One of the reasons I've kept this blog going on a regular basis for so long has to do with my belief that people in my world read it but don't tell me they read it.  I like posting stuff and then going around in my day to day routines and guessing as to whether this or that person has read what I write.  I  think I want to take a break from that for a while.  I also don't want to hurt anyone's feelings with what I write anymore.  Wish me luck.

At this one business I patronize, there worked a young woman I will call Cindy.  She was really cute and really young.  I liked her a lot.  I would get the impression that she would read this blog when I interacted with her during our transactions.  For example: after I posted, "See What Fuckface Is Up To Today,"  an irreverent song that made light of looking up the Invisible Woman on my phone almost everyday,  she laughed as she finished her transaction with me.  Little stuff like that really endeared her to me.

One time I wrote a post that talked about my show at the Fish Fry in June, 2018.  In that post I frantically put my foot down at the prospect of whether or not to invite someone like her to see my show.  She went about her business at her job with her lips tucked between her teeth after she saw me that one time, and I took that to indicate that she may have read that post and thought it funny.

I never asked Cindy out, or gave her a comic book, or gave her a CD, or invited her to see me perform anywhere.  Truth to tell, I really didn't go out of my way to talk to her for those several years she worked at this business.  The first time I talked to her for any length, I asked her a question related to her job.   That occurred earlier this year.  Soon after that, I walked into this business where Cindy worked, and when she saw me she curled her lips into snarl, as if to let me know I disgusted her or something.  I wrote a sarcastic post titled, "A Fine Romance," that talked about how I'd have to wait ten or twelve more years before I could feel comfortable approaching Cindy for a date, if that snarl on her lips after I talked to her just a little indicated anything.  Soon after  that post she didn't work there anymore.

I've talked about this one restaurant in posts where this one waitress seemed to have a raging hard-on to take me down, and the years-long battle that ensued.  One feature of that battle featured the attentions of Marta.  At one point Marta, another waitress at this restaurant, started being really friendly to me.  She started saying "Hi" really big and attending to me in a very friendly manner.  

After several weeks of this, I stopped patronizing this restaurant for about three months.  When I started going there again, Marta started right up again.   I let her do this for a couple of more months, and then I asked her out at her job.  She said she was seeing someone, but she was nice enough about it.  

I gave Marta a couple of my CDs anyway, but she quit soon after.  I saw her at a coffee shop with a waitress that still worked at this restaurant not long after Marta quit.  Her over the top friendly demeanor at the restaurant was replaced by a surly manner when I tried to interact with her at this coffee shop.  I said, "See ya'," and left.  I put a Facebook friend request in for Marta a couple of months or so later, but she didn't accept it.

The reason I went ahead and asked Marta out has to do with how she would be so friendly to me.  I had some hope that she would go out with me, sure, but I also figured that if her friendliness was some phony put-on, that she would look like a real asshole if she'd been rude and shitty to me when I asked her out, so I felt protected.

With Cindy, I just figured that she had boyfriends or whatever, and she pretty much stayed fairly quiet around me, and overall I'm totally pleased that I didn't ask her out or anything.  With Marta, I felt like she couldn't lower the boom if I did ask her out, because she had been so demonstrably friendly with me.  With neither woman did I really make any effort to put myself out there for any reason.

So, I give women in my world a choice:  I'm wiling to leave women alone, even women I'm really attracted to and like a lot, if they act more like Cindy, or I might take my chances on a woman if she puts herself out there over an extended period of time like Marta.  If I really put myself out there towards some young employee at a business I patronize for no other reason than because I am attracted to them, that can bring up issues of harassment.  No thanks. 

I just finished outlining four pages today on the inks phase of the latest issue of my comic book.  I have the goal of inking a few pages for three days in a row, and then resting my arm on the fourth day.  I had a cortisone shot in my wrist last Friday.  It helped with the nerve problem I've been having, but I might still need surgery.  I'm trying to take it easy on the workload of drawing and guitar playing, but I would like to step it up a bit on both.

No woman in my world can say I've formed an inappropriate emotional attachment to them.  I make it my stated goal in my life in general to have no woman in my world say that I'm trying to make them over into a love interest.  That seems to start all the messes I've managed to get myself into over the years; the idea that I need to have a love interest from amongst the women in my world.  Nope, as of right now I'm love interest free.

These past couple of weeks I've talked about how I've, once again, decided to stop patronizing this one particular business during hours when I thought one particular female employee might work there.  I made this same decision about this same person last Summer and stayed away from her for six weeks.  

Today I thought about going in there when this particular employee might work a shift there.  This second time, I decided to stop going to this place at these times and days for the foreseeable future, but I wondered today about relenting.   I figured that I would just refrain from trying to reach out to this person, because I figured that such a gesture would come across like an attempt to punch my way through some social brick wall.  In other words, it wouldn't come off well at all.  So today I thought maybe I could just go in there when she worked there but refrain from trying to punch my way through some social brick wall.

But then this line of thinking came to me: My biggest criticism of the experiment in my youth that I tried with Sara, the experiment to see what happened if I tried to turn my back on love, my biggest criticism of that experiment resides in the notion that I did not take the experiment far enough.  I really only tried the experiment in full effect that one time, and right after Sara, the woman I now call "Linda" in these posts took a big shit all over me, and then after Linda, Myrna took a big shit all over me as well.

How would taking this experiment far enough in regards to this young woman at this one business manifest itself?  I think that I do not want to go to this business if I think this person might work a shift at that time on that day for a long, as yet undefined period of weeks, and maybe months.  I'm so tired of having to deal with women who remind of the bad old days of my youth.

I saw a young woman this past weekend at an event.  I'd written her a note on her contact page on her website, but she never wrote back.  I'd written her that note because when I saw her about a month ago at another event, she seemed really glad to see me and greeted me warmly.  The note just pointed out my website and the Monica story on the home page.  She seemed a little more guarded and reserved this last time I talked to her.  I only talked to her a little and went on my way.

I'm fine with her coming off a little guarded and reserved.  I had some hope that she would have written me back after I wrote to her and that we could have gone out, but seeing as how that didn't happen, I'm okay with setting some boundaries.  If some attractive young woman comes off as friendly as she did, I think it's okay to run something like my note on her contact page up the flagpole and see if she salutes.  If she doesn't, that's fine, and I know where I really stand with her.  My intent in reaching out in such a way has nothing to do with setting boundaries.  I'm always at least somewhat hopeful that something more to my liking will happen than setting boundaries yet again.  As long as I'm not shitty in any way to such a person in my efforts or in the aftermath, I'm okay with doing such things.

I saw this young woman at a food service business that I patronize for the first time in three weeks.  Three weeks ago I invited her to see me play at the open mike at the Posse East on the next Tuesday night.  She said that she had a prior commitment, but that she'd try to make it.  She didn't show up.  

So, my next move consisted of not going to this particular food service place for two weeks.  The reason I took this course of action had to do with how I would come across.  I didn't want to go in there the following Wednesday or Thursday and come off like I'm some great guy about being stood up and what I great guy I was being about it, because that kind of thing comes off as manipulative, nice-guy bullshit to my way of seeing things.  

So I saw her today, and she was really nice and said she was sorry she couldn't make it, because she had her prior commitment to attend to, which is fine with me.  I think that I will just leave it at that, and not ask her out again.  The way I see it, I managed to break  the ice with my initial invitation, and now she can return my serve if she wants to, or not.  I saw a YouTube video by a woman named Appollonia Ponti that likened the dating game to a tennis match.  For example: I call someone once, and I don't call them again until they call me back once.  If they don't call me back, I don't call them at all anymore.  That's a good general rule of thumb, and I think that one could follow that rule in most instances.  That keeps the whole one-sided thing down to a minimum.     

I just read a comment from a Jezebel article where the contributor offhandedly mentions a society that "treats one gender as sexual gatekeepers and another gender as voracious consumers" before she makes a more specific point about sex work.  I like that.   I'm supposed to belong to the gender of voracious consumers that constantly tries to curry favor from the sexual gatekeeper gender.

What if I find myself in a situation with a gatekeeper that I want to reject?  Is that something I'm not supposed to do?  Several years ago, at one of these businesses I patronize, I found myself in just such a situation with that virgin girl.  That virgin girl was around twenty-one, really pretty, and seemed in overall very good health.  I was fifty, obese, and I made no attempt to conceal my mental health diagnosis.

The occasion she fired a shot across my bow in order to initiate engagement with me I found very frightening.  A young female coworker looked into her phone and mentioned something about "my first time."  This particular young woman was a mother, so I didn't think the out-of-context remark referred to herself.  I connected the remark to her virgin girl coworker, because that virgin girl was the queen bee of that whole lot at that time.

I became very paranoid and frightened at the situation I found myself in.  I called a male friend soon after the "first time" remark and told him my concerns in a very distressed tone.  He calmed me down and advised me not to reach out to the virgin girl.  He asked me if I wanted to date this young woman, and I said, "In a perfect world, maybe."

In the coming months, I wrestled with the notion of putting myself out there in some way in order to get with her.  I remember a young male employee at this particular business giving me a look as if some madness kept me from just going for it, but soon after that, I decided to stop patronizing this business for like, a month.

After a month I decided to just deal with it.  I went back and forth over whether to try to engage with this young woman somehow, but  all the while I referenced my time with Sara in 1988.  The world didn't come to an end when I decided to not engage with Sara back then.   On the contrary, I achieved new heights of insight and self-control as a result of my restraint.  So much so that I think I really modified my behavior quite a bit in the coming years, even after I came to the conclusion, some two years after the fact, that I'd made some tragic mistake in letting Sara go .

So, dealing with the virgin girl.  I would talk to her a little in the course of going about my business at her place of employment, but nothing to write home about.  For someone who supposedly had some kind of interest in me, she didn't seem much obliged to put herself out there for my sake.

I talked to Vernon Hoe about I how I applied the Sara template to this situation, and if I stayed true to the template, I would eventually cut this young woman loose without asking her on a date or anything like that.  I told Vern that I couldn't have done better in my situation with Sara if I'd had a hundred chances to do so.  That statement implied that I saw no real opportunity to get with Sara, even in hindsight, because Sara turned out to be gay.  One may debate "opportunity" in the context of such a revelation, but she was not the love of my life that I made her out to be when I thought I'd made a terrible mistake in cutting her loose.

I later told Vern that I'd lied when I said that I couldn't have improved on my handling of the situation with Sara.   I said that the only way I could improve my handling of that situation would involve cutting Sara loose sooner than I did.  I had that in mind when I cut that virgin girl loose in January 2015.  I figured that she just wanted me to really put myself out there at her place of employment, and then WAMMO, the axe would fall.  I remember the day I looked askance at her after my decision, and how she exclaimed, "YOU LIED!  YOU LIED!" to a male manager a few moments after I gave her that look.  About a month later, her pregnancy showed.

So, I, as a voracious consumer, was not supposed to reject a situation that seemed to present a opportunity with a sexual gatekeeper, but I did.  I want to emphasize that I merely rejected the situation that I saw set up.  The situation that I saw set up seemed to involve me punching my way through some social brick wall in order to ask her on a date, and I refused.  If I detected a more genuine offer of engagement that would have even afforded me the opportunity to decide love, girlfriend, and relationship, yes or no, I might well have decided differently.  That's not the situation I rejected at all.  In other words, if I'd been given an opportunity to accept or reject HER, and not just the situation, a different outcome would seem much more likely.

I systematically rejected the same situation with other female employees at this one business in the years since that virgin girl's day on the docket.  I do so to this day, and I reiterate, it's not even so much the women themselves I reject, it's more the bullshit situation they seem so keen on setting up.  

An example of rejecting the woman and not just the situation involves someone else I've talked about recently.  Briefly, I said that one reason I rejected this person involved the remark she made, twice, that she doesn't compete for men.  She had this self-satisfied smirk on her face both times she said that to me.   The first time I could hear this smirk over the phone, and the second time I saw it on her face.  I had an opportunity to have sex with her, but I turned it down.  That pretty much got the ball rolling on rejecting her, which I did.  We never went on a second date.

Am I bucking my role in our society as the voracious consumer in regards to the sexual gatekeeper? Fine with me.  Like, I don't have the right to reject any person or situation I decide to reject.  If being a mentally ill man in his fifties who rejects bullshit women and bullshit situations-and I again emphasize these can be two different things entirely- if that makes me a rebel than so be it.

My last post might have come off a pretty rough towards someone.  I'm sorry.  I need to remember that this person is quite young, and has not experienced the kinds of things I've experienced.  I care enough for this person that I don't want to do any real harm.  I care for this person a great deal.  I just don't feel comfortable reaching out to this person in a way they would find meaningful.  I just don't know what is going on.  I will try to refrain from posting anything this person might find hurtful, but my mind is made up.  I just want to move on.

My last posts may have given the mistaken impression that I will try to keep some lonely vigil for those parties I've had some interest in these past several months.  That won't happen.  The last time I looked, I still have a contact page on this website that anyone can access and utilize if they would have something to say to me.  If anyone I've talked about doesn't want to come forward themselves to me, then I suggest they tell a third party whatever it is they want to say and that party may then contact me.

Like I said, I've never, ever dated someone that I perceived to go down an adversarial road in regards to me.  I guess someone somewhere has had some kind of a relationship with someone who initially approached them adversarially, but that's never happened for me, and I've never known of a single solitary male friend who ever had that story to tell about anyone they ever dated.  That kind of thing exists in romantic comedies, but maybe only there when it comes down to it.  So, I have no interest in keeping some flame alive for an unavailable party.  That is all.

I've written about how I've never dated any women whom I believed came at me in an adversarial manner.  This is true.  I talked to a male friend the other night, and we both agreed that we'd never known of a guy friend who dated someone who had it in for them at first.  He said he'd never dated someone that shook out like that, so it's not just my own lack of experience and supposed ineptitude with women that explains why I've never dated someone like that, even though I've felt that many, many women have come after me initially in an adversarial manner.

What definitely has happened though, is that quite a number of women in my past lives came to see that I was not the bad guy they'd initially made me out to be, and quite a number of women came to care for me a great deal, even though I never went on one date with any of them.  This really happened in earnest when I attended grad school at SVA in New York City in 1990/91.  I pretty much had a nervous breakdown that time, and I was still seen as a loose cannon after my moment, but I do feel as if a lot of the young women in that school saw me in a different light than before. 

So, to say that many women in my past cared for me is not a small thing.  Regardless of what paths the women in my world take in their personal lives, I think I can say that some of them care for me a bit- maybe even more than a bit.  It's a lot to ask of a young woman to actually date me, but to have the sense that, like I said in my last post, that such a person cares for me enough to be on my side in life is a big deal to me.

And, the young woman I've been writing about has me on her side too, regardless of how things shake out in the end.  Like I said, an expectation of a romantic love relationship from such stuff seems like too much to ask, but if I get off of the idea that anything short of a full blown romantic love relationship just does not count for anything, well there you are.

Okay, I think that this young woman I've been writing about was never really available for me or interested in me in a romantic love context.  I think, however, that she became someone who was "for" me, as in someone who was on my side in life.  I don't know the extent that she was not for me before she looked at me that one time, but I think she became someone who was for me in life.  I connected her to Linda, an old adversary, and I don't know whether that has any basis in reality.  My best guess is that she may very well read what I write here after all, and that she may have read or heard about the way my last two issues of my comic developed in the storyline, and that converted her to someone who is for me in life.  I think my refusal to pursue her romantically indicates that I am for her in the larger sense, because I refused to act on such impulses until I felt like I had a better sense of what all might be going on.  Yes I am for her.  Yes I am.