Great.
I try
to be nice
to a woman.
I talk
to her.
I’m interested
in her.
I try
to find common themes
we can connect on.

I probe
not to manipulate,
but because I’m interested
in people,
especially women
would might
be right
for me
eventually.

I’m kind.
I don’t try
to string them
along.
I simply try
hard
and harder
and even more
to see if
there might be
some way
we connect.

When,
at last,
we don’t connect,
not really,
I try to be honest
and direct.

Maybe I’m not direct enough.
Maybe I need to say
“Thanks,
I’ll see you around,
but I won’t be asking you
out any more,
because I just don’t feel
“it”.”

But I don’t,
maybe because
I don’t want to hurt
her.
She is,
after all,
a daughter of Heavenly Father.
He loves her.
I wouldn’t want my daughters
to be hurt,
so I try to protect
all of God’s daughters
from that hurt.

That doesn’t make me
a playah.
I’m not trying to manipulate
or seduce
or lie
or be sneaky.

When she calls me
a player,
especially in my
Church’s culture
and society,
it’s like me
calling her
a slut,
a skank,
or worse,
(which is something
I would never do).

Yet she seems to think
it’s okay to warn others,
to tell them
that a month or two
of long-distance phone calls
(because I was thousands of miles away),
followed by two dates
that didn’t go well,
is somehow misleading,
is somehow wrong,
is somehow stringing her along.
That such actions
somehow make me
a player.

It doesn’t.
Because I can’t help
the way she felt.
I can’t help
what she thought about.
I can’t help
what she dreamed of,
or what she imagined
our future would be
together.
When together
doesn’t happen,
it doesn’t mean
it’s my fault.
It just is.

Now I have
a reputation
I don’t think
I deserve.
I have women
who won’t go out
with me,
because I
inadvertently
hurt a fellow
single woman
by not falling
for her.
All I can do
is write,
complain,
whine,
and ask other women
to come see
for themselves.

Oh, and to all women
who brag about how sisters
protect each other,
it might be wise
to get facts straight.
What you are doing
is gossiping,
and it doesn’t look good
on you.