Before I had my grand mal meltdown in 1992, I just saw myself as a guy who tried to do the right thing.  I failed to do the right thing a lot, but I would often try to make up for it.  I seemed to acquire groups of people dogging me in some Confederacy of Dunces kind of way, but it got to the point where I just accepted that as part of  the territory.

My image of myself changed forever after I ran into Gil Wilson at a party on June 19th, 1992.  An intrusive, hallucinatory, "Richy Vegas" alter ego competed with the reality I knew before I ran into Gil.  Richy Vegas always triumphed, always knew what to do, always did the right thing, and had special powers.

I can plug into the old image of myself easier than I can plug into Richy Vegas.  I can more readily situate myself as a flawed yet basically good hearted person who struggles and makes lots of mistakes rather than try to come off as some legendary demigod, bodhisattva, second coming of Christ and all of that other Richy Vegas baggage. 

I had a really challenging job taking care of disabled men in the '90's.  I coped with the low pay yet massive responsibility by drinking heavily.  I have a job now that demands more of me than i'd like, but I don't drink anymore.  I will look into joining a substance abuse oriented support group to help me cope with the demands I face at work.

So she has only one check again in her plus column, no longer two.  I took that second check away due to my belief that the former cashier and her confederates just sought to tie me up in knots and leave me in a permanent state of emotional paralysis over her.  If I actually believed this person cared for me, such a scheme might have a chance of working.  

However, I find myself free of any encumbrances due to any erroneous beliefs that such a person ever, ever cared for me in the slightest.  I see this latest effort, should that which I perceive have any basis in reality; I see this last effort as a response to how I took her ass to school in October of 2021, and rang the school day over when I stepped away from patronizing her place of employment at about this time last year.  I guess some people don't like being made to look like total assholes.

If my words sound harshly derisive of a person who may, after all, care for me quite a bit, I think nine out of ten guys with my levels  of experience with women in general at my age and my level of intelligence would come to the same conclusions I come to about her.  That tenth guy who believes, somehow, that such a person actually cares for him would either prove an extremely gifted, wise keeper of a mutual flame that somehow exists in spite of all the apparent evidence, or such an individual would prove themselves a totally deluded fool.  No in between for a guy who somehow believed that someone such as that former cashier in that grocery store mutually cared for him.

Nope, the belief that I cared for her a great deal, but that she never cared for me, strikes me as the most well reasoned interpretation of just about all that went on between us.  Her apparent belief that such a dynamic makes me inferior to her in some way, and that  she and her buddies can callously exploit that dynamic to achieve the final victory over me, constitutes a level a fascistic thinking I can only label as the product of a truly warped, emotionally crippled psyche.

Do my words serve to shoot myself in the foot?  Maybe, but consider this; if I come to understand that this person truly, actually cared for me and still cares for me, that would constitute the FIRST TIME in the four years this bullshit's been going on that I would receive an overt, unambiguous affirmation from this person that such feelings and desires for me on her part even existed at all.  That does not seem likely.



 
  

I write often about times in my past when I made things right with Jenna or others.  So, on the one hand, my mind altering experience of these past few weeks may just stem from the workings of my own mind in regards to that former cashier, or some of what I experienced may reflect a reality she wanted to bring to me.  If the latter proves true, and maybe time will tell on that, these last few weeks may represent an effort on her part to make things right with me. 

If what I just wrote has any basis in reality, I also conclude that she never wanted me, and that she doesn't want me now.   She also doesn't want me to so readily lump her in with several women from my past whom I bring up and portray in disparaging ways.  She doesn't want me having such a bad taste in my mouth about her, I guess.  Okay, I'll try to refer to her in the more dispassionate, professional manner I've taken to referring to her in the year since I really made a big push to let her go.  

Okay, I'll try to do that.  If the last experience I had of "her" truly represented an experience of her, then that's two big checks for her in the plus column.  One check comes from when I approached her for social reasons in late October of 2021, and the other check represents this feeling of peace and well-being that came over me after I inquired about her to that young woman at that one business I patronized a couple of weeks ago.  

It'd be nice if she and/or other women really put the word out for women to stop lining up outside my door in order to just totally shit on me.  It still happens.  I guess she doesn't have the power to do that, though.   Not with ALL of the women who so desire to be that to me, at any rate.  A noticeable drop off in that kind of activity would be nice, though. 

The days of this past week went by in a manner most strange, at least as far as my whole state of being.  I find myself so suspicious of states of being, that I would probably never make for a good Buddhist.  I talk about following my buddha all the time, but how I feel at any given time doesn't concern me in any universal sense.  I try to not fit states of being such as the inner quietude and calm I now tend to feel as of about a week ago into any grander scheme of things.   I see that as counting my chickens before they are hatched.

I haven't seen that young woman who used to work at that grocery store in over a year.  I don't know if she even lives in Austin anymore.  I tried to hunt her down by asking a young woman who resembles her if the young woman knew a girl with her name, and  the young woman said she didn't .  I don't want to look any further into that by asking anyone at the grocery store about her.  I don't want to impose.  For all I know, I may never see her again.

BUT, if I were to just go on my intuition alone, if I were to go by how I FEEL, in other words, it's on.  Oh yeah, it's on.   Like I said, I tend not to trust states of being, but there you are.  I encounter people all of the time, some of them I'm kind of acquainted with somehow, some of them I don't recall ever seeing before, and they seem to KNOW something.  But I'm no mindreader, you dig.  What do they know?  I don't think they know anything sinister or bad, but, what is it they know?  My deal with the young woman took on, some time back, the same aura of public spectacle it has now.  When I pass by the drummer for a band I saw last Friday on the street after her gig, and she looks at me with a slight, wistful, peaceful smile...what the hell?

If things fizzle two or three weeks from now, in other words, if she doesn't show in the coming weeks, I guess I'll remain as much in the dark as I am now.  Why were those attractive young woman at that grocery store acting so pissy last November?  I thought they wanted me to ask that young woman who kind of resembles that former cashier about her at that young woman's place of employment.  I did that, the young woman said she didn't know any girls by that name, and that was that.  Huh?  If this whole deal fizzles in the coming weeks, it'd be nice if other women I find attractive would take an interest in going out with me, but I'm in no hurry for that.

The last thing I want to do would involve me chasing down shadows.  I haven't patronized some of my usual haunts this past week, such as coffee shops, because I want to save money this month.  I definitely do not want to break up my discipline by speculating on stuff along the lines of, "Now that I'm not going to the coffee shops, she may have got herself a job at one of them, so I'd better go check that out."  That way lies madness.  If I wind up dropping the ball in that manner- by failing to chase down some crazy shadow in my mind- me and this young woman may wind up as friends a long time from now anyway.

I asked that girl at that one business I patronize if she knew a girl named (girl's name), and she said, no.  I asked the girl whom I thought looked like that former cashier's sister.  The "sister" might have lied to me.  I don't know.  It wasn't very painful at all.  I got a lot of work done on my latest comic book this weekend in the run-up to this encounter with  this "sister," so I must not have been too anxious about my "plans."  If that "sister" did lie to me, boy we may have us some more of that cat and mouse bullshit in the pipeline.  These types can play that shit all day and night, and the next day, and the next, until the fucking cows come home.  Still, not what I'd call a traumatic experience, asking the "sister" about that former cashier.

I had a transcendent moment with "Gwen" right after Thanksgiving 1990.  Gwen was dating, I suppose, an old roommate of mine from the SVA dorm who moved out after my first semester of grad school.  So, I had him as a roommate in the fall semester of 1989, and Gwen had him as a boyfriend during the time she and I had our transcendent moment.  Gwen was kind enough to let me down easy that night in the wood shop.  My old roommate walked into the shop after Gwen and I had our moment, but Gwen walked out of the door to the shop that led out to the street by herself so as to not hurt my feelings.

In March, 1991, Gwen let me know she had taken an interest in me.  My dumb ass had quickly latched onto Ann Marie as my chosen love interest right after my nervous breakdown that followed my transcendent moment with Gwen, and I let my opportunity with Gwen go by the wayside.  That's just one BIG reason that I had no desire to try to rebound, cash in, or otherwise find someone else to take that former cashier's place after our transcendent moment in October of 2021.  Another BIG reason I had no desire to try to rebound after my last transcendent moment has to do with the kinds of women I can latch onto after I fail to connect with someone such as that former cashier.  I won't name names right now, but a veritable rogues gallery I must say.

So yeah, if someone was kind to me when I approached them for social reasons. like Gwen was and like that former cashier was, and I considered myself smart enough to not try to cash in, and then that person who was kind to me, such as Gwen or that former cashier, were to indicate that they had taken an interest in me, that'd be awesome.  I would be willing to meet such a person halfway, even if their initial signals of interest in me registered as "jump through my hoops" commands.  Maybe "jump through my hoops" to me translates as "try to meet me halfway" to them.  Okay.  Man, someone who reminds me of Gwen again.  Yeah.

The self help book Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns contains several instances of patients, mainly women, having to contend with the prospect of wayward spouses and boyfriends never coming back to them.  In every scenario, Dr. Burns winds up advising the patient to take measures that will allow them to live without the person they miss so much.  The desired outcome in each case involves the patient acquiring a newfound sense of independence and autonomy.  The patient acquires so much autonomy, in fact, that they come to the conclusion that they really don't need the wayward spouse or elusive boyfriend they once pined for so desperately.

Many, many times in my life, I've taken this advice to heart.  From the times when I really put myself in the doghouse with someone such as Wanda, to the times later on, when I found myself without my love interest, even though I never really did anything wrong, such as the case with Sara.  In my case, I most often find myself having to go it alone in relation to a love interest type, rather than an actual girlfriend.  I find it notable that the absence of these people at some point in my life often seems to have more to do with an effort to exert dominance and control over me than any actual need to not show up in my life in a meaningful way.  When I see this absence on their part as a bid to control me and the deal between us in this way, I just feel that much more motivated to live without such a person.

In the cases of Sara and Ann Marie, the prospect of a reunion hinged on whether or not I jumped through their hoops in some way.  I saw them, or those I associated with them, seemingly communicate that message to me, and I blew them off.  After I blew Sara off, I wound up at SVA in New York City in 1989.  I blew off Ann Marie in the summer of 1991, after I'd graduated from SVA, and I wound up back in Austin.  Not exactly bigger and better things in either instance, but I did get on with my life.  

The one constant in just about every deal I've found myself with the Katies, or Veronicas, or the Wandas, or the Saras, or the Ann Maries, or the Virgin Girls, or  the other cashiers at that grocery store, remains this imperative that, at some point, I just get on with my life.  To get on with my life, I had to learn to enjoy my life as a single man and as a bit of a dateless wonder to boot. I haven't even seen that former cashier from that grocery store in over a year. Okay, I might have seen her once somewhere else last February, but still, that's a long time.  The worst thing she or anyone else can accuse me of doing wrong would involve accusing me of bailing out prematurely, but I just didn't want anything fucked up to happen, and based on my experiences with women such as her in my past, that's a laudable and worthwhile goal to try to achieve.

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.