I just read a New York Times article on independent housing for people with severe mental illnesses in New York State.  The article tells of some very abject cases of the failures of some people to succeed in living on their own, sometimes with tragic consequences, and the failures of the systems that the state set up to help such people.  The only reason Texas might not have such horror stories may lie in the fact that this state doesn't even try stuff like that, relying on supervised group home settings or institutions for such people.

My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder.  My dad, a psychiatrist, once told me that a big problem I have personally had is that care providers such as doctors have continually underestimated the amount of care that I needed.  I had problems getting medications that were both effective and that I could tolerate for the first three years after my initial diagnosis, for example.  I spent too much time sick with psychosis in early 1995, in my opinion.

Which leads to my topic today: what does anyone out there expect of me?  I am about as well integrated into the community as anyone could expect.  What do I expect of myself?  If I take into account my ability to function at a pretty high level, where should I be at this stage in my life?  That brings to mind something an art teacher at School of Visual Arts would say when presented with such a question, "By whose standards are we judging?"  The question, as presented to Brett De Palma, had to do with navigating the art world, but it applies to me as well.

In the past month I've talked about how a significant part of me has come to believe that I may have an internet presence that I'm not privy to.  This idea had added an extra dimension to how I navigate my way through my world.  Since I put this idea out there, there've been some women at these businesses i regularly patronize who no longer work in the same jobs they did.  They may work in jobs where they interact less with the public, or maybe they no longer work at those businesses at all.  I could chalk it up to coincidence.  I don't know.  Again.  What does anyone really have the right to expect of me?

I'm compliant with medication, I quit cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol, I manage my money pretty well, I fulfill my part-time work responsibilities well, I make the effort to get along with everyone in my world, and I do pay as much attention to all aspects of my living skills as I'm able.  I'm always seeking to improve.  The great experiment to have someone such as myself live in the community instead of in a more institutional setting can count at least myself and quite a few others as examples of success. 

If this internet presence stuff is true, it has to do with stuff from a long time ago.  Again, maybe someone could just reach out to me via my contact page if they have issues with me.  I have a lot of trouble with dissociative thinking as I navigate my world- I can't "just know" when an interaction I have in some day to day setting has to do with larger issues- so in my mind, I don't expect myself to discern what the aggrieved parties expect of me in the way of making amends if they refuse to open up some more overt, but socially acceptable, lines of communication to me.

Be specific.  Okay, Wednesday night I played the Songwriter's Circle at Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos.  A young woman traveling the country playing music on the streets for money came up and talked to me right before the show.  She was quite attractive.  I said at one point, "You're on quite an adventure... nowadays, my adventures are mainly in my mind."  She replied, "Well yeah, it's about doing whatever you want.  Right?"  I tried to interact with her a little more that night, but she didn't seem to want to.  After she finished her two songs, she left with a handsome young man who'd also performed that night, and whom she'd been talking to, outside, during the show.  I performed several slots later, and left before the event ended.

Last night I was in the grocery store (Thursday).  I get my groceries checked out, and I proceed to leave.  About fifteen feet in front of me, I see a male manager interact with two female cashiers.  Something seemed to strike them all as funny, and I thought I heard this male manager say, "And he'd left before she (or they) got back.  Hah, hah, hah!"  The connection my more dissociative side made with these two disparate events on two successive evenings points out a prime example of my dilemma.  Did they, the manger and/or employees, read on some site where this young woman who was traveling related the story?  Did I inadvertently trick anyone by leaving earlier than they expected?  Did she return to the club just to mess with me?  Was she trying to teach me a lesson about something that happened in my life thirty years ago?  Do people now see what I mean when I say that this tendency to make such seemingly unrelated connections really complicates things for me?

Look, the introduction of effective psychiatric medications to treat people such as myself, and the effort to integrate people such as myself into a larger, "real world" setting, amounts to a great experiment that has everything to do with this country's stated aim of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," for its people.  If anyone finds my efforts coming up short, please say something.

   

Saturday night I went out to see some bands.  It was a show where some of the bands featured people I know.  Last month I speculated about how I might have an internet presence I don't know about.  I suspected at least three women in this scene of knowing of this supposed presence, and these three women were at this club last night.  I saw one talking to a good male friend at one point, and I walked near them with thoughts of approaching them, but I stopped myself before going up to talk to these two. I just didn't want to come across as some great guy about what a significant part of me thinks might be going on with this internet presence.   I thought that it would come off as so manipulative, and it would come off as so manipulative that this woman would call bullshit on it and react accordingly.  I didn't try to talk to any of these women Saturday night.

I'm going to keep this in mind as I go about my daily routine in these businesses.  The attractive young women at these businesses whom I suspect of being in on this conspiracy have to interact with me to some extent some of the time.  I don't want to find myself trying to buddy up to these women either.  I imagine all of these women, in both worlds, might be familiar with female friends, or male friends for that matter, who have tried to almost coerce someone who has been a total asshole to them with this "niceness" in hopes of getting the offending parties to love them back.  I hope I didn't confuse anyone with overly vague pronoun usage.  I mean, this tendency to be the "nice guy" about someone who treats him or her shabbily can crop up in both men and women.  I almost think that these women are so familiar with this sort of thing, that they may even be for me in that they don't want me to succumb to this impulse.

I think it's pretty healthy that I'm not really trying for meaningful engagement with women now.  After my initial hospitalization in August of 1992, ALL I wanted was to finally get a girlfriend and be in a relationship.  This desire dogged me as the pendulum swung from the extreme psychosis that led to my first hospitalization to the extreme depression that led to my second hospitalization.  It took me months to stabilize enough to return to Austin and try to live on my own.  I still clung to the desperate hope that I would "get" a girlfriend soon enough, that I became overjoyed when I heard that a woman I'd had a few dates with in New York when I went to school there a couple of years earlier had moved to Austin.  I literally saw her as my salvation.  Well, there were reasons we didn't connect in New York, either.

I guess this time, right now, might represent a real payoff for all of these years where I really worked on being by myself.  I worked so hard at this that I quit smoking, drinking, and drugs in the process.  By the way, the overall vibe I get from the women in my world is really nice right now, at least it was today.  

One hears about how love is the only way to conquer hate.  If I were to apply it to my own life, especially all that I've talked about this past month or so, I would say this: in these adversarial situations I've so often found myself in with women in my world these past few years, I've always tried to have the other party's best interests at heart as well as my own.  If I'm right about what has been happening  these past several years, I've been viewed by the other parties as the bad guy who needed to learn his lesson.  

It takes a while to "win" when one does it my way.  In the last post, I brought up a couple of times where I "lost," and I just had to lower my head and soldier on.  The problem I've traditionally had in the past had to do with how naive and overly trusting I could be in regards to the intentions of the other party.  It's hard to wrap my head around the concept that the other party doesn't have the same agenda as me in regards to having my best interests at heart.  If anyone out there wonders why I've done so well in these conflicts of the past several years, I would attribute my success to the fact that I've got the other party's well being in mind, AND that I've just had a ton of practice at this sort of thing.  One example of why those two things in tandem can work to my advantage over the other party lies in fact that the other party often doesn't have the support of those around them that I have when it becomes clear where they are coming from vs. where I am coming from.  That's a big lesson I learned from my days with Sara in 1988.

On to the second question.  I don't think I am addicted to these conflicts.  I don't think that I will try to milk this conflict of these past several years for all it's worth.  In 1999, in the aftermath of the incident at Rhythm house, I thought it'd be clever to depict my antagonists in that conflict as victims of the Whitman Massacre in the first issue of my comic book.  Talk about shooting myself in the foot!  Those people even tried to set me up with a gal before I sent them a copy of the book the next year.  When that gal didn't work out, the sister of one of the Whitman victims said that she wanted to hang out with me.  Then I sent them the copy of that book, and that was the end of that.

It was only years later, when instead of the kind of effigy I did of those antagonists in the first issue of Richy Vegas Comics, I came out with issue # 4, which simply told my side of the whole brouhaha that started the trouble in the first place, that they all kind of called off the dogs on me.  So, that's the lesson I learned from that; that just telling my side of the story has a better chance of working to my advantage than trying to get cute.  After I finish what I'm currently working on, which should take about five or six more years, I will try to do a series on the experience I just had for my comic book.  In fact, that's kind of where my head is at right now.  I'm not thinking about trying to pick up women or have love interests or anything like that.  I hope that my intention of telling my side of this story doesn't alarm anyone out there.  I try to be fair and reasonably discreet when I relate these stories. 

During the Summer of 1986, I watched a documentary by Tony Brown one weekend afternoon on PBS.  Tony featured elite Black athletes such as Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Edwin Moses in this documentary.  At the end they all answered, in their individual interviews, the question, "What makes a champion?"  They all agreed that a champion's true measure of greatness was in how that person conducted themselves when things did not go their way, and that things could possibly not go one's way for a very long period of time.  They all said winning medals and championships was all great while it lasted, but it was when the chips were down that a champion was really a champion.  

That inspired me enough to continue my utterly fruitless, futile pursuit of Donna, which led to a psychotic episode at Suckmeat Muldoon's party in early September of that year.  That's not to say that these guy's were wrong. Okay?  The next weekend I saw Donna again at another party and demonstrated by my conciliatory manner towards her that I was not a threat to her.  That really opened up an opportunity for Wanda to represent herself as my girlfriend when she was really someone else's girlfriend at the beginning of 1987.  I did not conduct myself towards Wanda in a completely exemplary manner.  

In the Spring of 1988, I did conduct myself in an exemplary manner towards Sara (see the post, "I'm not bad," from January of 2016).  I conducted myself in such an exemplary manner towards Sara that my approach to the dilemmas she presented to me serve as a template to how I conduct myself towards difficult women to this day.  I have a less than ideal love interest in my world these days whom I shall treat in much the same way as I treated Sara.  There will be no lack of frankness and honesty about what I do, but I will do so with regard to our mutual self-interests.  Don't believe me?  Watch.

If I awarded a silver medal to how I would conduct myself towards a less than ideal love interest in my world, that medal would go to Myrna.  In the Spring of 1989, Myrna and others had the idea that I was a rapist, so she would do stuff like sidle up to me real close while I washed dishes at G/M and she washed out jugs for food storage.  Well, that didn't work out the way I wanted it to, but in the aftermath, the worst I behaved towards Myrna was give her a scowl one time through the front window of G/M as she walked to her new job at the yogurt shop around the corner.

The bronze medal in how I would conduct myself towards a less than ideal love interest goes to the way I conducted myself towards a coffee shop employee in 2007. She and her fellow employees sought to punish me for depicting some people who tried to hurt me in 1999 as victims of the Whitman massacre in the first issue of my comic book.  In the aftermath of their moves, I just decided to stop patronizing that particular coffee shop, and to instead patronize another.  That move stands to this day.

Ever since I broke up with Jeannette in January of 1986, my relationship with women has resembled, on an emotional level, a rather vicious, nasty dog fight more than anything else, and I haven't always conducted myself in an exemplary fashion in every case.  But, the fact that my relationship with women has resembled a rather vicious, nasty dogfight this past thirty years or so does not excuse my behavior towards some of the women in my past, and it does not exempt me from trying to behave in an exemplary manner towards less than ideal women in my world nowadays or in the foreseeable future.

I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day up to the time I quit.  From time to time over the years prior to quitting I would try to cut down to something that made sense, such as five cigarettes a day.  Cigarette smoking did not lend itself to moderation for me.  The same could be said for booze and drugs.  I've talked about trying to follow my Buddha, but these things I've had to give up don't lend themselves to moderation for me.

The same could be said for unavailable women and my pursuit of same.  It's nice these days to wake up in the morning and not have my first thoughts be of some woman I'm fixated on.  I don't miss that at all.  In these posts of the past two weeks, I've talked about how I thought that I had, or may still have, a presence on the internet that I don't know about.  A lot of the women in my world that I've suspected of knowing about this presence have presented themselves as unavailable to me in one way or the other.

Whether this supposed presence on the internet is a real thing or not, these women all still seem unavailable to me.  I have no desire, not anymore than I did several weeks ago, or several months ago, or several years ago, to "settle" for a fruitless fixation on some unavailable woman in my world.

Where does that leave me with moderation?  I think I can do pretty much the same as I've been doing these past few years and not fuck much with the women in my world to any extent.  I can still enjoy the presence of women in my world, to some degree, without making it all about any one of them in particular.  I'm not a mind reader, so I can't tell who does or does not have knowledge of this supposed web presence that I'm not privy to, nor do I have to really know.  I can still just kind of go about my business as usual, I suppose.

The only reason I'm not going to patronize this or that business in the coming weeks will involve financial, rather that personal, reasons.  I just had a new book printed up, and I had to charge that on my credit card.  My production on these comic books is at a total balls-out level now.  I work on them almost every day of the month, typically, so I can count of having to pay for another print job in another four months or so.  Plus, I plan on going to NYC and maybe the DC area next year, so I have to pay for those trips too.

People should see my visitor tallies for this past week.  They've pretty much doubled.  I was going on this space to write about the subject of this entry's title, and the numbers jumped out.  Wow!  And so, I must ask, did cooperating get me these numbers?  I would like to think that I did not hurt anyone when I refused to go along this time.  Hurting people, and especially women, has been a problem when I felt rebellious in the past and did things I shouldn't have done.  

I got back from Houston on Sunday afternoon.  I made my way to some of my usual haunts later in the day.  I've written about how I've entertained the notion that I had a web presence that I didn't know about.  The kind of dissociative paranoia about this notion in my head cropped up in my interactions with women in Houston and on the way there and back; in convenience stores with female staff and customers, in a restaurant upon arrival in Houston, at Zine Fest Houston itself.  When I went to my usual haunts once I got back, the usual suspects seemed to be glad to see me.  They know who they are.

If that's true, that's pretty fucked up.  Can I kind of buck this shit without doing anything hurtful to anyone?  I would like to.  A few minutes ago I looked on IMDB.com at a gallery of celebrity power couples.  It kind of made me sick to look at those smug fucks on the red carpet and whatnot.  I wanted to shoot a few gobs of scuzz on my phone in protest.  The whole vibe I picked up at my usual haunts from the usual suspects seemed to have something to do with me finding luv.  I was reasonably polite to the women at Zine Fest and other places, and I even had something of a good time even, and I thought that was was why the usual suspects seemed glad to see me i.e. that the notion that, though I may or may not have been the victim of some shitbird cyber-bullying campaign, it hasn't affected how I relate to women in general and on a one to one basis. 

Anyway, this is pretty fucked up, but new, terrain for me, so I will ask my readers for some help in my decision making.  Should I cooperate and try to find love amidst all of this madness, or should I just dump a few plumes of scuzz on my phone with a picture of a Hollywood power couple on it?  Just write one word, "luv" or "scuzz," in the comments section below and I will take my readers' poll under advisement as to my final decision. 

A Facebook friend, whom I've never met, is in the entertainment industry.  He is famous for being a Pabst Blue Ribbon guy with Champaign tastes in women.  I've heard him say on various entertainment programs that he doesn't "settle" for women who don't meet his high standards.  

As I've tried to improve my relationship with women over these past ten or fifteen years or so, I've come up with quite a different personal definition of what it means to "settle."  The first thing that one should realize about me, is that for the longest time, most of my adult life in fact, I would unconsciously select those women in my world who were the most attractive, and somehow make it about them.  Sometimes to a greater extent, nowadays to a much lesser extent, if at all, I'm happy to say.

To me, making it about the best looking women in my world, regardless of whether they are available or not, regardless of whether they are interested in me or not, regardless of whether they even like me as a person or not, amounts to "settling" in the most fundamental sense of the word.  That's because, if I were to just carry on making it about the best looking women in my world in substantive ways, that would mean I was not making any effort at all to change my overall relationship with women for the better.

I could think of several women I've been on dates with over these last ten or fifteen years that I would rather go out with again than go out on even one date with some of the best looking women in my world at this time.  These women I would prefer to go out with may not look as good as these best-looking-women-in-my-world-today, they may not be as young as these best-looking-women-in-my- world-today, but, for the most part, they were demonstrably nicer to me than all of these best-looking-women-in-my-world, who shall remain nameless.

I remember this male cook who worked at Rhythm House back in 1999.  There was this waitress who worked there whom this cook knew from a previous restaurant where they both worked.  The waitress was really pretty, and she seemed really cool, and was sought after by young men who worked at Rhythm House, whether as employees of the restaurant, or as music acts. 

Anyhoo, this male cook really didn't seem to have much of an interest in her, to the point where, when another male employee would sing her praises, he wouldn't say much of anything.  As far as I could tell, this male cook and this waitress got along well enough in their working relationship, he just didn't seem to be much of a fan of hers. 

It was only after she went to rehab that everyone found out the extent of her drug problem.  One of the big questions the male employees who liked her had about her was whether she was fully gay, bisexual, what's up with her.  She never dated anyone or had any dates with anyone that we all knew of.  So, the male cook just knew this about her, and stories began to surface about how she'd use and ripoff people for drug money.  She was more into drugs that dating and all of that.

My point is, I think it was okay for this male cook to be kind of cool towards her in their interactions and cool in reference to her when she wasn't around.  I've talked about how some of the most attractive women in my world have really come off to me as a major disappointment in various ways, and I think it's okay for me to be kind of cool towards these women in much the same way that James was cool to this waitress. 

In these past couple of weeks I wrote about a young woman who was very rude to me at a food service business I patronize.  She works there, and her manner towards me came out of the blue and caught me completely unawares.  I speculated that her move might have been a ploy to vie for crappy love interest status with me.

I've worked too hard on my relationship with women over these last ten, fifteen years or so to make it about someone like that again.  It'd be the equivalent of taking up cigarette smoking again.   It's been almost sixteen years since I managed to rid myself of a two pack a day habit.  Why would I want to start something like that up again?  It just wouldn't be the same if I started on that kind of thing again.

By hard work, I mean that I've made it a goal in my relationship with women to have a variety of dating experiences with a variety of women, for one thing.  I've gone out with women I wouldn't have given the time of day to in earlier times.  I did things like this to expand my frame of reference in regards to the types of women I've had some kinds of experiences with.  I would go out with women I didn't find very attractive just to know what it was like to be around someone who would show some kind of positive interest in me.  I found it easier to get dates with these women in the first place, which was always a real pain in the ass proposition with the asshole types.  I would not be so dismissive of these kinds of women in regards to their interest in me, so that I could usefully compare them to how the more asshole type women would typically behave towards me.  How would the asshole type women typically behave towards me?  Well, one way they might behave towards me might include being really rude to me one morning when I went into their place of employment.

Another thing I've worked hard on is my overall sobriety from drugs and alcohol.  The desire to improve my relationship with women inspired me to quit drugs and alcohol in the first place.  In committing to abstinence from drugs and alcohol, I've learned how to spend all of this time I have by myself in more constructive ways.  I've produced twelve eighty page comic books, four solo albums, and an album with my old band, as some examples of my increased productivity.  I don't want to give these kinds of  things up to fret over some jive-ride bullshit from some crapola love interest.

Another thing i've worked REALLY, REALLY hard on is learning how to smell a rat.  It helps to not idealize attractive women in general, even going so far as to pick them apart so that one doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that someone is "perfect," when it fact they might just be very attractive and unavailable in some way.  Another thing to do is keep a kind of ledger on them, so that when they do something along the lines of treating one in a very rude manner when one goes into their place of employment, that kind of thing can go into the minus column.  Another thing to do is not make too big a deal over the times they do seem to treat one better than one has come to expect from them.  A good idea would be to note, "whoop de do!" whenever they act just okay towards one.  

The very best advice I can give to develop the ability to smell a rat is to just let a supposed "opportunity" slip through one's fingers.  If one finds that they just seem to wind up taking chances on the same type of asshole women all the time, what does one have to lose?  From my personal experience, this is what it's like to see things on the "other side."  Long ago I found out that this is the only realistic way to "know" the types of women who have proven time and again to be elusive whenever I chased after them blindly.     

Sometimes the crapola tove interest will take something of an interest in me after attempts to drop their usual turd game on me come to naught. In my experience, the attempts to treat me in some kind of a shabby manner and maybe even try to make me over as some kind of bad guy so that they can and others can justify an out and out ostracism of me have often shown up in their agenda towards me before they show an "interest" in me.  Sometimes when this stuff doesn't work, they then show some kind of an "interest" in me that usually involves trying to get me to jump through some hoops, and 'snarl,' 'gnash,' 'grumble,' 'mumble'...that is all, and that's enough.  I want more than that kind of crap these days. 

In my last post I talked about a young woman at a business who seemed to fire a shot across my bow a couple of weeks ago.  By that, I mean that she got my attention by her distinctively rude manner towards me one morning.  In my last post I talked about how she seemed an especially poor choice for a love interest, even though she may have been vying for my attention in some weird way.

In my last post I talked about how I thought that maybe I have some internet presence that I'm not currently aware of, and how that would explain all of this strange attention from women I've received over these past four to six years.  I mean, it would explain it, but it might not necessarily be true.

If it's true though, that this young woman has seen something on the internet about me, and is maybe even part of some kind of anti-Rich community that conspires to bring me down, I don't necessarily need to single her out for anything shitty from my end.  She's just a cog in the machine, as it were.

I've been in this kind of position before in my life, I believe.  I've dealt with this kind of ostracism in the days before the internet, but this brings it to a whole new level, if true.  What can I say?  Christ on the cross.  "Forgive them father, for they know not what they do."  Yep, works for me.

In 1986 I fixated on "Donna" and freaked a bunch of friends and acquaintances out.  I had a psychotic episode at Suckmeat Muldoon's party where I got the impression most of the guests knew what was going on with me and didn't like what I was trying to do.

In 1987 the fallout from that episode- I guess I'm being vague, but I have a point in being vague- the fallout from that psychotic episode led to further ostracism at my UT- Austin art school.  Nowadays I have the impression that someone from that clique of friends and acquaintances in 1986 was shooting their mouth off at the school in, perhaps, more than just a verbal way.

In 1989 the fallout from THAT episode, namely, the ostracism and shabby treatment I experienced at the art school, led to a psychotic episode at Dickbag McNuttsack's wedding during the Summer.  Oh, before that, there was the experience with Myrna at G/M Steakhouse in the Winter of 1989.  

The ostracism continued at SVA and helped lead me to another psychotic episode in the late Fall of 1990.  In the Spring of 1991, word seemed to leak out about what had been going on in Austin the previous years.

When I got back from grad school in 1991, I faced a social world in Austin where Jim had been shooting his mouth off about my past the whole time i was gone.  I had a grand mal psychotic episode in the Summer of 1992 that led to my hospitalization, treatment, and diagnosis of schizophrenia.

In 1996, about a year and a half after my stabilization on medications, I experienced another attempt from a group of people to ostracize me yet again.  That time I had more on the ball, and men who were acquainted with me back then always seem to be really happy to see me even to this day.

In 1999 I had another incident occur connected to my job at Rhythm House.   I did not handle that one so well, and I had to live down further attempts to ostracize me up until about, well, it's hard to say if that one is over yet.

Nowadays, we've got the biggest blabbermouth of all to contend with; the internet.  Lord only knows if there is something going on between myself and people in my world due to that, and I don't just mean what ever I write on this blog.

The vibe I got from all of those experiences was that my crimes were not all that bad, but rather the people doing all the ostracizing got off on the power they had over me.  In recent posts, I talked about someone who might still have issues from my past.  I don't mean to dismiss or minimize what ever it is they went through, but it seems like there might be more constructive ways of dealing with me, dealing with their pain, etc., than to try to coerce some kind of virtuous action out of me through the means they may have tried to coerce said virtuous actions.  Mainly, trying to set me up and trying to disseminate one side of a story so that I will have this stuff coming from all sides.

What if I don't feel like being coerced?  What if I just let this stuff go on, and on, and on, and on?  What if I'm not too concerned about coming across a some kind of a great guy about all of this shit? I check my mailboxes every day for anything from a party who might enlighten me as to what the hell might be going on.  Just because I haven't heard from anyone doesn't mean there isn't anything going on.

Last week I thought, "Let's try all of this again without a love interest, and see how that goes."  In last week's posts I talked about a young woman at a business whom I believed to have started in on me a couple of Fridays ago.  She seems like an especially piss-poor choice for a love interest.  In these situations, I was just never their guy, even in the days when we didn't have, like, thirty years difference in our ages.  So, don't go out of my way to be some great guy about all of this, and ditch that crappy love interest.  If I go somewhere and a black guy calls me "the man with the plan," I'll eat my hat.