A some point, well after I came to have the conviction that I had an internet presence that I did not consent to, I emailed Allyson about my website.  I needed something done for maintenance or an update or whatever.  I started out my email asking if I was in the doghouse with her too, as I seemed to be with a lot of women due to this alleged internet presence.  When Allyson replied, she began her message with, "Hi Richard!"  Then she proceeded to refer me to a girlfriend who could help me with my website, because Allyson didn't do web stuff anymore.  

That meant a lot to me.  What also meant a lot to me was the way MOST of the baristas at Thunderbird seemed to regard me during that whole Schmaylor Schmift ordeal.  Those baristas at Thunderbird were a critical social lifeline during the 2020 phase of the pandemic, plus the two or so years of 2021 and 2022.  But yeah, Allyson never came out and said, "I stand by your side, Richard Alexander."  But I choose to look at her message greeting as an example of actions speaking louder than words.

It's been quite an adjustment these past several days as far as how I think about that barista in my world. I do believe she just wanted me as an admirer and nothing more.  Veronica Ortega and the major psychotic episode I experienced in 1985 as our deal degenerated does NOT provide me with the only frame of reference to draw upon to make decisions about what to do or what not to do about this barista.  

Another experience I have to draw on concerns my friend Allyson. I met Allyson in the summer of 1993.  I had just come back from Big Spring, where I went into the state hospital in December of 1992 because I became so depressed I was suicidal.  This depression followed my gran mal meltdown over Jenna and subsequent diagnosis of a major mental illness during the summer of 1992.  Anyway, after I got back from Big Spring, where I stayed with my dad and his family after my hospitalization out there, I met Allyson at a party.

I'll cut to the chase and just say that, yeah, Allyson wanted me as an admirer too.  I was more willing to face reality regarding her over the years, and I mean over the years because we're pretty much friends to this day.  No, I never rang her phone off the hook or bothered her on any social media accounts.  She designed my website in 2012.  For money.

That former cashier, whom I really fixated on for so long, still has that person who may or may not know her in my world.  I'll cut to the chase on this former cashier.  Access and approachability was always an issue for me in regards to her.  After all these years of this cashier being an issue, it still is.  There's no progress on that front at all.  That fact will affect any decisions I make about her moving forward.  All one has to do is refer back to the title of this blog post for my thinking on her. 

I have some things to say about that barista I've become friendly with over the past month and a half or so.  I do so with two things in mind. 1) This blog may or may not provide a forum that allows me to interact with my world in a unique way.  The very issue of whether or not ANYONE I interact with on a day to day basis actually reads this or not seems to provide me with a certain amount of freedom for me to speak my mind.  On  the one hand, I might just write these posts to an audience of none.  On the other hand, maybe that barista and those around her, plus people at my job, plus other people in other places in my life; maybe a lot of those people actually read this blog, so I still feel the need to be careful about what I say.  It's precisely this dilemma that allows me the freedom to speak my mind while tempering my language and preserving people's privacy at the same time.

The other thing I keep in mind is, 2) My willingness to just let this deal I have going with this barista slip through my fingers allows me to better look out for her best interests as well as mine.  That's because, in my willingness to just let it all go, I display a demonstrated willingness to accept an outcome where me and this barista don't become boyfriend and girlfriend.  Mind you, this willingness to let it all go doesn't just sit in my back pocket in case my ardent efforts to get with her don't work out, but rather this willingness to let the whole deal go takes a front and center position in my overall game.  So no, experience tells me that a demonstrated willingness to let this kind of deal just fall by the wayside does not constitute me shooting myself in the foot.

The other day she was nice enough to ask me for social media info, and I can now contact her through that means.  I took advantage of this yesterday and invited her to come out and see some friends play with their bands in the upcoming days.  She said she had to work.  I saw her tonight at her job, and she seemed to have the impression that I'd invited her out to a gig where I was to play.  Part of me wonders whether or not, in mentioning the prospect that I was to play at the gig I invited her to, she might have been slyly hinting that she only wants me to invite her to something like that if I'm on the bill as a performer.  I don't know about that, but I take that into consideration.

Well, I never made it off the farm as a musical act, so I probably won't be inviting her to any gigs any time soon.  I'll try inviting her to a show like the one I invited her to yesterday one or two more times via social media messaging.  Then again, maybe I won't.  The real issue I have with her has to do with what she wants from me.  I wonder whether or not the attention she's been paying to me this past month and a half or so really has anything to do with a desire to get to know me better.  A while back I speculated to myself that she may just want me as an admirer and nothing more.

In 1985 I had very traumatic, painful experience with Veronica Ortega when she came at me with this exact same agenda.  I'll give this barista more credit that I give Veronica, because (I hope) the barista probably sees me as a whole lot wiser about such things, and that I can look out for my best interests better now that I could when Veronica Ortega came at me with this agenda in 1985.  If this barista has the confidence that I can look after my best interest, she may in turn have my best interests more in her heart than I feel that Veronica ever had.  Nonetheless, whether or not she takes me more seriously than Veronica did in 1985, I really don't want to revisit ANY PART of those bad old days.  Older and wiser, right? 

As of this writing, I'm sticking with my choice to refrain from approaching that very attractive, young barista for social reasons.  I make this decision despite the fact that I like her very much.  Here's the thing: A big reason I like her to the extent I like her has everything to do with the fact that I frequently make choices about women I desire that involve no substantial engagement with them.   Decisions such as retraining from asking them on dates or asking them for contact information.  I discovered, in the era of Sara, that my attentions to women were mine to WITHHOLD as well as mine to give.  Exercising that right, over these past twelve years especially, has greatly improved my relationship with women.  At least as to how I view them and whether or not I like them in general.

Think about it.  I set up a boundary that involves retraining from asking baristas who flirt with me on dates.  I enforce that boundary over these past several years, and that improves how I interact with female baristas in general.  Take that altogether, and doesn't it seem likely that I could meet up with a barista that I really, really like, and so in meeting this person, her attentions to me would challenge that boundary like never before?  I'm not saying such a development would necessarily be inevitable, but given that this girl finds me in a better mood than I've typically been in over the course of many, many years (decades really), that I take better care of myself now than I did for many, many years, and that I'm receptive to liking someone such as her more unreservedly than before (maybe, I might have liked her a LOT even in my more grumpy days); put all those elements together, and it seems likely to me, at least, that I would meet someone who could really challenge such a boundary as swearing off asking the baristas out on dates.

But you know what?  As Darrell K. Royal once said, "We dance with them who brung us."  What brought me to this place was my willingness to set up the no-asking-flirtatious-baristas-on-dates boundary.  With this one, it's definitely not as if I'm enforcing this boundary because I don't like her.  I DO like her.  I do.  I like her so much, I ask nothing of her as far as taking actions of her own accord to bring about an encounter between us that doesn't involve me going into her place of employment and seeing her there.  If she's not into doing something like that, I don't see it as appropriate for me to demand that she do something like that to make it happen between us.  It's not any more appropriate for me to make such demands of her than it would be for her to make demands that I take the initiative on the two of us getting together somewhere outside of her place of employment.

I'm not approaching this young woman I've been writing about for social reasons.  She's a barista at a coffee shop I patronize.  The baristas at Thunderbird Coffee on Koenig Lane were all horrible to me when I approached quite a few of them for social reasons in the early 2010's.  This girl who works at this coffee shop I patronize now shouldn't blame me for my decision to not approach her for social reasons.  She should blame all of those baristas at Thunderbird Coffee on Koenig, and before them, all of those baristas at Pacha Coffee on Burnet Road in the mid-2000's.

By the time I started going to the Thunderbird Coffee on Manor Road in the early 2020's, I'd sworn off of the baristas to such an extent that I never approached any female employee at the Manor location for social reasons for the entire time I went there.  I'm really loathe to look at female employees of coffee shops or restaurants as my own personal dating pool, because that just never, ever worked out.

Don't get me wrong.  I really LIKE this young woman who has been flirting with me quite a bit these past several weeks, but, you know, I thought I had a pretty good chance with all of those girls at that Thunderbird on Koenig until they all shot me down.  I now see all of my OPPORTUNITIES in the context of what would happen if I DON'T do this or I DON'T do that.  I really get to challenge my own beliefs about whether or not taking such a course of action in regards to this young woman at this coffee shop will lead to an unfulfilled life.  Will it make me less of a man to let this whole situation go?  Will she and the other employees at the coffee shop not like me anymore if I just refuse to ask her for a date or contact information, such as a social media handle?  Anyhoo, that's the road I see opening up to me now.  The path of my buddha.

There's things I want to say to this young woman in my world that I'd rather say to her in person.  Nothing bad. Nothing bad at all.  I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to talk to her in a more private setting, but I'm willing to hold my tongue right now on some topics in the hope that I will get a chance to talk to her in a more private setting.  

I will say this, though.  She MIGHT actually be trying to follow my lead in something I brought up right away a couple of weeks back.  That has to do with my efforts to keep MYSELF at arms's length from HER.  Mind you, not keeping HER at arm's length from ME, as if I'm just too cool for her, but the other way around.  I think some of what I've experienced of her these past couple of weeks might result from an effort by her to keep HERSELF at arm's length from ME.  If that's true, the effort by both of us to do this towards the other is working like a dream, because I, for one, feel more emotionally close to HER than ever right now.

Well, I went from being the coolest guy ever to just being another customer to this young, attractive woman who works at a food service business I patronize.  She may have made a personal decision that did not go my way.  She may have decided to turn her attention to someone else.  For. Whatever.  Reason.  Yeah, I feel a bit jerked around, but I'll be alright.   

This brings to mind a situation I found myself in back in 2016.  A shift manager at Milto's Pizza named LeeAnn asked me to go drinking with her at her favorite tavern.  I told her I didn't drink, and she acted shot down.  A week or so later I said I'd still like to hang out with her at her night spot, and we agreed to meet there to watch the presidential debate.   I showed up at the bar, but she stood me up.

Okay, here's the good part, for me.  At first I thought about going into Milto's Pizza a couple of days after our aborted date.  I would just want to demonstrate that there were no hard feelings and like that.  Then I thought, "Wait a minute. Think about it."  I then decided that I did NOT want to go into Milto's and prove what I great guy I was about being rejected or any of that kind of bullshit.

I decided that "great guy'" schtick could come off as pretty manipulative, because in effect, I would knock the ball back in her court in a manner that would come off as if I were trying to win her over and get her to change her mind about me or all of the above.  I would make like being rejected that way was not a big deal, but in going out of my way to prove it was no big deal to me, I would be saying just the opposite.  I would try to use her rejection of me and how I parried it as leverage to try and get more out of her. 

Instead, I went there a couple a weeks later, and just played it all low key to her.  A guy prepping food in the visible kitchen area looked at me as if he had read what I wrote on my blog about the great guy angle and he seemed to be like, "Yeah, exactly."  I basically didn't try to be all buddy buddy with LeeAnn, and she seemed okay with it.  Things were a little cool between us, but not unbearably so.

I think blowing off this attractive young woman who gushed that I was the coolest guy ever a few weeks ago, but acted as if she were giving me the brush off the last time I saw her; I think just blowing her off for an appreciable length of time could stand the chance of coming off as if I spoke her language a little more than if I tried that great guy stuff.  I may not necessarily score any points with her, but at least I can refrain from that great guy charade.  Going with the great guy charade might just tell her I'm in a less developed place than even I feel as if I'm in nowadays.

She seemed happy to see me, and I was happy to see her.  I'll just leave it at that.  I don't want to put my foot in my mouth anymore.