Princess MoMo

Once upon a time, my oral kingdom was encumbered by metal facets wired together, commonly known as braces. That time was long ago and it was for but a short duration. After being freed from the metal binding them, the pearly white residents of my oral kingdom were in blissful alignment. I kept them in place as instructed through the use of a retainer. Eventually, I stopped wearing the retainer because I had not been advised to eternally subject my mouth to the plastic restraint. Many, many years later, I noticed that two of the little fuckers in my bottom row of teeth had shifted out of their perfect alignment. Needless to say, I was outraged by their defiance. The culprit? Yet another rogue wisdom tooth. It was a Friday night. I decided to employ self-help. (Folks, don’t try this at home.) I attempted to remove the wisdom tooth myself. When I didn’t succeed using just my hands, I went out to the garage and gathered some tools – not of the dental variety.  That didn’t work out too well either and I wasn’t really in the mood for tetanus.  With difficulty, I exercised patience and figured I would solicit the assistance of a trained professional in the banishment of this tooth.

Morning came. January 17, 2015. I called my regular dentist, but she informed me that I would have to see an oral surgeon. Google to the rescue. I made several phone calls until I located a dentist open on a Saturday and willing to perform the extraction.

The dentist numbed my mouth. That extra long needle going into my mouth is my least favorite part of dental procedures. I feel like I need a numbing before the numbing needle to tolerate it. Then began the extraction. Frankly, it didn’t appear the tools and methods employed in that dental chair were much more advanced than the ones from the garage and my bedroom, though admittedly, less rusty. He chiseled into my jaw with a utensil seemingly from the Neolithic Age. After chiseling, and slicing, and yanking, FINALLY the fucking tooth came out. The dentist then prescribed me Percocet.

The problem? I had a date scheduled for that night. Was it really a problem, though? Some dates are like pulling teeth. So why not couple the figurative with the literal? I alerted the specimen, we’ll call him Mr. Percocet, about the procedure I had undergone and the fact that my ability to drive and consume adult beverages would be impaired by my prescribed drug use. He seemed unfazed by this information. Instead, he offered to pick me up.

At that point, my options were (i) sit home drugged up with nothing to do or (ii) give this stranger my address, have him pick me up and potentially kill me or eventually stalk me. I like adventure so option (ii) was the clear winner. (Spoiler: He didn’t kill me.)  

I popped two Percocets in hopes of curbing the pain I thought might come over me as a result of the prehistoric procedure and waited for his arrival. Within ten minutes or so, I began feeling drowsy.

Eventually, he arrived and went out to his car to meet him. Even though he was seated, the first thing I noticed was his height – or lack thereof. This was already a sore spot for me because he had listed himself as 5’9” on his online dating profile. I had no doubt in my mind that 5’9” meant 5’ 8 1/2”, at best. It is well known that guys ALWAYS round up when it comes to measurements. But he was not even 5’8”. We’ll get to that in a bit.

He had no plan as to where we were going. That was also a bit disappointing considering the day before I asked him what the plan was and he assured me that it wouldn’t be difficult for him to figure it out using Yelp. We headed to a downtown-ish area about 20 minutes from where I live.

PSA: Drugs (legally prescribed and taken) can be good for dates.  Why? Well, I was feeling pretty sedated, which worked to his benefit because I remained very calm and almost indifferent to things that might otherwise have caused visible annoyance.

We opted with a Hibachi place. The food was delicious, but my appetite was suppressed so I only had a few bites before calling it quits. While the meal was great, the noise level in this restaurant was at a level that I deemed unbearable thanks to my tranquil state. There were tons of kids in there and there terrible birthday song kept playing through shot out speakers with accompanying crazy epileptic seizure inducing lights. No, we were not at Chuck E. Cheese Hibachi.  Moreover, the hole where my wisdom tooth once was began to throb. So, I had to roll up a piece of a napkin and stuff it into the depths of my mouth in an effort to apply pressure and relieve the pain. What goes in, must come out. When said napkin came out, it was fairly bloody. Lest you have any doubt, let me assure you that all of this is exactly as gross as it sounds. He didn’t seem to care, though. Was he on his own sedatives? In fact, he requested that we continue the date elsewhere (since I had expressed my inability to tolerate the then-current surroundings). He said we could grab a drink somewhere. I reminded him of the MoMo prohibition, but stated that I had no objection to him having a drink.

We tried a couple of bars, most of which were too crowded for my liking. Finally, we found a quiet one. As we entered the building, he asked, “How tall are you?” I replied, “5’6”.” I reciprocated the question. He replied, “5’7”.” I thought to myself, “Bro, rounding up two inches is totally egregious.” However, Percocet aided in filtering the stream of content in my head from free flow through my vocal chords. On a side note, there is a very simple way to address, on some level, the misrepresentation of height that occurs thanks to imperial units. That way is to use the metric system. Centimeters provide a far more accurate measure of human height than inches.

We sat at the second place for a while, him drinking beer and me drinking water while periodically replenishing rolled up napkins in my oral kingdom until they were saturated with blood and saliva and then disgustingly removing them and placing them in a pile on a clean napkin. We also enjoyed dessert. During all this time, I felt very boring. Typically, I’m loquacious, but I was functioning at a much slower speed than usual and formulating many words required more energy than I had the capacity to exert at the time.

Somehow, he was still enjoying my company. I was utterly surprised because I was boring my own damn self. It was 10 p.m. and that bar closed. We headed to his car and he started driving me home. Just shy of arriving, he asked if I wanted to keep hanging out. I had nothing better to do other than sleep, so I said, “what the fuck; why not?” We headed to another bar. In writing this, I’m reliving the boredom. He had a couple drinks at this last bar and I had a couple more rolled up napkins.   Finally, I expressed my inability to maintain a wakeful state. He dropped me off at home and I went straight to sleep.

Now, you’d assume he never called me again. That assumption couldn’t be further from wrong.

TO BE CONTINUED…