Back in 2000-ish, I was living in Orange, CA and working at a Barnes & Noble in Santa Ana. I was broke (because I was working at Barnes & Noble) so my transportation options were feet, bus, or bike. I went with bike.

As I was riding home one afternoon, a man rode up next to me on his bike, paced me, looked over and said, “You. Me. Sex.”

“No thank you,” I said in the most touch-me-and-I’ll-stab-you voice I could conjur up, and upped the rate of pedal rotations to move away from this fine example of a human being.

Not to be deterred, the man pedaled faster to catch up with me and said, in his broken English, ” You. Me. Sex. Money.”

I looked over at him briefly and imagined spikes going into his head. “I said no.” And off I sped on my mountain bike.

Fortunately, he didn’t make a third attempt at hiring me for love.

I think about this occasionally and wonder how many women he tried to buy sex from. Did it ever work? His English was pretty bad. Did he understand what he was asking for? Did he lose a bet? Was he just a good old-fashioned perv?

I guess I’ll never know.

Zoinks.