remember when no one knew about photobucket?
I first realize something is wrong when a leathery tanned brunette calls me into the dentist’s office. This is not Patti. Where are we going? We are going to the back of the dentist’s office. No one ever keeps anything pleasant in the back of anything. And no I’m not afraid of the dentist’s, I’m just wondering why I don’t have smiley happy Patti cleaning my teeth, telling me about her son and giving me a toothbrush when it’s all over.
Leathery tan asks me what I’m majoring in. English and Anthropology that’s so great! Now open wide. So what am I doing here? What are you doing with my teeth? Matching the color tone? I’m getting a filling? Do I need a filling?
So the dentist finally comes and he too checks the tone of my teeth. And then proceeds to ask me why I’m getting a filling. You’re asking me? Well there’s a slight discoloration on your front teeth, but I don’t see any decay. Well that’s great, I knew brushing my teeth would pay off. So what are we doing here? I don’t know, what are we doing here? I could adjust the discoloration on your front teeth? Yea? Yea. I look at the dentist. He looks at leathery tan. Leathery tan is staring out the window at a squirrel at the bird feeder. Sorry, what?
Oh hell, why not? My insurance covers it. You get an extra couple hundred bucks for thirty minutes of work, and the slight discoloration on my front teeth that I never noticed goes away.
It begins with anesthetics. A one-inch needle in the top of my gums. It feels like the needle has gone past my mouth straight into my nose. As does the second. The third I don’t even feel. And then, what I will call, the whiny drill. A high pitched shrill and I can actually see the now particle sized pieces of my teeth flying up into the air in front of me. This is the part that everyone is afraid of in cartoons, except the drill is pen sized and cold on my lip. But then something thicker. And this is more fun. It vibrates so hard that I feel it all around my mouth. I assume it’s a sander, something to trim down whatever he added. He rubs it back and forth over my two front teeth. Through bone conduction it sounds exactly like a Nascar race. I see the cars zoom past as he brushes left to right. Men in cutoff shorts drink beer on my molars and cheer as the filling is finally brushed down to be flush with my teeth. And then this beautiful blue light for which I must put on glasses. I feel nothing. Maybe the Nascar race is now just a rave, the beer turned to ecstasy, everyone’s skin appearing darker than normal under the hue. By now my jaw is aching. My tongue feels like burlap. There’s a pool of saliva welling at the bottom of my throat that leathery tan keeps trying to suck up with a hose.
And then my chair moves up. And I mouthwash with a gross blue liquid that tastes like bleach. Maybe it is bleach.
I scratch my nose and feeling nothing. I look in the mirror and my car and try to smile, but the top of my lip doesn’t move up far enough to reveal my teeth. I push it up with my finger. My teeth look the same. I tap myself in the upper lip with no physical response. I tap harder, this time with two fingers. Nothing. I use my knuckles and rap on it. And still feel nothing.
The rest of the day was rainy, and I couldn’t taste my mango salad.