During the years 2012 to 2014, a waitress at a diner I patronized spearheaded a campaign of harassment and intimidation against me because she saw my mental illness as making me vulnerable to such treatment at the hands of herself and any other employees of this diner who cared to join in with her.  When I caught on as this activity started to ramp up, I made a decision.  I decided that I would engage in a one man civil rights protest against any staff, management, or owner who chose to engage in discriminatory behavior against me simply because I patronized their place of employment and/or business as a person with a mental illness.

Right now, employees, management, and owners of any businesses I patronize are put on notice that I will once again initiate a one man civil rights protest against any such discriminatory, abusive, and harassing attempts to intimidate me simply because I patronize their place of business and/or employment as a person with a mental illness.

For my part, I will not attempt to initiate any effort to reach out in a social manner to any management, owners, or employees in any social way that would include such things as asking a female employee out on a date, giving a female employee a comic book I made or a CD I made, or inviting any female employee, or male employee, to any musical performance I might plan when things open up more. 

I will only attempt to engage a female or male employee of any business in activities such as small talk about my day to day life or theirs at those establishments where such activities are already the established norm for me and them.  I will otherwise just go about my business at these places and try to not bother anyone, male or female, low level employees, management, or owners.  In other words, I will just "stay in my lane" for the most part.  If any employee, customer, management, or business owner has a problem with my stated course of action, well, that's why I'm embarking on this course of action in the first place, and that is why I label this course of action a one man civil rights protest. 

The other day I patronized that business where that young woman works, the young woman I can go on and on about, and she seemed inappropriately cold in her manner towards me when I greeted her.  I say inappropriate because she had previously favored me with very nice, affirming attention.  I conclude that this young woman figures that she can get more information from me and about me by blowing hot and cold than she can get just being nice to me and letting me know she likes me.  I find this kind of controlling behavior very, very off-putting.

In other news, I've given myself permission to think a lot about someone else in my world.  I figured long ago that I could think obsessively about someone such as that young woman at  that business whom I can go on and on about as long as I did the right thing when all was said and done.  So, if I can allow myself to think obsessively about someone such as that young woman, I can allow myself to think about someone who strikes me as an entirely different type.  Right?

I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to rebound from any setback, perceived or genuine, that I may have experienced in regards to that young woman at that business.  I associate "rebounding" with finding another love interest who will essentially take this person's place.  Looking for someone to take this young woman I can go on and on about's place brings to mind the adage, "Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it."  Do I really want a love interest who can take this young woman's place in every sense of the word?  No.  This other person doesn't rate as a love interest, yet, and she may never rate as a love interest, but I feel as if I've done enough thinking, and doing, outside the box these past twenty years that I can permit my mind to wander from that young woman at that business to someone who may or may not represent greener pastures.

I've just spent a lot of time thinking about love matters large and small.  For me, right now, because I don't feel I have the energy or inclination to go into everything I've thought about this morning, it comes down to this: I expect myself to function as my main provider of personal happiness.  Whomever I select as a love interest, sex partner, girlfriend, spouse etc., whether now or in the future, I don't expect them to shoulder the burden of making me happy.  I have my problems, god knows, and I don't expect a person I care for to solve them to the extent that I can if I put my mind to it.  I got this concept from Feeling Good.  David Burns says something like; making oneself the one responsible for one's happiness provides that person with the most reliable resource for that goal.

In a Joe Coleman art book I bought a long time ago, there resides a timeline of Joe's life that includes an entry about his first wife, and how she "abandons marriage, 1992," or some such.  To Joe, and to pretty much everyone else who has ever really made a go at a marriage, they can see it as an entity unto itself.  Married people often talk about how a marriage requires a lot of work.

The two times I had a girlfriend in the eighties demonstrated to me that even such a deal as that can require a lot of work.  It can take a lot of work to compel women to take in interest in me in the first place, and it can take a lot of work to date them once they do take an interest in me.

My last post talked about how even having a love interest can take a lot of work, and so it can.  One can straddle an ambiguous world between a totally unattached, single life and the promise of some good times with someone that they care for.  I've seen reams of YouTube videos posted with titles that suggest how a man or woman might negotiate their way through this time.  Seeing how romantic love and all that attends it dictates how we choose a mate in our society, one would do well to pay attention to this phase in one's life should one find oneself in the midst of such a deal.  

In other words, such a time, for me at least, is not some exercise in effortless spontaneity where I just serendipitously find the embrace of my beloved.  Sexual encounters themselves can seem like these random, chaotic events, and negotiating the realm where one desires one person but has an opportunity with another at some point often saw me "saving myself" for the one I assigned the status of love interest.  That has everything to do with a time in 1985 when I had a seemingly random sexual encounter with a female friend who was not my beloved Veronica Ortega.  The psychotic episode that followed this stressful incongruity between the two women and what they represented to me led me to turn down similar-seeming opportunities later on down the road, much to my regret. 

Yep, I'm still single, and the life of a totally single person can take a lot of work, with or without a love interest.  For me, the work of single life these past many years showed itself in finding things to do with myself that proved constructive and sustainable.  I spend a lot of time on music and art, and on generally maintaining my health and well being. The vast majority of this time since 2001 saw very few opportunities for a dating or sex life with women.  But as I shed the bad habits such as smoking, drinking, drugs, AND assigning love interest status to women in my world that invariably seemed to strike these women as arbitrary, premature,  inappropriate, and INTENSE, I think the overall package I've made of myself helped me make much more intelligent decisions about all of that dating, love, and love interest stuff.  And that all takes a LOT of work, spontaneity or no.

I see that young woman I can go on and on about often enough these days.  She still works at a business that I patronize frequently. The last time we interacted, I made like we don't know each other at all and for all I can tell, that pretty much tells the truth about the matter at hand.  Nonetheless, I have the feeling that she wants me to take her on as a love interest, which can often turn into a real pain in the ass proposition.  She seems pretty nice, though.

Love interests can take a lot of work.  Even though this person doesn't rank as a girlfriend, and may never achieve that status with me, accommodating her to the extent of acknowledging her as a love interest requires an investment of time and resources to a very material, tangible extent.  These resources can include everything from mental acuity to the situation, commitment of personal attention to the love interest (which proves a very tricky proposition), to the mustering of all the things I've learned about how to stay happy as a single person and how to spend all of this time I have to myself in constructive, sustainable ways.  I've spent the last twenty years working on those last two things pretty much nonstop. 

When I worked at the factory in 1992, I told one of my fellow employees that I had a "girlfriend."  I really put my foot in it with that one.  When things did not work out with Jenna after all, I had to backtrack what I said to this employee in front of other coworkers, including this one really attractive girl.  How embarrassing!

Acknowledging that this person does represent a love interest, but does not qualify as a girlfriend to me, sets up boundaries and paradigms that will, hopefully, allow me to just walk away from this situation should things refuse to play out in a timely manner.  In the case of this young woman, though, since she put herself up for consideration for love interest status about two years and two months ago, and I've thought of her a great deal and expended a great deal of energy just with that, a "timely" resolution might take a couple of months or even more.  All the while, her status as this kind of person to me pretty much demands attention from me that no other women in my world requires.

If I'd just acknowledged that Jenna represented a love interest to me rather than a girlfriend, well, I don't know.  Looking back, my behavior towards Jenna seems pretty exemplary, if not altogether good for me or particularly skilled or smooth.  My game could have used quite a bit of work, but all that eating crow from her on behalf of seeing things through to the bitter end in the name of Sara provided a kind of boot camp training for the kinds of shit I've faced since then.  I don't believe this young woman I can go on and on about wants me to put myself through any kind of hell like that for her sake.  If I ever got the impression that she did, she would lose her love interest status with me at that precise moment in time.

In the documentary series, Mike Judge Presents: Tales From the Tour Bus, Season 1, Country Music, Tammy Wynette's contemporaries talked about how she felt as if she always had to have a man in her life.  An actual woman in my life has proven a difficult proposition indeed, but not so a love interest.  In 2016 I came to the realization that my problems with love addiction caused me to almost unconsciously feel as if I needed to always have a love interest to aspire to in my life.  Having a love interest meant, to me, that I at least played some part in the dating and love game.   That realization contributes to my reluctance these past two years to take on this young woman as a love interest.  

​Believe or not, when a fifty-something, mentally ill man, who has a tendency towards romantic fixation decides that an early-twenty-something, very, very attractive woman-a young woman that he only knows through his walks through his daily routines (as opposed to a person in a more social orbit)-when that mentally ill man makes the decision to take on such a person as his love interest, that might not go over well with her or anyone else around her, which also explains my total reluctance to do so these past couple of years.  We'll see.  We'll see. 

Not long ago I posted on this blog my conclusion that the young woman I go on so much about no longer worked at the business that I still patronize.  Well, I saw her working there the other day.  She gave me what looked like, from underneath her mask, a beaming smile.   I could tell as much as I could tell about the nature of her smile from the look in her eyes.  I've patronized the business since then with an eye towards seeing her and interacting with her again, but with no luck.  I'm glad she didn't quit that job.  I just wish I could see more of her there or anywhere else.

So, last Saturday night/ Sunday morning I noticed a big wave of anxiety came over me in relation to that young woman.  My head became filled with speculation as to where she was coming from in relation to me at this point in time, to scenarios of the two of us out on the town and finding ourselves beset by ruffians, to the possibility that she will go off on tour with Guns 'n Roses after all.  I decided when I woke up Sunday that, no matter the nature of the deal between myself and this young woman, I would address this issue of anxiety head on, even if I manage to accomplish absolutely nothing else in the deal between myself and this young woman.

On Sunday I decided to try and cope with this anxiety using a technique I learned from Feeling Good by Doctor David Burns.  He recommends in one part that the reader buy a counter that the reader can use to tick off each time a disturbing thought appears in the reader's head.  The reader can then see how many of these types of thoughts they've counted off at the end of the day and record them. I discovered that nowadays they have free apps for one's phone that can count things such as this, so I downloaded one and did just that.  I set up a category for anxiety producing thoughts regarding this young woman, but also included a category for positive thoughts that came up in answer to all the anxiety producing thoughts.

On Sunday and Monday of this week I recorded  anxiety producing thoughts that numbered in the twenties and thirties on both days, and more positive, constructive thoughts that numbered a little less.  So far I've felt no need to tick off such thoughts today.  Last night, as I lay in bed, I thought to myself, "What if I just let this perceived opportunity with this young woman slip through my fingers?"  I interact with baristas at this one coffee shop I patronize on a fairly familiar basis.  I tried asking young women who worked at this same coffee shop on dates around ten years ago, and I always came up empty.  The last time I tried to ask a waitress out that I kind of knew while she worked, in 2019, it seemed as If I ran up against something women such as her consider kind of an occupational hazard.

That's not to say I would NEVER do anything along the lines of say, inviting this young woman to an open mike at the Posse East once that place opens up this Summer, but the nature of our interactions don't seem to allow for that level of comfort and familiarity.  I wrote that song, "Pardon Me Young Lady (But You've Double Parked Your Broom)," about her.  I practice it regularly, and I'd love to play it for her at an open mike.   But, maybe I'm a coward, or I just don't have the game to pick someone such as her up, but remember, I said that the ONE thing I would address this time on this particular deal with this young woman would be the anxiety that comes along with such a deal, and I have, and I will continue to concentrate on just that one thing.   

​Pardon Me Young Lady (But You’ve Double Parked Your Broom)

Strumming Pattern: Bv^, Bv^, or rather more like: v^, v^ for most of the song, but a bass note pick at the start of some new part, sometimes.

verse: 1st couplet, C, F, Am, G
           2nd couplet, F, C, Am, G, C

chorus: 1st couplet, G, F, Am, G
             2nd couplet, G, F, Am, G, C

bridge: both couplets, E7, A7, B7, E7

verse:
Early morning makin’ rounds
a steppin’ Texas guy
when I look over at Missy Miss
she’s givin’ hexin’ eye.
-
Her lids a flutter flutter
just then look away from me
when I head out to my car
it’s then and there that I do see

chorus:
Pardon me young lady
but you’ve double parked your broom
your hex eye it ain’t workin’
go on up and clean your room.
-
Time to seal up Satan’s Cave
close Dracula’s Tomb
Pardon me young lady
but you’ve double parked your broom.


verse:
You might see me as a dog
and you some old mean eyed cat
but I’m just too damn old to chase you
won’t be sucked into a spat.
-
you might see me as a dog
and you some old mean eyed cat
but I never seen a kitty
wear a pointy old black hat.

chorus:
Pardon me young lady
but you’ve double parked your broom
your hex eye it ain’t workin’
go on up and clean your room.
-
Time to seal up Satan’s Cave
close Dracula’s Tomb
pardon me young lady 
but you’ve double parked your broom.

bridge:
I might need to see a doctor
think I’ll find a waiting room
but in a magazine I’ll find you
a-ridin’ that old broom.
-
why you gotta be that way?
don’t call yourself a witch
I just think of you as sexy
that’s the truth to the last stitch.


verse:
Oh, you know I love ya’ baby 
now I’m not so bad a guy now
take that idol from your alter
take a stand and take a bow now.
-
No need for spells and blinkin’ eyes
you had me from day one
can’t quite put my finger on it
like a pot pie gettin’ done.

chorus:
Pardon me young lady
but you’ve double parked your broom
your hex eye it ain’t workin’ 
go on up and clean your room.
-
Time to seal up Satan’s Cave
close Dracula’s Tomb
pardon me young lady
but you’ve double parked your broom.

Richy Vegas 3/24/2021

I remember feeling very trapped and pressured by the situation with Sara in 1988.  Read blog entry, "I'm not bad," from January or February of 2016 to get up to speed on Sara.  When I delivered documents for my dad's practice in 1987, I  remembered one office that had a flyer for a group that would meet for counseling.  The flyer said that this particular set of patients would feel especially emotionally accessible due to their childhoods.  I think it had something to do with the absence of hardworking parents or something like that.  Anyway, I never looked up that group, but the flyer went on to say that such people often feel victimized due to this heightened emotional accessibility.  I read that flyer at the time I had a really bad time with Wanda, and I felt as if she had been taking advantage of me.

So, here's Sara in the Spring of 1988 in my Latin American Art History class, and she seems to want nothing better than to put me behind some kind of eight ball, emotionally speaking.  Sara seems to have had nothing better to do than to present me with this dilemma posed by so many elusive women in my life.  If I pursue them, will they run?  If I don't pursue  them, will I miss out on an opportunity?

So, like I said, I felt very trapped and pressured in this dilemma presented by Sara.  I remembered that flyer about how emotionally accessible people can often feel victimized in relationships, whatever "relationships" means, and I said to myself, "So what's so bad about coming off as accessible and available?"  My course of action, once I took it, made it clear to Sara that she could approach me should she wish to.

I learned through the course of action I did take with Sara that I didn't need to chase women like her to the ends of the Earth and back.  I could just come off as someone they could avail themselves of for any reason should they want to.  The cat and mouse game continued into the Summer of 1988, until I got really insulted one night when one of Sara's friends made it clear through her repeated coughing in a large painting studio at the school that I was to jump through hoops.  After taking this deal to a new place for me, and probably Sara, I ended Sara's access to me.   I snubbed Sara as I walked by her one time in the hall at the beginning of the Fall semester, 1988.  I kept it up that whole semester, during which I secured teacher recommendations for graduate school but did not attend classes because I'd graduated the previous Summer.

I've taken that lesson to heart ever since I decided to revive the Sara experiment in 2012.  Women will favor whomever they favor, and oftentimes it's just not me.  If I make myself available, approachable, and accessible enough over an extended period of time towards this or that woman in my world and nothing happens, there's a reason for such a nonevent that has nothing to do with whether my game is up to speed or whether I'm playing my cards right.  All I can really do involves coming off as friendly and approachable enough to satisfy my own standard of meeting that kind of expectation. 

In other news:  Tonight I found my brand new container of parmesan cheese in the pantry at the front of the shelf at eye level.  I said in the post yesterday that it looked as if the Invisible Woman was back at it in regards to pilfering shit such as my parmesan cheese and my Pogues CD.  "Gee, not to put any pressure on you, Rich, but now that you mention it..."  Also: Last night I wrote a draft of, "Pardon Me Young Lady (But You've Double Parked Your Broom)."  I decided to refrain from posting it, because I didn't want to offend anyone's religious beliefs.  Just call me Woke As Fuck Rich.  That's what the kids like today, for you to be woke as fuck.

I did photocopies of my latest book today.  Now all I have to do is lay it up in a book and take it to the printer. I'm also going to print a second edition of issue number 4, "Anita, You're the Reason I'm Not In Prison."  I drew a new cover for it and added about six pages to flesh out the story.

In other news: The Invisible Woman may be back in my life.  Last night I cooked spaghetti with meat sauce and couldn't find the brand new container of parmesan cheese that I bought not long ago.  I've had maintenance people in the apartment as well, but this has the MO of old Invis.   Plus, I wanted to play my Pogues CD, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, in my car as I drove around today, but I couldn't find it.

The last song I wrote about Invis was "Fuckface, Bloody Fuckface," in November of 2019.  The latest songs I"ve written about someone like that involved that young woman that I can go on and on and on about at great length.   I had a song idea about her titled, "Pardon Me, Young Lady, But You've Double Parked Your Broom," that I haven't written yet.  It's bad luck to talk about a song before one has written it, because one might jinx oneself and never get around to writing it.  Maybe I'll try to write some notes for it after I finish this blog entry.   I think I have some earlier notes I'll try to find first. Maybe Invis is jealous of this girl and wants me to write songs about HER again instead.  

"Fuckface, Bloody Fuckface," was a takeoff on the girls game Bloody Mary.  That's a game where juvenile girls on sleepovers stand in front of a mirror and chant, "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary" over, and over, and over again.  The legend says that if they do it long enough, Bloody Mary will appear in the mirror.  "Fuckface, Bloody Fuckface," a song in waltz time, involves a game where I chant "Fuckface, Bloody Fuckface," in the mirror for a real long time in hopes of getting all of the shit she had someone pilfer from me back.  I guess I can add my parmesan cheese and the Pogues CD to that list.

A really good technique that a lot of self help books advise for readers involves the reader to pretend to give advice to a friend who found themselves in a similar situation or dilemma the reader finds themselves in. The idea behind such a tactic being that we can often help somebody we care about a lot better than we can help ourselves.

In my last post I talked about a former friend who regularly attracted these jealous, possessive women who acted as if they owned him shortly after dating him and giving him some sex.  I would advise such a girlfriend who regularly found herself consumed with rage over this guy's lack of willingness to commit to their plans for him that they need not date such a guy seriously.  They need not have an eye towards a long term committed relationship with this kind of person, but rather cut this kind of person loose after, like, a month of dating him (a month, my personal record for dating fuck anyone in my own personal history).

I would definitely advise a hypothetical girlfriend of, let's call him Bill, that they could stand to date around a bit with different types of guys who cut a different psychological profile than Bill.  The first place for, let's call her Heather, to look for someone markedly different than Bill would be the scrap heap of guys she normally would have nothing to do with.  I'm not talking about accepting guys that she would normally have nothing to do with on a romantic or sexual level necessarily, but rather just go out with someone she wouldn't normally consider for dinner or coffee or whatever.

In my own experiences, I've found it necessary to actually accept someone I wouldn't have given the time of day to in my twenties on  the level of at least going out with them once or twice, even if nothing else happens.  That way I can make important, useful comparisons between such a person and the type of person I can get so hung up on.  Heather, for example, could go out with, say, Paul, and in hindsight  make comparisons along the lines of "Paul returns my calls, generally acts respectful, is nice etc. while Bill has the natural charisma and looks I crave, but can be a bit of a scoundrel...  Gee, if I could just commit to dating around for a while and see if I can meet someone or someones with a combination of these two guys different qualities in some measure..." like that. 

I've been with some pretty attractive women.  Yeah, for a total of eleven times with all women, but nonetheless, some pretty attractive ones in that mix.  I can include one really good looking girl who aspired to femme fatale status, and in the tryin' could come of as a total asshole a good deal of the time.  I gave my "plans" for her a good rethinking in the Fall of 2012 when I remembered that she stated to me, during the Summer of 2011, a desire for me to paint her likeness into a painting I did years before that depicted a lot of women I had major problems with in the eighties and nineties.  I realized that I needed to take this statement of hers seriously, and no, she didn't make the cut.

I'm willing to bet that, should I find myself in a situation where one of these femme fatale types remained in play after like, two-plus years since they threw down the gauntlet -I'm speaking hypothetically of course- any talk by me of relationships and working things out on that level would just run them off for good.  The first woman I ever dated in 1985 had a history of bad boyfriends and overall neediness.  She didn't have a clue as to how to enjoy sex, either.  She had begun making changes in these areas when she included me in these changes. I dated her for a month.  Her idea, not mine.  Fast forward a few years later, and her girlfriends and just about everyone else couldn't stop talking about her insatiable appetite for fresh men and dick, dick, dick everywhere, all the while never having a serious boyfriend in that mix.  Good for her.  I heard she finally got herself a real boyfriend after she moved to the New York City area at about the same time I did in 1989.