In 1986, a friend of mine had a young female friend of his visit Austin for a day or two. My friend made a point of introducing me to her, and he talked me up to her. Her name was Susan, and she was fucking gorgeous. Tall, slender, graceful, poised, very attractive face. If Susan and I were to connect intimately, it would be one-night hookup initially, and then she would leave town the next day to move to New York City. My only experience of a one-night stand at that point involved an experience during the Halloween season of 1985. I took an ex-coworker I'll call Kristy like a sex-hungry, savage beast at a time when I found myself at an irredeemable impasse with Veronica Ortega.
Three nights after my intense sexual encounter with Kristy, I had an intense psychotic episode while I worked my busboy job at a very busy, popular Mexican Restaurant. I experienced extreme feelings of guilt and remorse over how I had treated Veronica. Before Veronica and I reached our impasse, I had directed persistent and increasingly insistent attention to Veronica in the form of almost daily phone calls where I repeatedly asked her for dates, and in turn Veronica repeatedly turned me down and insisted she was busy with school and work.
The psychotic episode I weathered through a busy night at the restaurant morphed into intense feelings of love and connectedness towards Veronica, but really, these intense feelings of love and connection were just another form of the disconnected psychosis, because Veronica did not feel the same way about me. In fact, she took on a new boyfriend who, in turned out, also hired her at his interior design firm the same weekend they hooked up. She told me all about it on the Sunday night afterwards. That, coupled with my one-night stand with Kristy on that same weekend, brought on the psychotic episode.
So yeah, the prospect of a one-night stand with Susan didn't really appeal to me during the following summer of 1986. I still wanted to try to make things work with Donna. Just as I had willed Donna, a woman I had met briefly only one time; a woman I knew to have a serious boyfriend; just as I had willed Donna to be my chosen love interest; I willed the idea that Susan was not really available, even though she insistently hinted to me that she was really available during the course of our evening out with a group of friends; an evening in which we went to a house party and wound up at the friend's house where Susan was spending the night.
I managed to communicate to Susan my own sense that my life was too chaotic for me to take on any sexual and emotional acrobatics with her that night, and she was cool with it. After she left for New York City, Wolfgang, our mutual friend, told me that Susan said that she liked me. I've had many, many occasions, some before that summer, and many, many since, where I let an opportunity slip through my fingers, and many of the women were mean or snotty about it. I conclude two things about those occasions: 1) that many of these "opportunities" really weren't opportunities at all, but rather that the girls or women were just attempting to play me for a fool, or 2) that the women really wanted to give me an opportunity, but that they were just mean about it and/or had messed up, troubled ideas about intimacy and sexuality because they were messed up, troubled women.
Susan stands out to this day as a genuine, broad-side-of-a-barn opportunity that I did indeed just let slip through my fingers. But you know what? She was really nice about it. I thought about that aspect of it all last night. That one night I hung out with her, when we wound up the night sitting on Wolfgang's front steps of the house he shared with two roommates, I told her stories of my life at the time that brought home to her that my priorities centered around staying out of trouble, and my overall manner towards her conveyed that I really did like her. So I begged off of an opportunity for sex with Susan and all of that because I thought I could have something that involved less randomness and chaos with my love interest, "Donna." Boy, was I wrong about that!
So here I am, sixty years old, and I'm trying a new wrinkle to the whole notion of opportunity. What if I just let supposed opportunities to get with woman in my world slip through my fingers? Suppose I did this, not in an effort to save myself for a love interest, but just to see what happens? What if I let opportunities with women in my world slip through my fingers that I would, in my increasingly distant past, have assigned the role of love interest to? What would happen then?
Well ladies, I'm going to set a bar for YOU in all of this. It would be NICE if all of you that I try this ongoing experiment with, this experiment that I call following my buddha; it would be nice if you all could be as nice to me about it as Susan was in 1986. She did not act pissed off or alienated by my course of action; by my just begging off of my GENUINE opportunity to get with her. After all, I find it pretty easy to be nice to you women when I have this mindset on, and if any of you are rude, mean, or snotty about my clear-cut, chosen path, well, that'll likely just arouse more suspicion in me than regret.
In reality, what I've discovered with this chosen path is more along the lines of a tightening up of my game rather than an absolute renunciation of all interactions and relations with the women of my world. My chosen path seems to open up a wholly new space for me to work with women I would have previously just pursued to the ends of the earth and back; with women I would have assigned the role of love interest to in my increasingly distant past.
The last woman I openly declared as my chosen love interest was that former cashier at that grocery store I still patronize. I think I did open up a new space where we had the chance to work but for the fact that she was just not available for me and/or not interested in me at all just told me that our deal was not meant to be. Following my buddha helped me do a beautiful job in taking care of my end of it, and the fact that she simply did not reciprocate just convinced me that it was appropriate for me to let her go like I did.
So, the topic today is skeptical inquiry. Skeptical inquiry involves a process of elimination. When one opens up a subject of study to skeptical inquiry, one sets up a hypothesis-a guess-about the nature of the subject or phenomenon, and eliminates all other possibilities until the hypothesis one initially puts out there about the nature of the subject or phenomenon is the only remaining viable conclusion.
The nature of my skeptical inquiry into the "what if I turned my back on love" experiment, I figure, is NOT along the lines of, "Is Mary really single," or, "Is Jane really interested in me." Those two kinds of questions are definitely a PART of it, but the overall line of skeptical inquiry is, "Am I really onto something, or am I totally full of shit?" So, I must eliminate the overarching possibility that I'm just totally full of shit with this experiment of letting opportunities to get with women in my world slip through my fingers, and if my experiment bears substantive fruit, then voila, I have a workable theory about how to make this whole dating game work for me, Richard Alexander. Whether it would work for even one other guy than me, who knows?
I personally think I have an actual theory here. Enough has worked out for me to call this a theory. Since I revived my experiment in September of 2012, I have not experienced the kinds of emotional and mental upheavals that typically accompanied my efforts to improve my relationship with women. This FACT by itself makes this theory, and I'll call it a theory now; this fact makes it something I can really work with.
That's not all, either. My whole attitude towards women in general seems MUCH better these days. I think my utilization of this approach, again, "What if I turned my back on love?," or, "What if I let this supposed opportunity slip through my fingers?," or, "What would happen if I just blow this person off?," the paths that open up through these ways of thinking seem to allow me an opportunity to get to know the kinds of women I've desired almost all of my life a lot better than I knew them through my futile efforts to chase them to the ends of the earth and back. Even though the kinds of women I've found so desirable throughout my adolescent and adult life almost NEVER gave me much in the way of opportunities to get with them socially or intimately, these techniques seem to allow me to know their ways and what makes them tick MUCH better than I did in the days of Veronica Ortega or Wanda. That apparent knowledge and insight has helped me a great deal in maintaining an overall mental and emotional stability.
I could go on and on in the vein of how much of my efforts to follow the little fat man have improved things for me. Yeah, I'm still not getting laid much, nor have I really had much in the way of actual opportunities to get laid since I revived my experiment in 2012, but I really think I could just croak in a wreck on the highway tomorrow and others could take up this experiment and carry it to a fuller fruition than I've been able to realize at this point. That is, if I were to die or become incapacitated somehow tomorrow, or the day after, or the next week, month, or year.
Three nights after my intense sexual encounter with Kristy, I had an intense psychotic episode while I worked my busboy job at a very busy, popular Mexican Restaurant. I experienced extreme feelings of guilt and remorse over how I had treated Veronica. Before Veronica and I reached our impasse, I had directed persistent and increasingly insistent attention to Veronica in the form of almost daily phone calls where I repeatedly asked her for dates, and in turn Veronica repeatedly turned me down and insisted she was busy with school and work.
The psychotic episode I weathered through a busy night at the restaurant morphed into intense feelings of love and connectedness towards Veronica, but really, these intense feelings of love and connection were just another form of the disconnected psychosis, because Veronica did not feel the same way about me. In fact, she took on a new boyfriend who, in turned out, also hired her at his interior design firm the same weekend they hooked up. She told me all about it on the Sunday night afterwards. That, coupled with my one-night stand with Kristy on that same weekend, brought on the psychotic episode.
So yeah, the prospect of a one-night stand with Susan didn't really appeal to me during the following summer of 1986. I still wanted to try to make things work with Donna. Just as I had willed Donna, a woman I had met briefly only one time; a woman I knew to have a serious boyfriend; just as I had willed Donna to be my chosen love interest; I willed the idea that Susan was not really available, even though she insistently hinted to me that she was really available during the course of our evening out with a group of friends; an evening in which we went to a house party and wound up at the friend's house where Susan was spending the night.
I managed to communicate to Susan my own sense that my life was too chaotic for me to take on any sexual and emotional acrobatics with her that night, and she was cool with it. After she left for New York City, Wolfgang, our mutual friend, told me that Susan said that she liked me. I've had many, many occasions, some before that summer, and many, many since, where I let an opportunity slip through my fingers, and many of the women were mean or snotty about it. I conclude two things about those occasions: 1) that many of these "opportunities" really weren't opportunities at all, but rather that the girls or women were just attempting to play me for a fool, or 2) that the women really wanted to give me an opportunity, but that they were just mean about it and/or had messed up, troubled ideas about intimacy and sexuality because they were messed up, troubled women.
Susan stands out to this day as a genuine, broad-side-of-a-barn opportunity that I did indeed just let slip through my fingers. But you know what? She was really nice about it. I thought about that aspect of it all last night. That one night I hung out with her, when we wound up the night sitting on Wolfgang's front steps of the house he shared with two roommates, I told her stories of my life at the time that brought home to her that my priorities centered around staying out of trouble, and my overall manner towards her conveyed that I really did like her. So I begged off of an opportunity for sex with Susan and all of that because I thought I could have something that involved less randomness and chaos with my love interest, "Donna." Boy, was I wrong about that!
So here I am, sixty years old, and I'm trying a new wrinkle to the whole notion of opportunity. What if I just let supposed opportunities to get with woman in my world slip through my fingers? Suppose I did this, not in an effort to save myself for a love interest, but just to see what happens? What if I let opportunities with women in my world slip through my fingers that I would, in my increasingly distant past, have assigned the role of love interest to? What would happen then?
Well ladies, I'm going to set a bar for YOU in all of this. It would be NICE if all of you that I try this ongoing experiment with, this experiment that I call following my buddha; it would be nice if you all could be as nice to me about it as Susan was in 1986. She did not act pissed off or alienated by my course of action; by my just begging off of my GENUINE opportunity to get with her. After all, I find it pretty easy to be nice to you women when I have this mindset on, and if any of you are rude, mean, or snotty about my clear-cut, chosen path, well, that'll likely just arouse more suspicion in me than regret.
In reality, what I've discovered with this chosen path is more along the lines of a tightening up of my game rather than an absolute renunciation of all interactions and relations with the women of my world. My chosen path seems to open up a wholly new space for me to work with women I would have previously just pursued to the ends of the earth and back; with women I would have assigned the role of love interest to in my increasingly distant past.
The last woman I openly declared as my chosen love interest was that former cashier at that grocery store I still patronize. I think I did open up a new space where we had the chance to work but for the fact that she was just not available for me and/or not interested in me at all just told me that our deal was not meant to be. Following my buddha helped me do a beautiful job in taking care of my end of it, and the fact that she simply did not reciprocate just convinced me that it was appropriate for me to let her go like I did.
So, the topic today is skeptical inquiry. Skeptical inquiry involves a process of elimination. When one opens up a subject of study to skeptical inquiry, one sets up a hypothesis-a guess-about the nature of the subject or phenomenon, and eliminates all other possibilities until the hypothesis one initially puts out there about the nature of the subject or phenomenon is the only remaining viable conclusion.
The nature of my skeptical inquiry into the "what if I turned my back on love" experiment, I figure, is NOT along the lines of, "Is Mary really single," or, "Is Jane really interested in me." Those two kinds of questions are definitely a PART of it, but the overall line of skeptical inquiry is, "Am I really onto something, or am I totally full of shit?" So, I must eliminate the overarching possibility that I'm just totally full of shit with this experiment of letting opportunities to get with women in my world slip through my fingers, and if my experiment bears substantive fruit, then voila, I have a workable theory about how to make this whole dating game work for me, Richard Alexander. Whether it would work for even one other guy than me, who knows?
I personally think I have an actual theory here. Enough has worked out for me to call this a theory. Since I revived my experiment in September of 2012, I have not experienced the kinds of emotional and mental upheavals that typically accompanied my efforts to improve my relationship with women. This FACT by itself makes this theory, and I'll call it a theory now; this fact makes it something I can really work with.
That's not all, either. My whole attitude towards women in general seems MUCH better these days. I think my utilization of this approach, again, "What if I turned my back on love?," or, "What if I let this supposed opportunity slip through my fingers?," or, "What would happen if I just blow this person off?," the paths that open up through these ways of thinking seem to allow me an opportunity to get to know the kinds of women I've desired almost all of my life a lot better than I knew them through my futile efforts to chase them to the ends of the earth and back. Even though the kinds of women I've found so desirable throughout my adolescent and adult life almost NEVER gave me much in the way of opportunities to get with them socially or intimately, these techniques seem to allow me to know their ways and what makes them tick MUCH better than I did in the days of Veronica Ortega or Wanda. That apparent knowledge and insight has helped me a great deal in maintaining an overall mental and emotional stability.
I could go on and on in the vein of how much of my efforts to follow the little fat man have improved things for me. Yeah, I'm still not getting laid much, nor have I really had much in the way of actual opportunities to get laid since I revived my experiment in 2012, but I really think I could just croak in a wreck on the highway tomorrow and others could take up this experiment and carry it to a fuller fruition than I've been able to realize at this point. That is, if I were to die or become incapacitated somehow tomorrow, or the day after, or the next week, month, or year.
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