This time last year, when I found myself in a situation with someone who really didn't seem to care for me romantically, but I cared for them a great deal, I'd come to some conclusions by then.  One conclusion came from debunking any notion that I ever, ever faced a romantic love equivalent of a fight or flight crisis.  I'd done that a number of times with this person by then.  I just sat down on any anxieties about the situation, and any impulse to act decisively, "Now, dammit," proved not at all worth acting on.  She never cared for me, so I could just slow things way, way down to my pace, and make intelligent decisions accordingly.  In so doing, I realized the other conclusion.  I realized that no time clock existed, either.  Our cat and mouse game dragged on for almost three years before I invited her to my comic book sale at my friends' shop last October.  My invite still felt spot on as coming at the right time, the right place, for the right reasons, and for the right occasion after all that time had passed since she'd started in on me in February of 2019.  It didn't work out, but that just proves my point.  She never wanted to go out with me, so I could just slow things way, way down in that regard, and pick my spots, if I so chose to pick any spots.  I really feel as if I did all I could in regards to that whole situation.

Now if, someday, I get the impression that someone out there in my world really cares for me- I'm not saying that's the case now, mind you, but, if I do ever get that impression- I bet the same core elements of the above-mentioned situation would hold true.  i bet that neither a fight or flight crisis nor a time clock would exist.  I seriously doubt someone who really cared for me would ever pressure me in that manner, and that no matter the outcome, she would still care for me. I probably would have to engage in some sort of extremely misguided, deliberate sabotage of our deal to make her not care for me anymore.  I've known people who deliberately sabotage their relationships with those around them in some sort of really fucked-up bid for unconditional love.  I imagine a huge element of my end of it would actually involve refraining from that sort of behavior to the utmost, and hoping that things might shake out favorably in the absence of such behavior.  I'm thinking this stuff up as I go along.  I mean, I know that's not all there is to it, but I bet a willingness to let it all go factors in heavily as well, for example.  Neither of those two things, no sabotage, a willingness to let go, involves coming on like "Johnny on the spot," so to speak.

I've concluded that I'm afraid that I will fall in love with the wrong person sometime in the foreseeable future.  There's someone in my world I care for, and I worry that my unerring instinct to gravitate towards inappropriate love interests will bring upon me yet another epic struggle to keep my head above water and keep from going totally nuts.

The thing is, I conducted myself really well when I fell in love with the wrong person the last time.  I couldn't have done better than I did if I had a hundred more chances to do so.  If I treat all of this drama and bullshit as the symptoms of a chronic illness that I can just take care of and manage, then I have no reason to believe that I won't handle any future situation as well or better than I handled the last one.

I just wish "real" women would take an interest in me at some point.  I guess one of my deepest fears resides in the notion that the women in my world will just want to see a repeat performance from me of all I went through with the last wrong person I fell in love with, and that no one really has any interest in me for more than that.  Well, that would really suck, but that remains to be seen.  If the women in my world just want me to perform in that manner, no matter the toll such a performance would take on my health and well being, then shame on them, and there's no reason to believe that I would not catch wise to that desire on their part sooner rather than later.

The only way I found to get through my day to day life involves refraining from asking attractive waitresses, baristas, female grocery store cashiers, and female staff at the Austin Clubhouse for dates, contact info, or making any other attempt, such as approaching them on social media, in an effort to get to know them better.  That doesn't mean I don't approach ANYONE for social reasons, but it does mean that I don't approach many women for social reasons.  This past year I approached that young woman who used to work at that business whom I can go on and on about, but I also approached a woman I knew from my music scene hangouts, and I approached that woman at Free Comic Book Day where I had a table at my friends' shop.

The young woman at that business falls under the category of waitress, barista, etc., but in approaching her I really, really raised the bar quite a bit as to what all it would take for me to even make a try for one of those types.  I could not stop thinking about her for one, this whole cat and mouse thing with her had gone on for almost three years for another, and so the verbal invitation I offered to come see me at my comic book table last October served two purposes: 1) I really liked her and wanted to get to know her better, but also, 2) I put her on notice that this cat and mouse bullshit would soon end, and so it did.

So, I have a viable boundary in regards to the above mentioned types that I have no desire to cross at this time. I don't maintain this boundary out of shyness, inhibition, or lack of courage, because I will approach other types of women in other settings readily enough.  At least enough to satisfy me in my mind that my boundaries with waitresses, baristas, etc., exist because I grew tired of  these types acting as if I'd committed some gross affront towards them, and having to put up with mean games in retaliation for these supposed affronts.

If any waitress, barista, grocery store cashier, or Austin Clubhouse staff member wants to get to know me better, but it has to go down where I, Richard Alexander, SIMPLY MUST act as the initial breaker of the ice, well then, you're shit out of luck.  But don't blame me, blame all of the shitty behavior I had to endure as a consequence of asking a fucking barista on date, or having a mental illness while grocery shopping, or what have you.  Not "having a mental illness while grocery shopping" in the sense that I was psychotic while in the grocery store or anything, but just being a person with a mental illness who needs to buy groceries like everyone else.

Something I've found helpful these last few days stems directly from my last post.  In my last post I talked about the need I felt to always have a love interest to think about.  I wrote that having a love interest made me feel as if i played a part in the whole love and dating game.

That got me to think about the Legend of Richy Vegas.  I spend a good deal of my days trying to parse out the actual reality of the Legend from that which exists only in my head.  I tend to think that many people in my world, no matter where I am, know about me in a way many would find unusual.  The girl at the coffee shop knows about my doings with women in my world, even though no obvious connection exists between the girl at the coffee shop and women I think about in a romantic way.  I've speculated that I have a web presence that I did not consent to, which supposedly connects disparate women in locals spread all over Austin, and other parts of the country whenever I travel for comic book conventions, for example.

I also speculate that a parallel knowledge of the Legend of Richy Vegas runs through a network of, primarily, men in my world.  I speculate that the League (I don't want to elaborate on the League right now), that the League recruits members around the country to tell men I might or might not encounter of the Legend of Richy Vegas.  So my mind filters day to day interactions with this construct in place.  The women know about one thing, while certain people, men mainly, know the real story, and I will often make dissociative connections about mundane, everyday interactions, such as when a female cashier at a business says, "Have a good one," as I leave after completing my purchase, or when a couple of men laugh about something between themselves in my presence.

That sucks, not as much as it sucked when I was sick with psychosis, but it still kind of sucks. I've concluded this past week that this tendency to make such dissociative connections, and the grandiose construct that underpins it all, reflects a primal desire in my being for me to be a part of something bigger than me.  Whether all of this stuff has a least some truth it- all the stuff about the Legend, that is- or whether it only actually resides in my head, my tendency to think in this manner displays a desire to find a personal connection to something divine and much bigger than me.  It sucks that my brain and consciousness works this way, I guess, but I hope this train of thought about how it just reflects my desire for connection, and that thinking this way doesn't make me bad or inferior, I hope this insight helps me in the long run.

Okay, I really care for this person, but I don't want her as a love interest.  I mean, if I did want her as a love interest, it would show some definite improvement in my taste in love interests, but I still don't want her as a love interest.  I trace a big source of my dysfunction in my relationship with women back to the idea that I supposedly need a love interest in order to feel as if I play a part in the whole love and dating game.  If I did somehow unconsciously assign this young woman the role of love interest for me at this current time, she would probably see such behavior towards her that would result from such an designation as a sign that I have formed an inappropriate, premature emotional attachment to her.  Whether she would react negatively or just feel really concerned about such a development, I don't want to sweat her.  Nope, no love interests for me, thank you.

Yesterday I wrote about someone I care for quite a bit.  I've written often about how a lot of women see the romantically obsessive type as the bad guy in the dating world.  I've managed to figure this one out only recently.  I've been in several situations over the past seven or eight years that brought home this perception of me by a lot of women.  I think this young woman I write about now also sees me as the romantically obsessive type, but I don't think she sees me as the bad guy.  But that doesn't mean she's madly in love with me, either.  That is all.

There's someone I think about a lot that I care for a great deal.  I don't want to put my foot in my mouth by writing something stupid on here that I'll regret.  I just got past page one hundred of Moby Dick, so I don't have much to write about that.  Plus, I wanted to read Call of the Wild and compare and contrast that book to Moby Dick.  I might want to throw in White Fang too, which might take even more time.  I don't have much to write about if I don't talk about women, so I might try to not write any blog posts at all for a while.

Last May I had a table selling my comic books at my friends' shop for Free Comic Book Day.  Towards the end of the day, this woman around forty-seven or forty-eight years of age started talking to me about the paper plates I draw my comics on.  She had an interest in the idea of repurposed materials and talked about things made out of plastic.  Anyway, we talked for quite a bit along these lines, and she just wouldn't go away.  She wore a mask, even though the event took place outdoors, and she seemed pretty nerdy.  As I broke down my table and carried stuff to my car, she even helped me with that.  I tried to come off as polite, and as she helped me with a chair at my car, I blurted out, "My URL is on those comics of mine you bought, if you read them and like them, send me an email through my contact page."  A little while later, she looked me up and down, for what reason I don't know, and I saw her talking to a guy who may have been her friend or her boyfriend or husband or whatever.

She did not seem to meet my usual standards as far as how good she looked, but I've been trying to work on that aspect of my game for a looong time now.  She just came off as so AVAILABLE for me to approach for social reasons, that I decided, "Why not?"  She never came off as if she wanted to play mean games with me, she didn't act offended when I asked her to write me, and she never tried to retaliate or otherwise make me feel bad for reaching out to her socially.  Like I said, I've wanted to push the envelope in that direction for a long time now, and I just saw a chance to act on that desire in that situation.  As of this writing, she still has not written me any emails, but even that aspect of it makes it feel like kind of a breakthrough.

If I continue to pursue this line of inquiry, I feel as if I will give myself some genuine options to go out with women.  With someone such as that young female employee who used to work at that business I patronize, I feel as if my efforts to disengage with her after I approached her for social reasons last year constituted pushing the envelope with a goddess type in a direction I feel as if I don't push often enough. After I invited that young woman to a comic book event in late October of 2021, and she did not show up to it, and she did not display any desire to talk to me or engage with me at all at her place of employment in the weeks that followed, I decided to take my business elsewhere and also join a support group for people who suffer from love addiction.  After about six weeks of patronizing another business, I decided to return, but this young woman didn't work there anymore, and I figured she had quit that job during my absence.

I said in a post titled "Physician Heal Thyself" that a woman who feels frustrated from dating womanizer types all the time might want to try giving the time of day to someone she doesn't normally give it to. I wrote that she didn't have to have sex with such men, necessarily, but that by giving such men the time of day, she could have some other experience of men other than the same one, over and over and over again. I then said in that post that I might want to try that myself, and with this woman at Free Comic Book Day, I think I did.  

This one time at this Free Comic Book Day didn't mark the only time I've gone in this direction, but I still think there's plenty of room for me to go further with this line of inquiry than I can with these young goddess types.  I feel as if I pushed the envelope as far as I could possibly push it with goddess types at the juncture of my dealings with Sara in 1988.  I honestly don't feel as if I have anywhere else to go that I would want to go with such types, and each successive experience I have, especially since the days of that virgin girl in 2014/ 2015, just seems to reinforce this conclusion.  

If I do actually die "unloved and alone," I want these two FACTS carved on my tombstone: 1) That I managed to quit smoking cigarettes, and 2) That I taught myself how to act in both my own and HER best interests.  By HER, I mean, for me at least, the eternal HER. I mean the type that seems to line up outside my metaphorical door with an agenda that has nothing to do with going on dates with me, getting me laid, or being my girlfriend.  Any newcomers to this blog can go back to about 2015 in my entries and find me talking on and on and on about HER.  If every damn thing I write about my relationship with women just beats this same drum over and over and over again, so be it.  I have much less of an interest in calling other women out for choosing other men over me or any kind of that shit.  However astute and insightful my observations may prove about women who simply favor someone else over me, for whatever reason, I can just let all of that go.  I would sooner tell the same story in regards to women who remind me somehow of Sara in 1988, Katy in 1985, Veronica in 1985, Wanda in 1987, Linda in 1988, Myrna in 1989, or any of the much more recent young women who've darkened that metaphorical door, but whom I've dealt with and managed so much better than all of those from the eighties, save for Sara, that i've just listed.

One reason I persist in writing about personal stuff has to do with the fact that it takes time and effort to read books and whatnot.  I just started Moby Dick, and at the pace I read books, I might not finish it until sometime next year.  So, as of today, I want the personal stuff to just reiterate the one skill set I have learned in regards to women, while at the same time I cast about for other stuff to write about.

I read two of Charles Dickens' books that feature orphans as the lead characters, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.  Dickens had a hard childhood.  His father wound up in debtor's prison, and as a boy Charles Dickens had to make his own way in the world of child labor as, from what I've read, a boot black and a worker in a bottle factory.  I find it kind of funny that the two orphans of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations come into prosperity through no devices of their own making, because Dickens had no such benefactors as he found early success as a serialized novelist in the first half of the nineteenth century in Victorian England.  Dickens had the ability to pluck himself out of the depths of personal gloom and despair and make a really good go of it in life, and his industry and success all throughout his adult life reflect this almost superhuman ability to lift himself out of almost any personal hell.  I guess he made Oliver Twist and Pip, the orphan in Great Expectations, the protagonists of those two books to shine a light on the utter helplessness children born into ill fortune experience in controlling their own destiny.

One finds this theme in full force in Oliver Twist, as, for much of the book, young Oliver finds himself cast about like a leaf in a gale from the most dire of life circumstances imaginable from birth until an incredible coincidence puts him in touch with his true lineage as a cast-off foundling from a much more prosperous class than his tormenters in the workhouse ever know of at first.  Oliver gets a taste of the good life until the criminal gang headed by Fagin kidnaps him and spirits him away from his newfound life.  The circumstances of Dickens' juvenile life in child labor no doubt inform the utter helplessness of Oliver to the whims of fortune that mark the tone of his book.  Oliver Twist came out as Dickens' second book published while still in his early to mid-twenties.  The hard life of child labor had to still taste very fresh to him. 

Great Expectations appeared as Charles Dickens' last major work, finding serialized newspaper publication as Dickens closed out his life in his fifties.   Dickens had suffered a failed, loveless marriage that ended while the author was in his forties, and he subsequently suffered the failed courtship of an eighteen year old stage actress that Dickens might have seen as his last chance at finding true love.  These experiences of women doubtlessly inform his characterizations of Miss Havisham and her young, beautiful protege, Estella.  Miss Havisham comes on as an elderly spinster who raises the beautiful Estella from childhood for the sole purpose of breaking the hearts of the male of the species.  Miss Havisham wears the same wedding dress she wore as a young woman, who, jilted at the alter by a rogue, vows revenge through the upbringing of Estella as a heartless bitch-goddess.  Pip finds himself hopelessly enamored of Estella from boyhood, all while suffering from the delusion that Miss Havisham serves as his mysterious benefactor that bestows a gentlemanly station upon him at the arrival of his eighteenth year.  For all of Dickens can-do pluck, he never found the love he longed for, and might have worked himself to death in his late fifties, as he toured Great Britain giving physically demanding readings of his works, perhaps as an effort to ward off the despair brought upon him by this central failure in the face of encroaching old age.

Great Expectations holds the general regard as Dickens' best book, but the visceral brutality in Oliver Twist really lays bare the hardship of life for England's lower classes in his times.  I imagine the overwrought sentimentality found in Oliver Twist put the tongues of twentieth century critics of such tendencies into a never-ending scolding clucking that attempted to rattle a previously unassailable literary reputation, but hey, Dickens and his depictions of the hardships of his times initiated an attempt for art to bring that stuff to light that ran through the rest of the nineteenth century in books such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, and influenced the attempts to form more humane welfare states in the developed world in the twentieth century.