The Root of all Evil.
Still reeling.
I walked briskly to a root canal appointment at the dentist's today. I worry about what sort of person that makes me - would I be early to my own execution? Would I dress for it? Bring a box of Krispy Kremes for the firing squad? What sort of a lick-spittle am I?
But I am on time. I've walked. It is a cool bright day. When I lie down in the chair my glasses immediately fog framing proceedings with soft focus. What follows is an act of extreme violence that I'm obliged to sit through but don't actually feel. Its uncomfortable and inconvenient and quite strange and you are always anticipating pain but it never comes. The dentist gives me an injection. Within a minute she is flicking my bottom lip. "You feel that?" she says. I admit I can feel it. She gives me another injection. This one feels like a big one - its like she's plunging a cafetiere. She flicks the lip again. "How about now?" I can still feel my lip but my tongue is totally under. "Flebunraw" I explain. It's good enough - she digs in.
I am aware of many things: the bright light shining in my eyes, the blue of the sky visible through the high window, the lack of any way to gauge the time (this is an hour long appointment and there is no clock anywhere in the room). The four pairs of hands deftly rummaging in the Oak Island Money Pit that my mouth has become. There is a drill, there is a mirror, there is that sucking machine. I think I see a flash of some car keys. There is definitely a clamp and some green thing that looks like the devil - there are horns. That goes in. At one point what appears to be an uninflated balloon or perhaps a burst whoopee cushion is placed in my mouth to "absorb any liquids". What liquids are these? Are they my liquids? Are there rogue fluids in the area, operating with their own agenda? I try to swallow but somebody's hand is in the way of my gag reflex.
I am distracted, however. I am bursting for a wee. I drank an entire pot of tea before I left the house and the brief, exploratory pee that I took downstairs has only taken the edge off. By the twenty minute mark I can feel myself filling up like a toilet cistern: if you bounced a penny of my belly it would sound like a timpani. I am nervous. I pride myself on my pain management but I am constantly waiting for a glancing blow off an exposed nerve and the attendant searing agony that it will bring. I feel like I should explain to the dentist that if I wet myself its not because I'm a scaredy cat who can't deal with the pain, but because I'm filled to the brim with angry, boiling piss. However I can't say this because my mouth is full of hands.
Suddenly there is the taste of chlorine in my mouth. Why is there chlorine in my mouth? That can't be right, surely? The masked figures above me mumble to each other, my sight is fringed with mist, there appears to be five of six hands in my mouth and quite a lot of road-mending equipment. The only thing to do is to stare into the bright light. This is like a classic alien abduction, though normally the chair would be the other way round.
My mouth tastes strongly of cloves now. That's strangely comforting: there's something medicinal about cloves. And it does beat tasting like a municipal swimming pool foot-bath. I can still taste the verruca socks.
I haven't mentioned the music. There is music. There are inappropriate tunes playing and I'm briefly reminded of the novel "Alma Cogan" before I get some perspective. The tunes I remember are "Somewhere in my heart" by Aztec Camera, "Dont'cha" by Pussycat Dolls and "You and Me Song" by the Wannadies. I met them once. They were nice. Very small.
My dentist looks like a ballerina, has arms like a trawlerman and is NOT shy. She's so far in I can taste her armpits, which on this occasion is not erotic. But, eventually, still painlessly, she is done. I stagger to my feet feeling as if I have been beaten around the face and neck with a bag of oranges but still, miraculously, alive, albeit with half my head missing.
Outside the sky is still blue. The sun low and bright in the sky. I am dazed and buy ibuprofen, mushroom soup and deodorant and think the woman behind the till is flirting with me - no doubt because of my sexy shopping list. I stagger home, dazed. Dancing with the traffic. "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me? Don't ya?"
Shit.
I walked briskly to a root canal appointment at the dentist's today. I worry about what sort of person that makes me - would I be early to my own execution? Would I dress for it? Bring a box of Krispy Kremes for the firing squad? What sort of a lick-spittle am I?
But I am on time. I've walked. It is a cool bright day. When I lie down in the chair my glasses immediately fog framing proceedings with soft focus. What follows is an act of extreme violence that I'm obliged to sit through but don't actually feel. Its uncomfortable and inconvenient and quite strange and you are always anticipating pain but it never comes. The dentist gives me an injection. Within a minute she is flicking my bottom lip. "You feel that?" she says. I admit I can feel it. She gives me another injection. This one feels like a big one - its like she's plunging a cafetiere. She flicks the lip again. "How about now?" I can still feel my lip but my tongue is totally under. "Flebunraw" I explain. It's good enough - she digs in.
I am aware of many things: the bright light shining in my eyes, the blue of the sky visible through the high window, the lack of any way to gauge the time (this is an hour long appointment and there is no clock anywhere in the room). The four pairs of hands deftly rummaging in the Oak Island Money Pit that my mouth has become. There is a drill, there is a mirror, there is that sucking machine. I think I see a flash of some car keys. There is definitely a clamp and some green thing that looks like the devil - there are horns. That goes in. At one point what appears to be an uninflated balloon or perhaps a burst whoopee cushion is placed in my mouth to "absorb any liquids". What liquids are these? Are they my liquids? Are there rogue fluids in the area, operating with their own agenda? I try to swallow but somebody's hand is in the way of my gag reflex.
I am distracted, however. I am bursting for a wee. I drank an entire pot of tea before I left the house and the brief, exploratory pee that I took downstairs has only taken the edge off. By the twenty minute mark I can feel myself filling up like a toilet cistern: if you bounced a penny of my belly it would sound like a timpani. I am nervous. I pride myself on my pain management but I am constantly waiting for a glancing blow off an exposed nerve and the attendant searing agony that it will bring. I feel like I should explain to the dentist that if I wet myself its not because I'm a scaredy cat who can't deal with the pain, but because I'm filled to the brim with angry, boiling piss. However I can't say this because my mouth is full of hands.
Suddenly there is the taste of chlorine in my mouth. Why is there chlorine in my mouth? That can't be right, surely? The masked figures above me mumble to each other, my sight is fringed with mist, there appears to be five of six hands in my mouth and quite a lot of road-mending equipment. The only thing to do is to stare into the bright light. This is like a classic alien abduction, though normally the chair would be the other way round.
My mouth tastes strongly of cloves now. That's strangely comforting: there's something medicinal about cloves. And it does beat tasting like a municipal swimming pool foot-bath. I can still taste the verruca socks.
I haven't mentioned the music. There is music. There are inappropriate tunes playing and I'm briefly reminded of the novel "Alma Cogan" before I get some perspective. The tunes I remember are "Somewhere in my heart" by Aztec Camera, "Dont'cha" by Pussycat Dolls and "You and Me Song" by the Wannadies. I met them once. They were nice. Very small.
My dentist looks like a ballerina, has arms like a trawlerman and is NOT shy. She's so far in I can taste her armpits, which on this occasion is not erotic. But, eventually, still painlessly, she is done. I stagger to my feet feeling as if I have been beaten around the face and neck with a bag of oranges but still, miraculously, alive, albeit with half my head missing.
Outside the sky is still blue. The sun low and bright in the sky. I am dazed and buy ibuprofen, mushroom soup and deodorant and think the woman behind the till is flirting with me - no doubt because of my sexy shopping list. I stagger home, dazed. Dancing with the traffic. "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me? Don't ya?"
Shit.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment