This is how it went down:

I was sitting outside a bar on Hawthorne Blvd. drinking a glass of water. A woman approached me. She was with a guy. She said, “Oh my God! Do you have jewelry in your teeth?” And I said, “No, this is a gold tooth. It’s a real one.”

She said, “Can I lick it? I’ve never licked a gold tooth before.”

I said, “I lick it all the time. It’s great.”

“Yeah but can I lick it? I’m serious.”

“Uhhhhh. I mean, I don’t see why not.”

“He doesn’t care,” she said, and she motioned to the guy she was with. “I do weird stuff all the time.” The dude nodded.

“Yeah all right,” I said. “Hell, if you really want to, you can lick my gold tooth.”

She put her hands on my shoulders and leaned in and stuck her tongue in my mouth. She sloshed it around my front teeth for a good 30 seconds. It felt like a very long time. I sat there awkwardly and hoped it would end soon. People walked by us. In my perisperhal vision I saw her boyfriend sucking on a vape pen.

“Wow!” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Can I do it again?”

“Um.”

“C’mon!”

“OK, go for it.”

She did it again!

“Just so you know,” I said, “I brushed my teeth about 20 minutes ago.”

“Oh, I don’t care,” she said. “Was that weird just now though?”

“It was probably a little weird, yeah. But who cares.”

“Yeah, man!”

She told me she worked at Hawthorne Strip on Powell Blvd. near “the bowling alley.” I knew which bowling alley she meant because I’ve ben trying to form a league there for weeks. I said, “All right.”

She sat down on a little picnic table across from me and fetched her wallet. She handed me $5 in ones. I refused to take the money. She insisted I take the money.

“I’m a stripper,” she said. “I know how important it is to tip.”

I didn’t want to offend her. I said, “Well, all right. But I don’t feel good about this!”

“Just take it, man.”

I took it!