Jose wrote:
"Unable 13,000. Tell you what, can you give me direct Salisbury VOR for
now, and let me go off frequency for a while to talk to Flight Service?"

"Unable Salsbury. I already told you Potomac is refusing to accept you."

(I'm making up the fact that Salsbury is served by Potomac approach -
you as a pilot have no good way to know what is and what isn't. In
fact, Salsbury may only be served by Potomac from 3000 to 7000, but you
are at 5000 and the controller is being as helpful and forthcoming now
as he was originally).

Now what?

I'm not sure where this is going, but how about:

"What clearance can you give me which will get me around to the east
of Potomac's airspace?"

Maybe he'll say something like, "I need to keep you about 5 miles south of
Salisbury. Can you navigate direct to XXXXX and I'll try and get you
something better after that?"

Or maybe he'll say, "Unfortunately, I can't get you anywhere near
there. The best I can do in that direction is blah, blah. Can you do
that?"

You seem to be expecting that he's going to say, "Bzzzt, wrong answer,
try again". It doesn't work like that. It doesn't do either you or
the controller any good to waste time playing 20 questions. He's just
as interested in getting you where you're going as you are.

Why is this such a complicated concept? You know what you want to do
and you ask for it. If ATC is unable to give it to you, you decide
what you want to do instead and ask for that. "Say intentions" should
not be something pilots fear hearing. It's nothing more than a
jargony way of saying, "What can I do for you?" If you can't come up
with a useful answer to "say intentions", you have no business being
PIC.