In my last post I put forth the notion that other employees at this business wanted me to try to get to know this young woman I write about better.  If that notion has any basis in reality, I feel extremely honored.  I talk often about my desire to improve my relationship with women, and the idea that people would consider it a good thing for this young woman to become friends with me amounts to something like an Academy Award for self-improvement.  That does not go unnoticed or unappreciated by me, I assure everyone.

I just don't want to get in the middle of anything between this young woman and another person.  I'm sorry, but the other day I got the distinct impression that any effort to get with this young woman would amount to just that.  In better times than we have now, I would say that there's plenty of fish in the sea, and that I find no need to do something like that.  My last post touched upon the idea that any attempt to work stuff like that out during this time would prove inappropriate and too difficult to accomplish.  

But, again, I emphasize how honored I feel that people want me to try and get something going with her.  In my memory, which to me feels not too long ago, people definitely DID NOT see me as someone who might hit it off with someone like her.  In fact, people tended to see me as more of a threat to someone like her than anything else.  Again, thanks to all the well wishers, I wish I felt as if I could follow through on your wishes, if that indeed proves to be your desire.  But, one should remember, this young woman is an adult as well, and her wishes need honoring too.

I spent a good deal of last night going over things in my head in regards to this young woman at this one business I patronize.  I came up with a theory that other employees at this business want me to pursue a friendship with this young woman, no matter her personal life circumstances.  By that I mean, I think she probably has a boyfriend.  I'm flattered that perhaps a lot of employees like the idea of me pursuing a friendship with this young woman, but I don't want to do that right now.  

First off, I'm a fifty-six year old man.  I bring that up because I've been in this place before; where people had ideas about matching me up with this or that woman, and I looked into it a little, and I came to the conclusion that things wouldn't work, but people tried to overrule me.  A lot of people seem to have the idea that mentally ill people, regardless of their age or level of development, are more like children than adults, and that the mentally ill person can't make sound decisions on their own behalf.  That's very disrespectful.

Second, I realize that there can exist a lot of gray areas in these situations, but this time in our history and our own lives does not seem to present good opportunities to sort out those gray areas, in my opinion.   Now represents a time for all of us to just look out for ourselves and those around us as best as we can, and not the time at all for these kinds of romantic issues.

I repeat: I'm not going to try to pursue a friendship with this young woman now or in the foreseeable future.  I'm not interested in trying to be there for her, because I don't really even know her at all.  Please, I want people to respect my judgement, and for these employees at this business to treat me in a professional, courteous manner.

Well, I patronized this business that this young woman works at very recently.  Yes, I saw her.  Yes, I said hello.  Yes, she said hello back in a pleasant enough way, I guess.  I went about my business and saw her again as I left the business.  She seemed busy with her phone, maybe trying to call someone, and we did not exchange greetings as I left.

Now, I have some guesses here.  Maybe she seemed irked while using her phone because she needed transportation home from work, and had trouble accomplishing that task.  Maybe, maybe, she became frustrated when she couldn't track down her real boyfriend.  Eh?  Here I am, the guy who supposedly played the unloving son of a bitch role in her life when I abandoned her to the coronavirus a few months back.  Here I am, I mean, HERE I AM.  Am I her guy?  Why did she seem so focused on her phone calls?

Well, what column should all her flirtations fall under in light of the fact that her attention seemed to go elsewhere when I was in the building?  She wouldn't be some kind of....player, would she?  Do I really need to "be there" in this time of coronavirus for some total player type?  I don't think so.

I've decided to patronize that business at the times I think that young woman might work there.  I decided against that course of action for some months, but I will resume again.  I looked at the news of new COVID-19 infections for Travis County and Texas.  Things look grim.  I think that I will just try to be there for this young woman.  She can do whatever she wants in her personal life.  I don't care.  Last Sunday she seemed glad to see me.  I don't feel much like getting to know new people now.  It seems highly inappropriate to press someone such as this young woman for contact info or anything like that.  I'm just going to do like I do.  I'm in a much less risky position than a lot of people now.  My health remains pretty good, and I don't have to work right now.  I'm less fearful of the coronavirus now, but I think I do a pretty good job of respecting Mother Nature.  I don't take any foolish chances about the places I go, and I will just hang around this situation with this young woman like the St. Louis Cardinals seem to do every baseball season and somehow wind up in the playoffs when all is said and done.

I've decided to once more patronize that business where this young woman works at the times I think she works there.  I  think these blog posts that I write concerning her make up a big part of what appeals to her about this situation.  I'll try to keep that it mind, but I also want things to breathe a little, so I will try to refrain from writing too, too much about the whole deal.  I will just say now that whatever part of me cared for her in the past has ballooned off the scale these past couple of days.  I will try in the coming days and weeks to assess what's really going on, though, and try to make intelligent decisions accordingly.  

Yep, Chris Gaffney and The Cold Hard Facts: Live and Then Some. Has been on heavy rotation for quite a while.  Highlights of this great album include: "Fade to Grey," "C'mon Joe," "WALTZ FOR MINNIE," "East of Houston, West of Baton Rouge," " '68."

Right now I've got Chet Baker Sings on the computer playing songs of love, longing, and longing for love.  No Frank Sinatra confidently belting out "Nice and Easy" for me today, but rather a young Chet Baker coming from a lonelier, more wistful, melancholy,  somewhat desperate place.  If any extremely attractive, totally viable, very young woman in my world actually took an interest in me for some dumbass reason, I would hip them to the legacy of Chet Baker.

Check out the documentary Let's Get Lost to see what became of the handsome young man seen on the cover of Chet Baker Sings.  Filming began in January 1987, so Chet must have been 57, 58 at the most.  He looks like shit. He tells the story of how he lost most of his upper teeth in a drug deal gone bad in the late '60's, he confesses his drug of choice at the time of filming was to mainline a "speedball," a mixture of cocaine and heroin, the very idea of which, "Scares the hell out of most people."  The filmmakers interview his parents, who say that yes, Chet has received a lot of awards and recognition throughout his career, but his parents agree when the interviewer asks them if he is a disappointment to them in the end.  I don't want to give away the ending, but it is not exactly a surprise how Chet meets his demise.   Ooo, I made a rhyme.

As for an old cruster like me, some young gal feeling like an asshole for liking me in the first place could tell herself, "At least he's not Chet Baker."  I'm not saying I think any young wimmins out there has anything like that going on for me, I'm just saying what if.  Oh well, the album's on pause, I want to listen to the rest of it now.

Whelp, I turned fifty-six today.  In some ways, I might as well celebrate my twentieth birthday as my fifty-sixth.  I say so because I still have strong feelings for women in my world, and these women still seem just as unavailable to me these days as the women I fixated on at the ages of nineteen going on twenty.

I've decided to patronize that business where the young woman used to work as of a few months ago.  That is, I've decided to go in there at the times she used  to work there.  I went there today, she wasn't there, but I still don't know whether she's moved on or not.  That will take a few more trips to find out, I guess.

As my tendency to fixate on very attractive women progressed into my twenties, I made a lot of bad decisions about these women.  I've talked about these decisions extensively here, and I won't go into them now.  I can now say that I tend to make very intelligent decisions about very attractive young women I think about these days.  At least, I think I make very intelligent decisions about such women.  In fact, I often say, my relationship with women IS intelligent decisions these days.

Now, these decisions, all of them, pretty much, have nothing to do with love, girlfriends, or relationships, yes or no, for or against.  These decisions uniformly have to do with treating the person as well as I can, but then coming to a day when I just cut them loose.  That's about it.  I count decisions of that nature where the other party or parties totally succeeded in playing whatever cruel games they wanted to play, but where I just cut my losses and moved on.  I wish I could draw on some great dating history that contained lots of great, affirming experiences with these women, but I don't have such a history, for the most part.  I mainly have a history these days where I just stay out of trouble and don't get hurt.

It seems as if dragging things out serves to my advantage in my decision making.  I hope so, in the case of this young woman I've written extensively about this past year-plus or so.  I've certainly dragged things out with this one.  Yeah, I tend to do pretty good when I don't make decisions in haste.  It seems counter-intuitive to drag things out like I do, but I don't seem to regret it in the end.

First off, I will imagine we don't have coronavirus times to deal with.  I will suppose I have the freedom of movement to go to clubs and bars where my friends' bands play or I play myself. and that the opportunity to meet younger women presents itself regularly enough.  If we lived in such times, I don't know that I'd want to put myself out there much to try to get with some woman half my age or younger, and I finally came up with a good reason.

If a much younger woman really liked me, and we started seeing each other, then she'd probably have to do a lot of explaining of her choice to those in her world.  This would include her friends, coworkers, and maybe even family if it got that far.  From what I read all over the internet on blog sites such as Jezebel, or on social media comments in general on the subject of older men dating younger women, I would not call these very forgiving or tolerant times in regards to that possibility.

So, if a much younger woman really, really liked me, she would do well to resign herself to explaining without apologies her choices regarding me.  And, if that holds true, then the time to start declaring her preference and why she makes the choices she makes may as well start right off with making the first move on me.  With that in mind, I would not add anything to the situation by taking a substantial initiative in getting something going with such a young woman.

One reason I read in Jezebel that women object on MORAL grounds to the situation of a much younger woman dating an older man has to do with the notion that the older man seeks to control  the younger woman.  Well, all the more reason for me to not go out of my way even a little bit to try to pick up on some woman half my age or younger.

Years ago I heard Howard Stern talk on the air about the late Don Imus' marriage to a much younger woman.  Howard disparaged the marriage and said that the young woman probably just wanted the money and lifestyle he could give her.  Then one of his cohorts mentioned Tony Randall and his much younger wife and said it was probably the same deal.  Howard then countered that Tony's wife probably really loved him.  Tony Randall had his first child by her when he was 77 and she was in her late twenties/early thirties.  

So, such a thing does exist, to my way of seeing things.  I talk a lot about much younger women on this blog, but if anyone sees me as the controlling type, especially any young women I've written about, well, good luck with that notion.  Hugh Hefner used  to impose a 9 PM curfew on his girlfriends to be back at the mansion.  His legacy on those later times comes in the form of disparaging memoirs and interviews with some of these women who speak of their deal as a purely financial arrangement with no real romantic feelings for the old mummy.  No thanks.

I mean, the last young woman I talked about on this blog, I said many times that she could just do whatever she wanted, and that I would try to refrain from signing on to some deal where I really bent over backwards to get with her.  It would have been NICE if whatever she felt like doing included talking to me or letting me know in any other substantive way that she even liked me, but no, doing whatever she wanted didn't include stuff like that, not to my way of seeing things, so I bailed.  Sue me, women of the Jezebel blog site and all you other clucking hens out there.

I've asked a lot of waitresses and baristas and whatnot out over the years.  I've been shot down almost every time.  I can think of two exceptions.   One involved a clerk at a convenience store near my old house, and the other involved a counter girl at a pizza place.  But, they both had this one thing in common: they both broached the subject of going out before I did.  The clerk was around my age, and I met her at a club to see her brother's band.  The counter girl wanted me to hang out with her at her favorite bar, but I'd quit drinking by that time, so she was the one who acted shot down.

It seems as if every time I crest that hilltop, in other words, broach the subject of going out with a waitress or barista before they do, it vibes like a big time faux pas.  Well, that's good to realize, especially in these days of coronavirus, when the only women I have any contact with on regular basis who aren't my family members come from this category of food service or retail worker.  To say these times seem too weird and scary to date would understate the whole idea of trying to get something going with someone these days, but I just read an article in the New York Times where people do manage to pull something like some of the aspects of dating off these days, so there you are.

So yeah, I'm not going to ask out some employee of a business in front of god and everyone these days, and I don't think I'll take that up again when or if the times get better for me as well as everyone else.  For me at least, the rule seems to consist of letting the employee make  the major move in that direction, and if that person just doesn't do that for some reason, there's my answer.  Like I said, the only women I have any social contact with these days are these employees, and I have no interest in fucking anything up right now.