I've been watching youtube videos from something called pop culture detective.  The first one had the title, "Stalking For Love."  I really liked it.  It showed some very popular movies, mostly romantic comedies such as There's Something About Mary, Love Actually, 50 First Dates, The Wedding Crashers, but also others such as Twilight, where male characters behave in ways towards their love interests that would generally not go over well in real life.  Such behaviors include: persisting in romantic pursuit after the woman or girl says no, spying on the love interest, showing up unexpectedly at the love interest's home or place of work, and putting the love interest on the spot in a public setting that the movie portrays as a grand romantic gesture.

I think I've taught myself how to refrain from pursuing women to the ends of the Earth and back pretty well by now.  I've spent enough time learning how to do this, or to not do that, if one prefers.  Why, for many years, I had this one female friend that I'd been with this one time who didn't even know me as the guy who kept calling and calling and calling in a one sided manner.  She's really pretty too.  The reason I know that she didn't think of me as the persistent caller stems from the time I asked her if she thought of me as that, and she said, "Are you someone who calls me a lot?  Ugh, no Rich."

I've talked a lot about this one girl in my world whom I decided to not go to her place of employment during her usual hours.  Well, there also exists in my world someone I put in a Facebook Friend request for in January of 2018.  She never accepted it, and I went on and on here about her bogus flirtations towards me after I put in that friend request.  I interpreted her looks of faux-longing as a defense mechanism that indicated she thought she might have a struggle with me further down the road if she didn't put me in my place first.  I called bullshit on her in this blog, and coincidentally or not, her bogus looks at me stopped.

She started being pretty nice to me after that.  And, you know what, I still haven't chased her to the ends of the Earth and back.  Why, one time she stopped me outside of her place of employment, her leaving and myself going in, I think, and it was friendly on both sides and no big deal.  I viewed the Facebook friend request as a line in the sand, and since she never accepted it, that was that.  I think her friendliness towards me stems from the belief that, no, I have no plans, now or in the foreseeable future, to ask her out at her place of employment, outside her place of employment, or anywhere else.

And another thing, she could give any of the most attractive young women in my world a run for their money as far as how good she looks.  In a town such as Austin, that's saying a lot.  So there's hope that with time and another, different type of persistence, I can impart to at least some of these women that, though I find them attractive, that does not mean that I will chase them to the ends of the Earth and back. 

My last post talked about the romantic love dilemmas that would tie me up in knots often in my life.  This tendency started in my adolescence when I would become hung up on girls at my school.  Looking back, no matter what the circumstances or on whom I had the fixation, the phenomenon of getting the machinery all locked up and totally dysfunctional persisted for much of my adult life.   I remember a friend mocking me by saying I looked mesmerized on one occasion.  

I go over this again and again and again, but I do so because here resides the truth; my experience with Sara in 1988 has truly shown me the way out of these dilemmas.  Following the template of my time with Sara demonstrated, over and over again, that I never really forsook the love of my life when I would bail on these deals.  That virgin girl at that business in 2014/15 really brought this point home in this, the current era.

The fact that the virgin girl was only twenty-one didn't discourage me from fixating on her.  In fact, it only enhanced the tendency for me become tied up in knots to the extent that I did, and my period of not knowing what to do about all of that lasted approximately four months from the occasion when she fired a shot across my bow to my decisive move to cut her loose.  Since then, the decision to cut these women loose only comes sooner and sooner and with more and more decisive conviction that I'm doing the right thing.

George Clinton said, "Free your mind and your ass will follow."  I think maybe the opposite may ring true in a lot of these situations I find myself in, "Free your ass and your mind will follow."  For example, I often manage to only come up with a good reason for saying no to a person or a situation after I first say no.  Or, as I talked about with this young woman I've been discussing in these posts of late, I only come up with justifications for taking the path I took- avoiding her as best I can- only after the path of letting her go presented itself to me and I went ahead and took it.   

I've written a lot about how I cut this young woman in my world loose five weeks ago now.  She's an employee I would see at one of these businesses I patronize.  I decided to refrain from patronizing this particular business at the times that I knew she might work there.  The over all vibe I get from the employees when I do choose to patronize this business suggests- if this vibe has any basis in reality- the over all vibe suggests that I did the right thing in cutting this young woman loose.

I admit, though, I'm pretty fond of her, even though I don't know this person at all.  I think about how getting to know her better would play out if I had the chance.  I feel as if I reside a safe enough distance from her emotionally that I can fantasize about that stuff from time to time.  I figure she's doing whatever the hell she wants, and that means something that has nothing to do with me, most likely.

I guess I'm going by the whole, "It's about being the right person, not finding the right person," axiom.  I think the right person would have let her go under the circumstances I found myself in.  She didn't seem at all receptive to letting me get closer to her, and I even thought she might have considered me some kind of threat to her, which is a bad sign in anyone's book.

Maybe the move I busted on her, letting her go super early in whatever timeline I went by, might work some day with the right person. I don't know.  I used to have a friend who could pick up women pretty readily, and he would get to have sex with these women soon after meeting them, sometimes within hours.  Right?  Some of them became his girlfriends, and he and these girlfriends often seemed to buy into the notion that they owned each other after dating each other just a little while, like days or weeks, and then the shit could really hit the fan.  

Me, I'm due for another sexual encounter in about two to five years from now, if my history this century holds any clue to that.  The "real" girls I have sex with don't conform to the usual interactive dynamics I saw between myself and this woman.  The girls I have that kind of sex with just come up in some different kind of way that doesn't involve the romantic love dilemmas I found myself in with this woman that I cut loose.  I told a friend of mine the other night that I seemed to exist socially and sexually in a de facto wild oats period.  In other words, I'm sowing my wild oats, at the age of forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, because the women I encounter offer themselves with little or no strings attached, so that my only viable option lies in viewing this time as a wild oats time.

I've been out of action for two weeks now on guitar playing and comics because I have a repetitive motion injury in my left index finger.  It's still pretty numb, and I have a hard time telling whether it is gradually getting better or not.  I think the injury results more from the drawing than the guitar playing.  The other night I noticed that the numbness conformed to the exact areas where I held a pencil in my left hand.  Mostly on the index finger, but also a little on the thumb and the middle finger.

In other news.  My learned ability to make intelligent decisions about women in my world continues unabated.  Anyone with my history with women should make it their goal to learn how to make intelligent decisions about women before they talk of love, girlfriends, or relationships.  Talk of love, girlfriends, and relationships for someone with poor decision making skills in these areas doesn't make sense, because that kind of talk leads to making poor choices of prospective love interests.  An inappropriate love interest does not lead to anything any good for such a person.

I've encountered new, very attractive women in my world, but I'm not filled with the usual apprehension about such things.  I believe the reason I'm not filled with the usual apprehension stems from the notion that I'm more confident that I will make intelligent decisions about such women should the time come to do so.

A month ago I decided to refrain from patronizing a certain business at a time of day when one particular female employee might work there. I'm so glad I made that move. I wanted things to change between myself and this young, very attractive woman, so I decided to make that change.

I'm fifty-five years old. I'm sooo very, very tired of the same old outcome that ALWAYS seems to come about with women such as this one. I'll just say this: they never seem to turn out to be all they're cracked up to be. It's as if some unavailable and disappointing angel just moves from body, to body, to body, ad nauseum.

If I suspect this kind of outcome looms, and that this outcome comes about ALMOST EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to make it about such a person, then who should the resposibility fall on to make the change in outcome? Should I put the responsibility for an acceptable outcome in the hands of yet another twenty/twenty-one year old girl who might have her own (really crappy) ideas about what exactly constitutes an acceptable outcome?

​What constitutes an acceptable outcome, if leaving these things up to such women seems tantamount to flushing myself down some bad-love-interest toilet? The acceptable outcome I readily embrace involves me making little to no moves in such a person's direction. These days I feel like I may as well go piss up a rope as approach these kinds of women.

In letting go of these kinds of deals with these kinds of women, one may run up against the cliches about finding love through letting go of one's beloved. Yeah, right. I may as well go piss up a rope on that account as well, at least as far as these Disappointment Angel Deals shake out.

A certain lower tier celebrity I follow has a hard time with the ladies.  One of his most notorious statements concerns people who advise him to only go after women who are in his "league."  He dramatically leans into the microphone and says, "I don't believe in leagues."  I guess I do believe in leagues as far as dating women.

I've been thinking about the women I've known since 2003, and I can think of six women since then I've been on at least one date with that I consider within my league.  A couple of them I had intimate encounters with, one of them presented me with an opportunity that I turned down, and a few more it never came to that for various reasons.

One thing they all have in common resides in the fact that I never really had to have any real finesse or skill to go out with them on at least one date.  I never really had to successfully negotiate my way through some romantic love equivalent of a fight or flight dilemma to get or give out contact information and go on at least one date with any of them.  

I thought about these things today after I considered the idea of trying to make it about this or that waitress or barista or ice cream parlor girl or what have you.  I never really had to "make it about" any of these women in my league.   They just kind of offered themselves to me on a particular occasion or another. 

I really hope I'm done with aspiring to get with twenty-two year old goddess types. I really hope I'm done with trying to show up at a particular restaurant or coffee shop or comic book store to see whether or not this or that employee has taken an interest in me.  Earlier today I told myself that I would give this one particular deal with one of these employee types a month to bear fruit, but as these deals always seem to shake out once I put a clock on them, I'm ready to blow the whole thing off after a matter of hours.

I've talked about how I've decided to refrain from patronizing a certain business while a particular young woman may work there.  I see no reason to discontinue this practice.  I feel good about my decision overall.  One reason I made this decision has to do with the idea some other employees may have had that this young woman needed protecting from me.  Well, they're doing a bang-up job of protecting her, because I haven't seen her in three weeks now.

One of my songs, "My Girlfriend Is a Hatesong," talks about this waitress at this restaurant I've been going to more often lately, again.  This waitress seems to not work there, which accounts for one big reason I'm going there more often.  I wrote a song titled "My Girlfriend Is a Hatesong" about her because I used my mighty psychic abilities to guess that she tried to rope me into some cruel sexual/ romantic love rejection game she had going on.  One may listen to "My Girlfriend Is a Hatesong" on my Bandcamp page, which one may access on the Music tab on my site.  "My Girlfriend Is a Hatesong" resides as the sixth or so track of my 2018 masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

I don't really know if she tried to rope me into some cruel sexual/ romantic love rejection game, but I didn't use her name in the song or anything that would identify her to an uninformed third party, so that just means my muse is a rather bitter/ paranoid little thing that makes sure the targets of her wrath don't get unduly hurt, I guess. 

But, I would only patronize this business because I wanted to eat there.  I never bothered this woman, I don't  think, I tipped her well, and I just went on my way.  Why rope me in as the loser in some vicious, capitalistic sex game where someone MUST play the role of the loser to whomever she deemed the winner?  And yeah, this waitress might identify herself as just the lefty type who would rail against the excesses of capitalism, save for this one aspect of it which she really gets off on.  One of the main lessons I've learned in following my buddha resides in the way a LOT of people NEED for me to play the role of loser in their tragicomic little shit plays.  I've found this NEED that I'm somehow supposed to meet to exist because following my buddha allows me to shut down my end of it and just observe the world around me.

I've written about the particulars of this waitress' game before, but I'll try to summarize briefly.   This waitress started acting rudely towards me for no reason on the occasions when I would dine there.  I wrote that great song I mentioned at the top of this post, and decided to not go in there for a while.  When I first wrote it I thought, "If I post this on my blog and she reads it, I bet she'd get a real kick out of it," but then I thought better of posting it right then.

I came back to this restaurant after about a month.  She mentioned that she hadn't seen me in a while.  Throughout my meal I overheard her talk to this really handsome, newer waiter in the wait station.  She mentioned twice that she'd moved to Austin when she was twelve, plus other autobiographical information.  As I left, a waiter I liked said, "Have a good one," in a wary tone.

My incredible psychic abilities ascertained that this waitress and this handsome waiter were already boyfriend and girlfriend by the time she volunteered this stuff about herself to him.  My incredible psychic abilities ascertained that her end of the conversation amounted to some charade for the benefit of others, maybe even me.  Anyhoo, given that this stuff just resided in my head, I decided to just stop going  to this place when she worked there and, a month or so after that decision, I posted the dis song of all dis songs, "My Girlfriend Is a Hatesong," available for one's FREE listening pleasure through the link on my Music page to my Bandcamp site.  On the great album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (it's the eighth track on the album).

As I've said before, I wonder how people like her boyfriend like the idea of being used to play these kinds of games?  Sometimes the  sex partner relishes it greatly until they lose, I guess.  But, I imagine at least some of these people don't like the idea of being, ahem, USED as a means for this kind of person's end.  Oh well, I just like to think out loud on these things.

      

I posted two weeks ago that I would stop patronizing one particular business when I thought that one particular female employee may work there.  I said at the time that actions speak louder than words, and so it goes, I haven't seen this particular young woman since, because I really did refrain form patronizing this place during her known hours.  I plan on keeping it up.  I have done a lot of daily activities since my decision, and I feel comfortable in general.  I can sit in a bar or a nightclub at a table for long periods of time and just chill.  I haven't been able to do that kind of thing in as long as I can remember.

The situation I found myself in regarding this young woman just creeped me out somehow.  I tended to project a lot of paranoid thoughts onto her to the point where I just wanted to bail, and bail I did.  The bottom line came to the fact that she didn't seem to want to interact with me at all, and since getting closer to her socially did not present itself as a viable option, and since I did not want things to stay the same, I opted to change things up substantially.  I don't know if any of my paranoid thoughts had any basis in reality, but I feel really good about the idea that I can just bail on one of these situations anytime I want to and not have to worry about forsaking the love of my life.

If I encounter any other waitresses or baristas or whatever in my world that just want to get up in my business and see what I'm made of, I will try to keep the following in mind.  Although I greatly admire the abundance of youth and beauty they typically possess, I'm looking for someone more approachable for social things such as dates.  So, I would like to approach women who possess some of the qualities of youth and beauty these women have, but I want to approach women who might actually go out with me or hang out with me or what have you.

I compiled quite an oh-fer, starting in 2009 and going up to 2013, as far as striking out with the waitresses and baristas in my world.  Since 2013, I've approached three of these types of women through a more discreet Facebook friend request.  Two of those three at least accepted my friend request.  The last one I approached via this method decided to take offense, I guess, so that's it for the Facebook friend requests.  I'm not on Facebook anymore anyway.  

The only other woman of this type I approached since 2013 first invited me to hang out with her at her favorite bar.  I told her I didn't drink, which I guess was the deal killer for her.  That's pretty good, though.  Three Facebook friend requests and one woman who wasn't just a total asshole about the whole deal since 2013.  I don't really feel the need to put myself out there for anyone of these types in my world at this time.  Nope.  It seems as if for every young woman I "process," i.e. decide to let go of somehow, another just sprouts up from somewhere and takes her place.  That may result from the whole "nature abhors a vacuum" phenomenon.  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  I don't really know, and it really doesn't matter.    

I've been working on my youtube channel.  It looks like I'm going to keep a pretty low profile on that, judging by the lack of traffic on the video I uploaded the other day.  I hope to shoot new videos after I rehearse a bunch of songs for the next two weeks.  I have all the equipment I need, and I'm familiar enough with the software that I can work that end too.  The sound is pretty good on the new video, considering that it's live and I'm using a twenty-two dollar condenser mic.  

Um, about what happens in issue number eighteen, yeah.  I'm wondering if people have actually gone down to the library and read that issue.  It seems as if maybe some of the people who read this blog may have done just that.  But, then again, is the data on views to this website real?  Does the data reflect in any way that local people I interact with in my everyday world actually read these blog posts and would go to the trouble to go down to the main library and read the books there on the Zine Shelf?  I wonder, because of the total lack of traffic on the YouTube channel.  

Maybe it's the price I pay for being an underground phenom, people they just don't want me to really know.  Kind of like how God put dinosaur fossils underground when he created the world six thousand years ago in order to fool the skeptics about the age of the Earth.

Soo, if anyone really has read issue number eighteen and thinks anything of that part where I talk to Michelle at the Cannibal Club, there are some things to keep in mind.   Mainly, that medical science says those kind of "recovered memories" are actually hallucinations.  With that in mind, I feel kind of bad exploiting what happened to "Michelle," even though it happened thirty years ago.  Like I said, I seem to keep a pretty low profile and seem doomed to obscurity with my art and music, and that may prove to be the only saving grace for me just coming out with all of this stuff-that not that many people will read it.

I want people to say, "I can at least see why he would have the beliefs he has about these experiences."  I do personally believe that there is something to these experiences I've had.  I've just decided to take a personal leap of faith about all of this stuff, but I just want people to read the books and maybe to sell some at a competitive price.  Yeah, it would be nice to have an audience, over anything more heavy than that.