Well, two weekends ago I wrote that I would refrain from writing about that young woman at that one business whom I can go on and on about.  In order to motivate myself to actually refrain from writing about her, I would give myself a "thumbs up" sticker on my calendar as a token reward for a full day of no mentions of her on this blog.  I told myself I could order an inexpensive, easy to get classic rock CD if I kept it up until the 15th of this month.  I just ordered a Jimi Hendrix CD, and I've given myself permission to write about this person again.  If I write one or two posts about her on this one day, Saturday the 15th, but refrain thereafter until the 1st of June, I can order some other classic rock CD.

It looks as if things didn't go my way in regards to this young woman at this business I go on and on about.  I really don't want to go into it anymore than that.  What to do now?  In the Fall of 1986, things really didn't go my way in regards to Donna.  I fixated on Donna all throughout the Summer of 1986, and I looked forward to seeing her at a party at some friends' house in September.  Donna had flirted once with me in June, and I took that occasion as a sign that I should make it all about her from thereon.  Donna had a boyfriend, and I fancied myself as a rival for her affections.  

My fixation on Donna seemed to freak people out.  My reputation seemed to proceed me at that party, and it seemed as if a numberl of the guests lay in wait for me.  I walked by Donna at one point, and she scowled at me.  Moments later a girl I'd met the previous weekend, Wanda, came up and laughed in my face, twice.  Several other people performed similar acts of scorn and derision towards me that all seemed to drive the point home that I was some sort of loser, dangerous person, etc.  Looking back, I considered my time at that party a psychotic episode.  

The next weekend I saw Donna at another party with her boyfriend.  I walked up to her and introduced myself and I asked if she'd seen a friend of mine recently whom I worried about etc.  I played it all off as if I barely knew her and all of that.  I said how nice it was to talk to her and took my leave of her.

This gesture seemed to resonate amongst my peers who so gleefully heaped serious scorn and contempt on me at the party at their house along with guests such as Wanda and Dennis, etc.  People seemed surprised and somewhat chastened by my gesture.  Wanda seemed to take a romantic interest in me.  It really seemed as if I'd managed to "cash in" and turn things around to my advantage.

My experience in trying to date Wanda became one of the worst dating experiences I've ever had.  During the early months of 1987, Wanda basically pretended to be my girlfriend while having a boyfriend she didn't tell that group of friends about.  I think the live-in girlfriend of one of those guys knew about Wanda's boyfriend, but I guess they both figured that Wanda was doing me a favor with the attention she did give me.  Anyway, crude sexual proposition by me towards Wanda after several weeks where the heavy makeout sessions with her went nowhere.

So, in regards to this young woman at this business whom I can go on and on about on this blog, what to do now?  In my past I've had several experiences similar to the experience involving Donna, where I wondered if I could cash in on a good handling of the situation. I've never really had the ability to cash in on such an episode.  So, what do I do about where I find myself in regards to this young woman at this business?  Super-niceness seems out as a way to relate to her now.  Should I come off as angry? How about hurt?  Should i come off as nasty to her?

In previous posts I've talked about how the way I relate to one woman I have an attraction to can seem to spill over in how I relate to another woman I have an attraction to.  It seems spiritual this way.  During my high school years, my obsessive weirdness towards one girl would show up in another way to another girl.  In the aftermath to my super-niceness towards Donna, my tendency to try way too hard to connect on some level with individual young women showed itself in less than beneficial ways to other women during that Fall of 1986 semester.  I won't go into detail,  but it wasn't good.

So, though I may not have any ability to cash in on the outcome between myself and this young woman at this business whom I can go on and on about, I can try to demonstrate a desire to regard her in a spiritual way in relation to other women in my world.  In a couple of my posts from earlier this year I talked about a young woman named Daria and how she gave me her email address last year.  I last sent Daria one email last November or December.  Since Daria never replied to that one email, I haven't written her since.  I have no desire to show more persistence with Daria or anyone else.  

I think how I related to Daria can serve as an example of how I relate to other women in my world; from waitresses and baristas of businesses I patronize, to women I meet online somehow, to female comics artists I send a book to, to this young woman whom I can go on and on about in this blog, to other young, attractive female employees at this business where this young woman works.  Again, not to try to cash in, which is up to the women out there to allow for that sort of thing, and therefore out of my control, but more to just not let my insecurities get the better of me and to try to relate to the women in my world in a more even handed, spiritual way.

That's the title of the Richy Vegas album that follows I Make Country Music Records, Sir; That is, Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack. Of course, there is no motion picture that the album is a soundtrack to, but why quibble over the small stuff.  I'm looking forward to playing the songs I have, so far, out on the town at open mikes and at the songwriter's circle in San Marcos.  

I hope Cheatham Street Warehouse is still open there in San Marcos.  A rich country music guy owns it.  I talked to Matt, he said the Posse East plans to open in mid-June.  I'd like to run the new songs by the open mike at Posse East before I go to San Marcos. Matt said they aren't taking chances with a hasty reopening of the Posse East.  They want all of the staff vaccinated, and they'll open the inside for the first time since March 2020.

One of the new songs on the album is, "Tastes Like a Penny."  That's a gospel number that shouts the praises of Richy Vegas' butthole tasting just like a penny.  Another song is,  "I Never Was Her Guy," I wrote that one a month or so after "Tastes Like a Penny" in January or early February of 2020.  I dusted "I Never Was Her Guy" off a couple of weeks ago and played it for the first time since I wrote it, and it sounds pretty damn good.  Another song I wrote, in 2018 I think, is "I'm Just a Rock."  I'm just a rock/ skipping past the waters/ of Asshole Woman Lake.  I'm skipping I hope/ to the Island of Good Women/ 'cross the waters of Asshole Woman Lake.

Some of the new songs I have to run by a live performance before I know if I'll keep them.  I need to work on the arrangement of at least one of them ("Cat And Mouse"), and performing that song at places in various incarnations will help with that, I hope.  The two waltzes about the Invisible Woman: "Fuckface on Monday, Fuckface On Friday," and, "Fuckface Bloody Fuckface," well, I don't even know if I'll put those on Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack. 

  

The name of the next album will be, I Make Country Music Records, Sir.  I've finished the guitar/vocal tracks.  Now I'm working on the two remaining bass tracks and the four augmenting guitar tracks.  This afternoon and tonight I rehearsed all of those.  I hope to finish with those tracks by the end of  the month.

The most involved augmenting guitar track appears on "Job Called Shrimp."  I pick the strings high on the neck and just place my fingers on the strings in the chord positions instead of pressing all the way down on the strings and actually fretting the chords.  This suggests shrimp swimming around in water during the part where the narrator gives the girl the shrimp job.  Kinky.

"The Man Who Never Washed His Hair," has me plucking the same bass notes and guitar notes together to accompany the guitar/vocal part.  I wish I had the guitar know how and chops to do more than that, but maybe this simple arrangement will give listeners something interesting to listen to.

I had charts for the bass arrangements when I worked on them last Fall, so I cold just pick up where I left off on that.  That was when i decided to rerecord three guitar/vocal tracks, and that's what's been holding up production.  I got sick with the flu in January and so I couldn't practice all that month, and then I moved.  I figure I'm well over two thirds done with this record as far as actual work I have to put in to complete it.  I hope to finish in June.

Austin Clubhouse announced an effort to reopen their facility for in-person activities such as lunch and volunteer participation in the running of the place by the beginning of next month.  I think I want to start going there to do volunteer stuff primarily as a way to meet some people.  My options for meeting women have proven limited along with a lot of other people's options for all kinds of social activities since this pandemic began.  I don't anticipate things getting back to "normal" anytime soon, but they might get better than they have been in a long time by the next month or so.  While I don't want to get a full-on job just to meet people, the clubhouse presents an option that might do for now in that department.

I've started illustrating issue number 24 of my comic book.  I've got two more issues of this series to go.  I met Casanova Frankenstein yesterday over by a coffee shop I patronize frequently.  He said that he wrote me after I sent him a book last Summer, but I never got the email.  I have problems with spam coming through my contact page for this sight, and I can see how legitimate correspondence can slip through the cracks.  I apologized to him, said, "Good meeting you," and went on my way. 

I've got one more guitar/vocal track for my next album to record before I can proceed to the two remaining bass tracks and all of the other stuff I want to do for the record.  I recently rerecorded two guitar/vocal tracks that, in addition to the one left to record, sat on my docket for months.  I got sick in January, and that slowed all kinds of productivity down.  I've gone over some of the songs for consideration for the album that follows the one I'm working on now, and some of them are not bad. 

Right now I don't want these blog posts to undermine my efforts to interact with this young woman at this business whom I can go on and on about at length, so I'm going to try to sign off on her as a subject of future posts for a while (well, we'll see about that).  I really think my last post about feeling insecure about her lack of accessibility really hit the nail on the head in regards to my deal with her and just about every girl and woman in my past, good, bad, or indifferent.  So I'm just saying to myself, "Dude, right there!  Stop right there!  Work on that!"  This person has done absolutely nothing to alienate me from my affection towards her, and I just want to see how an effort to interact with her in the real world will go without these posts possibly fucking all of that up.

I can forgive myself for fucking up this deal with this young woman I can go on and on about on this blog.  Lack of accessibility serves to undermine a lot of relationships, or in our case, lack of accessibility could totally undermine our deal.  High powered movie star couples split up all the time because one or the other is off on location somewhere and they can't see each other.  If my own insecurities about my lack of access to this young woman fuck up this deal, so be it.  I definitely won't be happy about it, but I can live with it eventually, because that is so understandable.  Maybe I'm in a place I've never been before and I don't know it.  Or, maybe I'm in a place I've wound up in too many times already.  The only thing I can do is be nice to this person when I see her, and be ready for anything.

I've decided that I will renew my commitment to the  one-man civil rights protest I announced several posts ago.  So once again, employees, management, and owners of any businesses I target for this action can expect this protest to manifest itself in behavior similar to the behavior of participants in sit-ins of segregated lunch counters during the Civil Rights Era of the 1950's and 60's.  I will just go about my business at certain retail and/or food service establishments with no intention of bothering any customers, employees, management, or owners of those establishments.  I will follow such rules and guidelines as appropriate attire and masks and social distancing, practice appropriate personal hygiene so as not to bother anyone with a personal odor or unclean or unkempt appearance.  I will strive to treat all employees, customers, managers, and owners with appropriate courtesy and respect.

Believe it or not, this kind of action-action that I've undertaken before at that diner that I mentioned in the last post on this subject- proves more effectual than a typical bystander or observer might initially expect.  I remember this waitress who inspired this course of action by me in 2012 shaking with rage after I talked to her a little one time as I went about my business at her place of employment back then.  This intent of this course of action was never to just make people mad, and I will attempt to illustrate the gist of my actions at that diner from about June of 2012 to about October of 2014.   

This waitress inspired me to take this course of action due to a conversation I overheard between her and another waitress in the Summer of 2012.  The instigating waitress went on at length about her ex and their kids and the conversation seemed pretty intimate for a customer to just overhear inadvertently.  The conversation centered around her struggles as a single mother, and I wondered if a t-shirt I used to wear quite often might have offended her.  The t-shirt had a silhouette of a stripper and said, "I support single mothers," on the front.  The shirt read, "One dollar at a time," on the back.  

I decided to stop wearing the shirt any time I ever dined there from there on out.  This one male waiter seemed to try to ally himself with her.  One time I ate at the diner early in the morning right at opening time.  I said something to this male waiter, and for some reason he sang the the opening lyrics to the Carpenters' '70's hit, "Close to You," as he walked off.  "Why do birds suddenly appear/ every time, you are near/ just like me, they long to be/ close to you."

If this kind of stuff strikes the reader as suspect as a kind of out and out harassment, well, the reader can note that I maintained a stance of emotional distance and boundaries in relation to these people as I ate there.  I displayed appropriate courtesy to employees and customers, went about my business, tipped well, and would just go on my way.  So any paranoid thoughts that resided in my head at the time just stayed there, as I made no effort to bother anyone with those thoughts.

This waitress, to my way of seeing things, had other allies who joined in her efforts to harass and intimidate me.  These included her righteous boyfriend, the owner, and another waitress who displayed a kind of over-the-top friendliness to me for a time.  Plenty of other employees seemed to have no part of this bullshit, and when things shook out, finally, I could count their number quite clearly.

So, one afternoon in October of 2014.  I walked into the busy diner to find a table, and another waitress exclaimed in a louder than usual voice, "Like your Butthole Surfers t-shirt, Richard!"  I said, "Thank you," and sat down.  The waitress I accuse of instigating harassment and intimidation against me almost two and a half years prior came to my table and looked at me as if she saw ME for the first time as she attended to my drink order.

So, I will renew my commitment to this kind of action, because I recently saw it as necessary.  I have the right to patronize any business I want to in a courteous and appropriate manner as often as I see fit to those guidelines.   As long as I go about my business in such places and don't bother anyone, I'm fine with everything else.  The personal lives of individual employees don't really concern me, and I will make no effort to connect with any employees, male or female, but especially female, on a personal level.    

In a lot of my blog posts I refer back to a lot of failed deals for my frame of reference in how I negotiate my way through my current deal.  I just don't have a lot of successes to refer back to, and it seems to me as if the successes I enjoyed in my past stand as a product of their times, while a lot of the failures seem eternal.  Well, if this current deal I find myself in with this young woman at this business whom I can go on and on about turns out a failure, that would hold no surprise for me.

I've found a lot of honor in a lot of the failed deals in my past.  Some of the worst ones had me suffering nervous breakdowns in their wake.  A lot of those deals had me honorably letting my love interest go when I read the writing on the wall.  And well, I've just gotten  better and better at negotiating my way through failed deals.  Remember the Invisible Woman?  That one seems weird, but at one time it seemed very real to me.  Nothing on this blog or anywhere else on the internet or anywhere in the world will come back to haunt me as something I regret in regards to that weirdness.

I've negotiated my way through plenty of failed deals these past eight or nine years, and in the years before, that simply don't compare to the dramas of the eighties and nineties, so I don't talk about them much.  This blog of the past couple of years might just serve as a manual for how Richard Alexander negotiates his way through a monster of a failed deal.  There's honor in negotiating one's way through a failed deal honorably.  If we in our society are relegated to choosing mates through the institution of romantic love, then failed deals will come with the territory for, probably, most of us.  As someone who has diagnosed himself with love addiction, I have a lot of failed romantic love deals to draw on.

On the other hand, I may now find myself in a place I've never been before.  I say that without an ounce of sarcasm, cynicism, or pessimism.  Who am I to come off as sarcastic, cynical, or pessimistic about something I don't feel as if I know a lot about?  Looking back these past however many years, I've sometimes said to myself something along the lines of, "On the other hand, Rich.  This could be an experience that so many people see as one of the greatest experiences in life a person can have, so be ready for that."  So far, no, I've not had one of those experiences when I've had this train of thought going, but I've also not had the crash and burn experiences I've so often brought up on this blog.

In September 2012 I revived the experiment that I first tried in regards to Sara, a girl I had in an art history class at UT-Austin in 1988.  Briefly, I came to the conclusion that my problems with my relationship with women stemmed from love addiction.  So, when Sara started letting me know through her actions that she would not just leave me alone, that she would continue to play the role of tease and tormentor, I started a train of thought that began with, 'This girl and all that goes with her may represent a shot at love," and I wound up thinking, "What if I turned my back on love?"  In pursuing that line of inquiry, I put Sara and the observers of the situation in the class on notice that I would just let what ever perceived opportunity with her slip through my fingers if push came to shove.  Sure enough, on the day of the final, I just let her walk out of the class while I finished the test.  At that point I still didn't even know her name.

Taking such a path seemed to sublimate whatever challenges my still-raging hormones posed (I was twenty-three at the time) and allowed for a process of delayed gratification to come into play.  I took Summer classes in 1988, where I one day saw Sara looking at a bulletin board as the door of  the elevator I rode in opened, I pointed at her, she turned to wave, and just then the door slid shut.  I laughed heartily, she then showed up in my painting class one day soon after, and I finally pulled the plug on the whole deal when I cut her loose in August of 1988 after not seeing her for two months and getting some attitude from one of her friends.

I think the whole experience with Sara demonstrated to me and others that I proved trustworthy over the course of  time.  I never came off as particularly confident.  I had no concept of some ultra-sharp, proven-to-work game to lay on Sara or the situation.   Whatever interest in me I managed to generate from her stemmed, I believe, from the trust that I managed to inspire in her over the course of several months.  Trust that comes from a "relationship", I use quotation marks because I'm not talking about a fully realized, romantic love relationship, just what developed between myself and Sara; trust comes from a "relationship" that one builds over time with another person.  I believe that kind of "relationship" can prove hard to fake, should one have an interest in putting something over on another person, because the truth often does come out about someone's actual intentions over the course of an extended period of time.

A guy can tell himself he has all the confidence and pick-up game in the world, and he may actually have that sort of thing going for him, but some women, at least, actually worry about whether such a dude will attack them in some sexually charged or otherwise way if the dude ever saw an opening by which to do such a thing.  I had a friend who could pick up a lot women and have sex with them by, if not the first time they ever hung out him, almost certainly by the second time they hung out with him.  I think it says more about him that I rejected him after thirty-plus years of friendship than it does about me.  I think it also says a lot in general that I would refuse to jump through Jenna's hoops in potentially intimate situations, whereby she would hook up with some other dude a short time later who may have played that game with her; I think it says a lot that Jenna seemed to really like seeing me in the years after things shook out as much as they could possibly shake out between myself and her.

As much as I'd like to carry on with tooting my own horn about matters such as these, I have a point to what I'm writing here.  I'm trying to favor that young woman at that one business whom I can go on and on about at length with attention these days.  So far things seem okay, but I have to realize that she just may find this extra attention annoying and I may come across as some sort of pest to her.  I will try  to stay in my lane, so to speak, as much as I can while still favoring her with attention, but there you are.  She may wind up hooking up with some guy who has far, far easier social access to her than I do, if she does not already find herself in that kind of arrangement as of this writing.  I sometimes feel as a sword hangs over my head in my efforts to get something going with her.

I still really, really like this young woman, and I absolutely want to go out with her and get to know her better than I do now.  But if I'm serious about building trust with her, the best way I know how to build that trust involves potentially giving way to the inertia of the situation we find ourselves in with each other, and potentially giving way to how she ultimately wants to conduct her life and how that life might never involve me at all.  EVERY damn situation I've ever found myself in with women over the years only improved once I unwittingly let such a process unveil, or, after I became conscious that such a thing could occur, eventually, no matter whatever drama and bullshit preceded it, I would play to the notion that such a process could unveil, given time, if I would just "get out of my own way."   That kind of long game can prove hard to play, but if one comes across as a romantically obsessive, mentally ill guy-which, to the best of my knowledge, translates as "bad guy" to a lot of women-and one has tried to make things happen in more conventional ways, then one could do worse than to give such an approach a try.     

I tried to make small talk with this young woman I go on and on about while we conducted our business the other day.  Things went reasonably well.  Real quick out of her after I initiated the small talk exchange, she asked if I worked certain hours.  I blurted out something about how I'd get a job "as soon as things ramp up a bit" in the world.  I walked out of there thinking I wanted a job toot sweet.  I asked one of staff at Austin Clubhouse if he knew of any place I could apply, and he gave me a promising lead.

Then, as I leisurely lounged around in my apartment looking forward to listening to West Coast baseball on the internet at nine and working on my last two books of my current comic book series, I thought, "Wait a minute."  "Wait a minute," I thought, "This young woman is a love interest.  A love interest is not a girlfriend.  A love interest resides in a whole different set of parameters in regards to me than does a girlfriend."  Now, I adore this young woman in her current status as a love interest to me, but isn't the idea that I should get a job because she might possibly want me to get one a little presumptuous on my part and a little premature on the whole?

I get money from Social Security Disability and family gifts to me.  The level of support from my family remains at a level similar to the level of support I got during those years when I helped take care of my dad.  My dad passed away in March of last year (not COVID BTW), and the sibling in charge of disbursing assets left by my dad for my care had a very transparent dialogue, initiated by me, about my level of support from these assets.  As of this writing, my family makes no demands of me to pull more of my own weight.

I understand where this young woman comes from if she would like the idea of anyone she gets involved with to have the responsibilities and demands of a job; part-time, full time, temp work, professional, menial, whatever, "Just have a job, dude, okay." I've been one of those people with that same requirement most of my life too.  But realize that if she and I went out to eat at just about any place in town, she would have no worries about whether I could pick up the check or not.  Not because I'm some free money tree, but because I could plan and budget for such an occasion with the monies provided my by my current sources of income.   I can cook some pretty nice meals at home too.

Let's just say this issue might come up as an issue on the table for further discussion should we ever make more of each other's acquaintance some day, I hope.  That's fine.  If my current position on this issue proves a deal killer for her, no matter that we hardly know each at all in so many ways at this point, well, chalk it up to the dating options of an early twenty-something, very attractive young woman who could just as easily reject a guy because he likes crunchy hippie jam band music as she could reject me because I reside at a different place in my own working life than she does in her working life.

Myself and this young woman reside a very, very different places in our respective lives in so many, many ways.  In my last post I talked about fundamental issues of incompatibility potentially killing off any deal between us before we ever get started, and this one possible issue could do that, but so could so many other issues as well.  In other words. "She likes po-tay-to, I like po-tah-to/ she likes to-may-to, I like to-mah-to/  po-tay-to, po-tah-to/ to-may-to, to-mah-to/ let's call the whole thing off."