventually.

A sure-fire sign of falling for these deals hook, line, and sinker comes in the form of a mental breakdown period to end the deal.  That never happened with that virgin girl, or that entitled young mother with the fiancé, or anyone else at this business who came after me  for that kind of thing to any extent, greater or lesser.  I remember that time in regards to that virgin girl as a real ordeal, but again, no breakdown.  I've experienced several more ordeals in relation to young Fred MacMurray types at that business, but no breakdowns over them, and I don't anticipate any kind of breakdown period for me in the foreseeable future, either.  Believe me, those breakdowns can have the characteristic of an epileptic seizure, where the afflicted can feel one coming on as that time approaches.

So, if I haven't experienced any breakdowns since the days of that virgin girl over these bad deals these women at this one business seem so intent on having me sign on for, what has happened instead?  Well, when that virgin girl first reared her head, during the Summer of 2014, I found myself in the process of working on issue number 8 of Richy Vegas Comics.  These days, I find I have fifty-two more pages of issue number 25 of my comic book to finish illustrating, and that will close the book on the fourteen part epic, "The Legend of Richy Vegas."  That's two prequel issues, plus the twelve issues of "The Legend..." proper. Fourteen issues total, eighty pages per issue, so that's eleven hundred and twenty pages of comics.  All written, illustrated, and edited by myself. Yesterday afternoon, I completed the tracking for my third solo music album, I Make Country Music Records, Sir.  That's my fifth solo album over all, and my third album since the days of that virgin girl.  In the days to come, I anticipate shooting more YouTube videos of a lot of those songs I've written, most of which I've written since 2014.  Sorry to disappoint you Fred, but no breakdown over you.  I'm not really sorry about that, either.

I've often thought about that virgin girl at that one business I patronize and what all she and her kind ever got out of the deals they would so ....aggressively(?)...express a desire to have me sign on for.  They all had boyfriends or whatever.  So it wasn't that.  I had the promise of functioning, I believe, as a weird, emotional equivalent of a mistress for them.  They could get all of this bullshit and drama out of me, they hoped, without ever having to commit to fulfilling my desires for anything more than what would amount to a bizarre flirtation for them.  E-agh! Yeah, the ones at this business who went after me to a greater rather than a lesser extent saw me as providing something they couldn't get from their boyfriends, fiances, whatever.  Good to know.  Anyone want to try to prove me wrong on that?  I didn't think so.

There's this really attractive young woman who works at one of these businesses I patronize whom I would like to get to know better.   The problem I have with that resides in the notion that if I ask her out in front of God and everyone at her place of employment, she would just see me as some silly-ass pushover of an old man.  She would likely just see me as succumbing to her charms in a premature and inappropriate manner, if past experiences teach me anything.  I think I've done very well these past several years in declaring a moratorium on the asking out of young, very attractive baristas, waitresses, and other young women I come into contact with on a regular basis.  I don't want to fuck with that at all at this point.  

I've come up with so many reasons for halting that kind of thing for the time being, and the more I refrain from asking such young women out, the more reasons I seem to come up with for such restraint. Face it, if I asked this young woman out in front of God and everyone at her place of employment, because she comes across to me as THAT SPECIAL, so much so that, well, in HER case, I HAVE to make an exception, that would just open the door for me making an exception in the cases of other young women in my world, especially after this particular young woman would (probably) shoot my ass down for all my efforts to be some good guy and take it upon myself to work out our "assuredly" mutual attraction.

I've often complained bitterly about the young women at this one business I patronize frequently-that business where that virgin girl used to work, yeah that one- about how I've counted nine young woman at this one business who just wanted to fuck with me by testing my mettle.  Now, if I'd ever gotten the impression that any of these young women at this business had ever developed a genuine interest in me through this process of seeing what I'm made of, so to speak, that be another matter entirely, so much so that I would KIND OF be okay with it, to some extent.  But no, as of this writing I've never gotten the lasting impression that these young, very attractive women-women I've often cared for a great deal, I might add-I've never came away with the lasting impression from my interactions with any of these women of these past several years, that ANY of them EVER took a romantic interest in me at some point.  If one or two of them ever had, and it just never registered with me as that kind of thing, well, whose fault is that?  I've had SOME dating and sex experiences in my lifetime, enough to know when those options get seriously put on the table, but nope, not from any waitress, barista, or any other day-to-day employee type I'm even the slightest bit acquainted with to this point.

Oh geez, here I am bringing up SEX when I talk about waitresses, baristas, and other employee types I regularly see.  Maybe that kind of too-soon thought process has me barking up the wrong tree way more often than I or anyone else would care for.  Well, what's the cure for, perhaps, coming off as a pushover to the extent that I wind up barking up the wrong tree?  'DING, DING, DING' to anyone who suggests that I just see what happens when I let perceived dating opportunities slip through my fingers!  If someone wants to see what I'm made of just for shits and grins, I can up the ante to the point of just blowing them off for all of that bullshit they want to sling my way.  Yep, like Darrel Royal said, "We dance with them that brung us."  Uh, to make myself clear, by, "Them that brung us, " I mean the idea that I will stick with just letting perceived opportunities slip through my fingers, not that I will literally try to  dance with any flirty young thing that darkens my door.

I reiterate, as far as I know, I do NOT currently find myself in negotiations for a date, contact information, or any other type of deal that would involve me seeing ANYONE in my world I currently have an attraction towards in any kind of social setting.  And, I very, very strongly reiterate that this one particular business remains the MOST problematic, in that the gunfighter mentality of some of the young, vey attractive female employees who saunter in and out of employment there STILL seems to persist years after that virgin girl first threw down the gauntlet in front of me in 2014(!).  I'm working on this pushover issue hard enough to satisfy me, at least.   

Yep, barking up the wrong tree.  I told my cousin last night that so much of my efforts to improve my game these days involve learning whom NOT to approach for dating purposes.  My checkered history with women so much involves a tendency to make it all about the wrong person for all of that.  I think I've made changes.  If I extract the last seven years of my life these days and compare it to the last seven years before my hospitalization for mental illness, the difference in how frequently and intensely and for how long I would pursue the wrong person between those two periods of my life speaks volumes as to how much I have tried and succeeded in changing that aspect of my game around.  I can't say I've NEVER barked up the wrong tree these past seven years, but I can see a steep reduction in that sort of thing these last seven years over those years between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight.  In the recovery from an illness with no real cure, a steep reduction in the symptoms of that illness generally counts as the best progress one may achieve. 

I frequently look at men or machines reading Reddit posts about nice guys, neckbeards, incels, what have you, in YouTube videos.  It seems as if an overall obsession with women and a tendency to bark up the wrong tree informs the stories told in so many of these videos.  I remember the kind of obsessive things I would do in high school and college and wish to God I could change somehow.  I think just the state of existing in a bad place for a lot of these guys makes their efforts to connect with women about the wrong women by definition. A vicious cycle emerges where the behavior of these (mostly) young men can lead them to the wrong person's door before too long, if my personal experiences applies to their situations in any way.

I've talked often enough about how things I went through in the eighties and nineties seem to have come back to haunt me these days.  I think my mental illness, and what that signifies to various people hungry for some adversarial drama in their lives, makes  that kind of phenomenon a definite possibility.  The mentally ill have tended to get scapegoated for the sins of the many throughout history.  Couple this with the notion many antagonists posses that the mentally ill can't defend themselves against such attacks, and that the aggressors can get away clean with such attacks, and one can find all the explanation one needs for why this kind of behavior runs rampant in the situations someone such as me finds himself in to this day. 

What I wrote on my last post struck me as a possible breakthrough about women I have a strong attraction to.  I think I'm the type they worry will not leave them alone if they show even a smidgen of interest in me.  All these years I've learned how to pretty much rein that enthusiasm in, or at least I thought I learned how, but I may still give women I have a strong attraction to the impression that I'd just be all over them in a way they wouldn't like if they gave me half a chance.

Well, it's the first of the month.  I bought a five CD set of classic albums by the British band Traffic because I did not directly refer to that young woman I can go on, and on, and on, and on about for the past fifteen days as I wrote these blog posts.  She works at a business where- I sat up and counted one night- she works at a business where, since 2014, eight young woman have tried to make me look like an asshole, some to a lesser extent, some to a greater extent, by trying to get me to put myself out there in a romantic sense.  It's nine young women, if I count her, and yes, come to think of it, I WILL count her in that number.

Well, as far as I know, she still works there, and I want to check her out, a little....onnnne mooore tiiiiime.  Did I truly have a breakthrough in regards to her, or am I going to make myself look like an asshole in her eyes and the eyes of those around us?  Does she want to make me look like an asshole?  How can I tell if that's what she wants?  Oh yeah, all that experience with women who look about as good as her in my past.  Plus, all those times where I made THEM look like assholes instead.  Well, we will see.

In the months leading up to the world's shutdown over the pandemic, an identical kind of thing occurred with me in regards to two separate young women.  The first time occurred when I patronized a coffee shop I still patronize regularly, and caught a look from an attractive young barista whom I'd become somewhat familiar with by this time.  She looked at me with a wide-eyed look of, I don't want to say fear, but a sense of reservation (?) or some such.  Like she had some kind of fear of what might happen next in the interactions between us if things continued on their present course.  That's it.  Some sort of apprehension about where things might go between us showed up in her face and eyes as she looked at me go off to use the restroom after I'd ordered a drink.

I caught pretty much the same look one night at the Posse East after I finished an open mike set.  A table of college age kids featured one attractive young girl who looked a me in exactly the same way that barista had done many months before.  At that point I'd never even tried to talk to this young woman at the Posse or anyone in her party.  I just continued to go about my own business and leave them alone.  Soon after this young woman looked at me this way, she came up and talked to me.  She told me she liked my set and asked general questions about whether I play out and stuff like that.  I stood there with my hands clasped behind my back and politely talked to her until she went back to her table with her friends.  They left soon afterwards.

I couldn't quite put my finger on why these two totally unrelated young women looked at me in precisely the same way on two different occasions.  I'm now prepared to conclude that they both had something of an interest in me, but that they had serious reservations about throwing me any kind of bone of attention.  The same fearful looks they both had in their eyes tell me that they thought that if they showed any interest in me at all, that I might not leave them alone, so to speak.  In other words, that they might suffer negative consequences for showing the slightest bit of interest in me.  

I can only come to these kinds of understandings about women I very much have an attraction to by following my buddha.  By following my buddha, I mean continually working the experiment I first tried with Sara in 1988 where I "turned my back on love."  In other words, by seeing what would happen if I just let perceived opportunities slip through my fingers and go on my way.  If I had a love interest at this current time who seemed to 1) just want me to let go and walk away from them, or 2) wanted things to stay in exactly the same stalemate, or 3) wanted me to move things forward by jumping through her hoops, I think following my buddha and just letting all of this stuff slip through my fingers would help me to see that she probably would, as in the case of these two young women I've mentioned here, not like for me to pursue her to the ends of the Earth and back, and therefore, she really doesn't want to give me some kind of really affirming, validating, positive attention.

If I were to have a love interest at the current time who felt too inhibited to show that she liked me because of what I might do in reaction, the most reassuring thing I think I could do is not much of anything, really.  This current era has brought to light a whole spectrum of male misconduct towards women ranging from grabbing some woman's ass at a gathering to sexual assault, and I think I can see that such apprehensions on the part of young women in my world to show that they like me seem pretty understandable. 

My last post brought up the point that I've never had the opportunity to cash in on any situation where I felt compelled to let go of a love interest that just would not work out.  As a matter of fact, several of the very worst experiences I've ever had in my life in my relationship with women followed in the wake of what, even to this day, seems to constitute quite exemplary behaviors on my part.  In my last post I brought up a desire i had to rewrite the rules of what constituted a reward and who becomes the person to bestow that reward on me.  I concluded that I would reward myself with things such as comic books or CD's for acceptable behavior in this particular circumstance.  I would reward myself in such ways instead of waiting for the women in my world to bestow some kind of boon upon me.

To make myself the primary bestower of rewards sets up a whole new set of rules, it might seem, particularly a whole new set of rules about what I could bring up on this blog.  As I say in the title of this post, I will try to take the high road on this issue, and not single any one person out.  That means that the reader may have to forgive me for my lack of specific, concrete examples that might better illustrate whatever point I want to illustrate, but here goes.

I've never dated someone who initially came at me in an adversarial manner.  Furthermore, I've never known a male friend, coworker, or casual acquaintance who ever had a story to tell where they dated a woman or girl who came at them in an adversarial manner.  That record stands from my college days to this very day, September, 24th, 2021.  Never happened.  I'm not saying that it's never happened with anyone, anywhere, just not for me or any male peer I've ever known in any capacity.  

I've had adversarial situations arise between myself and a young woman that rose to the point where I felt the need to demonstrate a willingness to defend myself from physical assault from overly zealous young men who seemed driven by a misguided sense of chivalry that a person or persons, known or unknown, instilled in them somehow.  I'm not singling any one person out, because I've dealt with such situations from the mid-80's to the present day.  I've certainly never, ever dated a young woman or girl who went to this place with me.

That said, I think any effort I make to let go of such a woman or girl, given that I now assume responsibly for rewarding myself; I think I would do well to at least point out some of the elements in play in some of these situations.  That would include all kinds of efforts on their part at harassment and intimidation that rise to, at times, the threat of physical violence against me.  Hey, all in the name of letting go a love interest who wants nothing more than for me to let them go so we can both get on with our lives.  Right?  And since I've rewritten the rules as to who gets to reward me for exemplary, high-road behavior, that frees up a lot of topics that used lay buried underneath the surface.  All in the name of letting go.  All in the name of loving these kinds of women the best way I know how.

Back in the day, after I would let go of someone such as Donna or Gwen, I would tell myself that letting go of such women in an acceptable manner would really raise my stock with other women, and that I could rebound with a real girlfriend for my efforts at such acceptable behavior.  Well, one of the worst experiences I've ever had in my relationship with women occurred in the aftermath of my efforts to let go of Donna in the Fall of 1986.  That bad experience came in the form of Wanda.  So much for cashing in.

I had a friend who related to his girlfriends in the manner of an abusive alcoholic asshole, and he'd have girlfriends rewarding him for his efforts sometimes two at a time.  And, I might add, these "rewards" aren't just something one could put off on women, because I used to associate with someone whose ongoing infidelity towards her husband got rewarded with a long, stable marriage, a roof over her head, and kids.

So, if I ever had the occasion where I saw fit to let go of someone in my world, and I wanted to do so in a manner that she and those around us found acceptable, I'd set up a token reward system rather than try to look for validation for my behavior from other women in my world.  I give myself token rewards for behaving in an acceptable manner towards family members, and for meeting goals such as regular guitar practice and exercise, among other things.  I find that these kinds of rewards, coming from myself, prove so much more reliable than affirmation and/or validation from others in my purview. 

 I just got finished watching a couple of YouTube videos posted by Dr. Todd Grande.  These two videos featured analyses of content creator's videos where they claimed a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I won't get too much into what he said, but I'll just say that this subject interests a lot of people.  

I have never received a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder by a doctor or other type of clinician.  My official diagnosis is Schizoaffective Disorder.  BUT, the main conceit of my memoir stories centers around a narrative that presents the dilemmas I face in trying to figure these life experiences out, and under which of these two diagnoses my life experiences belong.  I'm trying to present art, not science, which can hopefully speak to a lot of people and their own lives in a way a clinical case study of my experiences never could.

Maybe these dilemmas interest others more than even I, in my most grandiose imaginings, can really appreciate.  Maybe my interactions with those around me on a day to day basis reflect this interest in my story that I can't fathom.  Or maybe I'd do just as well to go piss up a rope as write and draw these comics, write and perform those songs, and write these blog posts.  Again with the dilemma.

I'm prepared to forgive the Invisible Woman for her enthusiasm for wanting to play a part in this somehow, and I can especially forgive that young woman whom I can go on and on about on this blog.  Yeah,  I've been living in a cartoon of sorts long before either of them came along, and I don't mind if they want to watch, I guess.