In 2009, when I first committed to abstinence from drugs and alcohol, I was like Rip Van Winkle waking up from a fifteen year slumber.  One aspect of this era that played out like that, and an aspect I had to face up to immediately, had to do with the notion that it was still about twenty-two year old girls for me.  I was forty-four at the time.  I patronized Thunderbird Coffee, which had a location just down the street from my house.

Thunderbird Coffee employed a lot of attractive young women as baristas.  I started asking them out.  They all turned me down.  That part was okay with me.  The being turned down part I could accept.  I could just move on from that.  What I didn't like was this need these young women all seemed to feel to retaliate for my overtures towards them.  Uniformly, after I'd ask some barista out and she'd turn me down, that wasn't the last of it by a long shot.

They would, almost to an individual barista, each one,' they would commence to playing some cruel rejection games to teach me a lesson about approaching them for social reasons.  It got so bad that by 2013 I stopped patronizing that coffee shop and just made my own lattes at home.   I started patronizing that location again after about two years, but I vowed to not approach any baristas for social reasons.  

I mean, I get the why of the retaliation, sort of.  The age gap.  The fact that it was their job to be friendly to customers, and how my interpretation of their friendliness was an almost willful attempt at fooling myself about whether or not they had any interest in me.  But did the punishment really fit the crime?   Retaliation, really?

When I got Schmaylor Schmift off of my back in 2023, doing so seemed to promise an improvement in my relationship with the women around me.  I approached another barista at another coffee shop last year.  Yeah, she didn't go out with me either, but she had no trouble with giving me contact information and being nice to me.  So there's one.  That waitress at that diner gave me contact info when I asked for it.  She gave me her email last August.  I just sent her a THIRD email, that's a THIRD email SINCE last August, telling her about a show that featured a band she wanted to go out and see.  Yeah, she was pretty rude when I invited her to that comic book show in April, but that's about all I have to complain about.  SHE did not actually triy to retaliate, either.  So there's two.

So, if I approach some woman in my world for social reasons in the coming days, weeks, or months, whether or not she retaliates for approaching her for social reasons, should she turn me down, is ALMOST as important to me as whether or not she accepts me or rejects me in the first place.  If I should approach a third woman in the coming days, weeks, or months, and SHE does NOT try to punish me for approaching her for social reasons, then things may have actually improved for me.  That's fair.

For the longest time, when I vied for that former cashier's attention, I said I could possibly handle being friends with her for a while should she ever decide to see about me.  She never really did decide to see about me, but I think the idea of being friends with someone who reminds me of her in so many important ways presents an opportunity to vie for that same kind of deal.  If I were to meet someone who reminded me of that former cashier in really important ways, AND such a person actually wanted to get to know me better, then going for a friendship instead of full on dating right out of the gate might actually work the best for me, and her.  We'd just have to talk openly about things such as for how long this probationary period would last and what all it would entail.

The kinds of interactions I've described with young, very attractive women of this past year and a half or so strike me, from this perspective, as a normal part of the dating world.  When someone my age and my history approaches much younger women for social reasons, I should expect to endure some rejection.  The thing of it is, the rejection hasn't been so much the discriminatory rejection I experienced for so long.  In other words, it wasn't the kind of rejection I can attribute to whatever my mental illness and whatever stories they've heard about me represent to them.  The rejection has been just the run-of-the-mill, everyday rejection that comes with the dating world for a lot of people.  Not everyone, but a lot of people, even normal people.

If I don't take a chance on that young woman I talked about in the last post, that's a part of the dating world for me, too.  I often don't feel like taking a chance on much younger women, believe it or not.  Believe it or not, I DO get quite sick of always coming up empty with such women, and often enough I do feel like sitting this or that "opportunity" out.  All part of the dating world.  It would be nice, I think, if young women such as this coworker I've talked about would refrain from trying to challenge me on a stated desire to just take a break from approaching women such as them for social reasons.  I'm not writing these words as a challenge to her or anyone else to get me to change my mind and go for it ONE MORE TIME.  Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The young, very attractive woman I talked about in my last post presented access and availability issues  the last time I worked with her.  Specifically, at one point as we talked during our shift, I mentioned that I'd had a lot of days in a row off work recently, and how that afforded me time to work on my projects.  Okay, cue the hottie: "What projects are you working on?" Did she then ask me that question? Nope.  She just stood there, and the silent pause in our conversation just let that prompt from me fade into air. 

"Geez, what's the big deal, Rich?  Were your fee-fees hurt or something because she didn't ask you about your pwecious comic books?"  No.  My issue with her response arises from the notion that she knew damn well what she was doing when she didn't take the bait. As attractive AND intelligent as she is, she banked on the notion that by responding the way she did, I would then try to prompt her again in the same manner at some future date.  She would then find such repeated attempts by me to steer our small talk in that kind of direction highly amusing, so she would continue to let my prompts hang in the air and die off, awkwardly. 

When I like someone such as her, I want to get to know them better.  The worst way to go about that is to do anything that smacks of mindlessly chasing after them, I've found.  Going in some other direction in response to such games, as subtle as her game was, it was still a game; going in some other direction in response to such games presents a much better method of getting to know someone such as her better.

She might not even be available.  She might not even be interested.  She might not even be available or interested.  Women such her never, ever afforded me much of an opportunity to actually date them.  To my way of seeing things, I have little or nothing to lose by going off in some other away kind of direction from her, because, in doing so, I might see the things in her that make women such has her tick.  Like I  said, I want to get to know her better.  My methods might not afford me the opportunity to date someone such as her, but at least I have a chance to know things about her I'd never, ever find out by chasing after her to the ends of the earth and back.

Okay, I really am throwing down the gauntlet with this post.  There's a young, very attractive woman at my job I think about.  Right now, I think her attractiveness stirred up my neurosis concerning hotties and how it all ties into my childhood and my family.  Briefly put, I believe my disproportionate attraction to twenty-two year old hotties over all other types of women stems from my childhood.  I grew up in a family where everyone was always tearing each other down with putdowns and criticism.  This went on a lot between myself and my siblings, especially, but my parents, especially my dad, got into the act as well.  Couple this constant backbiting and cruel things said to each other with the near total absence of displays of affection such as saying, "I love you," to each other, or hugging each other, or showing support for each other in things such as school work or my drawing skills, and yeah, a deficit of familial love there.  So I made it about twenty-two year old hotties.  That's because twenty-two year old hotties are the most harshly critical, judgmental, and unforgiving-of-my-shortcomings type of women I can make it all about.  

Don't get me wrong, I like this woman I work with, but the old, familiar fantasies that swirl around in my head after some prompting from the world around me started up again concerning her a few weeks ago, and all I've been able to do is use my math skills on this young woman.  Adding it up, I see no reason to infer any interest from her in me based on our interactions of these past several weeks.  I don't think she's out to get me or anything bad like that.  Let me be clear on that.  This is in no way an attempt to embarrass her or make her feel bad. 

Skeptical inquiry.  I have to eliminate the possibility that my stimulated response to our mundane interactions of these past few weeks has more to do with me and my old demons than any interest from her in me.  I doubt I will successfully eliminate that possibility, because that's probably what's really going on.  I have no plans to approach her for social reasons.  That possibility, the possibility that my neurosis is kicking in about her, has to fall by the wayside before any plans to approach her for social reasons take place.

In a post last year I wrote about two women I met since my relative stability due to psych meds since the spring of 1995.  In that post from last year, I said I counted Celeste and Lauren as the TWO, count 'em folks, TWO women I would have liked to have another crack at as far as putting myself out there to get with someone.  TWO!  Why these two?  They were both attractive and nice, that's why.  I've beat myself up many a time over not taking advantage of the opportunities both of them seemed to want to give me to get to know them better, but, I repeat, TWO women in the last thirty years I can put in this category.

If there were someone in my world now who fits the description of being both attractive and nice, AND seemingly interested in getting to know me better, AND I let such a woman slip through my fingers, what would that say about me?  I think all it would say is that I had THREE, count 'em folks, THREE women in the last thirty years I could put in such a category.  

In my last post I talked about how I kind of keep my desires to get to know attractive coworkers better under my hat, because doing so seems to help me get along with the women I work with better.  I talked about how such restraint might actually work against me should I encounter a coworker who seems to actually want to get to know me better.  Okay, suppose I let an opportunity to get with a coworker I'm attracted to slip through my fingers, AND, it turns out, she was a nice person as well as an attractive woman.  Okay, read the previous paragraph.  Specifically, the part about how that would count as THREE woman in the last THIRTY YEARS who seemingly wanted to get  to know me better, who were quite attractive, and who seemed nice, but that I let slip through my fingers.

That's not very many opportunities to get with such a type of woman in the first place, in my opinion.  I don't think that's enough opportunities to get bent out of shape over.  Furthermore, I think I might stand a better chance of getting more, and better, opportunities with women I really liked if I continued to do things such as keep my desires for hot coworkers under my hat and just do my job and try to get along with such women in that context and setting.  It might not lead to opportunities with hot coworkers specifically, but the day to day discipline it takes to leave all of that getting with women stuff on the back burner might spill over into other arenas with other women in a beneficial way.  So yeah, let me repeat what I concluded in my last post.  I'm willing to let a potential love of my life slip through my fingers and take a chance that in doing so it helped me get along better with women in my world as a whole.     

Last night I saw a meme on Instagram from a young model I follow.  She has a video of herself dancing and lip-synching to music, smiling, winking, and gesturing to the camera in a playful, perhaps teasing manner.  The text over her says, "I never lower my standards for someone. If u want me, pursue me.  If u can't do it, then another man will." What she said there really started my gears turning.

I have really bad associations with the pursuit of women from my experiences of doing, in my opinion, way too much of that kind of  thing in my youth.  However, here's a really hot, young model saying she has to have a guy pursue her or it's no deal.  As the gears turned in my head, I concluded that, for me, the extent I want to pursue anyone romantically seems to be entirely up to me.  I doubt this young woman could put out one, all encompassing rule that applies to all instances of when a man pursues her and what constitutes acceptable pursuit and what goes too far.  

That's not to say she couldn't come up with general guidelines of when a man goes so far in his pursuit of her that it veers into stalking and harassment.  I think lots of desirable women can give some cut and dried rules about that shit, but what about someone like me?  I definitely have a history that gives plenty of examples of too numerous, too frequent phone calls and too much of the repeatedly asking a woman for a date when she'd turned me away numerous times, and, more recently, asking women such as baristas and waitresses out and then getting the impression that such an overture struck these women as premature, arbitrarily decided upon, and just overall one-sided as to whether or not they even had that kind of an attraction to me in the first place.

I think my limits on what I'll do to get with women I'm attracted to strike me as quite conservative these days.  Furthermore, I think this overall conservative approach to that kind of  thing allows me to get along reasonably well with the women in my world.  The women in my day to day world include not only the above-mentioned waitresses and baristas, but also coworkers.  I really try to be careful about approaching coworkers, because that's a situation where both me and the woman have to show up for work in order to meet the expectations of our employer.  Whereas, with waitresses and baristas, I can choose whether or not to patronize such a business if circumstances appear questionable in the wake of some approach I made to such a woman.

So yeah, it occurred to me just now that the very reason  that I get along with my female coworkers as well as I do might be the very same reason a hypothetical female coworker who might actually like me slips through my fingers. The same conservatism of admiring attention to female coworkers that serves me well enough in getting along with them on a day to day basis might actually work to my detriment in getting with one of them if one of them really does like me.  At least that's the "silent assumption" that turns over in my head.  A silent assumption is a thought in one's head that one has not yet put into actual words.  So that's what the gears are doing in my head right now.  That's the paradox. Here's the thing, though, I can live with that, because my relative conservatism in my attentions to women I admire in circumstances such as a work situation reflects how I want to live my life these days.  

Furthermore, is my above-mentioned silent assumption really true?  Is this not something I can investigate?   Will I really let a potential love of my life just slip through my fingers if I'm just a bit more cool about the whole situation than I really need to be?  Well, to find the yes or no to such questions probably requires that I play such a situation pretty cool.  I'm trying to answer a question that's important for me to answer.  Therefore, trying to "play it safe" and coming on like johnny-on-the-spot to some waitress, barista, or coworker would not serve to answer the question I want answered.  Yes, I'm willing to sacrifice a potential love of my life to just answer this paradoxical dilemma that bedevils me.    

I talk about mainly young, mainly very attractive women on this blog all the  time.  I'm not sure anyone like that is in play right now, but issues concerning the accessibility and availability of such woman for me come up on a regular basis, anyway.  At least as far as what concerns me and what I think about on a day to day basis.

In 1991, a fellow SVA student named Ann Marie, an undergrad, became someone I thought about a LOT.  The spring semester of 1991 was my last semester in the Masters of Fine Arts program in studio art.   As much as I fixated on Ann Marie, I stayed focused on trying to graduate without any shit going down concerning her or any shit going down in general.  I did brandish my pocket knife at a fellow male grad student when he made some remark near me about, "Doing it the hard way."  That whole incident got buried, I guess, but it was out there for Ann Marie and others to know about.

So yeah, staying out of  trouble.  I really made a concerted effort to stay out of trouble from then on, and that meant refraining from pursuing Ann Marie.  I just stayed in my lane and didn't go out of it for anything.  At the end of the semester, on one of the last class days for the entire school, I saw her pass by me near the elevators in one of the school buildings, and I just let her go by.

Two or three days later I had my graduate thesis critique of the work I had done the previous semester.  One of the faculty members got really snotty about how he didn't like my essay supporting my art or my art project itself.  My thesis advisor, Tommy Lanigen-Schmidt, defended me and my work, as did the other of that trio of male faculty members assigned to grade what I'd done.  At the end of the critique, the middle-aged, art world insider type who had an issue with my work smiled smugly as he shook my hand and said, "Good luck man."  At one time during the open studios portion of that semester on the following Friday, my thesis advisor said to me, "They were gunning for you, Richard." I asked who was that, and by his coy responses I figured he meant that snotty art world insider who took issue with what I'd said in my essay and with what I'd done for my thesis project.

About a week and a half later, as I crossed a busy street in midtown Manhattan at a crowded crosswalk, I looked down and to my right and saw Ann Marie looking at me.  I smiled at her as if to say, "See, I told you I cared for you," and we passed.  Such were big moments for me in those days.

Cut to the chase.  Several weeks later, in order to leave no stone unturned, I went to an art gallery near that crosswalk where I thought I saw Ann Marie to see if maybe she worked there.  My thesis advisor's gallery, as it turned out.  I waked in and checked out a current show.  I asked the young guy at the desk if a guy worked there that I knew from the grad program.  The guy behind the counter said that my former classmate was on vacation for part of the summer.

After I talked to the guy behind the desk, I heard a young woman's voice make a phone call from an office nook just behind the front desk. I couldn't see if it was Ann Marie, but the voice sounded like that of an attractive, confident young woman as she made a business related call about an artist.  I stood at the front desk and read the brochure for that month's exhibit, the guy behind the front desk cleared his throat, and the young woman in the back finished her call.  A moment or two passed as I looked over the brochure, and then I walked out without saying anything.

If that was Ann Marie, I took that whole thing at the gallery as her saying that what I'd done to connect with her on the street below a few weeks earlier was not good enough for her, and that I had to do more.  I even tried to be a good guy about the whole thing and went back to the gallery a week or so later to see if I could work things out.  I asked the young guy at the front desk about my former classmate again, and the front desk guy's whole demeanor seemed....chastened.  The whole air about the gallery seemed to breathe that what was done was done, and that there was no more for me to do or say.

But yeah, accessibility and availability, that's what that was all about, as far as I'm concerned.  In the years that followed, I correctly or incorrectly put together the idea that the snotty art world insider guy at my critique, who was married, was having an affair with Ann Marie.  I figured, rightly or wrongly, that whatever he was to her was good enough for him to have access to her, but that my swooping down and stealing her heart on the streets of midtown Manhattan was not, and I had to do more.  Fat chance!

Anyway, I've aged out of twenty-two year old hotties, as far as I can tell, so I try to cultivate an interest in other types of women to compensate.  I don't know if any twenty-two year old hotties in my world want to bring across the idea to me that I should consider them in play, but even if that were so, this issue of access and availability invariably comes up with them.  In my twenties, and once in my thirties, I did some lashing out at such women that I regret, but I think how I handled that whole situation with Ann Marie at SVA in 1991 represented a definite improvement.  One needs to realize that my mental illness was undiagnosed and untreated at the time.  Despite my compromised mental state, I did manage to spend the whole semester modeling my behavior after how I'd done things with Sara in the spring and summer of 1988. I managed to graduate with an MFA in studio art.  I'm an SVA alumnus.  The same can't be said for some of the other students in my year in my program, a couple of whom were kicked out due to their behavior.

If any twenty-two year old hotties in my world want me to consider them in play for whatever reason, good or bad that reason may be, I hope they understand if I just let the whole situation go by the wayside and don't do much of anything at all about it, because I find that a much more acceptable course of action to take than lashing out.  And, trying to be a good guy and work things out in such situations can be an exercise in futility, if so many of my experiences count as relevant.

In October of 2001 I had an epiphany about my substance abuse issues.  I theorized that I smoked, drank, and used drugs in order to cope with loneliness.  This insight gave me the wherewithal to quit smoking and make an unprecedented effort to deal with my other substance abuse issues.

I wound up having one hundred percent success with quitting smoking (so far, so good), but my attempts at moderation with drugs and alcohol fell short.  In late-December, 2008, I had another epiphany about my substance abuse.  This involved an insight about a friend of mine.  My friend could drink and use all the drugs and alcohol he could handle, and still have "success" with women.  Me, not so much.  I put success in quotation marks, because, yeah, he got laid a lot, and always seemed to have girlfriends, but he was an angry, controlling, abusive drunk as well, and, of course, his girlfriends saw this side of him, along with everyone else.  Me, at least I had nothing to lose in my relationship with women if I committed to abstinence from drugs and alcohol, and so began a newly found desire on my part to do just that.  Success (again, so far, so good) as a result of THAT epiphany.

With abstinence from drugs and alcohol came realizations about the extent of my love addiction, so that set up my campaign to come to terms with that.  I got to work on that in earnest with my newfound sobriety from cigarettes, drugs and alcohol.  I feel like I really hit upon something with the revival of my, "What if I turn my back on love?," experiment which I first conducted with Sara in the spring of 1988.  I began following that buddha again in September of 2012.

In August of 2021 (I think it was August of  that year) I had another epiphany.  I theorized that my obsessive thoughts and pursuit of certain women stemmed from my upbringing.  Years earlier, I read in one of Dr. David Burn's books that studies had shown that shy people were otten very critical and judgmental of those around them.  Shy people aren't just the benign, harmless people they are often made out to be.  I came from a family where all of us could be pretty shy.  One summer day in 2021, I thought about this side of my family thusly, "I don't think my family members were really critical of me, were they?" Then, the next INSTANT, "Oh, hell yeah!"  I grew up in a family where my dad didn't really want to be married to my mom.  This was the dynamic in play before I, the youngest of five siblings, was even born.

My dad could just sit one of the kids down and PICK THEM APART.  I mean, really dress them down.  The kids were always putting each other down and often jumping on things about each other in very critical, judgmental ways.  I took part in this too, This was just normal family life for me.  The putdowns, the ugly things we'd say to each other, coupled with the near TOTAL absence of  things such as hugs, or "I love you," or any other displays of affection towards one another.

Now, if one buys into the concept that one's upbringing can "bewitch," to put it one way, an individual, how would such an upbringing affect someone like me?  Now, let's see, what kind of woman would I choose to make it all about who could potentially be the most critical, judgmental, unforgiving-of-my-shortcomings type of woman I could find, over, and over, and over again, throughout my adult life?  That would be a twenty-two year old hottie, by my understanding of this revelation.  And, not just ANY twenty-two year old hottie, but one who is, in some way, logistically, emotionally, both, all of the above; someone who is somehow, in some way, unavailable. That's what nine years of following my "what if I turned my back on love?" buddha revealed to me, FINALLY!

Like I said, knowledge is power.  That's probably why, when I finally did approach that former cashier at that grocery store for social reasons in October of 2021, I came off as well as I did.  I came off VERY well.  In that instance, at least, "What if I turned my back on love?," became a way of turning off the clock, not caring about being johnny-on-the-spot, and just BRINGING IT when I was damn good and ready to bring it.  And, that epiphany about how I relate to women in my world DEFINITELY gave me the wherewithal to turn away from that whole situation when things didn't go my way and I then joined a support group for love addiction. 

Would I like to date some really hot woman these days?  Of course I would!  I've decided, though, that I would want such an outcome to come about, in some way or other, in the course of following my "turn my back on love" buddha.  "What if I turned my back on love?"  "What if I just let this supposed opportunity to get with this woman slip through my fingers?"  "What if I refrained from trying to get from point 'A' to point 'B' in regard to this or that woman?"  "What if I cooled myself out of the picture?"  All of these paths I go down are really the SAME PATH.. 

I don't think that waitress in that diner, or that barista from last year, or those hot coworkers I like would really want to know about how much my sense of self worth can get tied up in trying to get with someone such as them.  I really don't think any of them would like that very much.  I'm glad of how I relate to women in these two important ways: 1) I stand ready to follow the "turn my back on love" buddha at any time with women in my world, and 2) I'm willing to give some women who aren't necessarily supermodels the time of day.  Yep, "A variety of dating experiences with a variety of women."  That's something I've been vying for since 2002.  "Available, interested, acts like she gives a shit about taking care of herself," is the whole of my standards as to who can get at least one date with me.  That standard has been in play for quite a number of years now. Yep!

I didn't go to the coffee shop or that diner very much since I last wrote.  I'm working on prepress for my latest comic book.  I hope to finish by this weekend.  I will then reach out to the on-demand printer.