there are some jobs that always make me wonder. jobs like downtown commissionaires, eight hour shifts of fighting with people over their parking jobs. or plumbers, shoulder deep in other people’s rotten pipes. what makes people choose jobs like this? what do they get out of them? i really want to know.
it’s how i feel about the entire industry of dentistry, and i had plenty of time to reconcile my thoughts on the matter as i lay back on the chair for ninety minutes today in the early morning with my mouth jacked open, jaw aching, hands restless.
i haven’t been to a dentist in at least three years, so there was a lot of mapping out of uncharted territory to be done. my hygienist, andy, made careful work of it for forty-five minutes that felt like my own personal eternal purgatory. through the tinny stereo speakers, over the wet whir of the blasting hose andy was using to power-wash my molars, wynonna judd bleated out her insipid cover of foreigner’s classic i want to know what love is, and i began to fear that i would suffer an aneurism or stroke in that moment, lest the last moment of my life be a view of my hygienist’s face, masked to the eyes; the spray of my own saliva ricocheting warmly back onto my cheeks and chin, wynonna warbling faintly, and andy getting frisky with his needle-point and tenderly stabbing every inch of my gums. please universe, i thought, please don’t let this be how it all ends.
imagine!
when my mouth was sliced and shellacked, stripped and flossed, throbbing, and disgruntled to his liking, andy made me hold up a mirror and taught me how to floss properly. then he asked,
‘do you smoke? drink coffee, tea? red wine?’
i nodded.
‘all of them?’ he asked
‘my favorite things in life!’ i kidded him. his brown eyes stared at me unblinking above his blue paper mask.
‘they all stain your teeth,’ he told me.
‘right’, i nodded. ‘ok.’
i went back into the waiting room to kill time until the dentist could see me. i have to say, as waiting rooms go, this one beats most. the lighting is soft and natural, there are comfortable chairs, a plethora of juicy magazines and a large, wooden train set for the kiddies to tinker with. my doctor’s office waiting room makes me feel like i’ve fallen backwards into a peach-toned nightmare, where drippy songs like wynonna’s doozie play endlessly, just below fully audible so that you’re actually struggling to hear the shitty song you don’t want to hear anyway. the chairs are hard, and all the books, magazines and toys have been removed because of swine flu.
anyway.
it wasn’t long before a head popped out of the surgery door and called me back in. i assumed she was the dentist, never having been there before and her being decked out in head to toe blue scrubs. i was wrong.
‘i’m the dental assistant,’ she told me. ‘i’m just going to take a look at your mouth and take some notes and then i’ll get the doctor to come in, ok? how’s your day going so far? cold out there isn’t it! and the fog! i swear i never get used to going to work before the sun comes up. ok, so you’re not a flosser, haven’t been for a check up in three years, no pain, no sensitivity, right?’
i could barely muster a response and i’m sure a too-long moment passed before i collected myself. she had been speaking without breathing, as though she didn’t need to breathe, and it was a lot for eight in the morning under fluorescent lights.
‘right,’ i said. ‘yup.’
‘ok,’ she said. ‘well let’s get you laid back and i’ll take a little look for myself, ok? ok, how’s that? comfortable?’ all this was said with her fingers already in my mouth. i sort of tried to answer with my eyes and an impotent gurgle caught in the back of my throat.
‘any big plans for halloween?’ she asked.
i shrugged. ‘i uhn kno’.’
‘i know, me neither,’ she told me. ‘like, i don’t know, i was thinking about having people over because i just got a condo but to tell you the truth’, she lowered her voice conspiratorially, ‘my roommate’s stuff is all over the place. we just moved in. but i can’t have people over with it looking like that, i just can’t! how’s that feel? any tenderness there?’
she was jamming a rubber implement the parameter of a pool cue into my gum line. i found myself longing for andy’s somberness ; at least he knew about mutually beneficial silences.
‘unh hunh,’ i said, nodding gravely.
she took a note then put her fingers back in my mouth. ‘ok. ok. good. and because i live in this condo, it’s not like a lot of kids are going to come around for candy. i told this guy i’m seeing, i said, we should just go and get some candy in bulk and eat it ourselves!’ she laughed grandly, like a calibrated tinkle in my face. i smiled half-heartedly around her hands.
‘ok,’ she said standing up. ‘looks good. i’m going to go brief the doctor on your file. be right back!’
at this point my opinion of all those even remotely associated with dentistry were dead to me, lost for hope, irreparably damned. there were no clocks anywhere, i had no idea how long i’d been there, would i ever get out? why did these people want to hurt me? aliens? were they aliens? was i on the mothership? oh god, chest tightening, wheezing, i felt clammy and faint. panic began to set in. things almost got really weird, but then the door opened and this breath of fresh air breezed in with a genial, wide smile and shook my hand warmly. it was the dentist. she introduced herself and sat and chatted for a spell before gently lowering the chair and giving me dark glasses to wear against the glare of the overhead dome light hovering above our heads. this woman made love to my mouth with her instruments, then pressed her fingertips into my jaw gently on both sides and had me open and close, open and close, open and close.
‘you’re a clencher, aren’t you? a clencher or a grinder?’
‘yes,’ i said. ‘both i think. my jaw hurts when i wake up a lot.’
‘how much is a lot?’
‘once, twice a week,’ i said.
‘that’s a lot. ok. make a note to book a fitting for a bite-guard.’ she looked down at me. ‘i’m a terrible clencher. i wear a guard every night,’ she told me.
at the end of the brief, professional assessment, after she had fondled my jaw a little more, she had me stand up facing away from her so that she could see my posture.
‘you clench your jaw worse on the right hand side,’ she said. ‘so i want to see how your body is carrying other stress.’
i got up and faced the wall. ‘good posture really,’ she told the assistant behind my back. ‘but that right hip is held up higher than the left. same with the right shoulder, do you see that? which way does she tilt her head? to the right. ok. turn to face me.’
i spun and stood as straight as i could, squaring my shoulders and steeling my feet.
‘do you have good health insurance?’ she asked.
‘yes.’
‘ok, book yourself a massage, or a series of massages, every couple of weeks or so.’
‘really?’ i laughed. ‘you’re prescribing massages for my jaw?’
‘shoulders. you’re carrying all your stress there, and massages will help with the tension in your jaw muscles. you need to get it out a different way. you’re ok now, but it will get worse the longer you do it.’
my mother picked me up to drive me to work, and in the car i ranted like a lunatic about those sick cretins with their tools and saws and sharp floss and mimicked their ‘no smoking or drinking anything good’ buzz-killing lectures.
she admitted that she herself had also often wondered about them, dentists, but then, as per usual, she cut my ranting and raving with a sharper view.
‘but wasn’t she good?’
‘the dentist? yes. i liked her, actually.’
‘i always ask them how they ended up doing it, because i’m always curious myself. she came into it by accident. she had some sort of science degree and then didn’t know what to do and someone said go into dentistry or law. she picked dentistry.’
we took a curve turn onto yates and when the wheel had righted she continued, ‘the best answer i ever got was from a dentist in toronto. he said he liked it because it was all about problem solving; about pro-active maintenance. i liked that,’ she said. ‘i can understand that.’
i thought about how this dentist had studied my posture, shot the shit about seasonal affective disorder and vitamin d and gingers’ resistance to anesthesia, and talked about my mouth like a fine craftsman might talk about the ribs of a mahogany sailboat.
it should be said, my mouth is no mahogany sailboat—not by a long shot. dentists have been asking me about orthodontics since my adult teeth first pushed through, pell-mell and askew. when i was thirteen the talk became serious and my parents asked me straight up if i wanted braces. i was in the kitchen of our sunny country house, standing by the telephone. i thought about it for a few seconds, looked out the window at the yard, at my parents’ faces, then said no and picked up the phone to dial. they dropped it and that was that.
and now, at this point, i am who i am who i am, idiosyncratic though my smile may be, and almost always i could care less.
but the dentist, the fucking dentist, 90 minutes or longer with people’s hands in my gob, analyzing every crooked inch of my poor, sheepish chops. it reminds me that uncorrected smiles in people my age are rare among those that can regularly attend a dentist and whose parents could afford orthodontics in the nineties.
staring into a little mirror at my teeth is like being in one of those impossible nightmares i have about once a year where all my teeth fall out. those suckers just fall right out! bam. in the dreams, usually it happens when i am alone in an alley or a bathroom stall but moments away from seeing people i know, giving a speech, acting in a movie or about to kiss someone. one by one they just fall out and i collect them like marbles in my palm, glass skins rubbing uneasily together, even dislodged.
i got out of the car and walked up the block to the office where i spend my days. on the way into the building, i spied a navy-blue uniformed parking commissionaire coming up the street with her little notebook, chalking tire-lines and checking meters scrupulously. her long blond ponytail swished under a low-slung blue cap as she strolled from car to car.
in the lobby, as i waited for the elevator, i tongued my newly gleaming choppers and braced myself for another day. another dollar.
a lot of people would look at my job and wonder to themselves why anyone would choose it, this job that i came upon by accident, as with most all my jobs.
there is good and bad in it like any job, like anything. there are days that i feel as if one more person asks me to change the toner in the copier while sending a fax and fixing the coffee machine and ordering catering and implementing the first-aid defibrillator while smiling and bowing meek and grateful before the grave honor of it all, i will just go right off the deep end. i imagine loosening my tie, undoing the top buttons of my waistcoat, unburdening my desk of papers and debris in a flourishing sweep, jumping atop the pale-grey laminate, dimming the lights, grabbing a microphone and wailing out a caterwaul version of depeche mode’s personal jesus.
then there are days when i feel like a superhero; you need something done? who do you go to? this guy (points thumb at self). on these days i crack jokes to all the loiterers who come to shoot the shit around my desk. on these days i am an administrative force to be reckoned with, let me tell you. and not only that, but there can be pleasure in it too. there is gratification in constantly calling on one’s analytical skills to solve problems effectively, efficiently, creatively.
and after today’s ten hour workday, with my gums still pulsing from the investigations of three sets of prodding thumbs and forefingers, i have forgiven dentistry its crimes against me. that woman was a problem solver, and she took some kind of strange pleasure in it, and i can get on board with that. traffic cops i still don’t get, but they just be doing like we all do; another day, another goddamned dollar.
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