I recently stumbled into provided health insurance at my new job. This got me to thinking: when is the last time I went to the dentist? We all started laughing, my thoughts and I, when we began to suspect it's been at least 10 years. Our laughing took a small hit when my thoughts mentioned something about one of my back molars, about suspicions of a new cavity. Before we could discern one single slice of clarity, we shook that shit off with a quick insta-scroll, a few likes, and more thoughts about more bullshit. Now that we've safely packed our new-cavity-concerns away in a box out back labeled: Stuff We'll Think About Tomorrow Or The Next Day, we thought we'd share with you a story inspired by our last trip to the Devil.
I mean, dentist.
(Joe, I love you and I miss you, kinda. I'm sure you are a splendid dentist. But, if you even think about touching the inside of my mouth I will carve shitty and outdated graffiti into your bones with a dull pickle)
* * * * *
My cavity and I are on our last drive together. One of us will not be making the trip home. It’s as if I’m taking an evil pet in to be put down, but the pet has burrowed into my circulatory system.
Funny how love can nourish you then subject you to the threat of toxic infection.
Normally, a drive to the dentist is not on my list of favorite trips. In fact, I’d rather drive into a gargantuan, diseased penis hole. But this drive is nice, too nice. There’s way too much comfort in my cornering and I’m domestically patient at pretty much every traffic light. I’ve already let at least two people cut ahead of me. What is my problem? For shits and giggles, I yell-think at myself, in the voice of a gorgeous, shiny, Pulp-Fiction-version of Sam Jackson:
SAYWHATAGAIN!
My inner shouting gets my attention. My forearms tense up and the steering wheel, before soft and supple, is now a nose ring in the air holes of some horny sow from hell. Already progress. I’m curious. I lean forward, into myself. I need more, Sam.
SAYWHATAGAINIDAREYA!
Um, what? I swerve uncomfortably and perfectly close to an off-duty ambulance. Hopefully I’ll really fuck this all up.
IDOUBLEDAREYAMOTHERFUCKERSAYWHATONEMOREGODDAMNTIME!
Well, it’s either that or go to the dentist, Sam. Is there another direction we could take this game of dare? In the brief moment that myself takes to ponder my own question, I notice the ambulance driver is flipping me off. That has got to be illegal.
GO ON.
Since this drive is nearly over and we’re so close, I figure we could go big. I was thinking maybe you could dare me to drive into a tree or a light post. A store front? Hell, I could take her into the Mississippi? I can’t worry too much about how worried myself could become here. I need to let this all hang out. I have to be real. I have to be brave. I have to do something drastic to allow myself to save me.
DOESHELOOKLIKEABITCH?
I see what you are getting at, but I’d rather sit this one out. It’s not the dentist so much as it’s his tools. Fuck man, you know half of those things are used to either mess up or clean up torture chambers. I’m screwed either way. I take a moment of mindfulness during this episode of severe dissociation and remind myself: I am awareness and I am fucked.
THENWHYYOUTRYINTOFUCKHIMLIKEABITCHRICK?
Jeez Sam, no need to go that far. Christ. You dick. Fine, we’ll all keep on driving our dumbass selves to the piece of shit dentist. You, me, this cavity and hopefully John Travolta. Is he even alive?
ANDMARCELOUSWALLACEDONTLIKETOBEFUCKEDBYANYONEBUTMRSWALLACE.
Whatever. I love you too. That motherfucker better have suckers.
* * * * *
He is a kind man. Soft-spoken. Sincere. He sits in his chair, before me, in such a way as to emit some sort of warmth, a type of radiating calm I figure is normally effective.
“Do you have other people here who can help you?” I ask. While his mind is undoubtedly strong, I surmise quickly that I could break his arms in the time it takes to spit his blood all over the ceiling. “I feel like two more people would be a good idea.”
“Sorry?” he says. “More people?”
“I can’t help it man. I change. I try to stay calm. Something else takes over. Trust me, you should have someone for each arm.”
He looks at me with old man puppy dog eyes, his face wrinkled and mopey like an ancient basset hound who’s weathered one-too-many decades with thousands-too-many kids. Ears the size of bread loafs. A nose the size of a late season cucumber. He scoots closer, leans in like he didn’t hear me, like I’m going to throw him a piece of my pork chop.
“It’s just one shot,” he says. “Quick and easy.” He fucking smiles.
“Look bud, you seem like a good guy.” My hands are already beginning to do shit that I didn’t tell them to do. “But if you try sticking that needle in my mouth without some way of holding me, I’m going to knock your chin into your asshole.”
* * * * *
I don’t have the data to show you, but I’m confident that my fear of dentistry is perfectly rational. Sharp objects near the vicinity of my brain bucket? No thank you. You should also be afraid. Very, very afraid. But you are not. At least, you seem ok. Sure, maybe you feel a twinge of fear somewhere in you, but you stuff it down. It’s not that big of a deal, you think. Everyone does it. Sometimes you just have to do these things.
Oh do you? Why? How? How do you do it? How do you stay calm – chatty even – as he talks about tomorrow’s weather, all the while pulling extremely tight rubber gloves on? You see his old face wrinkle and wink in places it should not wink and yet you do not scream? You see that his grimace – while slightly subdued and softened by years of suburban submersion – is a grimace of deep depravity and dissonance.
Yet you do not flee?
How do you sit so still while the madman goes diving into your main orifice like a horny miner chasing the blood diamond?
I imagine having a child, let’s say four years old, and driving her for the first time to the dentist:
“Papa, will it be scary?”
“Yes sweety. Extremely scary. It will be horrific.”
“I want mommy.”
“Oh honey, you think you want mommy now? Just wait till you see his drill.”
* * * * *
As the long, steel needle pushes into my soft, pink flesh, my mind does this neat-o trick: he turns a hot spotlight on in my mouth and focuses precisely on the penetration. He shows me all the details. The thin, shiny film of saliva covering everything. The massive needle – a giant steel arrow, a war-machine, a dragon slayer, a spear to shred the eye of god and undo the gates of hell. The soft dent in my innocent little pink gum where the needle is placed, then pushed. The pathetic way that flesh has no chance, no strength, no protection.
It’s really quite lovely how our concentration works as the worlds’ most effective magnification instrument. I have a great ability to concentrate, when I am called to the task, and nothing calls me more than pain.
“Wow. You weren’t kidding were you?” He says it through his mask and behind the mask I hear his smile. I have supreme suspicion that his attendants, one on each arm, are also smiling. I can feel it. I can also feel that they are scared. Scared and smiling and grunting. These demented fucks.
“WHAROOBAHRAH,” I say. My mouth has been propped open with something. I’m guessing it’s a slab of rusty, medieval iron. “FIEBEEMOONPACS.” What else can I say? I want to be honest.
“Ok. Easy peasy. The shot is done,” he says.
I must have blacked out for a few seconds because I don’t remember it. Thank you sweet baby Jesus.
“We’ll give that some time to set in, and then we’ll get started. You’re doing great!”
I’m doing great? That is not true, you old sack of shit.
“Maybe next time you’ll come in a little earlier?” He might as well be God, blocking out the sun, wearing the mask of rationale man, holding a miniature sword developed by the new-age method of science and order. I notice that they’ve replaced a square of their drop ceiling with a picture of puffy clouds on a perfect blue sky. A quaint blob of manicured arrogance. I want to cry.
“It’s so much easier to stop cavities in their tracks when we catch them early,” he says. Both attendants, one male, one female, are nodding their heads and looking at me with extreme levels of desire masked with pity. I want to shrink myself to an adequate size in which I could operate a neuro-chainsaw on their dendritic patterns. A chop here, a chop there. Like carving a tree stump, I’d make something pretty.
“MONSEEBUGA!” I say this as clearly as possible, but I have no idea to whom I am speaking. The dentist? My mother? Myself? The mercy of the universe? I feel the pool of spit inside of my mouth begin to breech the right corner of my bottom lip. Slowly, the saliva crawls over the levy and all four of us bear witness: I, with my imagination; they, with their eyeballs, as the dentist and both attendants stare down the slow motion waterfall. I expect someone to look away. No one does. The spitfall gains momentum and finally unleashes the entire pool from my mouth. I see in their eyes that I am a repulsive mutant who must be punished. A part of me agrees.
“I bet you played football?” asks the attendant on my right arm. He is obviously an intern. A pin on his shirt asks: Got Insurance? I suspect he has an erection. “Linebacker? Free safety? I bet you tackled so hard.” He is sweating the kind of sweat that has been tamed, watered down, filtered into a blend of weak piss, vanilla cappuccino and over-priced wine. I think he smells like a pet rabbit wanting only to be chased.
“Am I right? So. Hard.”