I had someone tell me once that a mutual friend of ours said that I was compulsively self-revealing. Okay, I guess this post will prove that. I do this for a reason, though. I've spent this overnight period in bed thinking about someone and where they might have been coming from with some of the kinds of attentions they did pay to me over these almost three years. I thought the subject of where they might be coming from in general in regards to me so delicate and so personal that I figure it a good idea if I put the primary focus of this post on myself instead of them.
I first must extend my apologies to my sister, whom I will call Judy, because I will now tell a dramatic story from my childhood that involves her. This story, whether one chooses to believe ALL of its narrative elements or not, at least reveals something about the nature of a youngest of five children who first grasps very, very serious matters with his gut years before he can intellectually process them with his mind.
One night in the Fall (?) of 1971, when I was seven years old, I lay in bed on a school night trying to get to sleep. The problem arose when my sister (17 at the time) and her boyfriend in the bedroom next to me started "fighting." The fighting consisted of Rusty hitting my sister and telling her that she was going to "sleep" with him that night, and my sister crying and protesting that she did not want to "sleep" with "Rusty" that night. I lay in bed in the next room wondering, I guess, why my sister didn't want to go to sleep with Rusty. I mean, weren't they already in bed together? Why was he hitting her over this issue? Why was he so mad at her? She might just take longer to go to sleep than he would. He could go ahead and doze off etc. etc.
Now, in the years that would follow my remembrance of this episode, I would feel really bad about how I must have just lay there in my bed in the next room doing nothing while all of this went on. It was only in my later twenties that I also recalled my dad being down there at some point and gently suggesting that Rusty might just want to go to his house that night, and Rusty being really super-nice about dad being down there and protesting that everything was fine to the point where he convinced Dad to go back upstairs.
I then remember Rusty being really gentle with Judy and how all of us went to bed and that was that. A day or two later I told my friend and neighbor, Moose, about how Rusty and Judy had had a fight, and when Moose (8 years old at the time) asked Judy about it in the kitchen during the next day or day after, she told us to, "Fuck off!"
I confronted Judy about this night during a long period of psychosis in 1995, and she couldn't recall this particular night or the next day or so when Moose confronted her with what I had told him. Judy told me she broke up with Rusty after a night at HIS apartment when he "wouldn't let (her) leave." She had no problem remembering that night.
Now, the Legend of Richy Vegas, as I pieced it together over the years, takes us back to those moments as I lay in bed frightened about what was going on in the room next to mine. My bed lay on the opposite side of the same wall next to Judy's bed. So, as Rusty proceeded to hit Judy- this went on for a while- as Rusty hit Judy and demanded that she sleep with him, I started to recall something Moose said one day as we played in a pile of landscaping dirt for a new house in our West Austin neighborhood. In the telling of the Legend, I recall Moose saying that if we ever found ourselves in a bad situation we didn't know how to deal with, I guess he supposedly said, that we should ask God for help, and that God would help us.
When we look into the mind of the seven year old Richy Vegas, God comes to him with an idea. So, Richy Vegas stands up in his bed, pounds the wall with his fist several times somewhere above his head, Rusty exclaims, "What the fuck is that?," Richy Vegas stealthily runs upstairs and tells his mom and dad in a drowsy manner that Rusty and Judy were having a fight, whereon Dad goes downstairs, but not before Richy Vegas goes downstairs ahead of him and gets into bed. That might explain why Rusty was so loudly, exceedingly polite and cooperative when Dad came downstairs and confronted the situation.
After Dad goes upstairs, and after Rusty promises my sister that he won't give her any more trouble, he calls to me as I lay in bed. He asks me about the pounding, I profess ignorance and say it must have been my older brother (13) whose bedroom resided in another part of the downstairs. According to the Legend, I said that my older brother must have been in my room looking for something, but that I was trying to get to sleep, like I was when Rusty woke me up to ask about the pounding.
The Legend has Rusty ask my older brother sometime later about that night, my brother professes ignorance, and Rusty is, not only the first person to guess that it was indeed me who pounded on the wall, but the first person to disseminate the origin story of the Legend of Richy Vegas to people as he turns his life around in later years.
So, the next day, I had no recall of the pounding on the wall. God had apparently struck a rather devious Faustian bargain with me, whereon in subsequent years, these acts of divine intervention I practiced left me with no memory of them in the wake of said acts. It was only in the aftermath of my conversation with Gil Wilson at that party in 1992, where I had recovered memories of that night at the Cannibal Club in 1989, that I started to have a clue about the supposed existence of my alter ego, Richy Vegas.
The Legend really kicked into high gear during that months long period of psychosis in 1995, when I really needed a medication change but didn't get one until, like I said, months after my first symptoms of voices and "recovered memories"; it wasn't until that long period of psychosis that I had the conviction that the Legend of Richy Vegas extended well beyond that night at the Cannibal Club and all the way from the age of seven until that period in 1992, which marked the beginning of the end of Richy Vegas. Or did it?
Let's get back to some facts, shall we? In 1985 and into 1986, I dated Lisa and Jeannette. I didn't date either of them for over a month, but I never laid a hand on either of them. In the 2000's, I sort of dated "Chelsea," but we were more platonic friends that people who dated. Never laid a hand on her. I had some loose sex with two other women, paid for three more. Never laid a hand on any of them. I've gone on at great lengths about the misconduct I did engage in with "Wanda," "Linda," and "Katy," I don't want to dredge that up. Regular readers of this blog know enough about those stories.
I'm a big guy with a mental illness who has acted out at times in his life. I can understand how someone might, if they heard about that stuff from third parties, might feel torn with indecision about me. I would caution such a person to watch out for ANYONE who seems a little TOO understanding and TOO patient and TOO nice and TOO smooth about any woman they supposedly care for taking up what must seem like a permanent residence astride a fence about them.
In 1989, I worked at G/M Steakhouse. "Dickbag McNuttsack" blabbed to our fellow employees that I had been cleared of an attempted rape charge only after submitting to a photo lineup, whereupon the victim emphatically said I was not her attacker AFTER she picked a photo of a guy that did more closely resemble her stated description. After my run-in with "Linda," during the Winter months of 1989, but before I waved an axe in the direction of Linda's house from my mom's property during the Summer of 1989, I had a run-in with "Myrna," a fellow employee at G/M.
From what I pieced together years later, during and after my psychosis in 1995, I guessed that certain employees at G/M took this rape lineup story that DB McNuttsack related a little too seriously, and that would explain how things shook out. For my part, looking back, I did not see MYSELF as a rapist, because I had never raped anyone. So when my fellow employees alluded to this or that around that subject, such as one story a punk girl told about being raped outside of Liberty Lunch, any idea that those allusions had anything to do with me, in their minds at least, just went right over my head and didn't register at all. Anyhoo, just yet another time when I arrived, youngest child that I am, very, very late to the the ball everyone's been attending this whole time.
If any women out there have such misgivings about me that they hesitate to approach me for social reasons despite their attraction to me, I might advise them to just not bother with me. I don't like being jerked around any more that anyone else does. Furthermore, I have met attractive women in my life who seem to not feel at all threatened by me from the get go, and sometimes we hit it off. They exist. I don't need to rely on anyone who has such major misgivings about me to enjoy some of the finer things life.
I first must extend my apologies to my sister, whom I will call Judy, because I will now tell a dramatic story from my childhood that involves her. This story, whether one chooses to believe ALL of its narrative elements or not, at least reveals something about the nature of a youngest of five children who first grasps very, very serious matters with his gut years before he can intellectually process them with his mind.
One night in the Fall (?) of 1971, when I was seven years old, I lay in bed on a school night trying to get to sleep. The problem arose when my sister (17 at the time) and her boyfriend in the bedroom next to me started "fighting." The fighting consisted of Rusty hitting my sister and telling her that she was going to "sleep" with him that night, and my sister crying and protesting that she did not want to "sleep" with "Rusty" that night. I lay in bed in the next room wondering, I guess, why my sister didn't want to go to sleep with Rusty. I mean, weren't they already in bed together? Why was he hitting her over this issue? Why was he so mad at her? She might just take longer to go to sleep than he would. He could go ahead and doze off etc. etc.
Now, in the years that would follow my remembrance of this episode, I would feel really bad about how I must have just lay there in my bed in the next room doing nothing while all of this went on. It was only in my later twenties that I also recalled my dad being down there at some point and gently suggesting that Rusty might just want to go to his house that night, and Rusty being really super-nice about dad being down there and protesting that everything was fine to the point where he convinced Dad to go back upstairs.
I then remember Rusty being really gentle with Judy and how all of us went to bed and that was that. A day or two later I told my friend and neighbor, Moose, about how Rusty and Judy had had a fight, and when Moose (8 years old at the time) asked Judy about it in the kitchen during the next day or day after, she told us to, "Fuck off!"
I confronted Judy about this night during a long period of psychosis in 1995, and she couldn't recall this particular night or the next day or so when Moose confronted her with what I had told him. Judy told me she broke up with Rusty after a night at HIS apartment when he "wouldn't let (her) leave." She had no problem remembering that night.
Now, the Legend of Richy Vegas, as I pieced it together over the years, takes us back to those moments as I lay in bed frightened about what was going on in the room next to mine. My bed lay on the opposite side of the same wall next to Judy's bed. So, as Rusty proceeded to hit Judy- this went on for a while- as Rusty hit Judy and demanded that she sleep with him, I started to recall something Moose said one day as we played in a pile of landscaping dirt for a new house in our West Austin neighborhood. In the telling of the Legend, I recall Moose saying that if we ever found ourselves in a bad situation we didn't know how to deal with, I guess he supposedly said, that we should ask God for help, and that God would help us.
When we look into the mind of the seven year old Richy Vegas, God comes to him with an idea. So, Richy Vegas stands up in his bed, pounds the wall with his fist several times somewhere above his head, Rusty exclaims, "What the fuck is that?," Richy Vegas stealthily runs upstairs and tells his mom and dad in a drowsy manner that Rusty and Judy were having a fight, whereon Dad goes downstairs, but not before Richy Vegas goes downstairs ahead of him and gets into bed. That might explain why Rusty was so loudly, exceedingly polite and cooperative when Dad came downstairs and confronted the situation.
After Dad goes upstairs, and after Rusty promises my sister that he won't give her any more trouble, he calls to me as I lay in bed. He asks me about the pounding, I profess ignorance and say it must have been my older brother (13) whose bedroom resided in another part of the downstairs. According to the Legend, I said that my older brother must have been in my room looking for something, but that I was trying to get to sleep, like I was when Rusty woke me up to ask about the pounding.
The Legend has Rusty ask my older brother sometime later about that night, my brother professes ignorance, and Rusty is, not only the first person to guess that it was indeed me who pounded on the wall, but the first person to disseminate the origin story of the Legend of Richy Vegas to people as he turns his life around in later years.
So, the next day, I had no recall of the pounding on the wall. God had apparently struck a rather devious Faustian bargain with me, whereon in subsequent years, these acts of divine intervention I practiced left me with no memory of them in the wake of said acts. It was only in the aftermath of my conversation with Gil Wilson at that party in 1992, where I had recovered memories of that night at the Cannibal Club in 1989, that I started to have a clue about the supposed existence of my alter ego, Richy Vegas.
The Legend really kicked into high gear during that months long period of psychosis in 1995, when I really needed a medication change but didn't get one until, like I said, months after my first symptoms of voices and "recovered memories"; it wasn't until that long period of psychosis that I had the conviction that the Legend of Richy Vegas extended well beyond that night at the Cannibal Club and all the way from the age of seven until that period in 1992, which marked the beginning of the end of Richy Vegas. Or did it?
Let's get back to some facts, shall we? In 1985 and into 1986, I dated Lisa and Jeannette. I didn't date either of them for over a month, but I never laid a hand on either of them. In the 2000's, I sort of dated "Chelsea," but we were more platonic friends that people who dated. Never laid a hand on her. I had some loose sex with two other women, paid for three more. Never laid a hand on any of them. I've gone on at great lengths about the misconduct I did engage in with "Wanda," "Linda," and "Katy," I don't want to dredge that up. Regular readers of this blog know enough about those stories.
I'm a big guy with a mental illness who has acted out at times in his life. I can understand how someone might, if they heard about that stuff from third parties, might feel torn with indecision about me. I would caution such a person to watch out for ANYONE who seems a little TOO understanding and TOO patient and TOO nice and TOO smooth about any woman they supposedly care for taking up what must seem like a permanent residence astride a fence about them.
In 1989, I worked at G/M Steakhouse. "Dickbag McNuttsack" blabbed to our fellow employees that I had been cleared of an attempted rape charge only after submitting to a photo lineup, whereupon the victim emphatically said I was not her attacker AFTER she picked a photo of a guy that did more closely resemble her stated description. After my run-in with "Linda," during the Winter months of 1989, but before I waved an axe in the direction of Linda's house from my mom's property during the Summer of 1989, I had a run-in with "Myrna," a fellow employee at G/M.
From what I pieced together years later, during and after my psychosis in 1995, I guessed that certain employees at G/M took this rape lineup story that DB McNuttsack related a little too seriously, and that would explain how things shook out. For my part, looking back, I did not see MYSELF as a rapist, because I had never raped anyone. So when my fellow employees alluded to this or that around that subject, such as one story a punk girl told about being raped outside of Liberty Lunch, any idea that those allusions had anything to do with me, in their minds at least, just went right over my head and didn't register at all. Anyhoo, just yet another time when I arrived, youngest child that I am, very, very late to the the ball everyone's been attending this whole time.
If any women out there have such misgivings about me that they hesitate to approach me for social reasons despite their attraction to me, I might advise them to just not bother with me. I don't like being jerked around any more that anyone else does. Furthermore, I have met attractive women in my life who seem to not feel at all threatened by me from the get go, and sometimes we hit it off. They exist. I don't need to rely on anyone who has such major misgivings about me to enjoy some of the finer things life.
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