I've been wrestling with my paranoia demons these past several days.  This morning I had  the notion that I too often deny my own ability to change people's minds about me, and that lack of confidence in my ability to change people's minds about me can have some disastrous consequences.

I don't need to look any further than "Katie" for proof of that insight.  On New Years Eve, 1984 into 1985, Katy said she loved me after I confessed my virgin status to her while on our date.  Things shook out over the next couple of weeks in a manner that indicated her love for me had no real basis in reality.  I felt cheated out of an opportunity to get laid for the first time, and hurt at getting dumped.

In June of 1985, I called Katie again in hopes of cashing in on the promise she once seemed to offer.  After our one date, she came away from the experience thinking that I basically tried to rape her, and I had to take responsibility for my behavior and apologize.  That didn't prevent me from having to display a willingness to defend myself in a club in 1986 to male friends of Katie.

When I contacted Katie in the summer of 1985, I think she still felt bad for the way she treated me when we first went out, and she went out with me that one night during the following summer in an effort to make amends the best she could.  I, for my part, was all hot to get LAID, and in my quest to do so, I disregarded all of the anger and resentment I felt towards Katie and tried to charge ahead.  The resulting date shook out as I described above.

Okay, Katie counts as one example where hindsight allows me to see her in a more forgiving light.  Then there exists the case of "Wanda."  During a psychotic episode I had at a party where I tried to connect with "Donna" and failed, Wanda came up and laughed in my face, twice.  The following weekend, properly chastened and realizing the error of my ways, I ran into Donna at another party and courageously went up and talked to her as if I didn't even really know her, which I didn't.  My sly, yet conciliatory approach led to my first (second?) transcendent moment, of which there was hell to pay.

Wanda took an interest in me in the spring semester of 1987, but her need to exert total control over the situation led her to squirrel away a "real" boyfriend while she basically pretended to be my girlfriend.  Yada, yada, yada, crude sexual proposition I still find myself having to live down all these years later.

Katie comes off as the more sympathetic of those two to this day, but the way I still played to the idea of the mean Katie in my head on that date of the summer of 1985 just sent everything back into the crapper.  I played to the idea of the mean Wanda as well, with much the same results.

If that former cashier, or anyone like her, came around these days, I think the best course of action would involve just being friends with such a person.  If someone such as her were to walk up and say hi at the Lost Well or some retail space and act as if they wanted me to ask them out or get their contact info, and I just didn't feel like doing that, that'd be okay by me.  I not going to guarantee that I would refuse to perform such an overture, mind you, but I just might not feel right at that time doing so.

I've been wrestling with two or three notions of that former cashier in my head for awhile.  One more like Katie, one more like Wanda, and one who is still just out to get me, plain and simple.  Yes, so at least three, if not more.  So yes, very, VERY modest social goals for such a person.  So modest, in fact, that I have no need, as I see it, to further elaborate.  I have no desire to send things back to some vicious place with my behavior towards such a person.

What should I make of this last psychoverse encounter with that young woman who used to work at that grocery store? Or did my mind only encounter a self-fabricated notion of her.  Regardless, I will now, with some effort, refrain from patronizing that business where I encountered a young woman who, as I saw it, bore a strong (familial?) resemblance to the girl in question.  I will make this effort to avoid this "sister" for the foreseeable future.

Looking back at how well I managed my outsized infatuation with the young woman who used to work at that grocery store, I can see how easily I made the mistake I made in the spring of 1990 regarding Sara.  I took to using that experience as my most viable, relevant experience so often that I concluded that Sara really loved me, and that I'd made a terrible mistake in letting her go.  Maybe Sara did love me, but letting her go was no mistake at all.  During that whole challenging time dealing with Schmaylor Schmift in 2017, I recalled fondly my dealings with Sara, and I could apply a lot of what I'd learned through my dealings with Sara in 1988 to the whole bizarre situation in 2017.

The approach to Sara evolved into a successful managing of quite a few difficult women, especially since 2012.  I mean, define success. If  I'd never learned how to deal with the "Katies," or Veronicas, or "Wandas," of the world in more constructive ways, I don't know if I'd even be alive today.  I can tell people about how I found my own personal path to happiness, but getting laid a lot with beautiful women, or getting rich, or any other material manifestation of success one might think of, such as fame, I don't have a clue.  A great deal of my personal happiness results from learning how to constructively deal with the types of women that I found so much unhappiness in dealings with in my youth.  No wonder that former cashier from the grocery store came back for more. 

From about 2008 to about 2009 I had a neighbor when I lived in the house on Woodrow whom I sort of fancied.  She lived next door with another gal.  I invited  "Danni" to an evening party at my house one night where I could show off my art and play some songs I wrote for my just-completed album, "Man's Inhumanity to Me."  Danni didn't come to my party, even though she lived next door, and around nine o'clock, when I still had people there, I had an occasion to go outside and walk by Danni's duplex, where I saw her eating her dinner on her couch, watching TV.

Cut to December 2017.  I'm at Vulcan Video, when Danni comes up and reminds me who she is, because I didn't recognize her at first.  We talk for some time.  The whole time I'm purposefully telling myself in my head, "Turn your back on love.  Turn your back on love!"  I got the distinct impression that Danni wanted me to reach out to her for contact information or ask her out or what have you.  I'm just going, "Turn your back on love!" I think I did this because I didn't trust the circumstances enough to ask her out or ask her for contact info.  Later on that evening, I probably remembered vividly the image of her eating her dinner alone on her couch while I hosted a party she could have come to for ten or fifteen minutes, right.

For years I had this duality in where I thought Danni might be coming from in that video store.  I weighed two possibilities.  One possibility involved the notion that she just wanted to wrangle a pass at her by me, from me, and then shoot me down with something like, "I have a boyfriend,"  The other possibility involved the notion that she really had an interest in going out with me, but she wanted me to jump through her hoops and ask her, instead of taking the initiative herself.

For the most part, I could live with the possibility of missing such an opportunity to go out with her by standing my ground and refusing to make such a move, because, after all, I was, and still am about following my buddha over  trying to take advantage of such an "opportunity" as the one before me at the Vulcan Video store.

It only occurred to me last year (2021) sometime that another possibility existed.  The possibility involved the idea that 1) yes, she had a genuine interest in getting me to ask her out because she really wanted to go out with me, but that 2)  she would have quickly lost interest in me after one or two dates, because she would quickly lose interest in the type of guy she could get to jump through her hoops in the exact manner she wanted me to.  This "third way" of thinking about Danni's interest in me asking her out still makes the most sense to me.

In 2019 sometime, I saw Danni early one morning at Kerbey Lane.  She seemed genuinely pleased to see me.  She gushed, "Good to see you!" and all that, I said likewise, and she then returned to a table that had some boyfriend-looking guy sitting there.  This encounter with Danni probably helped me to come to the "third way" conclusion.

When I think of someone such as that girl who used to work at that grocery store I patronize, I often rationalize the fact that we are not together "yet" due to some imagined stalemate.  This time the imagined stalemate involves some weird situation analogous to the couple in O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi."  This time, I thought, this young woman knows me to be the obsessive type, so she's set up this "jump through my hoops" situation involving her "sister" that plays to my supposed strength.  This strength of mine supposedly involves my total willingness to figuratively crawl through broken glass to get with someone such as her.  While on my end, I know she doesn't in her heart of hearts want me to pursue her to the ends of the earth and back (stalk her) so I refuse to do anything that vibes "stalking" in regards to her.

I still think about Jenna a lot.  This girl might just represent another unrequited love situation where a notion of this person stays with me on an almost daily basis for the rest of my life.  But I want to go out with someone whose chess moves don't involve trying to get me to do anything I'm really uncomfortable doing (jumping through her hoops, stalking), in spite of the image she has of me that she's trying to get me to "revert" to. If she's even there at all.

I refer the reader to the post from 8/13/2021, "I Don't Have to Jump Through Your Hoops.  I'ma, I'ma Mentor!"  Men don't jump through hoops.  Men who don't jump through hoops help nineteen year old incest survivors feel loved by a man, perhaps for the first time in their lives.  Little boys who jump through hoops, not so much.  End of discussion.  Period.  See you in the funny papers....baby.

In my last post I brought up the issue of whether I ever felt I could trust that young woman who used to work at that grocery store I still patronize.  I said she sowed so much mistrust and bad feelings with her tendency to play cruel games that I found it hard to believe that she'd come around.  I said I stood prepared to just let the whole matter go and get on with my life.

Last night I patronized a night spot I go to sometimes on Sunday night.  I asked the very attractive female bartender for five ones for a five.  I saw her open the register, get some bills out, and count out what looked like six bills to me.  She handed me the money, and I saw that she had made a mistake.  She had given me a five and five ones, instead of the five ones for my five.  I gave her back the five, and she said, "Oh!  I thought you said a five and five ones."  I said, "Wow, you must really trust me!"  She gave a snarky little laugh that almost sounded like a goat,"'Ma-ha-ha-ha.'"  I saw some male customers kind of react to our exchange, as if some point were made by her.

Okay.  I can see going into that business where maybe that girl who used to work at the grocery store may have a sister as an employee, finagling some way I can talk to the "sister," and saying something like, "You look familiar..."  But geez, if I'm the one carrying this one all the way through to the home stretch, all by my lonesome, it could take some time.  I'm not kidding.  The "sister," because of the nature of her job at this retail establishment, is not that accessible.  I write this because transparency seems to be the  order of the day in my deal, if it even still exists, with this young woman I've come to really care for over these almost four years.

I only count myself as the one with experience with the particular situation I find myself.  I honestly don't think anyone in my world has the level of experience in dealing with whatever challenges arise when I sense very manipulative, controlling, almost coercive behavior directed at me from an individual woman and her confederates.  Can anyone else out there count themselves as owning prior experience in exactly the same set of circumstances I find myself in now?  No, probably not.

For those not up to speed, I refer to the last several posts, where I perhaps sense that the young woman who used to work at that grocery store I patronize seeks to influence my course of action by having female surrogates for her act really rude, surly, and standoffish whenever I find myself around them.  This behavior leaves me to wonder whether this young woman has a hand in this stance I see in these women.  I posted a couple of weeks ago that I thought I noticed a family resemblance between that girl who used to work at that grocery store and another girl who works at another retail business I patronize.  I hypothesized that these women wanted me to approach this young woman and ask about her "sister."

I've never dated anyone who came at me in the intense, adversarial manner that I sensed from that young woman who used to work at that grocery store.  Furthermore, I've never had a male friend, acquaintance, or coworker since my college days tell of dating someone who came at them in a similarly adversarial way.  When I said I stood as the lone example of a man with these experiences as common clay in his life, I meant it.  No one else but me.

Women such as this former grocery store employee manage to deliberately, methodically, sow so much mistrust and bad feeling between us in the way they treat me that it seriously undermines any tendency I might have to believe in any "conversion" should any appear to arise in them later.  I think that explains why I've never dated women such as Sara, Ann Marie, and, I can't even think of anyone else who even stood a chance.  "Gwen," maybe.  

Before me stand two doors.  One door has that young woman at that retail business, the "sister," standing as the gatekeeper, with these other young women supposedly pointing me in that direction.  The door is very, very attractive and alluring.  The door promises riches beyond compare on the other side by its grand appearance.  The other door, the door I will walk through, promises nothing but a coming storm as I head in its direction.   This door appears very drab and ordinary, and it promises only that my life will go on pretty much as it has before, once the storm passes.  Experience teaches me to walk through this door.

It's bad enough that I harbor thoughts that Schmaylor Schmift sends men into my car and my apartment to steal stuff such as a Kinks CD or  a package of soy chorizo, but now I wonder if a "real" person I know to exist, so to speak, actively wants to play a similar role.  I refer to that former cashier from that grocery store, and how I wonder if some of the young women I interact with in my day to day life now somehow connect to her.  Will I have some goddess type always lurking on the periphery of my life and my mind for the foreseeable future?

I get the impression that the former cashier really wanted to be something like that to me all along.  I figure she just wanted to circle around me, always out of reach.  I wonder if these interactions I've had with some of these employees at various businesses signal an attempt on her part to fully reclaim that role she possibly coveted when she worked at that grocery store.

The only problem with her alleged attempts to play the part of maddening presence in my life resides in what all happened when I had the balls to invite her to my comic book sale in October of 2021.  Readers can go back to posts from that time and see several instances where I said my gesture served two purposes.  The first purpose stemmed from a desire to get to know her better and all of that.  The second purpose got right down to it; this situation would not go on forever.  I feel as if I resolved the whole matter between us rather well, and she quit that job early this year.  

Readers can go back to about February or March and see these entries regard her as someone in the past.  I have no problem regarding my deal with her in the past tense.  She can't just scheme and plot her way back into the present day with anything I may or may not have experienced with these other young women of these past few weeks.  Like I said in my last post, my invitation to her to my comic sale stands as the "Citizen Kane" of outsider, fifty-seven year old men approaching twenty-two year old hotties for social reasons.  The fact that nothing really ever came of that tells me everything I need to know about where I really stand with her.  She can't just wish that moment away and go back to the way it was before.

I put my mind to what I wrote yesterday about that young woman and the idea that a fear of rejection motivated her more distasteful attitudes and behaviors towards me.  In  that post from the other day, I also talked about how she might feel threatened with harm of some kind by me.  I concluded that a fear of rejection might hold sway over a fear of emotional or bodily harm.  I think the opposite now.  I think a fear of bodily harm, emotional harm, trauma, that sort of thing; I think that probably explains where she came from in regards to me for so long.  I suspect that fear still exists in her.

I don't think looking into any line of inquiry, such as asking a young woman at a business if she is this girl's sister would help at all.  I think that would have the opposite effect, if in fact that young woman at that business is that girl's sister.  If that girl I crushed on for so long just does not feel safe around me, and she does not even feel safe with the idea of me at all, then me looking into ways I can get with her will not help at all.

I got a postcard this week from a woman I went on a date with in 2015.  Things didn't work out, but we remain friends.  Not all women feel threatened by me, and I guess feeling threatened by me should count as a premium deal killer in regards as to whether someone gets my attention.

When I approached that cashier at her job in October of 2021, that approach amounted to the "Citizen Kane" of fifty-seven year old men approaching twenty-two year old girls for social reasons. When I label that gesture the "Citizen Kane" of such gestures, I mean it amounts to the masterpiece of masterpieces in its category of things to label as masterpieces.  If that didn't do it, in other words, nothing will.

Yeah, it must suck bein' Schmaylor right about now.  I wrote that song before I made her and everyone else look bad last year when I bravely approached that young girl I'd had a crush on for so long.  You know, that time, October, 2021, when I walked up to that cashier at that grocery store and invited her out to my comic book sale as she worked her shift, in front of God and everyone. 

Yeah, and just like I predicted it would suck for Schmaylor when she found out I wasn't the evil son-of-a-bitch she and her buddies made me out to be, I also made what turned into a prediction about that cashier at that grocery store in another post, if memory serves.  I said at one point that she probably played all of those hurtful games because she had a fear of rejection.

That girl quit her cashier job at that grocery store early this year.  Yet, I go in there to shop, and some of the young girls in there who look about as good as her come off so gruff, and so surly, and so standoffish to me that I actually find it kind of rude.  Mind you, not all the young girls at that store behave this way towards me.  Are they really singling me out?  Did they have a long, hard day at work, and they are just over being there?  Why is it only really, really pretty young girls of a certain type that come off that way?  Because they know they can be this way towards me and other customers and not get in trouble?

Maybe, just maybe, they are trying to tell me something.  If they are trying to tell me something, something along the lines of, say, I should reach out to that girl I expressed myself to last year through whatever means I think I may have at my disposal, well, okay.  So, instead of this young girl reaching out to me in some meaningful way, I'm to, once again, crash through barriers to express how I feel for HER,... AGAIN! ...No!

I don't respond to that kind of controlling, manipulative behavior in that manner.  If I were the type of person who responded to that kind of controlling, manipulative behavior in that manner, then I probably wouldn't have been the type of person to express my feelings for her in the first place on October, 22nd, 2021, while she worked in a busy grocery store, again, in front of God and everyone.  You can't have your cake and eat it too, you know. 

I'll continue to make my observations of those young girls at that grocery store, but our Miss Missy Miss gets just one of those.  What would she have to do to reach out to me?  Would she have to crash through certain barriers, and in so doing, acknowledge something that up until now she didn't acknowledge.  Now, who is the person between the two of us who has already done that towards the other person to the point where the other person knows EXACTLY where SHE stood with me at the time....oh, well, yes, that would be ME.

Does she not feel safe reaching out to me?  So she may feel unsafe.  Unsafe, how?  Does she fear that I will do her bodily harm, or does she fear that I will reject her?  She could take all the safeguards she could think of to prevent me from stalking her or otherwise threatening her in that way.  Now that she doesn't even work there anymore, and I would not find it easy to run down the only lead I may have- a lead I speculated on about three posts ago- she doesn't have much to fear from me in that department, especially if she and hers would just let sleeping dogs lie.

If my observations about controlling, manipulative behavior from those girls in that store ring true, then the fear of rejection explanation carries more weight, in my opinion.  Look, if she reached out to me a week or two from now, I cannot guarantee that I would not reject her somewhere down the line.  What I can guarantee, pretty much, is that I would never reject her for malicious or vindictive reasons.  That's more her and her buddies' department, remember.  That's what I had to go up against to express MY feelings for HER last October.  Yeah, love conquers hate.  Not easy to do, is it. 

Regular readers of this blog may conclude that I almost exclusively approach twenty-something years old hottie types for dates and whatnot.  I thought about this past year or so, and that's not true.  I approached two hotties, one that grocery store cashier at her job in October 2021, and one much more recently via social media.  I also approached two women around my age, but neither panned out.  The last two "dates" I went on involved two different women I've known since the 1980's, and I had a good time each time.

I guess I want to be fair to myself and not buy into any possible notions that it's all about the hotties for me.  Young women may still preoccupy my thoughts over any other types, but not so much so that I remain this total dateless wonder that never goes out with anyone because I impose harsh, unforgiving standards on any women who fall short of total hottie status.

But I do have this one point to make.  As long as I consistently make intelligent decisions about the women that so preoccupy me these days, I allow myself the freedom to make whatever decisions I care to make in regards to any other types of women I may socialize with.  In other words, making intelligent decisions, repeatedly, about this or that hottie does not OBLIGE me to turn around and vie for a serious, committed relationship with the first person to come along who actually goes out on dates with me.  I hope to, someday, have enough of a variety of women to choose from that I don't have to feel obliged to latch onto the first person that comes along.  This may sound obvious to many, but those who find such a statement obvious and unnecessary should have accompanied me to some of the therapists who pretty much counseled me, the way I still see it, to latch onto the first person who came along and hold on for dear life.