There've been a couple of young women in my world who seem want to to vie for my attention these days.  They seem to have in common a desire to give me the impression that I have somehow won them over.  Naturally, being that they are both probably in their early twenties, I am suspicious.  Not long ago I often would possess the fondest hope of hopes that I had, at last, won over this or that young woman that captured my fancy.  I used to bang my head against the wall hoping that this had come to pass, only to find out that this was not really the case.  

I've come to understand after failure upon failure to really pull this off that it is pretty much futile to think in terms of winning someone over from not having an attraction to me to having an attraction to me.  After all, I'm not someone who can be won over like that.  I base so much of my attraction on how good a woman looks, and that is the first thing that one notices, that I have never been won over from a position of not being attracted to someone to becoming attracted to them.  Am I supposed to believe that these young women are so very different from me?

That is my high road take on the my world as it stands.  Now, on to other business:  I have to finish twenty-eight pages of my latest issue of Richy Vegas Comics.  That's still quite a bit, so I'm not really close to finishing yet.  I figure that I will finish well before the end of February, though.  I decided to take a day off from the book, today, after working thirteen days in a row on it.

I'm going on a trip in the Spring.  I've already charged a lot of it on my card, and paid cash for other parts.  I'm going to have to concentrate on paying for this trip in the coming months.

The music is coming along pretty well.  A couple of weeks ago I performed "Three Days In the Tickle" at two different venues.  I just have to keep at it to make sure that I really have it memorized.  It's a long song- seven or eight minutes.  Next week I want to perform "Poison On Thirteen," and Chuck and myself's arrangement of "The Cuckoo," a traditional song.  I did a song called "Sara" at Cheatham St. last Wednesday.  It was intense and gut wrenching.  I tried to follow it up with the much lighter, "My Girlfriend Is a Hatesong."  Fucking Crickets, man.  My voice was still quavering and breaking from "Sara," and the audience was still taking "Sara" in, so there were zero laughs for "My Girlfriend..."  It got boocoo laughs at the Posse East open mike a few weeks ago. 

There's this whole web based subculture of people who have been labeled "targeted individuals."  One time I attended a church service where members of the congregation were allowed to speak at the end.  This one guy got up and talked about how he was tortured by the police with remote control microwaves as he lay in bed at home with his wife.  He said that he found stuff on the internet that confirmed that this was real.

I saw this guy in 2002, and this internet based community has only grown since then, if the article I read in the New York Times is accurate.  These people now have a name, "targeted individuals."  I've been talking about some stuff lately, and I've been thinking today about these people, and my heart goes out to them.

What I've been experiencing seems a lot like what these people talk about.  Look at a the blog posts since January 1st of this year to get up to speed.  There's a couple of songs thrown in, but there's posts about how I've been wrestling with the same kinds of issues these targeted individuals wrestle with.  I bet there's even a subset of people who blame their misfortunes on famous people instead of the FBI or CIA or whateves. 

It's a very weird dynamic.  I have hard enough time trying to find out where women in what people would recognize as one's everyday world are really coming from.  I can get into heated arguments with friends and family who insist my interpretations and conclusions are way too dark about what this or that attractive, young or youngish woman is really up to.  I'm satisfied that I at least take darker possibilities into account at times, and that somehow I manage not to do anything in the way of violent or transgressive criminal behavior as a result.  I'm also satisfied in the knowledge that I often resolve these matters to my complete satisfaction when I do take these darker possibilities into account and I play to them.

But with an entity such as a famous person that I don't even know and that I am very unlikely to meet if I just stay on my life's chosen path, it's as if I'm dealing with a nebulous phantom that has no real form.  This famous woman I refer to in those posts from earlier  this month had a very real-seeming presence, but I couldn't just go to a coffee shop or restaurant to check things out with the real deal human.

On the other hand, I would consistently get the impression that people are trying to send me subliminal messages that had to do with this famous woman.  So, on the one hand, there's this phantom that I can't talk to or whose demeanor I can't read or anything, and on the other hand it seems as if all or most of my world has something to do with her.  What a drag!  Throw in the notion that things such as a brand new CD that gets mysteriously lost, a heater that keeps conking out even though the repair guy has come out and found nothing wrong, or something I thought got stolen off of my doorstep when the postman dropped it off suddenly shows up in my bedroom (okay, extra saddle pins for my guitar that I ordered from Amazon), and it's as if all of these disparate things connect.

Joseph Campbell talks about the great force of Romantic Love in his discourses on mythology.  He goes on and on about how profoundly meaningful love is and how two people become one and blah, blah, blah.  I have no doubt that there is a lot to that for quite a few people during at least some if not most of their adult lives.  But, I've found it most helpful to learn how to separate myself from those I found so desirable in my mind, and as a result, in my life.  I don't have a lot in common with the 22 year old baristas and waitresses that I can get so very into.  The best thing I've done in my spiritual development as an adult is learn where I leave off and such individuals begin.

Who wouldn't want to be the object of desire of a young, attractive, sexy GirlPop diva?  Well, a 52 year old man who struggles as much as I do would sure like that kind of a break, let me tell you.  I don't know how to explain it other than to say I know the drill by now; I've had lots of practice.  I just hope that I don't go through any more of this stuff that puts me on the same footing as targeted individuals.

My last post, "Unavailable woman deal," brought up a subject I've been going on about lately.  The post, "Secret admirer?" tells of a time last Spring when I received a CD and some coffee from Amazon that I didn't order.  So these past few weeks I've had to work my mind around the idea that the person who sent the CD, a CD that featured the latest release from an attractive, young GirlPop diva, was actually sent by the artist herself.  Read those blog posts for more.

This morning, as I ran errands, I began to think:  I've never heard of a celebrity, or famous athlete, or prominent politician engaging in a campaign of psychological harassment and intimidation against a vulnerable private citizen.  I've been thinking that this woman might have had redemptive motives for basically engaging in a kind of gas lighting of me, but that would still be a bastard thing for her to do.  Wouldn't it?  And like I said, it would be wholly unprecedented in the annals of movie stars, popular music stars, athletes, etc.  I mean, yeah, Richy Vegas is a unique kind of guy, and wholly unprecedented in and of himself, but then again, aren't we all?  

Again, this woman would have to be some kind of real lowlife to be engaging in the kinds of things my more primitive parts of my brain thought she might be engaging in; sending friends of hers or devoted fans out to give me subliminal messages as I ate in restaurants, going around to places staking her claim on me to employees of businesses I patronize, sleeping with a friend I've been in a general dispute with,  and in general just bringing a holistic, motherlode of a mindfuck down on me. 

Okay, there have been instances where the FBI have harassed people like John Lennon and Ernest Hemingway by tapping their phones, going into their mail, and messing with their heads about whether the FBI was tailing them or surveilling them or not, but those were for political motives in actions taken by the government.  People who knew Hemingway say that was the reason for his suicide, and that his excessive drinking made his problems with the FBI worse on his state of mind.   In the 1980's, the actor James Woods received a dead fish on his doorstep along with a note warning him not to mess with his newly minted ex-girlfriend, the female actor Sean Young, but that was a personal dispute between two ex-partners.  

I've never met this woman, and I would want to know what on Earth she could possibly have against me that she would want to do something like this?  Or, is she engaging in some kind of weird courtship?  I must confess, that was my fondest hope, but it all seemed pretty scary in the end, really.

Seriously, I wanted to check into a psychiatric hospital last week.  Not so much because I was so afraid of other people, but because I was more afraid of myself.  I  get this way when family members lean on me too much as well, so it's not been anything new of late. But man, if it was true that this music person had some redemptive motives for all of that, then she's never heard about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

Yesterday was intense, I think by my going out to the open mike and engaging with the world a little helped.  There's this guy who calls into Artie Lange's podcast, and until recently Howard Stern's radio show, who would constantly accuse those two of sending trolls to his Twitter feed and other social media accounts.  Apparently he just sits around in his parents' basement and smokes pot all day.  It can be a challenge to get out there and see people and do things, but really, my brain can run along the same lines as less engaged people if I don't do stuff like that.

Another sinister angle is that some woman or women in my world started the whole thing off by sending that coffee and that CD.  I don't want to single any one person out or group of people out.  It's like an Agatha Christie novel; where any number of suspects could have an equally compelling motive, because I eventually beat them all.  Don't I?

When the coffee and the CD first arrived last April or May (2016), I thought that they might be a gift from Amazon for being such a good customer.  I looked at the bag the coffee beans came in again yesterday.  It said, "Best before 12/15/2015."  So maybe Amazon just wanted to get rid of some of their old stock of coffee, and they put this woman's CD in with it as a bonus.   I don't recall seeing any note from Amazon or anyone else though.  Maybe I just misplaced it.

Yesterday I realized that I was in the middle of another unavailable woman deal for sure.  I first talked about this latest deal in the blog post "Secret admirer?" from the first of this month.  In that post I talked about how, earlier last year, I received a CD in the mail from Amazon that featured the latest release from a well known Girl-Pop diva.  I talked about how I recently listened to it again and how this started the gears in my head going about how this woman might have sent it herself because she saw my site and thought she'd show me a little love.

In the blog post "Some thots about secret admirers," I talked about how this still stuck in my craw a week later and what I thought might result. Yesterday all this thinking about this stuff led me to the realization that this was yet another unavailable woman deal on my table.  I'd been figuring that perhaps the women in my real world environment just weren't doing it for me anymore for this role, and that maybe it's true that nature abhors a vacuum, so I strung together a few odds and ends events since I'd received the CD, and came to the conclusion that I was, if nothing else, in a bit of a crisis about whether this was a real thing or not.

A few years ago an obsessed male fan of Ariana Grande, okay it's not Ariana Grande I'm talking about, posted a video that featured him lamely singing and rapping about his undying love for Ariana.  It kind of went around, I saw it on a Gawker site, and so there you have it.  Like me, the unavailable woman deal was on his table too, not through any deliberate course of action taken by Ariana Grande mind you, it was just his fixation on her that put this deal in front of him, and he took what I consider an ill-advised course of action in resolving it.  If nothing else he looked like a bit of a scary jackass as a result.

Since I realized that this was, indeed, yet another unavailable woman deal before me, I had a bit of a time about it.  I imagined laying some vituperative invective on this young woman should I see her, what might really be going on in her world and how that would tie into my world, how I could seriously be hurt and taken advantage of by her and others if she did show etc. etc.  Yeah, today was kind of rough.

Earlier this evening I talked to a male friend about what I was going through without going into too much detail or specifics-just that I was having a bad time of it- then I let him go.  I told him I might have to check in to a psychiatric hospital if it didn't let up.  After I got off the phone with him I thought about that.  The medication I'm on is definitely not the issue.  That's working fine in terms of both mood and thought.  So, would I check into the hospital because I don't feel safe right now?  That's more like it.  The problem with that is, how long could I expect to be able to hide out in a psych hospital before they release me?  They'd probably decide I was pretty stable soon after I checked in, so the idea of checking into one in the first place seemed pretty pointless.

In an earlier post I talked about how the only criticism I had about my approach with a girl named Sara back in college, to try to "turn my back on love (See the post, 'I'm not bad,' from January 2016)," was that I didn't take it far enough and try to apply that approach with other women who came up after I let go of Sara.  So, earlier tonight I thought, my mistake was that I did not take "turning my back on love" far enough back then, how would taking it far enough, now, manifest itself tonight?  

Then I realized that when it comes to the unavailable woman deal, the revelation that it is most likely not going to work out inevitably comes to me eventually.  After all, I'm not currently fixated on women I was fixated on back in college.  In every instance before this one, I let go.  I also remembered quite a few times where I was overcome with doubt and panic before I was able to let go.  One instance where I made an unwise decision in this angry, panicked state occurred when I made a crude sexual proposition to a girl whom I suspected of representing herself as something she was not.

The trick is to have as little drama occur as possible before this realization that one has to let go of this notion of this person, and the way I found to have as little drama occur as I can is to have as little skin in the game as I can possibly have.  I didn't even know Sara's name when I decided to cut her loose.  When one has as little invested as one can possibly have, it's easier to let go.  If one has too much invested, there can be the temptation to double down, and that can be a dodgy proposition.  The way one can have as little skin in the game as one can possibly have is to do as little as one can possibly stand to do about the dilemma before one.

Whether the unavailable woman is Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lawrence, the girl next door, a coworker, a classmate, someone one has met online; that moment where one realizes that it's probably not going to happen is going to come.  I'm 52 now, and this is definitely not my first rodeo.  The advantage of having it be about Ariana Grande or Jennifer Lawrence, is that once one reaches this stage they really disappear from one's inner landscape, because they were never a part of one's real world outer landscape.  They are not persistent Latina players who keep coming back because they hope that I mistake their persistence for sincerity.  They are not White feminists who have the idea that taking me down means that they are striking a blow for women everywhere, and that when I beat them yet again for another round, wrong has prevailed over right, and so they must try, try again.  Yeah, the A-list celebrity woman just go back to wherever they came from, probably.

I feel so much better.  I've had a less than two week turnaround on this one.  Pretty good.  Another love interest bites the dust! 

I wrote this one in early December.  A woman in my world flirted with me a tiny bit, and I wrote four out of five songs like this one for my latest album.  After a little over twenty-four hour jag of writing these songs, I snapped out of it.  The fifth song is in the vein of a song from December 2016 titled, "My Girlfriend Is a Hatesong."  Still, four out of five like the one below.  Just think ladies, if you're just a little bit nice to me....

(at the commas, strike the bass string HARD. It should fit into the strumming pattern)
4 for 5 (Everyone Knows)
G, Em, C,D
Bridge: D, Bm, G, C
B↓↑|↓

G
You should have seen that last bunch
     Em                       
A, busload of bums
  C                                                  
Their manager his gut ached
           G
Ate a, fistful of Tums

G
Their best player tumbled out
           Em
Went, 2 for 8
C
That’ll get her off the island
              G
But it’s, far from great.

D
We ride ‘em out on a rail
                C
But then, oh lookee see
  D
The next series the next team
               G
Has the, MVP.


Chorus:
                  D                           
But then, everyone knows,
                 Em
I mean, everyone knows
  D                          
Everyone knows,
                  C
Oh yeah, everyone knows
D                            
Everyone knows
C
Allll  aaa-bout
G
You!

Verse:
G
You rolled up to the park
          Em
In a, Lincoln Town Car
     C
I threw a yawning yakker
                   G
And you, hit it so far

G                            
When I got you out  that one time
          Em
I said please no autographs
C     
‘cuz if I claimed but dumb luck girl
G
I’d fail a polygraph.

D
After that you hit me one more time
    C
I lasted only five
    D
I wanted to throw at you babe
                                    G
Just to make you look alive.

Chorus:
               D
But then, everyone knows,
                 Em 
I mean, everyone knows
D
Everyone knows,
               C
Oh yeah, everyone knows
C 
Alll  aaa-bout
G
You!

Bridge:
D
My oh my oh my oh my
      Bm
You sure swing a mean stick
  G
Our organ player even played
          D
Your, walkup music
D                                
Next time we meet

I’ll throw meat balls
       Bm     
To, see you swing
G
I’ll pitch ‘em in your home park
               C                    
Just to hear those people sing….
D
Ring-a-ding-ding

G
Next game I’m at attention
                Em
And you, see our next cat
         C
You hit a tater bomb out
                G
Oh yeah, your first at bat
G
Rounding second jogging third
         Em            
On, your way home
C                    
Out there on that mound 
                         G
Our guy must, feel so alone.

D
Now the game’s in extra innings
                    C
And you’re , 4 for 5
             D
I yell “let’s all of us get naked,”
             C 
‘cuz I, feel so alive.

D
No doctoring the ball for you
C 
‘cuz everyone will know
D                    
the next time that I pitch you
            G
bet I, won’t wear no clothes.

Chorus:
But then, everyone knows
I mean, everyone knows,
Everyone knows,
Oh yeah, everyone knows
Everyone knows
Alll aaa-bout
You!

Richy Vegas 12/2/2016

It's true.


I Work Best When the Off Switch Is On
G,C,D
Bridge: D,A,G
B↓↑B↓↑
*electric guitar

G                C                         G
Love, is a many splendored thing
                       G                   C                  G
There’s heartache pain and sad songs to sing
D
Playin’ cool’s the golden rule
                  C
Cut them loose the most use
         G                              C                 G
And I work best when the off switch is on.

My heart, is a lovely flowing spring
For you, you sweet and subtle thing
I can’t win when I cave in
Settin’ you free is for me
And I work best when the off switch is on

Bridge:
A
Well if you’re ever on the b-side
                  G                        D
Won’t you come see about me
                  A
I weren’t down for your jive ride
         G            D    
I let it be, let it be
            A
Well it true I’ve been here long
           G                         D
But I know right from wrong
                       G
And you ain’t never been right
        C             G
In a solitary song.

Verse:
My song, is a simple one to sing
For you, I nixed the wedding ring
A young bride for my foolish pride
Just a kid for my lustful id
And I work best when the off switch is on. 

Richy Vegas 1/21/2016

I've been doing some math about things that have been going on these past few months.  They probably just add up to confirmation bias, i.e. seeing what I want to see in what I observe.  But, last week's post, "Secret admirer?," is about something that has been working my very last nerve since that notion crossed my mind.

Is there a secret admirer of old Rich in the midst of today's hottest Pop diva's?  Well, it might be such a secret that even she doesn't even realize that she's a secret admirer.  Is she there? Where?  I feel the space next to me on my bed to see if she's magically materialized yet.  Nope.  As I waited for the shower to warm up tonight, there was plenty of time for her to get undressed and hop in.  No go.

What the hell could she want from me?  In true schizoidal spectrum reasoning, I know all about what she wants, but I'm not at liberty to talk about that.

Now for the eternal question: what am I going to do about it?  This topic came up recently with my psychiatrist about unavailable women in general, and my answer now is the same answer that I gave to my psychiatrist: I'm going to do as little as possible about it until it runs its course.

Of course, I will not attempt to contact her in any way.  If one of her people tells her there's a guy outside her residence who just wants to talk to her, she'd better know it sure as hell ain't gonna be me.  

How will it run its course?  A likely scenario is that she will start dating Joey Jerkoff from the hot new boyband Cornhole Me With Crisco before too long, by which time I will have adjusted to this level of discomfort I'm having to go through.  It's like when David Carradine on Kung Fu just sat down and chilled in response to the evil Mexican witch doctor putting a curse on him, and in turn chased that dude out of the village.  All he did was chill. 

Here it is folks.  The first single from "Self Portrait of Me."  When I was in college I hung out with a bunch of gay guys.  One night I went over to their house, they weren't there, but the door was unlocked, so I went in.  I figured they went out for the night, so I decided to wait for them to get back.  They would leave their door unlocked all the time, and it was a pretty sketchy neighborhood too.  I guess they had locked themselves out enough times over the years to not bother with it, or maybe they saw catching an intruder after a night of drinking in the bars as, maybe a dangerous situation, but maybe a situation rife with possibilities too.

Anyhoo, Micheal had this book on the shelf that looked interesting.  It was by a guy named Laud Humphries and it was called, "Tearoom Trade: private sex in public places,"  It was about bathroom sex.  Laud Humphries was an Episcopalian minister who set out to do an anthroplocigal study of male-on-male bathroom sex.  "Tearoom Trade" is now considered a textbook on how NOT to do an anthropological study, because he does not inform the men he studies that he is not really a voyuer/lookout, but is in fact an anthroplogist doing a study of bathroom sex.

Maybe not good social science, but a hell of a good read.  I read "Tearoom Trade" from cover to cover and left the house before anyone showed up.  I even think those guys were in Houston that weekend.

I copped the arrangement from an arrangement Johnny Horton's "Sink the Bismarck."  So maybe try to sound like Johnny Horton when you sing and play it.


Blo-hole Acres
D,G,A
B↓↑B↓↑

D
Well my name is Tommy T
                            A
And I’m a family man
D
Got a wife and a boy and a little girl
                              A
And I do just what I can
G                                       G
Well I’m headed to a reststop
A                               D
I’m headed for their can
D
We call it Blo-hole Acres
 A                                     D
In the stall I’ll make my stand.


The game’s show hard get sucked
It’s in writing on the wall
Well I've seen a side of this old world
When I’m waiting in stall
Don’t know exactly what I feel
I don't think that it’s pride
When I head to Blo-hole Acres
For my fifteen minute bride.

Dan stands by the window
And he’s a lookout man
Dan clucks like a  chicken
Says what’s headed to the can
Well chicken’s a game for the strong
You don’t know what to plan
Does he know of Blo-hole Acres
Might know nothing of this can.


The kid sits in the next stall
Through the glory hole I peek
Oh my god it’s my own boy
I’m speechless as he speaks
Zip goes his fly
He sticks it through
“It’s twenty for a suck.
We call it Blo-hole Acres
If I show hard I get sucked.”

My mind is in a fever
What the hell is going on
He says "old man you’re peepin’ through
And I know just what you want
The glory hole’s for peepin’
The blo-hole’s for the suck
If you come to more than crap and pee
Then buddy, you’re in luck.”

I flee Blo-hole Acres
‘cuz I’m a family man
Thank god he don’t know it was me
As my car speeds from the can
Before too long I’m headed home
It didn’t get too far
She asks, “What’s with the Buick?
Why I loaned Billy that car.”

Solo by Chuck Pinnell

Well the lawyers were called
And I’m a family man
If only zombies roamed the Earth
The Acres would still stand
The glory hole’s for peepin’ 
The blo-hole’s for the suck
If you come to more than crap and pee
Then buddy, you’re in luck.

Richy Vegas 5/3/2014

Last Spring I received a package from Amazon in the mail.  It was a pound of coffee beans and the latest CD by a well known Pop diva.  I didn't order these items, yet the package was addressed to me.  I figured that Amazon had made a mistake, or that maybe this was some sort of thank you gift from them for being such a good customer.

I put the coffee in the freezer, because I don't have a coffee grinder, and I listened to the CD.  The record got really good reviews, so I gave it a chance.  I could see why people liked it, but it really wasn't my cup of tea.  Most of the music I listen to these days doesn't go much past the '70s.

The other day I saw the CD lying around and decided to listen to it again.  It really held up.  I decided that I actually like it, but being that I am Richy Vegas and all that, that's not all to this story.

Friday night I started to have to wrestle with the notion that maybe this attractive young Pop diva had sent me the CD because she has a crush on me.  See, she might know about the legend of Richy Vegas too.  I didn't sleep that night, and had to attend New Year's Eve events with no sleep.

The first event was a dinner with family members.  I was really short and crabby with a family member in the car ride over to my Mom's house, because I still wrestled with whether this Pop diva would be there to be my New Year's Eve date.  As I drove closer and closer to my Mom's, I took heart in the fact that I don't really bother to debunk this kind of stuff too much, because the unfolding events that I anticipate, in this case the dinner with my family, always take care of that end of it.

As I got to my Mom's, the main thought that killed this Pop diva stuff was the realization that I've been doing a really good job in aspects of my relationship with women that used to give me so many problems in the past.  I've handled the challenges that women have presented me with, deliberatly and otherwise, really well these past few years.

It used to be that I would crash and burn at regular intervals with these same kinds of (unavailable) women and have to pick up the pieces afterwards.  When the Big One came in 1992, that's when I first had my extreme break with reality in the form of hallucinations that I thought were recovered memories, and my attention turned from the all-to-real Jenna to the other worldly Robin.


So these past couple of days-I had a good night's sleep last night-I've just focused on how well I've coped with these challenges in recent years, and that has really dampened the intrusive thoughts about this Pop diva and all of that.