Manifest Dentistry

 This was the one I was dreading. I've had a lot of teeth out - you could plant a sword wielding skeleton army and bash up the Argonauts with my discarded molars. My gums have been number than Ranulph Fiennes fingertips for weeks now. But now the dentist - a hairy forearmed bruiser, more like a blacksmith than any medical professional I've ever met* - wants to pull the caps off my front teeth "to see what's under there". I lack his curiosity. I'd leave well enough alone. There be dragons. What's with this pioneering spirit anyway. "I'd like to pull off your front tooth," "Why?" "BECAUSE IT'S THERE."

My front four teeth are capped. They're capped because when I was living in London a mugger punched me so hard in the mouth he killed the nerve in one front tooth and snapped the other. He made it away with a bagel and a cassette copy of Kate Bush's "The Whole Story". More fool him - there was a slight fade on the intro to "Wuthering Heights". Loser. So I had those teeth capped and, since the removal of my molars, they've been doing all the work for me: chewing, biting, smiling. Representing. 

There's a psychological aspect as well. You don't really see the back teeth. You don't see mine at any rate - I'm not a big laugher. The front ones are the heavy lifters. And he's snapping them out today, to better see the wriggling morbidities beneath. But I've agreed to this. And I'll be paying for it too. 

After an hour I lose track of what's going on. I'm not getting my proper new teeth today. I'm getting transient, place-keeper teeth. He's putting these in, then at my next appointment - which he imagines will take all afternoon - he'll build up my bottom front teeth. Then, at a later date, he'll remove these temporary efforts and put in the proper ones. Okay. Sounds a bit...counter intuitive. But what the hell? It's only vast amounts of my money I'd otherwise waste on memories and experiences. 

After that first hour - and the session eventually takes about two and a half, which is long time to lie on your back with your mouth open - I start to refocus my thoughts. He's stripping the teeth down with a combination of a drill and a strong water jet and listing the teeth as he goes - he's working right to left. But my attention is elsewhere. I'm concentrating, hard, on not drowning. A lot of water is flooding into my mouth, washing away the debris from my denuded pegs and it has nowhere to go but down my throat. I manage to sluice some of it into waiting lagoons in my cheeks, the foot-well beneath my tongue, and I take strategic gasps, whenever he moves away. I'm not being melodramatic when I say it's exactly like being water-boarded. Well, I am, but I definitely would have talked, had I not had a gob-full of water, fingers and drills. Eventually I did choke, and had to do my safety gesture - a frantic blurring wave - and they allowed me to sit up and cough out the bits of old tooth lodged in my gullet. Then we went back to it again. I bore it manfully for the next hour and a half giving a double thumbs up every time they asked me if I was okay. 

I have new teeth. As I write this my top lip is frozen into a hard sneer and a passerby might well think Billy Idol had let himself go, but my teeth look quite good. They're white but they're not too white. They're not the enormous overbite I was anticipating. They look good. I'm not sure you'd notice anything was different at all, if you didn't know me well. They are not look-at-me teeth. They are humble, just-going-about-my-day-I-don't-want-any-trouble teeth. 

I may even start smiling in photos now. 

No. It looks weird. I'll continue to pout. It's all I know. 

Today's oral surgery soundtrack included: Westlife, Dido, Kylie, Pink, and Nickelback, along with the alarming realisation that Cool FM has a dating site called, wonderfully, Cool FM Dating. 

* This is a point of view. It bears little objective scrutiny. He seems quite nice.