Saturday Night...

Went back to the bar, made myself. I'm very glad that I did.
It was good to take such a long break, it made me bolder when
I did go back. And I saw things with a new, clearer perspective.

Guys have been waiting for me to be interested, for a long time now. When I first started
going there, about a year ago, about 20 different guys asked me for my number.
I couldn't even tell you how many numbers I've gotten, cumulatively, over time.
I'm talking about where they ask for my number, and I would say
" Um, I'm kind of nervous about that, but I would take your number."
Ok, now, if this is some kind of major dating/ social no-no, I didn't not know
this at the time..
I'm sorry you guys, if that makes me sound like a bitch, or stuck up.
It was more a case of just being very afraid of stalker types, because of
various problems.
BUT!!! This turned out to be an inadvertanly good screening tool, and weeded out some real
assholes.
But I'm confessing... I would come home every weekend with numbers in my
pockets, I'd pull my keys out of my pocket and there'd be slips of paper falling out.
3 or 4 at a time. They added up. You figure a few every weekend, for quite a long time.

This is fact, this isn't me thinking oh, I'm all that. I get all these phone numbers all the time.
I think I have the kevorka, Kramer had it on Seinfeld. I'm Kramer on Seinfeld. I'm certainly
not the most attractive, whatever. I think part of it is personality. And I think I'm easy to talk
to. Quirky maybe. Approachable in a girl- next- door- way?
But you know, I get the most awesome compliments from girls, young ones! A lot of them
hate me! And they don't realize that when they walk by me giving me those hating looks, it's
like they are paying me the ultimate compliment. They view me as a rival, a threat. If I were
really fat and ugly and old, they would probably be nice. Think of me as a girlfriend, a confidant but not any sort of competition.
But that actually hasn't happened in a long time. I get along really well with everyone now,
and it's now almost like Cheers when I walk in, everyone says " Lisa!Hey!" And look really happy. I smile and say hi to the girls that used to give me hating looks, all of that.

Whatever coldness that was there when I first went there, before I started singing.
Actually, there have been many funny instances of girls being cold and mean initially,
and then I win/won them over. I thinking it has to do with the choices of songs I've
done, it really broke the ice when I was first going there. War Pigs blew everyone's mind,
including my own.
Girls are just like that, though. I've learned this. I didn't know it until I started going out to
a club/bar scene.. I guess
I was used to getting a friendly reaction from everyone when I went out in the world.
Maybe things have changed, or I have changed, or both.
Whatever.
I was trying to say that I have been afraid of guys because of certain problems I've
had. I've written about a few of them previously. Americas Most Wanted guy. Guy that followed
my bus in LA. Etc.
I kid you not, in a bizarre twist right out of a movie, I had two, not one but two guys
stalking me at the same time. They probably saw each other, one on the other side
of the street, in a white truck, and AMW guy standing down below and looking up
or waiting for me at the mailbox just to freak me out. Etc.

One guy was my boss, the other guy was the clerk at 7-11 that lived in my apartment
building and turned out to be featured on Americas Most Wanted for a crime in
northern california. Rather, he saw on the website that he was going to be on TV the very
next week. The topic of that week's show? " Stalkers" .
He'd cut my phone line that very day or two before turning himself in.

Imagine what that's like, and I really did keep my sense of humor about it,
because I had to. Like, even though I was really scared, I DID mention to others:
" Maybe the two of them will run into each other down there, and get in a fight -wasn't that in Something about Mary?" Because like I said, Imagine what that's like to look out of
your second story apartment window and see a white truck parked across the street,
and you knew it was your then- boss. But you also see the other guy, the inappropriate neighbor
7-11 clerk who has said many inappropriate and scary things, and no one could or would do anything about it. And they are both watching you at the same time.
I really DID wonder if they were going to catch on to each other.

White truck guy stopped pretty quickly, when he found out that I knew, but AMW guy's behavior escalated.
AMW saved my ass, and I'm going to start crying if I think about it anymore. He
had access to the apartment keys and told me that. And unlocked my door and
left it open so that when I got up the next day my front door was standing wide open.
It was unlocked and opened. It was the same night that my phone had been cut.
I had slept that night with my cell phone in my bed.
And when he turned himself in, it was the best timing in the world.
But as a result, I got really scared about giving my number out.
So this past weekend I finally told everyone about this. What I've just told you.
And it was the best thing I could have done, because certain guys that
I've gotten to like are now seeing me as approachable, and they understand now
why I was so shy about that subject.

Because I know I confused them. Maybe I still do. I seem to be friendly, and nice,
approachable, and then I come off as unavailable the next minute. Not sure how to describe it,
except that I'm aware of it and I'm now trying to change that. Not in a slutty
way or anything. Just, there are a couple of guys that I like, and they were much more
forward in the beginning. And yet if anything, they've gotten more
interested. More interested in me as a person. Like maybe there are a couple of
guys there with deeper feelings and maybe I could feel the same if I let myself...
We all have such good talks, and they really do seem to have respect for me. I
I kind of feel like I know these guys, at this point. So it's time to try and let go of my fears
a little.

So I confessed the AMW story and gave one of them my phone number and the other
guy I had a really good talk with, and said " Look, I think you're kinda cute, and I
think you're smart, we've had enough talks for me to know that. "
THAT WAS MAJOR. Do you know how brave that is?
To say that to someone at a club that you've had a flirty, scary, intense, mysterious thing
with and they are equally shy? And give you mixed signals?
And I was even sober enough to remember it! : )
The person was pleased, I could tell. I'm myself am pleased about that night.


So we'll see what happens, if anything. My throat is thrashed, I have laryngitis.
I was so full of feeling when I sang Saturday night that I woke up yesterday with no voice.
But it felt good to be back belting it out. Singing Joni Mitchell and Ozzy Osbourne.
There was a cool kid there in a fedora, reminded me of someone I used to know.
The kid sang Johnny cash all night, it was great. He had an excellent voice.

I do want to write about Rick M. sometime:
" He strode purposefully across the Serra Mesa square.
Fedora. Long ringlets of shiny brown hair.
Wife beater T-shirt, Levis, shower thongs with white gym socks.
He had the face of Billy Idol, but with those long, shiny brown curls.
" Eyes without a face" was currently playing on MTV and everyone
in the neighborhood had joked about the resemblance."

Let me once again say that I know I'm not all that, I know! It's just that maybe I make
people feel comfortable around me, and that is an attractive quality. And I
can be funny. Personality really IS what it boils down to with guys. I'm talking about
if a guy likes a pretty girl, and it turns out that she has a lame personality. He'll usually
wind up dumping her.
I realize guys are shallow, but I think they might get a bad rap sometimes on that stuff.