Whatever Gary had, he had it in spades. So much so, at least 12 women are now mourning his death. Bless his heart.

I sat cross-legged at the foot of his tombstone. His name, neatly etched for all lifetime seemed to glisten as the rain shower went away, replaced by the sunlight and warmth.

I came to pay my final respects at the cemetery. My friend and teacher Paul was a great man, a loving father and a contributor to the community. He influenced me toward speaking from my heart, and coached our high school forensics team for the three years he taught there.

He got tired, he said, of that "game" and went to work at a newspaper, selling ads and composing pages. He got bored with that after four years. By that time, those of us close to him knew that he had a form of Alzheimer's disease and it was eating his body from the inside out.

My last vision and memory of him was in an assisted living facility, still smiling, still attempting to tell a joke or two he learned from the Boy Scouts' monthly magazine called "Boys' Life".

He could never remember the punch lines. Sometimes I would help him by recalling the joke line; sometimes we would make up a line and we would laugh as if it was the actual joke.

I sat there, wordless, letting the wind blow around my body as I sat on the picnic blanket.

Two women, one a short woman who would easily pass for a young teenager; the other a tallish woman with shoulder-length black hair and enough body jewelry to open a small boutique, were loudly and emotionally yelling at another tombstone not far from Paul's. Not caring a bit who heard them or why they should keep their comments to themselves, the two kicked the marble stone, the short woman uttering an "Ow!" and then "Shit! The man hurts me even after his death!"

"You can't touch me now!!", the young woman said. "I hate you for even being born!"

The other woman chimed in "I hope they ripped out your tongue before they buried you..."

I got up, folded my cloth, and touched Paul's tombstone. I then walked down the hill toward the two women.

"Hey Mister!"

"Hi", I spoke back. "Did this person molest or rape either of you? I'm sorry for whatever it was he did to you..."

"Mister, you don't know the half of it. I wouldn't let this piece of crap NEAR me, let alone rape me!"

"I'm sorry," I said, "I overheard what you were saying to the person's stone."

"Come down to our car and I'll explain it all," the shorter of the two women responded. We walked down the hill to the parking lot, whereby the shorter of the two women opened the passenger door and I got in after she did.

"My name is Holly. This is Gail. The asshole up there was -- we thought -- one of our friends."

"Mike." I extended my hand to shake each extended hand of the two women.

"His name was Gary. He never touched us sexually," to which Holly, the shorter of the two girls shooked as if she was shivering, "but nevertheless he touched us. He dated both of us -- that's how we met, in a group dedicated to this piece of work."

"Remind me not to get on you two's bad sides", I said. "What did Gary do?"

"Made us fall in love with him," Holly stated from beside me sitting in the car. "He wined and dined us -- and other women. He never took any money from his, never asked for sex of any kind from us..."

"We thought he was gay -- nothing wrong with that...you're not Gay are you?"

I smiled while shaking my head back and forth. "No, I'm straight. So what was his story?"

Gail sniffled and then said "He was lonely. That's what his story was. He didn't have a girlfriend, and those who were his girlfriend left him for other men. He stopped asking for sex from women because he would never get it if he asked, so he just stopped. He loved having someone to love him."

"And the bastard shot himself in the chest the day before yesterday!" Holly voiced loudly.

"There are other women -- I counted 11 or 12 myself from the website -- who was in love with this piece of crap. He would go to a town, meet them, wine and dine them, kiss them...."Gail started and then emotionally attempted to finish "...on their forehead or nose....and then leave."

Gail continued to cry softly, which started her friend crying again as well. I sat there, hands between my legs, until they appear to be letting up from the latest cry.

I looked at the two women, in tough initial stages of grief. Whatever this Gary guy had, he had it in spades to make that many women fall in love with him!

"Okay." I had to think clearly about this. As a member of the male part of the human species, there's GOT to be a catch to this. I looked at the two women. They appear to be proportionally pretty.

"Maybe Gary had a wife. He didn't want to get involved in you for fear he would wreak his marriage."

"There's a woman named Claire on the group. She's a nurse and she took Gary to her hospital after he complained of a deep cough and congestion. She had one of her friends to take some blood from him and run it through all of the tests...you know HIV, Yellow Fever, Measles, all of that shit. The guy has O-positive blood..."

"Universal donor", I spoke out, looking out the window and then at the young woman sitting beside me in their car.

"Yeah, that too. He has no STDs, nothing negative except a low iron count she said, and there was no reason why he couldn't do the boom boom boom with anyone!"

"Tell him about Marcia", Gail said to her friend while grabbing the small tissue package from the glove box.

"What about his parents. Maybe he doesn't want a relationship because he's close to his parents," I said, thinking that I was grasping at invisible straws.

"Marcia. She's in the same group we're in. She called Gary's house a couple of times, thinking that he'll trip up or that his wife would answer the phone or something. Voice mail of his mom and dad saying that they loved and missed him and whomever called to just leave a message and Gary would call back. Mom and Dad died minutes apart from each other after a car crash last winter. Just hearing their voices, Marcia said, would make you want to cry out for Gary!"

Gail passed the tissues over to her friend who took a couple and applied them to her puffy eyes and then to blow her nose. "Excuse me, " she politely stated.

"Asshole didn't even allow any of us to kiss him goodbye. He was burnt up," Holly stated, "and put into a small pine box and buried up there."

It took me a minute to realize that Holly was talking about cremation and the fact his ashes were placed into a small box and buried.

"He was a good man, a perfect mate for any of us. Smart, funny, outgoing. When I met him he was working on his second bachelor's degree." Gail stated.

"He was working on his Master's in Psychology when I knew him..." Holly stated.

I made my way to the door of their car and looked at the two women. They were clearly hurt. If they were at a bar, some guy would have viewed them as "easy pickings" and had them in his bedroom by closing time. They lost a friend, someone who valued their relationship, however brief, as important to his life.

"Can you two please answer me one question before I go to my own car over there?"

The two women looked at me, waiting for the question.

"If this Gary person..."

I was interrupted by Gail's restatement "asshole".

"If he hurt you so much -- and it looks like he did -- why are you here? Why can't you two move on like the rest of the women. I mean, I don't mean any disrespect to either of you, but I don't see the other women here."

Gail started but Holly was first to finish her thought.

"It's like this. The other women nominated us two, because we live closest to him, to represent all of us. He touched us in so many loving, positive ways that it is just hard for some to cope with the fact that he is now dead. Like we said, none of us had sex with Gary, and he didn't pressure us to have sex with us. He was just a lonely man who loved our company whenever he was around us. That's all. And now, he can't touch us any more, and that... what's your name again?"

"Mike."

"That is going to be the hardest thing for us to deal with, Mike. We'll move on. We'll find someone else. He may love us more than Gary did. We may screw and have babies. But for us...Gary was special in our lives. He had no right to take himself out of our lives. He had no authority to kill himself for whatever reason he thought was a reason." Holly looked out at the hill with all of the tombs and stones.

"Go. Touch someone with your voice, your hand, your arm. It is proof that we're all human."

I got out of their car, walked over to mine, opened the door to the driver's side, got in --

-- and cried.