My standards for one date with a woman list as follows:  1) available, 2) interested, 3) act like they give a shit about taking care of themselves.  Even with those, from my point of view, pretty forgiving standards, I don't get out much.  That includes the years in the  run up to this pandemic period.  Also, Ive had a problem several times with women who do want to go out with me, but can't manage that third requirement in the list.  Namely, act like they give shit about taking care of themselves.  By "problem" I mean they have a drug and/or alcohol problem.

I've decided to try to patronize that business that the young woman I go on at length about works at during the times I knew her to work there.  I don't even know if she still works at this business.  I hope she still works there, because I would like to go there and see if I could tell whether she is, 1) available, 2) interested, 3) acts like she gives a shit about taking care of herself.   I have a feeling that she meets the third item on the list, at least.  I don't know about the other two, though.  

I see those standards as pretty damn democratic, at least in comparison to a set of standards that would ONLY include someone who is as young as her and looks as good as her.  I've gone on actual dates with some women whom I was not infatuated with, who were not twenty-two years old, and did not look as good as this young woman, simply because I wanted to honor that more forgiving set of standards and not just be a total dateless wonder in life.  I think men who make it all about really attractive young women exclusively don't like women very much, when all is said and done.  That said, a willingness to go out with this young woman, if she meets my newer, more forgiving set of standards counts as democratic as well, to my way of seeing things.

I've said in previous posts that, for now, I want a variety of dating experiences with a variety of women.  Even though I'm very much attracted to this young women, and my fantasies about how things play out with her run towards more, um, traditional scenarios, I'm going to stick to my guns on my stated goal with my relationship with women.  Yep, a variety of dating experiences with a variety of women.  I look back on my past failings with women I considered exciting, women who remind me of her, and I keep coming back to one word; incompatibility.  I've gone on at length in this forum about all the ways the women from my past and I just weren't on the same page in one way or another, which led to a soul crushing incompatibility between myself and these women.  I think a goal that includes the possibility of seeing other women, and I don't necessarily mean making a uniform sexual conquest of a variety women I go out with- it's never worked out that way- I think at least allowing for that possibility to exist in a world where we won't find ourselves so beset with this pandemic issue will allow me to not put so much off on someone such as this young woman.  It takes pressure off of her and it takes pressure off of me, in other words. 

I don't go many places due to the current pandemic situation.  I do go to a couple of coffee shops several times a week.  I've noticed sometimes that very attractive young women will look at me a little more than usual or otherwise vie for my attention.  I like this.  They all seem to have in common a certain height and body proportion that remind me of  that young woman at that business I can go on about so much.

I don't want to see that young woman at that business right now.  I figure that if I tried to favor her with attention at her job, I would have the overwhelming feeling at some point that she might just want me to leave her alone and not bother her at all.  After all, it's OTHER woman at these coffee shops who look at me a moment more than usual or even put on a little miniature show for me by struttin' their stuff in front of me.  This attention, regardless of where it's coming from, seems to act as a salve on the bitter feelings over where this young woman might have been coming from for a good deal of that time these past two years.  She seemed to back off towards the end there, which helps.  These little interactions with these other young women seem to kind of let me know that I did the right thing by letting this young woman at this business go.

I had a real bad case of flu starting Saturday, Jan, 2nd, until the fever broke early last Sunday morning.   I tested twice for Covid, both negative.  I've never been through anything like that.  I had no one to fix me food or help me in any way.  I had to drive myself to the doctor and the pharmacist.  I had to do some housekeeping.  I had to keep up with bathing and grooming.  I had to make sure I didn't fall and bust my head open.  All that shit.  I had groceries delivered, thank god (thank HEB).  I'm feeling weak, but much better.  Anyway, that's what I've been up  to.

I've decided to refrain from patronizing that business that the young woman I go on about at length works at during the times I've known her to work there.  I want my intention to let her go to manifest itself in an explicit, material way.  I've been thinking at length today about this young woman, along with the women from my past she readily reminds me of, and I've come to several conclusions.  One: the decisions I typically make about women such as her typically have nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not I want to date them, have sex with them, have a relationship with them, or anything like that.  The decisions I have to make about  women such as her have more to do with whether I even want to approach them socially in the first place, so forget about those big decisions, they aren't even on the table at the stage where I have to make a really, really critical decision about whether or not to have anything at all to do with them in the first place.  Two: the intelligent decision invariably seems to turn out to be the decision to not have anything to do with them in the first place.  Three: I can like someone such as this young woman a LOT, and have absolutely no desire to try to get anything going at all with them when push comes to shove.  

It seems to me that young women such as this one I go on at length about just have a desire to cultivate one-sided attention from me towards them.  Well, I can absolutely adore the ground someone such as this young woman walks on and STILL, STILL, have absolutely ZERO DESIRE to bombard them with one-sided attention.  Not only can I have no desire to bombard them with one-sided attention, but I've actually taught myself how to have the ability to refrain from bombarding them with one-sided attention.  That makes me very happy.

In high school I fixated, hard, on one of my classmates and got myself worked up into a very, very distressed state about the whole matter.   Eventually, a senior girl in one of my art classes took an interest in me, and I went chasing after her and forgot all about the other girl.  BUT, my creepy, obsessive behaviors did not end.  I started doing things to the senior girl such as calling her house at 2 AM and hanging up when she or someone else answered.  So, the lesson I've learned from that entails the realization that there is no right person for me if I'm not right with myself.

Now, these days, these situations I've find myself in with twenty, twenty-one year old girls at the business this young woman works at don't just constitute useless appendages to my day to day life that I just wish I could cut off and be done with, not at all.  A couple of months ago I talked about a young woman I call Daria who gave me her email address right before this pandemic shit hit the fan.  Well, the same degree of self-restraint and self-control that I try to exhibit in how I handle these situations with these women at this one particular business-the business where this young woman I go on about works- that same degree of self-control absolutely spills over into how I relate to the Darias of this world.  So, as attracted as I may be to someone such as Daria, I still have no desire to bombard them with phone calls, emails, text-messages, messages on social media, or anything else, and I can follow through on that.

Maybe these blog posts ARE the one-sided attention these young women so very much seem to covet from me.  I may be old-fashioned and think that truly one-sided attention involves an effort to directly connect with someone through a personal phone call, or text, or email, or some such, so I don't worry too much about these blog posts in and of themselves compromising my best interests, or their best interests, as long as I obey the Thou Shalt Not Disrespect the Power of the Internet commandment. 

I've pretty much decided to not use that girl's likeness as the face of my main female character in my Van Helsing story.  I've also decided to not use another woman's likeness for the face of one of the main antagonists.  I think I'll model these character's likenesses after old movie stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema instead.  

Josh Bayer said in a review of one of my books that he suspected that I was a self-taught cartoonist.  I resist labels such as "self-taught," because I believe all of us learn from someone or something, even if not in an academic, tutorial, or apprentice setting.  I've read some books on cartooning that my parents gave me as a kid, that I've checked out at the library, or that I've bought in recent years.  Plus, I've made friends with people who've taught me stuff, so I count peer exchanges of information as being taught as well.

But, I've learned some lessons the hard way, I'm afraid.  In 1999 I completed the first issue of Richy Vegas Comics.  In that issue I drew some people who antagonized me in real life as victims of my version of the Whitman Massacre.  They seemed to not take that well at all after I sent one of them a copy of my book, and so a whispering campaign may have begun in the succeeding years.

It took the self-publication and distribution of issue four, "Anita, You're the Reason I'm Not In Prison," where I tell my side of the story of the incident that upset me so much in the first place that involved these people; it took that to put the kibosh on their shit.  So, I will apply the lessons I've learned from that episode, and not use these women's likenesses as the likenesses of fictional characters in my book.  You can do anything you want with comics!

I portray real life women such as Michelle, Robin, and Jenna using my best memories of what they looked like back then.  I make no attempt to alter their appearance, even if I sometimes give them a pseudonym.   I count on factors such as the fact that the stories take place so long ago, and my low overall profile in my chosen field of expression (self-published indie comics) to keep me out of trouble with all of the real life people I portray in general and the above mentioned women in particular.

If, by chance, a Robin, or Jenna, or Michelle from my stories objected to my efforts to lay some issues bare in the telling of these stories and wanted some sort of compensation, my options would prove limited.  I don't make any money off of these books, in fact, they cost me money to print up and sell at an overall loss.  Add the fact that my sales in a given year typically number in the several dozens at best, and one might get the idea of where I"m coming from as far as monetary compensation for these women.

But, I do have the original artwork that portrays Michelle, Robin, and Jenna in these comics almost completely intact, and I could give them some drawings to do with what they wish.  If they wanted to print up t-shirts or other merchandise from the art, I would want a piece of that action, and I would try to get that kind of thing in legal writing at my own expense from an entertainment lawyer.  The drawings themselves are non-archival, I'm afraid, but I would pay a lawyer to inform me of my rights in the event that someone such as the above mentioned women could sell the drawings to someone else.  I'm in no hurry to tell any of the women, or men, for that matter, that I portray in the these books of their existence in the world, but if more substantial sales, possibly a publishing deal, and thus a higher profile came about, that could all change.  "Money changes everything," as Cyndi Lauper once sang.

I mention these points because last night and today I experienced a cascade of ideas that would help me flesh out the Dr. Van Helsing story that I mentioned a few weeks back on this blog.  I still have at least eight books to complete before I'd even have the chance to work on a three or four book run of that story, but if my recent past productivity indicates future prospects, I could get to that story in four years or less.  We live in a crazy world, and I'm a crazy guy, but I can think of someone such as Robert Caro as an example of someone planning out decades of literary work for himself.  In his case, it's his biographical series of books on Lyndon Johnson that he probably first pitched soon after Johnson's death in the early seventies and finds himself still working on to this day.

Okay, back to Van Helsing. In my post of a few weeks back, I mentioned a young woman I still go on about as a physical model for the female lead character.  Now, I think she still works at this business I patronize, but I don't want to go in there when I think she might work there because I don't want anyone getting any wrong ideas about my intentions towards her.  I've pretty much accepted that she made whatever decisions in her life she made a long time ago, and that those decisions don't involve me.  I also know that my old ways of trying to get with one such as her don't work.  Those old ways involve, in no particular order: chasing her to the ends of the Earth and back, trying to be a great guy and make everything work out all by myself, trying to win her over, or carrying a torch for her.  I still think of her, of course, but, even in these times of pandemic, I try to approach other women for social reasons in some capacity.  So, to the extent that I still carry a  torch for her, I don't attempt to forsake all others on her account.

Okay, back to the Van Helsing story.  I could see giving her some original art in exchange for her blessing on the project.  There exists many, many examples of the artist/ muse relationship that never involved personal... anything between them.  Andrew Wyeth and his go-to model come to mind, and I get the impression that Botticelli never had intimate relations with his Venus on the half shell muse.  Now, in New York in the early nineties, I saw some photographs by an outsider artist, a baker by trade, that depicted his wife on a throne dressed up in regal garb of his and/or her making.  In the gallery brochure, the critic John Yau described his wife's participation in these photo shoots as an active, equal artistic collaboration with her husband the photographer, rather than the typical connotation of the photographer as the creative force, and the model as a passive muse.

Again, I've no interest in approaching this young woman for such a project.  I'd probably lock horns with her over the character that has her likeness- sympathetic though that character may be in the story.  Also, I can't guarantee that I will even get around to this project after all that books I have to complete beforehand, but, there it is anyway.  If, by some chance I were to make the social acquaintance of this young woman, and she found the whole project okay with her, she could perhaps provide meaningful reference for costuming of the period (early 20th century Amsterdam) for her character, plus other reference of things she could research online or elsewhere.  Then again, maybe not.  She doesn't have to be my girlfriend for any of that to happen, and I could compensate her with original drawings.  Okay?    

I decided to quit smoking in the wake of the September 11th attacks.  As the aftermath of those attacks wore on, I realized that all my smoking, drinking, and drug use represented not very constructive ways of coping with loneliness.  I decided to refrain from drinking and pot smoking on the nights I had to myself in my apartment, and my success at those efforts gave me the confidence to take a stab at quitting smoking. 

In the months that followed, talk flowed freely about the prospect of more terrorist attacks against the United States, including the prospect of a nuclear terrorist attack.  I relapsed on the cigarette smoking after about two months of successfully quitting in my initial effort to stop smoking over the prospect of a nuclear terrorist attack.  But, somewhere along the way, I said to myself, "What if it really is about quitting smoking and trying to take better care of myself over all?  Suppose I continue to smoke two packs or more a day and never get blown up by a terrorist's bomb?  I'd feel like a real asshole then."  Well, it's been eighteen years since I last had a cigarette, and I personally have not been subjected to a terrorist attack of any kind.  That's not to say terrorist attacks are not a real threat, but in my case, if I'd continued smoking like I was, I'd either be dead by now or wish I were dead from all the damage to my health such an addiction could do in eighteen years.

I thought about all of that today after I read about mad King Donald and his days of rage and denial as this pandemic churns along unmitigated by any meaningful leadership from him.  I decided to black out the news until ten o'clock tonight and just try to control the five percent of my world I can control until then.  I just went for a long walk, and I feel better.  That's not to say Trump won't try something crazy on all kinds of levels, but I'm not going to stop taking care of myself just at the prospect of that kind of thing.  I made  a bet with myself that I would buy myself an inexpensive present on January 20th, 2021, if Donald Trump is really gone by then.  If, for some crazy reason, he's still President after his expiration date, I will buy myself a piece of cake at the grocery store.  I've lost forty pounds since late December, 2018 and I've lost twenty-five pounds since this pandemic period began.  What if it really is about taking care of myself in those kinds of ways, rather than worrying all the time about what Trump might do?

Speaking of taking care of myself, I'm not patronizing that business at the times that young  woman might work there, for the most part.  I saw her in there the other day.  Before I saw her, I thought she'd quit.  I don't want to give her or anyone else the impression that I'm trying to get with her in any way.  I don't want anyone thinking I'm trying to win her over, or that I'm carrying a torch for her.  I'm sending a woman I've never met one of my books in the mail, because I ordered her comic book from her, read it, and liked it.  I only mention that because I count that kind of thing as more of an effort to connect with someone who is not this person I go on about than I have ever tried to connect with this person I go on about.

After Donald Trump got elected in 2016, I offered my services as his own personal Scheherazade.  I offered to tell him tales of The Legend of Richy Vegas every night if he'd just keep his insane bullshit under control.  I even offered to let him bugger me in the ass at the coming of the dawn.  

Well he never took me up on that, so to speak, but I kind of had another taker on that offer.  I do think that young woman I go on about reads these blog posts, and I think she might have even gone to the trouble to go down to the Central Library and read my comics as well.  If that's true, that's awesome!  From the very start, though, I suspected her of having it in for me.  If my "tales" have managed to pacify her to some extent, well alright then.

The Sultan in Arabian Nights eventually gives up his murderous ways towards the women and marries Scheherazade, but I think maybe this young woman and I will go our separate ways before all is said and done.  I have made a vow to myself to refrain from chasing her to the ends of the Earth and back, and also to not try to be some great guy and assume one hundred percent of the burden of seeing that all ends well, with myself and this young woman winding up as boyfriend and girlfriend, and my last post alluded to my desire to refrain from trying to win her over from some place I don't want her to be to some place I do want her to be.  Whew!  Long sentence.

I will reveal this, though. This morning I had an idea to do a comic book story about the young Dr. Van Helsing, and if this project ever sees the light of day. I will use this young lady's likeness as the female lead.  I have at least eight more issues of my comic book to complete before I can get to it, and that might be just as well.  By the time I get to this story, if I do it, I will probably just have an ever fading memory of this young woman's likeness, and she will have a hard time suing me over stealing her likeness in court.  Ha ha!  

I'm going to tell most of the story contained in issue number four of Richy Vegas Comics. I titled the story, "Anita, You're the Reason I'm Not In Prison."  At the beginning of the book, I go into how I felt a sense of acceptance in 1999 while I worked a dishwashing job at a restaurant in central Austin.   I talked about my psychiatric issues, and how this period of my life saw me stabilized and on medication.  I talked about how young women took an interest in me for the first time in a long time.  I talked about how I confessed an obsession with a young woman who worked there on and off during that time.  I confessed this predicament to Julie's roommate, Cesca.

Well, I made a mistake in doing that.  I tried to work it out with Julie, but she and Cesca turned adversarial before too long.  In the last week of the restaurant's existence I smelled a rat.  One day I went in to the restaurant to get a cup of coffee- I didn't work that night- and Cesca pointedly asks me, "Richard, what are you doing here?"  I explained that I was in the neighborhood, and how I thought I'd just stop by and get some coffee.  I drank my coffee for a little while and Cesca asks again, "Richard, what are you doing here?"  I explain again what I was doing there, drank my coffee and left.

A couple of days before that exchange, Julie came off as really cold when I talked to her a little on the phone in regards to a painting I had loaned those girls for their house.  I added this stuff up while I worked a shift at the restaurant later that week.  At the end of the night, I drank my beer with Cesca and Carl, Cesca's boyfriend.  Three Dog NIght's "One" played over the sound system.  The lyrics go, "One is the loneliest number/ one is the loneliest number/ one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do."  I exclaimed, "What is this shit music?" and Cesca rocked her head back and forth and laughed.  As I sat outside and waited for a cab after that, Carl sneered, "See ya'," as they drove off.

The second to last night of the restaurant's run came the following Friday night.  A mixture of thoughts filled my head.  As I smoked by the dumpster out back, I fantasized about telling Julie's daddy what I lucky guy I was to have her.  A little later, I sarcastically told Cesca, "I want to thank you for everything you've done for me," while I got a rack of dirty glasses from the bar.  

That Friday night was very busy.  At one point I went to get a glass rack on the deck, and a woman stood in front of me.  I recognized Anita.  I had gone to hight school and UT art school with her.  She beckoned me over to her table and gave me her phone number.

I went back to work, and by the time the Summer evening turned to night, Julie sat at the bar.  I was about to greet Julie, when Anita walked up.  Anita said, "It was good to see you Richard.  You have my phone number right?  You'll call me right?"  I said, "I will," with great relish.  Anita and I made a little more small talk and then she walked off.  I turned to Julie and said, "Hi Julie," as nice as I could.  Julie grimaced as she drank her red wine and gasped out a, "Hello."  

Right after that, a guy who had been sitting three chairs down from Julie went over to talk to her.  I'd seen those two exchange a greeting the week before at the restaurant.  I went about my work duties.  I didn't occur to me to ask Julie out or anything, and I thought how great it was that Anita came along when she did.  A little while later I saw that Julie and that guy sat together at a table in front of the bar.  I went about my business, but not long after, they left together with Julie saying 'bye to Cesca and others.

I figured that, with the assistance of Anita, I had managed to walk in and out of a setup that Julie and her new boyfriend had cooked up.  I figured that Vernon Hoe and the League had sent Anita out, because they had my phone tapped and they found out how much distress i felt over the whole situation when I called a friend about it in the weeks leading up to this second to last night at at the restaurant.

I won't go into the rest of the story.  The Eleventh Commandment?  Oh, I tried to win Julie over when I attempted to work things out with her.  Julie had hinted months earlier in a rather cruel way that she had no interest in dating me, and I disregarded this hint and tried to win her over, and that explained her and Cesca's distasteful behavior towards me.  I don't know that the punishment exactly fit the crime, but Julie might have been scared of me.  I don't know.  

So the Eleventh Commandment goes something like, "Thou shalt not try to win anyone over romantically," or some such.  I've never been won over myself- from a state of not having an attraction to someone to having an attraction to someone due to their efforts to win me over- so I don't know why I'd expect women to be won over by me because of how nice I am or whatever.

In my last post I talked about Snolly.  I related a story that involved me talking to her a little at a Halloween party in 1997.  I talked to her a little, and then went to the store for cigarettes.  When I returned, Snolly had left.  In that last post I talked about how I figured Snolly might have had it in for me in the previous year.  I talked about how I broke all of that up by just asking her alleged coconspirator, Lane, if he knew of any girls that worked at their restaurant that liked me.  Lane had to say no to that, because he couldn't hint in an out of context way that I would draw unfounded conclusions from regarding Snolly or anyone else.  Well, that clears that up.

Anyway, at this party, I went to get cigarettes, but I didn't know she'd leave in the meantime.  I probably thought I'd just play it cool and catch her some other time if she did leave while I was gone.  I probably just thought I'd see her around, but I never saw her after that.  I figured that Snolly must have moved out of town sometime thereafter.  Those two male managers at that restaurant, Joel and David, seemed to like me a lot after all of the blew over, but really, I probably just thought I'd catch her later.

The case of "Noelle" represents a whole other matter, though.  An ex-friend of mine started having sex with Noelle very soon after he first met her in late 2008.  The problem that presented involved the fact that my friend had a serious girlfriend at the time.  My friend described his relationship to Noelle to me as, "Just a flirtation."  I took his insistence on this statement at face value, at first.  Noelle showed up with two girlfriends at my band's show at Headhunters one cold night in January, 2009.  She also hung out at my house with some friends and watched me perform some of my own songs.  I got the hint that some people wanted me to take an interest in Noelle.

This presented problems.  I had committed to lifelong abstinence from drugs and alcohol in late December of 2008.  This attempt at total abstinence caused me to have problems with my antipsychotic medication.  All of a sudden my prescribed dose of medication was not powerful enough, because the alcohol I used to drink so much of apparently had a sedating effect, and now that was gone.  It took me a while to figure that out on my own, and I set up an appointment to see a new psychiatrist to get a change, but that would take two more weeks, not until late January, 2009.

Meanwhile, my supposed love interest, Noelle, just wasn't adding up.  I picked her up for a date at her house, and this guy was there who always seemed to be there whenever I showed up.  I took her on our date, and she said that this guy was just a friend.  She also said that she never had sex with my friend, either.  She also said, out of the blue, "I do things I'm not supposed to do," like three times.  While all this stuff with her goes down, I'm still having issues with my now inadequate dose of medication.  I turn all of this confusion over in my head in the days that follow my date with Noelle.  I go over to Noelle's one more time in the late afternoon to give her some food I'd bought on a trip to Llano, and there sits this guy with her.  I allude to my suspicions about their relationship, and she denies my statement.

I deicide to not call her anymore, and before too long my friend gets upset about this.  I blow Noelle off in late January sometime, and I consider it a done deal, because I immediately feel better about my decision and have no desire to go back to all of that confusion on top of my medication issues.  I see the new psychiatrist, and eventually get my medication increased permanently after an initial experiment that involved taking an extra amount as I felt I needed it.

In late February, Early March of 2009, i go over to a bit of a party at my former friend's house, and he starts giving me shit about Noelle when his other girlfriend is out of the room.  About how, "All she wanted was to be your friend, but that wasn't good enough for you." Before too long, I head to the door, and my former friend says, "Get back in here! You piece of shit!"   I leave.

I stick to my guns about Noelle.  In the process of telling my former friend to fuck off when he called me again, I figured that he was lying about the nature of his relationship to her, and that she lied to me about both of her boyfriends.  Aye, yi, yi!  Blowing Noelle off wasn't everything I wanted out of my relationship with women, but I still achieved a measure of satisfaction and gratification from doing it in a timely manner, before things went sideways with me as some sort of dupe trying to make something real happen.

I fired my therapist at the time in May of 2009.  "Relationship, relationship, relationship." He sounded like a broken fucking record.  I got tired of it.  My goal for the longest time, since 2002, was to have a variety of dating experiences with a variety of women.  One, to find out what kind of person I really wanted to go out with- to not just play exclusively to some preconceived notion of what I wanted with a relationship with such a person always on my mind- and two, to compile a history with women where I didn't get hurt.  At fifty-six years old, that's still pretty much my goal.  If I marry at all, it might not be until I am in my sixties.  With that in mind, it's still very satisfying to blow off the Snollys, the Noelles, and the others of their ilk.  It's not everything I ever wanted in my relationship with women, but I just figure that's as big a part of the dating scene as the actual dating of actual women.