I mean I am very fond of this person, and I care for her a great deal, but the young woman I've come to know- to the extent that I know her at all- comes off as a ruthless flirt who always seems to have some boyfriend or other in tow.  In my last post I talked about Veronica Ortega, from way back in 1985.  In the process of putting together the broken pieces of that time, I've ascertained that Veronica just wanted me as an ardent admirer, not as a boyfriend and lover.  She wanted me for that to help her get over a painful breakup.  She wanted male attention from someone she wouldn't have to take seriously.

If I'd have known Veronica's agenda at a more timely juncture, how seriously would I have taken whatever attentions she paid to me?  I feel, that in dragging this deal out with this current young woman, I can see more clearly that she just wanted me as an ardent admirer as well.  How seriously do I have to take her, in light of this guess I have about HER agenda in regards to me?  

Things never went sideways between myself and this young woman, because I slowed things down to the point where I can pick my spots to make intelligent decisions about her.  My willingness to slow things way, way down, to the point where even I can sort through all the confusion, PROVES DEFINITIVELY, once and for all, that I care for this person a great deal, and I probably always will.  That doesn't oblige me to take her all that seriously, though.  

I get to order another Rush CD this morning, because it's the 15th, and I haven't mentioned that young woman I can go on at length about on this blog since the 1st of July.  The last time I saw her, in the middle of June, she seemed really cheerful at her job.  That surprised me, because my blog post prior to this encounter, and I pretty much do think she and others read these; my last blog post prior to this encounter had me writing about how the thought of her joining in on some effort to stalk and harass me made me not feel so much warmth and affection for her, even though I still cared for her a great deal.  I said in that post that I stood willing to walk away from the entire deal.  Her upbeat, cheerful demeanor when I saw her next made me think all kinds of things.  Did she like the idea of me bailing on her?  Did her cheerful demeanor at her job when I saw her last signal a willingness to dare me to bail on our deal?  Did she ever like me or want me in the first place?

I've talked often about how I've ascertained over the years that, to a lot of young, attractive women out there, the mentally ill guy with a tendency towards romantic obsession represents a bad guy type to them.  I've said that many of them would rather take their chances with a charming, player type with a reputation for treating women shabbily than take a chance on a type that will often declare, through his actions mainly, his undying love for them and then proceed to chase them to the ends of the Earth and back.  I imagine the stories they tell each other about romantically obsessive, mentally ill guys amount to a kind of folklore, and I imagine they may all have personal stories of their own to back up this view.

So, when I declared my willingness to walk away from this whole deal, this young woman I can go on and on about knows me well enough to know that I can and will back such statements up by doing just that.  The first time I avoided going to her place of employment at times I knew her to work there occurred during the Summer of 2019.  I did stay away from her that way for six weeks, if I remember correctly.  I've done pretty much the same thing several more times, and I'm doing this same thing now.  I haven't seem her since mid-June, and I might stay away from her place of employment at the times I've known her to work there for, possibly, the rest of the Summer, because I feel this break from our deal has done me a lot of good.

One thing I think I might have a handle on these past few days has to do with the idea that she DOES know enough about me to take me seriously.  She realizes by now, possibly, that I'm not some silly-ass, obsessive pest/menace who will just not leave her alone if she shows the slightest bit of favor towards me.  I've talked in the past about Veronica Ortega and how, in 1985, Veronica threw me a few bones of attention with the belief that I would give her tenfold the amount of attention back.  Veronica seemed to do this to help her get over a painful breakup with a live-in boyfriend.  She wanted male attention from someone she didn't have to take seriously, and she saw me and at least one other guy as her guys for that. 

I have no idea about whom, if anyone, this young woman at this business is dating now, or whom she'll wind up with in the foreseeable future, but if SHE takes me seriously regarding my ability to master my obsessive impulses, other women-women I might not even know about at this time-may already take me seriously as well, and that may explain why this young woman came off as cheerful and friendly as she did the last time I saw her.  In other words, regardless of how things shake out between us, she doesn't feel the need to write me off as a liability in her world or that liking me in SOME way doesn't amount to some big mistake on her part. 

 In my last post I talked about that virgin girl from 2014/15.  I busted her pretty good in January of 2015, and by February of that year she showed visible signs of pregnancy.  I figured that she wanted to lose her virginity to the guy who impregnated her, and to top it all off, she tried to play some cruel kiss off game with me.  Now that's some game going on there!  Like I said in my last post, I never did anything to sabotage my deal with her, she was just never there for me.

I think about someone such as that virgin girl whenever I find myself embroiled in a situation that feels very similar.  Since I never did anything to sabotage our deal, could I conceivably catch one such as her on the b-side?  What if her relationship with the father of her child didn't work out?  Maybe then.  I've never had anything like that happen for me, but I guess something like that conceivably could happen.

I've had instances where someone demonstrated interest long after I'd let them go, and that's the closest I've come.  In every instance, the women I felt compelled to let go of stayed let go of, period.  In the instance of Gwen at SVA in 1991, she clearly desired that I let her go the previous semester, and when she showed interest the following Spring, I had moved onto another fruitless fixation.  In a couple of instances in later years, inertia and the passage of lots of time just compelled me to blow off a couple of women who seemed to want me to make some sort of move on them when they stopped me in a grocery store and a video store, respectively.

So, someone such as that virgin girl or other turd who wanted to try to get something going with me looong after the fact would probably have to take the initiative in the initial loooong-after-the-fact encounter (Getting me to jump through hoops? Guess again), get some sort of contact info, perhaps even persist in their course of action for quite some time, and even then, they may just make a pest of themselves.  It may come off as if they are a whole different person than the one I had the fixation on, and that person may or may not interest me.

I've gone on dates  with women for the first time who first showed interest in me years before those first dates, but in the case of that virgin girl and her ilk, not really.  The premise in play with that virgin girl and her ilk resided in the notion that the attraction had a clear one-sided direction, from me towards them.  

I guess I can't totally rule out the notion that one of these girls at this one business who all seemed so intent on making me look like an asshole COULD, MAYBE get something going with me loooong after the fact.  I usually come off as pretty nice, and I can't think of anyone from that era whom I would refuse to talk to, but yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that.

In my last post I talked about how I mention that time with Sara in 1988 and one of the main reasons I bring it up so much. I came across much more sympathetically in my dealings with Sara than I did in every previous incarnation of that particular situation.  I guess I really gave those people who observed the unfolding situation the impression that I no longer had the willingness to settle for business as usual, but rather that my stance reflected an attempt to face the realities of Sara and the realities of the dynamic between us.   My willingness to let the whole deal with Sara go at any time seemed to emotionally prepare me for the actual realities of that situation.  Mind you, when I cut her loose that following Summer, I still didn't even know her name, much less the ambiguities surrounding her actual sexual orientation coupled with her, I'm guessing, lack of sexual experience at the time.  The whole deal just seemed to stink, so I cut her loose.

My whole, "What if I turn my back on love?," experiment represented an adaptation to three things: 1) My tendency to fall in love with the wrong person, and 2) What I think about this tendency, and 3) What I do about it when it happens yet again.  I still can't seem to help myself as to the types of women I still readily fall for, but the experiment I first tried in the Spring of 1988 allows me to forgive myself when it does happen, and to make the correct, intelligent decisions moving forward.

I don't believe I've ever sabotaged a deal with any of the young women on my docket since I decided to revive the experiment in 2012. I think of the crude sexual proposition I made to Wanda in1987 as a sabotage move. I never did anything like that to Sara, and I never did anything like that to that virgin girl in 2014/15 or anyone like her ever since.  I think I allowed for things to develop, should that virgin girl or anyone like her had come from a better place than they did, but since they did not come from a good place in regards to their intentions with me, nothing noteworthy ever developed.

The main reason I refer so frequently back to my time with Sara in the Spring of 1988 has to do with how I came across to others in our art history class.  Although Sara started in on me in an adversarial manner, the new approach I tried, to "turn my back on love," allowed me to come across much more sympathetically to the observers of the unfolding situation that in any previous adversarial situation I'd ever found myself in.  When Sara busted her move where she loudly exclaimed, "What a weirdo! God, what a weirdo!," as a male classmate told a story of a guy's obsessive pursuit of a girl, and how at the end of the class I wheeled around, stared at her, and blurted out a question about the papers we had turned in, and how Sara then dashed out of the classroom in an apparently alarmed state, and how, in the day or two that followed, I felt as if I'd done something wrong at first, then thought, "Oh, come on!," and how she acted mad at the beginning of the next class in an effort to play on my supposed feelings of guilt and self-blame, and how I let her and everyone else in the class know I didn't buy it, and then....At the end of the class, the teacher in the auditorium-seating classroom instructed the students to come up and get their papers as she read each student's name out, she read Sara's name out before mine, Sara walked to the front, got her paper, walked out, I waited for the teacher to call my name, she called my name, I got my paper, proceeded to walk out and then...As I walked out, I noticed that at least four young women stood in front of me as I exited the class as they waited for the teacher to call their names.

I took this gesture as an effort by these other young women to nonverbally tell me that they supported me in this conflict with Sara.   Moreover, that in addition to their sympathy for my plight, that any one of them stood willing to offer themselves as someone to approach for social reasons over Sara.  Mind you, I think word may have gone round about my crude sexual proposition to Wanda from the previous year, so to gain such a sympathetic ear with so many young women meant a lot to me.  Well, the next class, Sara nonverbally let me know she was sorry, and I gave her another chance.

I get along as well as I do with those young, female baristas at that one coffee shop I patronize in large part because, I think, I don't try to approach them for dates, or contact info, or try to connect with them through social media.  I don't want to approach that young woman at that business I patronize, that young woman whom I go on and on about on this blog; I don't want to initiate an approach towards her for a date or for contact info.  I don't want to give her my comics or my CD's without her first asking me for such things.  I don't want to invite her to the Posse East open mike to hear me perform that song I wrote about her in any kind of out of the blue way.  Such inaction on my part may result in me forsaking the love of my life, for all I know.  But, consider these two points: 1) She may NOT in fact be the love of my life, and 2) Who's to say that by refusing to put myself out there and absolutely refusing to initiate the whole going-on-a-date process all by my lonesome, and instead insisting that she has to broach that subject in some clever way, that such an approach might actually stand a better chance of WORKING much, much better than me marching into her place of employment one day and asking her out in front of God and everyone. 

Judging by the times I've tried to just ask these employees of businesses I patronize out, versus the times I've refused to do any of that "for" anyone, I've come across much more sympathetically with the latter approach.  Furthermore, I seem to break through very significant barriers with the latter approach that I didn't even realize existed whenever I would try the former approach exclusively, and that includes many instances with Miss Missy Miss her own bad self.