Damn Yankee by George S Geisinger (most read books of all time txt) 📖

trying to achieve male favor, like little girls at a school dance; each of them easily old enough to be my mother, and maybe even my grandmother. I'm young enough to be at least one earlier generation around here.
I put them off gently as possible, one after the other, daily, as if I'm the new boy in town, attending the first, early fall, junior high dance everyday, since the rumors of my arrival here have just now reached every last one of the little girls (old ladies) in this small town south of nowhere, wherever this place is that I have to be now. My dance card, so to speak, is filled until this time the next decade, and I'm considering starting a rumor that I'm a homosexual, in self-defense against this endless, life size Barbies Playhouse game, in this overly-expensive, totally over-rated crazy-house of a place where I have to live now, so I can get my medicine from a professional medical person, and not OD out of my terminable confusion again, and die before my time.
People, keep your hands off me, please.
There are all these old ladies who found out that I'm a younger man who knows how to crochet, since I'm always wearing my hats and scarves around, publicly, telling everybody my grandmother taught me to crochet when I was little, trying to attract customers with a lot of face-to-face advertising.
They insist that I teach them how to crochet, as if I'm the teacher type, which I'm not. And I can't get rid of them. They seek me out every time I go out my door, with no apparent aptitude for the work at all, as students, anymore than I have any aptitude for teaching to bring to the table, myself.
They would hardly let me out of their sight after a full hour of perpetual, catty torment, scarcely letting me get a word in edge-wise the entire hour, not listening to word one of my demanded, detailed, ignored instructions, getting everything backwards, trying the final, miniscule amount of patience I'd brought with me in the first place, stretching me to my limit, as if I were not human and had no limit, and I'm expected to do this every week, until they can make their own hats and scarves? There goes my paycheck, if they figure that out. They're demanding that I show them how to crochet, when the two attempts I've made to hold the class so far have been disasters. Anything at all that anyone else doesn't know how to do, I cannot help them understand it.
I'm not in my element in that environment. I ain't no teacher.
I even get emails from my lady friend, the activities director at the other place like this, where I used to be, wishing I could be there to teach a class for her, too, even though it's hours away by car, and I don't have a driver's license or car anymore. I like the woman, but I think she was only trying to say something nice in a quick email. She wasn't seriously asking me to take on a class there. What I can't figure is how to stop the class here without a big row. Well, maybe it won't be so hard.
I'm not a teacher, I'm a craftsman, people. Buy my wares from me, don't make me explain how I do it. Pay me a little money to do it for you. I'm good at it. The money is what I'm after.
Please don't eat me alive with your sandcastles in the sky, ladies, please?

Second Part
Chapter 1

There's an old codger here who always rides his wheelchair, here at the Brighton Dam Apartments, who has a familiar name, and never speaks above a whisper. One has to read his lips to understand what he has to say at all, even if the room is quiet at the time. I'd rather not bother, so I don't pay him any attention. His reason for whispering is beyond me. He has the most lovely, middle-age daughter, who is not married, who attends him at meals now and then. I know very little about her, except for her looks, her first name, and to consider the issue of how she ever managed to remain a spinster with the looks she's got, has got to be a story worth telling.
There's something else about that. I can do without knowing.
But now I've talked to her. She was married, and has three daughters. The old man is a grandfather, and the beauty queen is a mother and glamorous divorce. What's her X's problem?
Then, there are the women who work here at the Brighton Dam Apartments.
I'm alluding to the story of how I've remained a bachelor, writing the story down as it occurs to me, for the purpose of solidifying my own sanity. I choose to be alone. I don't consider myself qualified to be a husband or father, for various reasons. But the lovely woman I was just referring to, of course, is different than me.
I've found out that, even when there's a perfectly nice, single woman, who happens to regard me pleasantly, with nothing to stand in our way, no artificial boundary or taboo between us, like some conflict of interest, or whatnot, I'd still rather remain a bachelor, myself, thank you very much, ma'am. I'm really quite too bruised and scarred from my monumentally traumatized life, to think I could ever have a close relationship with a lady again. I've been hurt too much.
There's a couple of the female employees here, who are very nice, flesh-and-blood women, and plenty attractive; I mean not the least bit “plastic” in their character or disposition; and I do have a wonderful time talking to them during the few minutes they have for me at any given moment on their jobs, but I stand by my own incapacity, with damaged instincts and damaged emotions, as if my entire future is weighing in the balances. There are no imperatives here.
It's a self-perpetuating concept, guaranteed to keep me alone.
Even if the woman are is as free as a breeze, as some of the women I'm thinking of in writing this are, and there's nothing impeding a relationship between myself and them, whatsoever, I'm still held back by the idea that I cannot deal with a relationship or commitment with anybody. I've been hurt that badly in life, and I surrender to the idea that is a part of who I am, whether I'm lonely or not.
I'm not that lonely.
If I ever did marry anyone, for whatever reason, I sorely anticipate coming down with one of the worst psychotic breakdowns of my lifetime, comparing since way back to my first one, when I was a young adult and didn't even recognize my own mother and sister when they came to visit me.
If there's a woman who thinks this is unfair of me, or unreasonable somehow, they are being too focused on themselves to understand who I really am as an individual. Besides, I really don't want to let them get to know me well enough to understand, though I talk and write about this overall issue endlessly. It's one of my main topics of discussion with people.
I've always had thoughts of how it might be, being married, with children of my own, in every fantasy of adulthood I can remember since early childhood, with so many visions of various ladies in the parade of my memory, until each of the few times the grasping of a relationship looked imminent. At all those times, reality set in, and I was never able to solidify the relationship and go on with anyone indefinitely. I undermine the whole relationship before I know I'm doing it.
I can break a heart, but I can't join forces with one.
How I'll ever be anything different than alone in a group home with friends around me, I cannot imagine. How I'll ever manage to change that position in my thinking and belief system can only happen as a growth process, and here I am, talking down the idea of having any other person who might like to get to know me and get close to me in the future.
I can flirt, I can visit, I can enjoy the view, as well as the company.
But, “I'd rather look at the menu, but never order,” as one of my buddies once put it.
I'd rather not publish all my reasons for this. I consider the issue to be significantly personal.

Chapter 2

I was a child prodigy. It was the one thing that helped me survive high school. Without the music programs, I would never have made it through high school. We had a dynamic director of the choral music program at my school, and he became intrinsically involved in helping me become the musician I was born to be, if only briefly. I thought of the man as a father figure, long before I ever graduated. He was the sort of man who was born to be a teacher, the kind of person who could bring out the best of what all of his students had to offer.
Being hesitant to do anything with music on arrival from my traumatic childhood in Pennsylvania, I had gotten Mister in a general music class that I could hardly avoid enrolling in, when I'd reluctantly signed up for classes in the fall, though I'd had it in mind to forget all about music altogether, before I'd enrolled that year. I was very self-conscious at that age, and was not interested in becoming a noticeable individual at a new school in a new town and a new State of the Union. This was Maryland, and I was new there. I wanted to blend in. He simply had had the general music class sing a few songs out of a book, and my bell-tone, boy soprano voice betrayed me to the very talent-conscious Mister. I was the sore thumb in the group. I could not fool ole Mister. He heard me loud and clear, even though I was trying my best to blend in with the music flunkies, but there was no getting around him.
Before I could take a breath, the man had me enrolled in every chorus and band the school had to offer, that I was eligible to join, that is, at the time. Then, the high school teacher called the 13 year old student on the telephone at home, to offer to pick me up on his way to school in the morning, so I could be in the men's chorus as well, which met before classes began every morning, well before my bus would arrive, in all kinds of cold, blustery weather.
I was terrified, but my mother decided that I should do it.
He would come driving past my aunt's house in his Volkswagen, and I'd get in the warm car, shivering from the cold.
By the time the man was done bringing my talent to a pinnacle, I just really took the opportunity to enjoy those days, I earned an appointment to the Maryland All-State High School Chorus, I was the drum major and student conductor of the high school band, and the Outstanding Senior in Choral Music.
He offered to not only write a letter of recommendation to go to the