Like I said, I've never, ever dated someone that I perceived to go down an adversarial road in regards to me. I guess someone somewhere has had some kind of a relationship with someone who initially approached them adversarially, but that's never happened for me, and I've never known of a single solitary male friend who ever had that story to tell about anyone they ever dated. That kind of thing exists in romantic comedies, but maybe only there when it comes down to it. So, I have no interest in keeping some flame alive for an unavailable party. That is all.
My last posts may have given the mistaken impression that I will try to keep some lonely vigil for those parties I've had some interest in these past several months. That won't happen. The last time I looked, I still have a contact page on this website that anyone can access and utilize if they would have something to say to me. If anyone I've talked about doesn't want to come forward themselves to me, then I suggest they tell a third party whatever it is they want to say and that party may then contact me.
Like I said, I've never, ever dated someone that I perceived to go down an adversarial road in regards to me. I guess someone somewhere has had some kind of a relationship with someone who initially approached them adversarially, but that's never happened for me, and I've never known of a single solitary male friend who ever had that story to tell about anyone they ever dated. That kind of thing exists in romantic comedies, but maybe only there when it comes down to it. So, I have no interest in keeping some flame alive for an unavailable party. That is all.
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I've written about how I've never dated any women whom I believed came at me in an adversarial manner. This is true. I talked to a male friend the other night, and we both agreed that we'd never known of a guy friend who dated someone who had it in for them at first. He said he'd never dated someone that shook out like that, so it's not just my own lack of experience and supposed ineptitude with women that explains why I've never dated someone like that, even though I've felt that many, many women have come after me initially in an adversarial manner.
What definitely has happened though, is that quite a number of women in my past lives came to see that I was not the bad guy they'd initially made me out to be, and quite a number of women came to care for me a great deal, even though I never went on one date with any of them. This really happened in earnest when I attended grad school at SVA in New York City in 1990/91. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown that time, and I was still seen as a loose cannon after my moment, but I do feel as if a lot of the young women in that school saw me in a different light than before. So, to say that many women in my past cared for me is not a small thing. Regardless of what paths the women in my world take in their personal lives, I think I can say that some of them care for me a bit- maybe even more than a bit. It's a lot to ask of a young woman to actually date me, but to have the sense that, like I said in my last post, that such a person cares for me enough to be on my side in life is a big deal to me. And, the young woman I've been writing about has me on her side too, regardless of how things shake out in the end. Like I said, an expectation of a romantic love relationship from such stuff seems like too much to ask, but if I get off of the idea that anything short of a full blown romantic love relationship just does not count for anything, well there you are. Okay, I think that this young woman I've been writing about was never really available for me or interested in me in a romantic love context. I think, however, that she became someone who was "for" me, as in someone who was on my side in life. I don't know the extent that she was not for me before she looked at me that one time, but I think she became someone who was for me in life. I connected her to Linda, an old adversary, and I don't know whether that has any basis in reality. My best guess is that she may very well read what I write here after all, and that she may have read or heard about the way my last two issues of my comic developed in the storyline, and that converted her to someone who is for me in life. I think my refusal to pursue her romantically indicates that I am for her in the larger sense, because I refused to act on such impulses until I felt like I had a better sense of what all might be going on. Yes I am for her. Yes I am.
I've written all Summer about that one young woman in my world, so much so that one may just randomly pick a post from these past several months and find something about her. Yep, I've been following the template I created in regards to Sara back in 1988 in just about every aspect of my game with this young woman. For newer readers of this blog, check out the post, "I'm not bad," from January of 2016 for reference.
I use the word "game" with some reservation, because I think what I've done in reality is look out for both of our best interests in the most efficient, constructive way I know how. I've refrained from favoring her with a lot of in-person attention. I've refused to pursue her romantically, really. I just don't think that obsessively pursuing her is going to serve either of our best interests. If I had to pick between my dealings with many young women back then and apply them to how I relate to a young woman such as her (the young woman I see at this one business I patronize) these days; between Veronica Ortega, Katy, Julie James, Wanda, Donna, Anna, Jenna, Linda, Myrna, Gwen, Ann Marie, or Sara; without question, hands down, unequivocally, how I related to Sara would win by many, many lengths. No doubt about it. No, I did not go on one date with Sara, nor did I even know her name until several years after she came onto the scene and left. But, of all those young woman I listed; all young women I thought about A LOT to the point of obsession back in those days, I looked out for both my own and Sara's best interests much, much better than I did with any of the others. I look back on my time with Sara with much more fondness than any of the others. Make no mistake about it, in reality Sara could come off as a sourpuss, bitchy little thing a good deal of the time, but I didn't have to put up with a lot of that, because I hardly associated with her at all. Until further notice, this young woman gets the Sara Template. As far as I can tell, based on my own personal experience almost exclusively, how I related to Sara back then, and how I've related to quite a few young woman in my world these days, from that virgin girl, to her friend, to the Invisible Woman and others beyond and beforehand, is how an obsessive guy like myself is SUPPOSED to relate to the obsessed upon parties I've encountered these past several years. If any men out there who find themselves similarly afflicted as I have with an overwhelming obsession with unavailable women and want advice on how to get with the object of their desire, I've got nothing for them. I mean, I haven't the slightest idea how I would go about picking up this young woman. Not the slightest idea in the world. But, if any men with a tendency to obsess on unavailable women want to free themselves of that obsession (Anyone read any posts from me lately that talk about the Invisible Woman? Anyone?), I can go on all day in the same vein as this post. That is all. I just got back from a coffee shop where I sat by this young guy making real smooth time with two young women. His game has been good to the point where mine will never be, probably. My "game" looks like an endless barrage of fits and starts with a lot of failure thrown in in comparison to someone like that.
I invited a young woman to an open mike that I played tonight. She didn't show. She had prior commitments, but she said she'd try to make it, but she didn't. She works at one of these food service businesses that I patronize on a regular basis. I guess that makes me oh-fer-19 on the waitresses and baristas in my world now. I've been keeping a tally that goes back to 2005 and continues up to...tonight, I guess. The only reason that it's oh-fer-19 and not higher is that I stopped counting a while back, but I decided to pick up where I knew I last left off on my count. What to do now? Well, the first thing I'm NOT doing is going to the business where this young woman works for at least two weeks or so. Why? Because the last thing I want to do is go in there a day or two from now and try to come off as a great guy to this young woman about being stood up and proceed to kiss her ass and tell her what a great person she is or any of that. Nope, not happening. I think that kind of thing is very manipulative to the point of being disrespectful. The flip side of that equation involves unwittingly rewarding her for standing me up. If I go in tomorrow or the next day and try to come off as some great guy, I would give her "free" attention to the point where she might say to herself, "What if I just told this geezer to go piss up a rope? What would I get in return for that, if this is how he's acting in regards to me standing him up?" Nope, not gonna happen. What I will do is wait a while, two weeks or so, go in and play it off as if none of that ever happened. That would include my offer to her to come out and see me play. If she doesn't say anything about any of it, I'll just leave it at that. Then, the only payoff I can see from asking her out in the first place and her just leaving it at that, is that I don't have to take her seriously any more if she comes off as super-friendly as she's been towards me previously. I mean, I've seen her act that same way towards other regular male customers, so I can just chalk up what I kind of interpreted as special attention meant for me as something more democratic on her part. I want to emphasize this one point; I DO NOT in any way think that this young woman will try to retaliate for my overture towards her, and I appreciate her for that. I considered my invitation to her as a volley back into her court. If nothing comes back when I do go back in there, that will be the end of that. Oh, my god! I am so fried from drawing the pages on my latest issue of my comic book. I only worked on ten pages, but the work was intense. I worked on twenty pages yesterday. I still have twenty-eight pages to go at this stage, which is the second pass at all eighty pages with the pencils. The second pass is the most involved pass, because it fills in the gestural sketches of the first pass. The third pass will take about a week or five days. Then the fourth pass is the final touches. The fifth pass is more for quality control, and involves very little work.
That young girl I've been writing about seems okay with me letting her go. I guess she just wanted to know why the hell I would so readily do that without really even making a move towards her at all. I just had her as the type that I would obsess on. The business where she works makes her pretty unapproachable for social reasons, to my way of seeing things. The difficult-to-approach aspect of her deal would make me pretty crazy if I did seriously think about trying to make a move towards her. I don't think she likes the idea of me obsessively pursuing her any more than I do. I told Vernon Hoe over the phone a few years back that my dilemma with that virgin girl at that one business I patronized made me feel as if I was young again. And so it goes with this one young woman I've talked about frequently on these posts these past several months. I feel as if she's presented the same dilemmas I faced as a young man with women such as "Katy," "Wanda," "Linda," etc. The dilemma centered around the adversarial approach these women initially took towards me. At some point I believe these and other young women back then had pangs on conscience that made them feel that I was not the; dumbass, bastard, or dumbass bastard they initially thought me to be, and that they accrued second thoughts in their adversarial journey to try to take me down.
For my part, the fact that woman such as these could be so attractive and have so much appeal at the thought of enjoying their company presented a great temptation for me to just forgive whatever cruelties some of them managed to visit upon me before they sort of had a change of heart. Yep, ages twenty to twenty-eight all over again for me. Being fifty-five and fully committed to following my buddha really helped show me the way out of such dilemmas. I could imagine this young woman I became concerned with this past Summer toggling back and forth about me at something like the rate I would toggle back and forth about women such as her. In a perfect world I would like nothing more than to get to know such an attractive young woman as this better, but we are not in a perfect world. She had her agenda, maybe, and I'm faced with staying or leaving a situation that proved vexing in my past. The only way I've ever known these woman for real is in the leavin'. The stayin' just makes me crazy, and it doesn't seem to do much for them either. If such a person comes off as more sympathetic in this post than in previous posts of mine, well, thank the buddha for giving me this insight into such a person. My buddha's the strong one, while I'm just as weak and compromised as any two pack a day, 60 beers a week, $200 dollar a month weed smoker can be about women such as the one I've been writing about this past Summer. It's just that I'm the one with the wisdom and the insight to know better than to try and work something out in situations that have been the source of so much grief for me in the past. To further run this into the ground; in the same way that I can't smoke just two or three cigarettes a day, have a beer or two now and then, and smoke a little weed once in a while; for those kinds of reasons I can't just work something out with an individual whose brought these conflicting issues into play; these issues brought about by how they initially came at me in an adversarial manner and then had a change of heart in the middle of their prescribed course of action. I've come to an understanding with all of these addictive things that I can't have them in my life in any sustainable way. I know this young woman is a person and not a thing, but the idea that one can run up against one's limits with a person in the same way that one can run up against one's limits with a thing shouldn't be something that's too hard to grasp for anyone out there. If what I believe to be true about this blog is actually true, then there's certain people in my day to day world who are used to knowing my mind. My last post talked about how I might try to look into the notion that this young woman I've been writing about could have an interest in me after all. After poking my head out of the sand these past couple of days, I've concluded that this young woman has no interest in me whatsoever. I know, I know. I've talked so much about letting this person go, and my last post marked a reversal in that course, but what can I say. Nobody's perfect.
My last post talked about how I went to Houston Zine Fest last weekend. Several years ago I sold one of my CDs to a woman at this event. She liked it enough to contact me via email. Long story short, I went to visit her in the town she lived in at the time in late 2015. She had a lot of personal issues that I won't go into, but I'lll say that there was this one statement she made that killed the deal for me as much as anything else. The first time she said, "I don't compete for men," was on the phone before I left for my trip to her town. I could tell over the phone that she had a smirk in her voice when she said it. She said it again on our date once I'd arrived. This time I could see the smirk on her face, as well as hear it in her voice. I could have said, "I've built up my life as a single person to the point where I very much enjoy lots of activities by myself, and you are competing with this life I've built up. And, that kind of attitude towards me that statement reveals won't cut it as competition between taking on your bullshit and staying with the life I have." Whew! That's a mouthful. It'd be nice if I could meet someone at one of these kinds of events. Someone who seemed really cool and had her shit together and all of that. Many years ago I had the occasion to hang out with this one guy who kept going on about, "I think I've met someone." I'd heard so many stories about how insecure he was about rejection, which had been happening a lot to him at this time, that I took his statement with a grain of salt. If I had the slightest inkling of a notion that I may have, maybe, met someone, the last thing I'd want to do is trumpet it around like this guy did. It'd be great to meet someone at one of these Zine Fest events or Comic Conventions, but I don't know that I'd want to make an announcement that I'd met someone right off the bat. I wouldn't want to count my chickens before they are hatched. I mean, if it was someone from say, Houston, or San Antonio, that'd be cool. Dallas, or Forth Worth, or Corpus Christie, for example, might be a bit of a hike on a regular basis. On the other hand, if this person seemed really cool, and intelligent, and awesome, and interesting, and talented.... but I digress. Far be it from me to be so presumptuous about another person I didn't really know and their possible situations in all kinds of areas of their life. You see, if this girl I'd been going on about these past couple of months had done something like light up with a beautiful smile when she saw me and greeted me warmly, that really would have been something. That girl did look at me in a way one time that made me think she'd read or heard about the "Legend of Richy Vegas" issue where I speculate on what might have gone on around me after I'd made thing right with Jenna in 1992, but, that girl I've been writing about had accumulated too much baggage for me by then. Man, if I could just meet someone I didn't know really at all, who didn't have any psychic baggage with our deal, but who just really lit up when she saw me and said "hi" like it has happened sometimes in the past with me....Man, that'd be awesome. My last post talked about someone in my world that I don't really know at all. I concluded that she had no romantic interest in me. If that is indeed the truth, I will try my best to honor her decision and not bother her. I'm pretty good at doing that kind of thing too. I would love for the opportunity to get to know her better, and if that is her wish, I will try to find that out and honor that wish. Like I said, I'm pretty good at going along with whatever a love interest decides. I just don't know right now if I've broken new ground, or if it's the same old letting-go-of-yet-another-beloved situation. That is all.
In other news. I sold 27 books at the Houston Zine Fest yesterday. I'd hoped to sell even more than that, but I'll definitely take 27 sold. Going to these things is pretty hard work. I got lost on Houston's freeways for two hours after the fest. Not to mention having to be "on" for all of the attendees and exhibitors and organizers at the fest. I plan on doing these next seven issues of "The Legend of Richy Vegas" with an order of 100 copies per issue as usual. But, when I start the next series, it will only consist of about 20 copies per issue and I will just hand them out to friends and family and whatnot and not try to sell them to the general public. That will give me more time to try and get rid the inventory, both current and those I plan on printing these next few years, that consists of 100 copies per issue. I told someone at the fest that I will try to sell this stuff at these kinds of events for the next few years, but that I will probably wind of recycling a large portion of my inventory. I had a therapist describe the process of letting go of a failed love interest as a process that is similar to the grief process at the passing of a loved one. He described how there were stages in both situations. Briefly, that there's stages such as shock, mourning, anger, and denial before the "grieving" party can accept the finality of the situation.
My best guess about this young woman I've been writing about in these posts is that she was never really ever interested in dating me. That covers all periods in which I've written about her, including the most recent periods. She might not even be available now, and I don't think she was ever, or ever will be, interested in dating me. I'm just glad the usual shit never went down in this kind of deal. I have myself to thank for that. Actually, I don't care whether this young woman really had some shenanigans planned for me. It's enough for me to accept this conclusion about her lack of interest in me and for me to move on. That is all. In other news, I sold all of the comics I brought today to Lone Star Zine Fest. I sold twenty-eight books and used one more for a trade. I sold them for a dollar each. I'm glad that I'm able to bring them down in price to the point where people want to buy them. I really don't want to recycle the vast majority of the books I've printed up. I've sold more books this year than I sold all of last year. It helps to have something going for myself in general, because it really helps me to come to the conclusions I need to come to as in the above paragraphs. |
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