I plan on ranging this subject over several posts.  When I broke through last year at about this time and took down Schmaylor and her confederates, I vowed to not retaliate against her or anyone else I considered complicit in trying to fuck me over.  And so, here we are a year later, and I've kept my promise.  I consider retaliation to consist of "acting out" behaviors that implicitly or explicitly intend to embarrass, humiliate, harass, intimidate, threaten, or inflict emotional or bodily harm on one's perceived adversaries.  I don't believe I've visited those kinds of behaviors on Schmaylor or anyone else I connect to her and hers.

When I speak of Schmaylor explicitly, I don't think posting a song such as "Fuckface on Monday and Fuckface on Friday" on YouTube constitutes retaliation. I do think a work of art has the potential to inflict base harm on a person or group of people, but I think I take enough care in the art I create that my art doesn't do that to anyone.  I think songs such as "See What Fuckface Is Up To Today" make fun of me as much, if not more, than they make fun of Schmaylor.  I think that kind of song dances around a line, jumps from one side of the line to the other, and at other times walks right on the line that people have about all kinds of issues of acceptability vs. transgression, and that's part of what makes that kind of art good.

So no, in my best ability to assess my behavior towards Schmaylor and others this past year, as well as the many, many years previous that the situation I speak of has been in effect; I don't think I've ever retaliated in an acting out sort of way towards her or anyone else. I'm glad I have not.  I still have no desire to retaliate, and I came up with another reason that reinforces my path just the day before yesterday.  Here it is.  When I look back to the years 1986 and 1987, and all those people who, often with apparent glee and relish, inflicted pain on me, and how I finally retaliated against Wanda; after my retaliatory gesture against Wanda; Wanda and all those other people could just hide behind my act of retaliation, figuratively speaking, and make accusations and condemnations against me, and I seemingly destroyed any real chance I might have had to actually hold Wanda or anyone else accountable for the way they behaved towards me.

To this day, so many people from that era have never had to answer to me or anyone else about what they did.  Not on apology from anyone to me.  Base retaliation is a relatively "easy" act to commit.  It may be a bitch to live down, but the act itself is pretty easy to execute.  I think any effort I may make to bring about an actual reckoning to any of these people might be much harder to do than base retaliation.  What form would it take?  How long should it take?  How do I regard friends and possibly family I think may be complicit?   I'm just starting to wrestle with these issues.  

The best part about my struggle now is that, in forgiving these people and letting go of my pain, I have virtually zero unresolved issues of lingering hurt that need addressing.  If I do continue to pursue my efforts to hold these people accountable, I do so without the burden of a boatload of emotional pain to carry around.  That is all, for now. 

I've talked about those two young women at those two different food service businesses I patronize.  They both gave me contact information, such as their social media handle or their email address.  I contacted both of these very attractive young women about seeing them outside of the confines of their respective places of employment, and it was no go with both of them.

I'm trying to rein in my discretionary spending these days.  These two food service businesses are two very tempting places to put on the chopping block, so to speak, or at least limit severely the extent to which I patronize either of these places.  That's one reason to perhaps not see these two women at their places of employment so much as I'm used to.  I mean, not see them so much by a LOT, too.

Another reason I've seriously thought about cutting WAY BACK on the extent to which I patronize these two places has to do with how available I want to make myself to these two women.  Could making myself less available to these two women possibly coax the kind of attention I would like from either or both of them?  What if that doesn't work out?  I'll have saved some money, sure, but will all that effort to make myself more scarce to these women pay off in any other way? 

I kind of doubt it, but here's the thing: Making myself less available to both of these women may be something I can look at as a practice drill for a more consequential situation with a woman or women down the road.  That kind of thing has definitely happened before.  I was going to tell a story that totally illustrated that point, but that would take too much time.  

Okay, here goes: It involved that virgin girl at that grocery story I still patronize.  That whole situation was no drill, believe me on that.  The decisions I made in that situation regarding her and whether I really wanted to approach her for social reasons at all proved very critical and consequential as to which path I took.  

I decided to blow that virgin girl off completely, and I made her look like a total asshole in doing so.  The thing is, I'd had practice in blowing her off in a situation the previous year that involved a very attractive receptionist at my friend's printing company where I tried to temp for a while.

At that  time, in the spring of 2013, I'd decided to revive the "what if I turned my back on love" experiment of my youth.  The whole situation regarding  that receptionist at a that printing company vibed drill to me at the time.  All I did was stop calling the place to see if they had work for me.  I make the decision to stop calling after I couldn't get work for a couple or three weeks.  I just took my desire to do temp work to a temp agency, and that settled that.

I KNEW, that when I stopped calling my friend for temp work, and in so doing took the presence of that beautiful receptionist out of my world;  I just knew that kind of renunciation would not be a drill some day, and sure enough, one year later, that virgin girl at that grocery store fired a shot across my bow, thus signaling her desire to engage with me in what she considered some fun and games.  Asshole!

On December 8th of last year, I told myself I would take stock of my overall relationship with women in a year's time and try to evaluate whether or not I could see any signs of improvement.  So far, in the calendar year 2024, I've approached three women for social reasons, and I will look into a situation with a fourth well before the 8th of December, 2024, rolls around.  I'm really looking forward to seeing about this latest person.  Whether things shake out the way I would like or not, I think I've seen definite improvement in my relationship with women this past year.  Actually, this person I'm talking about now will be the FIFTH person I've looked into this year, if I include my enquiry into my deal with that former cashier that I used to go on and on about.

Am I picking up a stranger in some bar every Saturday night and getting laid?  No, but I've been reading up and looking at YouTube videos that proclaim the lack of willingness a lot of men have when it comes to approaching women for social reasons.  I'm not exactly burning up the charts with my level of activity of that nature, but for a sixty year old guy that likes a certain level of peace in his social life, I've been pretty actively approaching women for social reasons this past year. One of the more promising ones I approached this past year had to be no younger than, say, fifty-three years old, too, so anyone who accuses me of only approaching much younger women can go piss up a rope.  Okay?

Does anyone remember Sister Wendy?  She was the nun who had a show that looked at art mainly from Western Civilization.  She had a heavy emphasis on Renaissance art. One painting I remember her talking about had a lot of phantasmagoric, strange, grotesque imagery that reminded me of Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights." Sister Wendy's very unique interpretation of this Northern Renaissance painting proclaimed that the painting tried to depict the state of a world where men and women did not get along.  I would say that such an interpretation speaks to our current times, and a big reason why that guy got elected President again.

I would very much like to have some material success in my relationship with women, so I could possibly help show a lot of men the way.  The advantage I have over a lot of other people in that line of work has to do with how self-conscious I am.  I can lay out, step by step, how a man who feels lost out there in the dating world can find a way to negotiate his way through it.  Then again, maybe my techniques, and approaches, and, this is big, mindsets I've taught myself and learned through others such as Dr, David Burns in his books will ONLY work for me.  I'm curious about that.