I went on my first date with Veronica Ortega in the spring of 1985.  I took her to Kerbey Lane Cafe.  As we went through our dinner ritual, our conversation became quite lively, which I found very stimulating.  At some point, as I looked at her while we talked, I exclaimed, "I love you!," to myself in my mind.  A few years ago, at Cheatham Street Warehouse, while performing on stage at the songwriter's circle, I said, "People ask me, 'Richy Vegas, why do you write so many songs hatin' on the women?'" I then related to the audience how I decided I was in love with Veronica Ortega on our first date in the spring of 1985, and how that might have something to do with it.   

This very, very attractive young woman in my world, who I decided managed to play me for a couple of weeks there, flirted with me in a pretty major way, and that kicked things to the kind of level I just talked about in regards to my date at Kerbey Lane Cafe with Veronica Ortega in the spring of 1985.  This very, very attractive young  woman told me I was the coolest guy ever.  I had sold her a copy of one of my comic books, and this was her review of the book the next time I saw her.

While I was in New York City a couple of weeks ago.  I texted a friend a glowing, idealized assessment of where I thought this very, very attractive young woman was coming from with the attention she was paying to me.  I look at that text message now, and it reminds me of the same state I was in on my date with Veronica in 1985 when I exclaimed "I love you!" in my mind.  I look at that text message and conclude that I was under some kind of a spell.

So last week, I decided to blow that very, very attractive young woman off.  I did it just to see what would happen.  For shits and grins, really.  It was only later that I looked at that text message and decided that I probably did the right thing.  I  want to emphasize this one point.  Very, very attractive young women flirting with me in a pretty brazen manner is not so much the problem.  The problem resides more in how I process such over the top flirtations, and how I then respond.  I  think holding myself at arm's length in regards to this very, very attractive young woman turned out to be a pretty intelligent decision.  It allowed me the room to guess what all might be occurring, and what to do about it.

  

 In September of 2012, when I revived the "turn my back on love" experiment in full effect,  I did so after concluding that I didn't take the experiment far enough when I tried it with Sara in 1988.  Am I wrong about this latest development involving a very, very, attractive woman in my world?  Did I take the experiment TOO far this time?  After twelve years of pretty much spot-on intelligent decision making in regards to many, many attractive women who just did not present any substantive opportunities for dating, sex, romance, or anything like that, have I taken the experiment too far with this young woman?

What would it mean, if I have indeed turned my back on a genuine opportunity to get to know someone better?  I really liked this person, too.  I called the experiment, where I would ask myself some variation of, "What if I turned my back on love?," or, "What if I just blew this person off?"; I called that line of thinking following my buddha.  The word "buddha" meaning a thought or concept that could possibly lead to an enlightened state if I "followed" it far enough.  But, did I go too far this time?  Is "what if I turned my back on love" just an extreme way of thinking that, in the end proves unsustainable, because it ultimately lead me to a too-far place?

That would be interesting, because it would mean that I took this path too far after TWELVE YEARS of finding great success while on it.  That blows me away to think about that.  What can I say?  Well, the proof's in the pudding.  This latest person I feel as if I made an intelligent decision about will join Celeste and Lauren in the pantheon of ones that got away since my diagnosis in 1992.  If I'm wrong about her, that is.  I will now have THREE missed opportunities I would like to have back since 1992 instead of the TWO that take up that position now.  I can live with that.  Although this idea that I've actually taken this experiment too far really gums up the works now.

​What distinguishes Celeste and Lauren from this young woman I just blew off centers around the LACK of any suspicions about Celeste and Lauren.  Whereas, this young woman I just blew off, whew, she fits in more with that Virgin Girl, or that Virgin Girl's buddy, or that former cashier, or "Katy," from 1985, or Veronica, from 1985, or "Wanda," from 1987, and on, and on, and on.  Just a slicker-'n-owl-shit type that has dogged me for so long now.

I don't think that my decision to go ahead and make a "this is bullshit" call on someone in my world I really, really liked marks the end of our business between each other.  Just because I declared no interest on my part in getting to know this person better, that doesn't mean I'll never have to deal with her again. I'll probably see her again, therefore I will need to call on whatever intelligent decision making capabilities I've developed at this stage of things.

For her part, a display of kindness, compassion, and understanding in reaction to my suspicions about her could really, really set her apart from pretty much EVERY SINGLE woman in my past she reminds me of these days.  Not going to hold my breath on that one.   She WILL NOT impress me that she's actually, sincerely interested in me with a display of general pissiness or acting all offended and insulted that I would DARE go ahead and just pull the trigger on my assessment of her and the situation I found myself in.  That's pretty much the go to move of every single bullshit artist I've ever had to deal with at this juncture. 

If she does come at me with a display of kindness, compassion, and understanding, that doesn't necessarily mean such a display will reignite my interest in her.  It just doesn't work that way. I once had this elderly, African-American auto repair shop porter give me a ride home after I dropped my car off for repairs.  He said he was an ordained minister, and he said, more than once, that Jesus preached that we were all put here to love one another. I would punctuate his statements with, "That's not easy to do."  I was thinking about that now-former cashier I very much felt as if I was in a situation with at the time.  Whatever I managed to express to that young woman when I invited her to my comic book sale a couple of years and one pandemic later was definitely not easy to do.

Speaking of that former cashier, I might have seen her a couple of times at work in the past month or so.  If it is her, her appearance has changed some, enough to where I'm a bit shy about saying hi to her.  That, plus I feel as if I've given enough of myself to her on behalf of "the cause," and I just don't feel like giving any more.  I can count one time I feel as if she gave something of herself to me. That was when she was very kind to me when I got up the courage to invite her to my comic book sale in October of 2021.  But I feel as if I commanded respect from her at that moment in what I did, and that explains in large part HER kindness towards ME that ONE TIME.  She closed up shop on that part of herself right afterwards, and that's why I bailed two months after I invited her to come see me when I was selling comics, and that's why I STILL don't much feel like giving any more of myself in regards to her to this day.



  

When Wanda represented herself as something she was not to me in early 1987, it set in motion a downward spiral of events.  When I laid my crude sexual proposition on her one night in this downward spiral, all of a sudden BOTH parties were behaving like total idiots, not just one.  For me, my behavior created a lot more problems than it solved.  To my way of seeing things, I seemed to suffer a lot more bad consequences for my behavior than Wanda did for her bad behavior.

I reread Dr. David Burn's Feeling Good during the interval between Wanda in 1986/1987 and Sara in 1988.  Thanks to the ways of thinking about stuff that book helped me with, the only person who really behaved like an idiot between myself and Sara was Sara. Simply put, I opted out of the faux courtship dance between myself and Sara that might well have resulted in another shitty "life lesson" being imposed on me.  My blog post "I'm not bad," from January 2016, details my thinking and approach towards the dilemma Sara presented to me during the spring semester of 1988.

By the time that Virgin Girl from that grocery store came around in August or September of 2014, I'd already implemented a full on revival of the "what if I turned my back on love" experiment I initially tried with Sara in 1988.  Even though the attractive women who came afterwards only seemed to want to be another version of Wanda, Sara, or say, that Virgin girl to me, I've never looked back.  

My record with these types of women since the days of that Virgin Girl speaks for itself.  Or should I say, my LACK of a record since the days of that Virgin Girl, or for that matter, my whole life before that Virgin Girl to boot, speaks for itself.  If any white knights at any coffee shops, restaurants, or retail businesses I patronize want me to sign a consent form for them to do a criminal background check on me, especially in regards to retaliatory acts of aggression toward women who want to be idiots toward me, well alright, bring it on, I'll sign such a form. Go for it.

I feel as if I got played by someone in my world these past two and a half weeks.  I snapped to it last night/this morning and did a complete one-eighty on my assessment of the situation and the person in question.  It's a real drag for me to say this, because this person is really, really attractive, and they seemed really cool.

It's only been two and half weeks since she started in on me, and nothing really disastrous happened, but still.  There always seems to be someone out there who stands at the ready to let me know who I "really am," and where I "really belong." I basically kept myself at arm's length from her, because that's my "A" game, you see.  I find it best to keep myself at arm's length from women I desire.  And I don't mean I'm keeping THEM at arm's length from ME, but rather I'm keeping MYSELF at arm's length from THEM.  

I find these protocols and procedures really helpful, such as keeping myself at arm's length from someone I desire greatly, because then I don't have to be so fearful all the time about women such as this trying to harm me.  I can just put the procedures in place and see how it all shakes out in my mind and in my world and that is that.  I don't have to always be so hyper-vigilant about keeping myself from getting hurt by such women.

One of the main symptoms of schizoaffective disorder is the fear that others will try to harm me.  But handling the situation the way I handled it is akin to safe driving or safe sex practices.  I can drive a car without constantly being afraid that I'll get into a wreck.  I can have sex (once in a blue moon. Yeesh!) and not be super afraid of the diseases or the person I'm having sex with.  And I can assign someone the role of love interest for a while (in this instance, two days) without having to worry about some crash and burn breakdown experience every time I do so.

If I were to assign love interest status to any attractive woman in my world, here's the two things she could expect: 1) The benefit of a doubt, and 2) My "A" game.  I'm just sayin'. 

These last several posts seem to center around the theme of women taking an interest in me and the specific reasons they do so.   A few posts ago I talked about a really attractive young woman at a coffee shop a couple of years back who seemed to be one of these women taking an interest in me.  I talked about how things didn't work out, and how she probably just "found someone she liked better."  I think that girl and the other young women at that coffee shop knew all about my struggles and felt a great deal of sympathy for me.  This particular, very attractive young woman seemed prepared to offer me a profound level of validation....until she got cold feet.

The thing is, she and those other women at that coffee shop have not counted as the only women who wanted to see me do well. Maybe a year and a half ago, some attractive, young female staff at the Austin Clubhouse saw that I liked one of their coworkers.  It got to where I would eat lunch at the Clubhouse, and "Mary" would sit at my table with "Cindy" and they would talk to each other about how "Megan" was doing.  The whole tone of their conversation seemed to center around a developing situation involving a breakup between Megan and some boyfriend.

My response to that whole deal involved me just finding Megan on Instagram and making a unilateral decision to follow her account. I hoped Megan would see that I was following her and that she would follow me back. Megan quit her job for a higher paying position elsewhere in the weeks that followed my effort to reach out to her, and after some significant time passed with nary a nibble from her on Instagram, I unfollowed her account.

Several months later, Mary also moved on to another job, but not before I hung out at the Clubhouse on her last day.  When I said goodbye and took my leave of her, she gave me  the most beautiful, wide open smile.  I think an older, former female staffer who'd retired sometime earlier told Mary what I'd said to the older woman about how I really made an effort to not fuck with the attractive young women who serve as staff, interns, or volunteers at Austin Clubhouse.  My discreet effort to reach out socially to Megan was the most I'd ever done in that realm.

So, big picture: It seems as if some attractive, young women want to see me do well with women in general.  Some seem to go so far as to ostensibly offer some part of themselves for that level of validation.  How can I possibly harbor any anger or resentment towards such young, very attractive women if they wind up getting cold feet?  My whole approach, to just display a willingness to let the whole matter go, only seems to increase my credibility, and quite possibly my viability, to other attractive women in my world.  I guess my fondest hope centers around the possibility that one or more attractive women WON'T chicken out and get cold feet. I hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

I'll state the obvious (to many) right off and say that the former cashier that looked like a possibility some weeks ago didn't go my way after all.  I think I showed a lot of bravery in questioning the whole premise of her supposed attraction to me to the extent that I questioned it.  When the pivotal moment came, and there she stood in person, I just wanted to see what would happen if I blew her off then and there, and in doing just that, I did the right thing.  She could have said "HI" to me at that moment, but she didn't, and we came to a parting of the ways.

The most counter-productive, disruptive thing I could do at this time would consist of casting about for a love interest from amongst the most attractive women in my world.  For me, this would mean looking to the waitress/ barista/ grocery store employee types who inhabit my day to day routines.  In a misguided attempt to rebound from my experience of these last several weeks, my mind can latch on to the most attractive of these types, and try to make it all about them.  Nope!  That is all.

Last summer, I got back in touch with a way of looking at my seemingly ever-present dilemmas with women.  I returned to the idea that God is giving me plenty of chances to get (Schmaylor Schmift) right. Nowadays, just insert (that former cashier) in the place of (Schmaylor Schmift).  Last summer got REALLY lonely for me too.  It was as if the attractive women in the small town I stayed in knew what a piece of shit I was in how I related to women.  At least that part of it is better now.  I glanced at a Washington Post article today about a Facebook group that seems to fit the description of what I might be facing to a "T."  Well now, isn't that precious.

Anyhoo, just because I'm actually inclined to believe that God wants me to get that former cashier right, that doesn't necessarily mean "happily ever after" with her.  Far from it.  Saying to myself that God wants me to get her right allows me to pivot in all kinds of directions in regards to her, depending on what I feel my actual options are, and the only rules about the decisions I make regarding her have to do with what such a God would accept as intelligent decisions regarding her.  Got it?

That said, okay, she started in on me in February of 2019, okay. She's STILL an issue for me, and, right now, I'm inclined to believe that she's STILL an issue for me does NOT necessarily just mark me as can obsessive guy who can carry a torch for an unavailable woman for years.  Not at all.  But, just in case that torch bearing angle really constitutes the whole of my dilemma regarding her, that DOES NOT negate how relevant and effectual my decision to lay down my burden on this issue and let God do His/Her thing can prove in bringing about an acceptable, nay viable, turn of events in the coming days, weeks, and months. 

Okay, why is she still an issue for me, if it may not just mean I carry a pointless, futile torch for her?  I think her end of it, in regards to me as someone she wants to get to know better, might just exist. I've done enough skeptical inquiry, eliminated some of the other possibilities, at least to some extent, and conclude....that God wants me to get this former cashier right, and that He/She is giving me PLENTY, but PLENTY of chances to get her right.. Is it June, 2019  already?  Oh, and before I sign off: If it's about the presence of her absence from here on out, that's STILL something God wants me to get right, and I will have LOTS of time and LOTS of chances to do just that.