I love the simplicity in this, but it complements the simplicity of men’s attraction, which is superficial. Men aren’t interested in a woman’s mind or her confidence initially, just with their lithe figures and faces. It’s like a chimera. Only later, do they realize the importance of being with someone, who can help them and not be a burden. And a woman lacking confidence is a bad sign. But this is a ploy men enact as a means of seduction, where they too must feel that unless they wear the other person’s sense of self down, they cannot penetrate their hardened shells. I see this course of action over and over. I know the type of man.

One, for example, bragged about his score keeping, saying: “Mario, you have no idea,” to which I felt the knife in my back, but also noted that he was an alcoholic at an advanced stage, and who never was able to get it up.

Still, it hurts, because I was never the one to attack my crush’s esteem. Because I am shy, I had my own problems. My whole life, I have been a wallflower. Beaten up when I mentioned an attraction, this added to the fear. Now, I listen to women’s voices from afar. I close my eyes and think what it must be like to hold them, to tell them that I admire them. I think of women in terms of my mother’s having raised my sister and I alone. I think of the migraines she had. Her tender following me down the road, she would say later in life, as I took my surfboard and paddled out when I was ten.

No, I do not attack the self-esteem of women. They are my guiding lights.