Put your money where your mouth is

One of the things that helped the relationship between me and Kelz prosper early on was the fact that I had money. The reason why I had money was because I didn't spend $500 trying to run for Mayor of San Diego. (When I was single, I thought that was a worthwhile use of my extra cash. I'm now glad I didn't go through with that.)

I didn't exactly make it known to Kelz that I had cash on hand. However, she told me one day that she wanted to get her tongue pierced and had made an appointment with someone to get it done. There was no prior discussion of this beforehand. I was a little put off that she didn't ask me first. But up to this point, she hadn't really asked for a lot that required money, so I went along with it.

We had to go to a tattoo parlor in a shopping center and wait for the appointment. The person who did the body piercing came out and got us. His name was Aard. He was rather good-looking. He had a muscular build and was bald, had a goatee and a piercing below his lower lip. And this was the first time I'd ever seen someone with this, but he also had his earlobes extended. It made me wonder why someone would want to do that. I couldn't imagine that it would make someone more attractive. But this guy was good-looking enough that he could have done anything to his face and women would still want to have sex with him.

He took us to a studio that was elsewhere in the shopping center. It looked like a doctor's office and was very anti-septic. In the studio, there was a headshot of Aard. The earlobe extensions must have been recent because he didn't have those in the photo.

Aard was very thorough about what was going to happen during the piercing. He told Kelz exactly what to expect and how to care for the piercing so that there wouldn't be an infection. He also gave her written instructions. She would have to come back for a follow up so he could check the progress.

One of the things he told her to avoid was deep kissing for a couple of weeks. I didn't like this aspect of it. I enjoyed kissing Kelz and it was going to be very hard for me to avoid putting my tongue against hers during our frequent periods of affection. But it was something we needed to sacrifice so she wouldn't die from having a hole in her tongue.

After we left Aard's studio, I told Kelz that since I paid for the piercing, that meant I owned her tongue. She laughed about that.

Kelz did follow Aard's instructions to the letter. She didn't have any complications as her tongue healed. I was relieved about that. The two weeks finally passed by and Kelz had her follow up. Everything was fine, so we were able to start kissing again. I never told her this, but I honestly did not like the feel of the jewelry on her tongue when we kissed. I was always afraid I was going to accidentally bite down on it and rip it out of her mouth.

Another of Aard's instructions was that she shouldn't remove the jewelry from her tongue for more than two days straight. Otherwise, the hole would close up and she'd have to get it re-pierced. As it turns out, about four months later, something happened that forced her to remove the jewelry.

That will be a story for another day.