vituperation

March 28, 2005

I settled back into the chair, got as comfortable as I could, and opened my mouth wide. The hygienist — Shauna — reached up with one pink-gloved hand and adjusted the overhead light so she could see into my mouth.

"Tilt your head a little toward me," she said, tugging at my chin in case I didn’t understand. I complied. She leaned in and went to work with an evil-looking metal utensil.

Scrape scrape scrape. Pick pick. Scrape scrape scrape.

"Hmm," she said. She picked at the spot a second time. A third. Each time she did, it felt like the tip of the scraper stuck in my tooth a little bit. Something that’s only happened to me a few times in my life, but a feeling I can’t forget: the feeling of a cavity.

Damn, I thought. I tried to make the universal "uh oh" sound, and was moderately successful. Talking with a fist in your mouth is tough stuff.

"I know," she said. "It’s sticking a little. I’ll make a note for the dentist."

She continued to scrape, pick, and pluck at my teeth, making them cleaner and cleaner with each swipe. I pride myself on keeping my teeth pretty clean, but the coffee and tea, they make for some stains.

"He’s going to pick up the kids," a hygienist in the next office called, and laughed. Outside, I heard the rumble of what sounded like a very large motorcycle.

"You hear that?" Shauna asked me. I nodded. "That’s Cindy’s husband. He just bought a new Mustang."

"Ungh hunh huh," I said, rather emphatically.

"But he’s in the doghouse over it," she said, her voice dropping to a conspirator’s whisper. "And he’s trying to make up for it by getting the kids."

"Hunga hoonf?"

"Isn’t that right, Cindy?" she called, ignoring my question.

Cindy wandered into my line of sight and leaned in. All I saw were two big faces staring down at me, one masked, one not.

"Yeah, he’s in the doghouse," Cindy said. On the radio, Billy Joe Armstrong allowed that he hoped I was having the time of my life. "He just asked if I wanted him to make dinner!"

Both women cackled. Shauna scraped at my teeth, and I lay there hoping that she didn’t flick a speck of tartar up onto Cindy’s face. I probably would’ve died of embarrassment if something like that had happened.

"First called three times, then he wanted to pick up the kids, and now he’s asking about making dinner!"

More cackling, and more tooth-scraping.

"Fred heard him drive off in that new Mustang. Didn’t you, Fred?"

"Ungh hunh!" I nodded with vigor.

Cindy shook her head and walked away.

Scrap scrape scrape. Floss floss. Squirt. Suck. Scrape.

"Let me just dry your teeth off," Shauna said, putting down the scraping tool She picked up a small gun-shaped piece of metal with a tube snaking down out of sight and blasted my mouth with air. First the back, bottom and top, then the sides.

Elton John let me know I shouldn’t go breakin’ his heart. My mind drifted.

Shauna sprayed the air down into the area where, were I more a redneck, I might put a pinch of Skoal. My lips, loose and rubbery, flapped like those of a hound dog hanging his head from the open window of a speeding car.

And made a long, low purring fart noise, plainly audible to the entire office.

Instantly I reverted 25 years.

Remember when you were a kid in church, sitting there with your mom and dad all fidgety and uncomfortable, bored to tears by the droning preacher up in the pulpit? Remember how your sister would do something, perfectly mundane in any other situation, but that was absofuckinglutely hilarious in church? Remember how you felt, struggling not to laugh, yet unsuccessful, even when your mom reached over and pinched the ever-loving shit out of your leg?

Now you know how I felt when my lips farted in the dentist’s office.

I lay there, staring up at the light, willing myself not to laugh. The more I thought about that fart noise the funnier it seemed and the harder I had to fight not to bust out. I quaked in the chair, shaking with the effort while Shauna kept working at my teeth like nothing was out of the ordinary.

A single tear slid from my left eye and crawled down my face, and I couldn’t take it any more. I snorted once, trying to get control of myself.

When I did, I blew a big dollop of snot out of one nostril and onto my upper lip, where it lay quivering in the bright light.

That sucked the laugh right out of me.

Shauna, to her credit, acted like nothing had happened, save a brief widening of her eyes when I almost blasted her with a snot rocket.

I begged the earth to open up and swallow me, but my prayers fell on deaf ears. Shauna finally turned away for a second to get the fluoride, and I swiped desperately at my mouth, red-faced.

And to add insult to injury, I have a flippin’ cavity I need to get filled. Maybe then I can just flick a booger on someone.