Three weeks ago I posted about my guesses at the motivations for that former cashier's alleged controlling behavior towards me.  I speculated that she successfully influenced various female employees at that coffee shop and that diner to try to bring home some impression to me that I should make it all about her.  I guessed that these women attempted to impress upon me this notion about the former cashier by, in turns, acting rude and standoffish to me for no discernible reason, or perhaps trying to "talk about" the situation in their incidental interactions with me.  Like saying,"It's all yours," when they handed me my beverage.  Pretty damning evidence I'm coming up with, I just wrote sarcastically, but there you have it.  My case.  The thing of it is, I can run these kinds of thoughts up the flagpole to see how they play.  No crime in that. 

I'm essentially saying that this former cashier at that grocery store duped these female employees into doing her dirty work for her.  I labeled this as controlling behavior on the former cashier's part, which these women went along with because they thought they were doing me a big favor with this shit.  Nope, just mean, controlling behavior.  The thing of it is, I probably know what women such as this former cashier are like more than these waitresses and baristas do, and so I pretty much busted this former cashier at her game.  I figure she's got some boyfriend squirreled away somewhere in her world.  Did I mention that one of  the essential components of this former cashier's game resided in the fact that she was not present in my world during all of this?  I just did. 

I guessed that the motivation for this former cashier's controlling behavior towards me came from a place of fear.  Namely, fear that I would reject her.  Here's the tricky part.  I don't think this former cashier actually has a romantic interest in me.  I don't think she finds me all that attractive.  I think the fear of rejection stems from the need to maintain an image of herself as a badass, femme fatale, man-killer who can wrap a guy like me around her little finger at will.  Posts such as these and previous ones of these past months were supposed to be filled with stuff about how much I love her and how I think she loves me and all of that.  She got quite a different response from me, this time.

In some of my last posts I talked about some of my old, obsessive behaviors towards women in my increasingly distant past whom she reminds me of so much.  I talked aoout the frequent phone calls, almost daily, sometimes more than one in a day, that I would impose on women such as "Katy," or Veronica, or "Wanda."  I talked about how I never really knew such women because I would blind myself to the reality of them through my obsessive pursuit.

Here's a guessed at reality about this former cashier.  She may very well engage in obsessive behaviors towards her real boyfriends that very much resemble my obsessive hehaviors towards someone such as her. In June of 2020, at the height of Covid,  I saw her repeatedly, unsuccessfully dialing up someone on her phone as I went about my business in that grocery store.  It could very well be the case that such behaviors towards at least some of her boyfriends drive them away from her in the same way I felt that such behaviors toward Veronica, et al, that I engaged in drove them away from me.

I said in that post of three weeks ago that when I like someone, I want to get to know them better.  Women such as Veronica and that former cashier never, ever allowed me much access to them.  These days, though, I respond to this lack of access to that former cashier in radically different ways than the near-constant phone calls to Veronica and her ilk.  I go some other way than repeatedly pestering women in my world who I think may know this former cashier about this former cashier.  I write blog posts, for example.  Blog posts on MY website.  It's anyone's choice whether to read them or not.  

I also just try to draw intelligent conclusions on what experiences I do have of that former cashier, and make intelligent decisions based on my observations and evaluations of those experiences.  For example, I said in that post from three weeks ago that this former cashier never showed an interest or attraction towards me in a way I could understand or accept.  I don't think she's really attracted to me.  I think her ability to exert such controlling behavior towards me largely depends on a lack of genuine attraction towards me.  She likes the attention when I talk about how much I love her and all of that, but the fearful basis of her behavior stems from the notion, perhaps, that if I wind up rejecting her like so many of her boyfriends may have rejected her, what does that say about her and her image of herself? 

I promised kindness towards her three weeks ago.  I really, really know what it feels like on the short end of a too-one-sided romantic love deal, so there's your kindness.  If the previous paragraphs seem steeped in bitterness and malice and ugliness towards her, I don't mean to come off that way.  Over the years, when I wrote about her, I wrote many, many times that God seemed to be giving me plenty of chances to get women such as her right, because they seem to just continually line up outside my metaphorical door with pretty much identical agendas.  The previous paragraphs only attempt to articulate my observations about her and the women from my very chaotic, painful past she reminds me so much of, that is all. 

The pages after this one is where I start to get into the writing and illustration of the song, "It Must Suck Bein' You."  I hope to start cartooning again next weekend.  I have to assemble a new table and chair, plus make other accommodations to help me with the back problem I've developed between cartooning and work.

I think my antagonist in this sequence invited "Tom Trout" on this particular day because of Tom's reputation as a brawler who would take up my antagonist's cause if crazy, out-of-control Richard Alexander should go off on my tormenter.  Don't let Tom's expression to me on page 23 mislead you, he was just as surprised as I was about how things shook out.  He was not in on it at all.

I think I'll go ahead and go over budget on my discretionary spending for the month.  I had a good run, but I'll want to be around some people before I go to bed this morning, so I'll have breakfast somewhere.

I'm trying to get through the sexual abuse part of "Baby Reindeer."  Here's my take on someone trying to crush my "dreams."  The thing of it was, I was fifty-two when this happened, and I'd seen their kind come and go for many, many, years.  Oh well, as soon as I post these four, I'll try to get back to the show.

In my last post I wrote about my plans to sharply curtail my patronage of that coffee shop.  It's the end of the month, and money is tight.  I've bought one latte from that coffee shop in the last ten days.  I've refrained from eating in a restaurant in that time as well.  I spent s lot of my discretionary budget on CD's this past month, and I only have about eleven dollars left for the rest of the month to spend on discretionary things such as coffee and tea from the coffee shop, restaurant meals, CD's, books, vinyl records, and nights out to see bands.

So yeah, I hope to save a lot of money with this plan to curtail my patronage of that coffee shop, but that's not the only reason I want to do that.  I've never picked up a barista at any of these coffee shops I've patronized over the years, nor have I ever struck up an acquaintance with a female patron, either. I've never picked up a waitress in any of  these restaurants and diners I've patronized, either.  I feel as if my continued, frequent patronage of such places sets me up to continue to look for something I'm not finding in these places.  I'm sixty years old, and I think it's time I changed things up a bit.

Yesterday I thought about all of the changes I've made to improve my relationship with women.  I've quit smoking, drinking, and doing drugs, for example.  I've worked on my issues with love addiction through self-care as well as support groups.  These major changes I've made only seem to bring about modest, incremental changes to my fortunes as far as dating goes and stuff like that.  Quitting substance abuse brought on great improvements to my health and overall mood and outlook, but for actual material manifestations of success with women, not so much.

As I took my mind along this path of what all my lifestyle and mental health changes have done for me, I thought about the things I hoped these changes would bring me.  When I committed to abstinence from drugs and alcohol in early 2009, I hoped that such a decision would result in a dramatic blossoming of my fortunes with women.  Instead, I found more work for me to do in the sphere of coming to terms with my love addiction.  I wanted a Cinderella story to come about for me, for sure.  I wanted an end to my drab, joyless life.  I wanted to ride off into the sunset with a really desirable woman in my world.  I wanted a near total transformation from my life as I knew it to one I'd never known but often fantasized about.

The problem with those kinds of desires, and really, the problem with putting too much stock in them, resides in how vulnerable such desires can make one to the wrong person coming along and wreaking havoc.  I remember what I started to do when I began to genuinely turn things around for myself in October of 2001.  The September 11th attacks still hung over everyone, and I read a headline in the online New York Times that talked about how vulnerable single New Yorkers felt in the wake of the attacks.  Their fears centered around the prospect of "dying alone," I suppose.

Anyway, all of that stuff went on in my head one night around October 20th of 2001, and I came to a realization.  I realized that all of my substance abuse habits represented an effort to cope with loneliness.  As this night took hold,  I started cleaning up my apartment.  I eventually settled in for the night and went to bed.  In the following months I joined a support group for smokers I found by calling the American Lung Association, and so it began.

Wow, I feel so inspired now!  Yeah, I can try sharply curtailing my patronage of that coffee shop, and that diner as well, if it can help serve as the kind of touchstone for changes I'll make that resemble the changes I started making in October of 2001.  I read an obituary of Peter Lawford, Jr., where they featured quotes from an interview he did discussing his recovery from drinking and all of that.  He talked about his dad and the other Rat Packers- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr- and how they continued with their bad habits for the rest of their lives and how that caused them to die "angry."  So maybe "not dying alone" isn't so much of what it's about.  We all go through that lonesome valley alone, after all.  Perhaps a worthwhile and achievable goal is to not die angry. 

Here's some more outlined pages from my latest book.

I'm in the process of deciding that the best way to follow my buddha would involve a concerted effort to refrain from patronizing my coffee shop, and while I'm at it, I might throw in that diner as well.  The coffee shop is the main thing, though.  I'll definitely save money on coffee and tea drinks if I just make that stuff at home instead of buying so many at that coffee shop.  Oddly enough, I'm really doing this to try to improve on how I relate to women I find attractive.  I might go into that in a later post.  Here's some more outlined pages from my latest book.

Is this blog an effective means of negotiating something?  If it is, I don't want to say anything messed up right now.  I've posted these pages before, but this time I took an eraser to the blueline pencil work.  I have twenty-six pages of outlined pages for my latest, "Selections from the Richy Vegas Songbook: issue number 2, It Must Such Bein' You,"   I plan on posting four pages at a time for the upcoming days until I overtake whatever pages I'm working on.

If it's true that some women in my world want me to make it about her, and by her I mean that former cashier I still go on and on about; if it's true that they want to try to impress upon me a certain reality concerning this young woman; then I may have figured out the why of these methods last night.  I see stuff such as an attractive young waitress being aloof and standoffish towards me when, a short time before, she had no problem talking to me, and I continually experience the presence of that former cashier's absence on a day to day basis, and I go to my regular coffee shop and the attractive young women seem to be "talking about" the situation, and I see other people in my world as in on some sort of knowledge loop that I'm not in on; I see all of that as controlling behaviors.  I hate controlling behavior.  

Put all of that with the fact that this young woman has never expressed a desire to get to know me better in any way I can accept and understand, and I have a case for this young woman and her confederates engaging in controlling behaviors towards me. On top of that, when she did come around to my place of employment last year, she seemed to want her mere presence in my world to inspire me to jump through her hoops and put myself out there, yet again.  Controlling behavior.  I hate controlling behavior.  Why can't she just do like I did and put herself out there and see what happens?  I've come to the conclusion that the combination of these guessed-at controlling behaviors and the lack of anything that's not total bullshit in the way of honestly expressing an interest in me come from the same place.  I think she's afraid, terrified possibly, that I will reject her.

Okay, okay, no, now that I might actually have a handle on why she and others are behaving towards me in this obnoxious, controlling manner, I'm backing off of that impulse to reject her.  Okay?  I'll try to be kind to her about this. I will, I promise.  If this insight I had last night does indeed bear fruit as a genuine insight, if she really does these behaviors, and if she's roped in others to do her dirty work for her, and if I do have a genuine, compassionate insight as to the why of all of this, then I've proved something I wrote about a few posts back.

When I like someone, I want to get to know them better.  Now, one thing I discovered a long time ago concerns the way I used to behave towards someone such as her when someone such as her entered my purview- my sphere of mental and emotional concern.  Oftentimes, the situation would degenerate into me making almost daily phone calls to women such as Veronica or Wanda in hopes that banging my head against the wall in that manner would yield results.  Things just went to shit, of course.  I never knew  these women at all when it was over.  I learned next to nothing about them when I engaged in such obsessive behaviors towards them.

Now, Sara, Sara in 1988, that's the first time I ever felt as if I knew one of these make-me-crazy types in a way I never knew Veronica or Wanda or Katy.  That was the first time I tried the "what if I turned my back on love" experiment.  These types have never afforded me much access to them, and perhaps, last night, I might have found out the why of all of that: fear of rejection.  Like I said, when I like someone, I want to get to know them better.  I feel now, about this former cashier, that I might have actually made a good guess as to the why of all of this.  

I want to emphasize this next point, now that we're here.  I shouldn't have much of a problem being patient and compassionate towards this young woman.  It really shouldn't put me out to display that side of myself to her now.  It sure was a strain getting here, but now that I'm here, it's all good, as the kids say.  Yeah, I may have reached a real breakthrough when my thinking last night led me to see something that may actually be from her point of view.  I'll be nice, I promise.  I care for her a great deal.

Now, in my efforts to display more compassion and understanding towards her, I will dance with them that brung me.  In other words, I will try to refrain from patronizing a certain diner and a certain coffee shop for a while.   I will possibly try to refrain from patronizing these two places for quite some time.  How long?  I'm shooting for the rest of this month.  I don't know if I'll succeed, but I do feel as if my efforts to build a wall between myself and these employees at these businesses may have helped lead me to this insight about this woman I care a great deal for. 

When I first got the impression in late December that some of the attractive young women in my world wanted me to make "it" about that former cashier again, I found that doing so- making it about her once more- amounted to an almost traumatic experience.  I found it difficult to just let the notion of this person become a thing to me again.  The  thought of it seemed to invite disaster.  I would get really bummed out at the prospect of coming up empty in some major way as a consequence of making it about her all over again.  My mood would swing from high to low at seemingly regular intervals.  I've talked about such a phenomenon as something I could even chart in such a way that it would resemble a sine wave.  Yeah, the sine wave came back.

As I found myself in the negative, downward part of the "sine wave" the other day, I went to my banjo lesson.  The negative, downward part of the sine wave involved a lot of thoughts about just letting this whole situation go and moving on with my life.  The letting go would stem from a lot of anger and resentment over feeling trapped in a situation that is not of my choosing.  And you know what?  I don't choose to have her not show up in my world.  I don't choose to have attractive waitresses at diners avoid me and act standoffish.  I don't choose to come up empty once more when I make it about someone who has never, ever expressed an interest in me in a way I can accept and understand.

I choose to make it about her, for now.  But, like I said, I went to my banjo lesson, and my mood was good.  I think it's because the prospect of letting go of people and situations I find frustrating is a course of action I know very well, and that when I decide on such a course of action, it's probably for the best.  If I'm not happy with a person or the predicament they seem to want to put me in, I'm really looking out for their best interests as well as mine when I let them go.  A learned, adult behavior I taught myself how to execute for the first time many, many years ago; that of letting go of people who make me crazy; has served me so well over these many, many years on more than one occasion.  

Letting someone such as this former cashier go, once more, demonstrates a willingness to accept an outcome where we don't become boyfriend and girlfriend, and I think that a demonstrable willingness to accept such an outcome allows me to act in her best interests as well as mine.  So, no need to feel shitty if my mind goes there in the downward part of the sine wave. 

Those kinds of thoughts about this predicament, a predicament possibly imposed by her and other women in my world, allows me to spend a lot of time by myself and quite possibly not concern myself too much with patronizing certain diners and coffee shops that employ attractive young waitresses and baristas who seem to have some inside scoop on her end of my predicament.  I find my mood sufficiently stable enough that I might not feel so much of a need to keep tabs on this situation in such a manner.