I've retaliated against individual women and others in the past at similar junctures to this one. Think of it: people finally see me as something resembling an actual human being, much like them, and it's been at these times, sometimes, when I just went, "Wammo!," and hit them with some retaliatory gesture. Talk about shooting myself in the foot! That's why I find it necessary to stay committed to my path of non-retaliation over a long period of time. If there's one thing that could most improve my relationship with women over this next year, over anything else I can do, this could very well be it.
I used to try to make women in my world over into love interests in order to give me someone to think about as I went through my work shifts and other challenging times. Two posts ago I wrote about how I would take stock on December 8th, 2024 over the issue of whether my relationship with women has actually improved by then. I think I will focus my energy over this next year on refraining from retaliating against anyone I might otherwise retaliate against if I refused to listen to my better angels. That will give me something to think about during my challenging work shifts and whatnot. The way I see it, such an effort requires an ongoing commitment. Not unlike the commitment I had to make in order to quit smoking cigarettes over twenty years ago. To bring about that change I had to stick with it for a long period of time. I couldn't just make a one time decision to quit smoking and that settled that.
I've retaliated against individual women and others in the past at similar junctures to this one. Think of it: people finally see me as something resembling an actual human being, much like them, and it's been at these times, sometimes, when I just went, "Wammo!," and hit them with some retaliatory gesture. Talk about shooting myself in the foot! That's why I find it necessary to stay committed to my path of non-retaliation over a long period of time. If there's one thing that could most improve my relationship with women over this next year, over anything else I can do, this could very well be it.
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A couple of posts ago I vowed to refrain from retaliating against those I've considered myself pitted against these past however many years in a conflict I definitely did not choose, initiate, or really wish to engage in. Did my last post declaring that I'd managed to kick Schmaylor Schmift to the curb constitute retaliation? Remember, a couple of posts ago I also vowed to really try to refrain from "micro-retaliations" in addition to making an effort to refrain from really anger-fueled, vindictive behavior. I defined micro-retaliations as snarky little things I might say or dirty looks I might give to those I thought might have had something to do with what I've been up against for so long.
Well, declaring that I've kicked Schmaylor to the curb does sound pretty snarky, but here's where such a statement might actually constitute something other than base retaliation. Okay, I don't think sending my male friend issue number nine of my Richy Vegas memoir comic, a book that told my side of a story so many of these people seemed so invested in one part of, I don't think the act of sending my male friend that book constituted retaliation. Nope, not by any stretch of the imagination. Remember, a couple of posts ago, I hypothesized that my male friend's wife got hold of that book, read it, and felt compelled to do a complete one-eighty on how she felt about the version of that crude sexual proposition story she may have heard about me from someone in her world. The crude sexual proposition story I openly talk about in issue number nine. The crude sexual proposition story that I place into the greater context of what all I went through at that that time. I hypothesized that my friend's wife, whom I also count as a friend, became an advocate for my position and interests after reading that issue of the Richy Vegas comic book. Does any of that, speculative though I may sound right now, sound like base retaliation to the readers out there? I think sending that issue of my comic book to my male friend may have set in motion the kicking to the curb of one Schmaylor Schmift. Does happily crowing about the possible outcome of said kicking to the curb of one Schmalyor Schmift amount to a micro-retaliation? Well, if one really has a stick up one's ass, maybe, but I personally would disagree with such an opinion. I see it as more akin to spreading my peacock feathers over possibly winning a game of Schmaylor's own devising, a game Schmaylor played using her own set of rules, and a game Schmaylor played where she got to define what exactly signified victory for her and hers over me. The reason I feel ready to crow and strut at this time has to do with my experiences of this same game women played with me in the past; a game they got to make up the rules to; and a game where they got to define what it was that made them such a winner at it. They all think they're so special and unique as individuals when they start up on these games with me, but to me it all registers as the same shit I've been dealing with since the mid-eighties, and I handled the situation accordingly. Okay, I'll come out and say it. I think Schmaylor lost this game, and she deserved to lose at this game. I don't think any god of any right-living, right-thinking person's imagining would be on the side of someone coming from the place she came from. I don't think her and hers aggression against me had anything to do with a higher moral code they tried to adhere to. I think the reason for their aggression had to more to do with their overall perception of me as vulnerable to such aggression, and that their aggression had to do with their overall perception that they could get away with it. I think she saw me as a helpless, mentally ill guy who couldn't defend himself, and they saw such a seemingly tangible chance at a rather easy victory, they couldn't help themselves. I don't consider any actions I've taken up to the point in regards to this situation as retaliation. Furthermore, as far as I'm concerned, it's over. I have no desire to hurt anyone over what they've may have been up to with me. If anyone from law enforcement or the media ever wants me to tell them what I think was going on all these years, yeah, I might talk to someone like that, maybe, but I'm not looking to reach out to anyone in those worlds. My work is done, as far as I'm concerned. Since I managed to kick old Schmaylor Schmift and her cohorts to the curb a few weeks back, I've wondered what to do next. I'm terrible at picking up women. When it comes to kicking the Schmaylor Schmifts of the world to the curb, I'm aces. But actually picking up women, not so much.
So I've decided to make a bet with myself. I'm loathe to make bets with myself regarding my relationship with women, because if I don't out and out lose the bet, I often walk away with nebulous, ambiguous results that I really can't hang my hat on. But maybe things have really improved with the very act of kicking Schmaylor Schmift and her confederates to the curb that I can just kick back and take a hands-off approach to the issue of whether I can actually pick up actual women for actual dates and whatnot. I'm giving myself until December 8th, 2024, to show a substantial improvement in my relationship with women. I hope that giving myself a full year will teach me to have some patience regarding this matter. After all, it took seven years for me to kick Schmaylor Schmift to the curb once and for all, so maybe a little tiny smidge of patience is in order on this front, still. I might even accept improvement that may seem vague, nebulous, and ambiguous to someone else. Such as someone who may have a lot more success in their relationship with women than I. Maybe a willingness to accept such vaguely defined improvements will teach me to look on the bright side of these matters. I mean, it's conceivable that I could accept the next year as substantially improved even if I don't land even ONE date with ONE woman in the next year. I've gone many, many years, in a row oftentimes, without even ONE date with ONE woman. When I quit drinking and drugs in 2009, a move I made to improve my relationship with women, they sure didn't line up around to block to go out with me then, but I accepted an overall improvement in my mood and outlook regarding life in general as a substantial improvement. No way I was going to give up on my commitment to sobriety just because I wasn't getting laid every weekend within the first two or three months of executing that commitment. Wish me luck. Oh yeah, the bet consists of me buying myself a little present like a CD or a vinyl record if I stay focused on trying the hand-offs, I'm easy approach to getting with women for the entire year. That is, I will buy myself that present regardless of the result. It has a lot to do with how I would like to live my life, regardless of whether living my life the way I want to live it gets me laid or not. So far, no random woman's come up to me this past three weeks or so and made some wise-ass remark that seems to allude to whatever dirt those out there who want to have dirt on me feel they have on me, so that's good. In my last post I talked about that kind of thing as the kind of thing I will look for first, over some kind of actual improvement in how certain women in my world interact with me and what they may think of me.
I'm not even sure there hasn't been substantial improvement on that front, either. See, I just used a double negative to state a possible positive development in my situation. I mean to say that things might have actually improved for me these past several weeks. Some weeks ago I sent issue number nine of my autobiographical Richy Vegas comic book to a male friend. I wonder if maybe his wife got hold of it at some point, saw that it was about a particularly trying time in my life- the part about people having dirt on me, remember?- and the events and people in that book, and how they treated me, and how things went for me, over and over again, might have struck a sympathetic chord with her. I wonder if maybe my male friend's wife didn't become a vociferous advocate for my position in defiance of the consensus view that I'm some incorrigible piece of shit with no hope of ever appearing as anything other than the picture so many on that side the fence wanted to paint of me. Oh well, just some idle thoughts on my part, maybe. If a grain of truth exists in what I wrote in the above paragraph about my male friend's wife (who is also my friend) taking up the role of advocate for my position and interests against my self-appointed adversaries, then that would earn that couple admittance into The League, for sure. If the powers that be made the decision to grant these two admittance into The League, then I don't expect much in the way of open, frank talk about the book I sent them. That is, he and maybe she might say they read it, but they won't own up to anything I've speculated on in the previous paragraph about the wife possibly advocating for me in some way. I don't have a problem with that, that's the ways of The League. I'll just say here that I apparently picked the right people to send that book to read. I'm getting pretty good at this. By "this," I mean making lots and lots of people look like total assholes for all of the grief and trouble they've brought to my door. I guess this skill-set comes from the knowledge that, no matter how much pain people like this wish to inflict on me, they always wind up looking and feeling like total assholes for their trouble. The secret for me resides in my ability to not allow them to inflict much pain at all. I think I've done a pretty good job of it this time around. There's a lot more of looking like total assholes for them, if they still want to go there with me. That part about retaliation that I brought up last week. Yeah, about that. I have no desire to retaliate against any of these people. I find that my forgiveness- my willingness to not retaliate; to refrain from inflicting a self-adjudicated, "just" measure of pain and suffering upon my tormentors in order that they may "learn their lesson." Yeah, that kind of forgiveness- my forgiveness allows me to have an appreciable measure of peace in my head and in my being, rather than the usual anger and rage that inhabits that realm at these times. I'm even trying to extend this restraint to "micro-retaliations," Like micro-aggressions, they are the little gestures and things I say around or to these people whenever I do see them. No dirty looks, no snarky comments, none of that, if I can help it. I may come across like Gary Cooper in "Sargent York," but I could do worse than Gary Cooper in "Sargent York," if you ask me. I often encounter situations where people around me want to inflict some kind of emotional or even physical pain on me to get me to see the error of my ways and exact some sort of retribution for whatever it is I've done. I think this dynamic informs the situation I've found myself in regarding that former cashier from that grocery store I still patronize. I've also brought up the notion that a famous woman became part of this mix in 2016. Right now I wonder if such parties are having second thoughts about whether there existed a need to inflict pain and suffering on me in the first place. I need to have a look around some more in my world.
One interesting thing I encounter in these situations at such a stage- a stage where my adversaries have second thoughts about their chosen courses of action against me- has to do with how they just want to totally disengage from me socially and seem to wish we never knew each other in the first place. They made their bed, and now they have to lie in it, or so it seems. This stage where I see people who no longer relish the idea of being my tormenters or adversaries, and just want to go on their own way, can make me feel surprisingly lonely and isolated. After all, if I could just be good friends with everyone who came after me in this manner, I'd be the least lonely man on earth. I thought about this today as I wondered if whether people who coveted the role of my enemy came to have some knowledge, somehow, of the contents of issue number 9 of my Richy Vegas comic book. In that issue I lay out in a dry, flat, dispassionate manner the events of 1986 and 1987 they seemed so intent on having me never be able to live down. I tell my side of the story. This train of thought just remains a speculative notion until I have some proof otherwise, I guess. One thing I'm looking for is for random women I don't really know to try to fuck with me like it has been happening for some years now. You know, remarks or behaviors towards me that seem to reference my past behaviors, such as crude sexual propositions or obsessive pursuits of women that I'm never, ever supposed to forget, and how those things I'm never, ever supposed to forget will forever mark me as a total piece of shit in life. Or, another thing that's been going on since like, 1988: entrapment oriented flirtations with me from young, attractive women. I look for these kinds of things because they occur so regularly, and they seem to offer conclusive proof that nothing has changed at all for me. On the other hand, I don't think I want to look for that former cashier from that grocery store to come my way looking to get to know me better. Like I said, she knows full well that she just displayed a desire to bring home some point that, no matter how I treated her, no matter what I did to prove my feelings for her, she just wanted to bring home the point that she could never care for someone such as me. If she has a change of heart about my actual guilt now, she probably just wants to forget the whole thing ever happened and not ever see me at all. Lots of people who engage in this kind of shit with me seem to have little or no desire or even ability to hold themselves to account for the behaviors and attitudes they've clung to for so long. So, as of right now, I have zero reasons to look for more positive developments from amongst the women in my world, but rather, to look for the same old shit interactions that random women just want to visit upon me to show what they really think of me, and how there's nothing I can do to change my standing with them or my situation. These types of interactions offer easy proof that nothing has changed, and such behaviors show up in places regularly enough. Mind you, my behavior has been exemplary these past seven, fifteen or so years in the face of this ostracism, and I have no desire to change MY course of action in that regard. I want people to keep this one point I will now make in mind. I can forgive a lot of the shit people such as the wives and girlfriends of my male friends, and that former cashier as well, have desired to put off on me. I can forgive these woman and lots of other people, male and female, in the sense that I will not try to retaliate or otherwise hurt them in any way. If anyone such as these women I've just cited actually WANT to be friends with me, I would just have to take such a desire on their part on a case by case basis, each one individually. I had events where I sold comics these past two weekends. I sold over a hundred comics combined at the two events. At the one this past weekend I went to the after party, which took place at about 7 p.m. There were some women to talk to, but I just didn't want to do that. I just didn't feel like submitting myself for the acceptance or rejection of women at that event. I'm trying to get away from having that be a thing for me to have to weigh heavily anywhere I go. That could include work, going to see bands at clubs, or events such as that after party. I think attractive young women can tell when a guy feels as if his sense of worth depends on whether someone such as them accepts or rejects them, and I think that can creep them out. I guess if they have to do that enough times, they can get pretty mean about it. Some of them, at least.
I sold fifty-nine comic books at an event this weekend. I got a little work done on the current book this evening. I'm looking at the first week in January as the deadline to finish illustrating this eighty page book. I finished pages 7 and 8 tonight.
I've interacted a little with some of the women at my new job, and all I have to say is, man, I don't want to end up as a featured story on Reddit Nice Guys or whatever that group is called. I subscribe to YouTube videos by Walter Fate, or Fatal Walter, and Vincey who just read horror stories written by girls and women who've encountered "nice guys" and posted their version of events on this Reddit page. The problem is, I recognize some version of myself in these obsessive, mostly younger boys and men who assign way too much significance to everyday interactions with women they happen to have a strong attraction to....and the race is on. I hope I can never really go back to those versions of myself from earlier days. I hope it's like a testimonial a guy gave at my old stop smoking group, where he said he was addicted to cigarettes, and that he could easily relapse and go back to smoking, but he knew that is just wouldn't be the same as it was before if he did go back to smoking heavily. Anyway, I spent my entire time at this event selling my Richy Vegas titles, and after this event ended, I noted that I really didn't think much at all about any women in my world I have an attraction to while I sat at my table trying to get people to buy my books. I like not having a love interest. I just finished glancing over the seventy-four pages I've outlined in blue ball point pen of my latest book. I've got six more pages to outline. I think the pen work on these illustrations looks pretty good, given how sloppy a lot of the pencil work is. If this job works out, it will give me some structure which I can build my creative hours around. Such a setup, with a part-time job at least, can actually increase productivity on the creative side. I stayed pretty busy for all of that time I had no job, so in my case it may mean a slight decrease in productivity over all.
I see these twenty-two year old waitress and barista types in my world frequently. I think about that former cashier at that grocery store I patronize and what it took for me to finally approach her for social reasons. My deal with her went on for almost three years before I invited her to my comic book sale, at her job, in front of God and everyone. I tried every which way to just let her go and move on, several times, before I wound up just-balls out walking up to her as she worked her busy shift and invited her to my sale. I could not have done better at that if I had a hundred more chances to do so. And still, she didn't come to my sale and she didn't seem to want to talk to me at all after I approached her. I think about her as I interact with these hottie types in my world, and my take on that whole episode just demonstrated a real raising of the bar on my part as to what it would take for me to stop everything and approach someone so much younger than I am. In the days of the early 2010's, at one of those coffee shops, I'd approach those baristas right and left for social reasons. They really didn't like it, and the cruel games they played with me demonstrated their displeasure at my overtures toward them. I think I came off so much better towards that cashier and those around us than I did toward those baristas of the prior decade. And yet, nothing. That really makes me think twice, and three and four times, about approaching anyone else that much younger than me under those circumstances these days. Maybe I should thank that cashier for rejecting me, because I really have no desire to approach anyone her age in my world at all at this time. The thought of putting myself out there to that extent, even doing as well as I did at it in the case of that cashier, only to come up empty handed, really doesn't appeal to me at all. The job is hard work. A friend said I'll build up stamina. I might also become more relaxed as I get it down more, which should help to keep me from getting too wiped out by the end of the shift. I have enough energy and wherewithal to continue working on issue 29 of my comic book. I hope to finish sometime in January. I want to cut WAY down on trips to the coffee shops in the months of November, December, January, and February. I hope to use the saved money to help pay for printing comic books and traveling to conventions, among other things. The job plus saving money on coffee shops and restaurants can give me a tangible means to pay for that stuff over the long haul.
I completed my first week at my new job. The work was hard, and that's all I want to say about it at this time. In other news, my latest issue of "Tales from the Richy Vegas Psychoverse" came back from the printer. I've been sending copies all over the place, including Domino Books, an online distributor. I have some drama going on that's proving too distracting for me to work on my next book right now. I might give it a try right after I get off of here.
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August 2023
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