A Trip to the Dentist Every time I chewed an intense pain shot through my jaw.
For a week I ate only yogurt. I had learned from Abbie Hoffman how to grow your own batch of flavored bacterial conglomerations, so it cut down on costs. It didn’t, however, satiate the lustful, lanky snake that is my intestinal tract, my hunger, so I tried adding applesauce to my diet, but the nostalgia of being spoon-fed in a high-chair was far too emasculating, so finally I decided I needed to fix my tooth.
After careful probing I discovered it was a right molar that was causing the trouble and I immediately became very angry at this insubordinate tooth, so I sought to punish it by seizing my pocket knife and slashing it to pieces with boiling, righteous self-hatred. This did not do me well. Not only did the tooth pain me tenfold, but lacerations now lined my gums and I nearly choked on my own blood before I clogged the wounds with a dirty dishrag. After consulting my psychic friend, my psychotherapist, a few acquaintances and street-met stranger passersby, I came to the horrid realization that I needed to visit the dentist.
Some people visit the dentist frequently, even on a yearly basis, and see nothing slightly wrong with such indiscriminate behavior. Clearly, they have not been subject to the same travesty and trauma that I have. Hold your breath while I relate:
I was nine years old, and my mother, that whore, scheduled a dentist appointment the day before Halloween. Fourteen insidious holes revealed themselves via X-ray and my mother was so disgusted to pay hundreds of dollars for each of their filling that she punished me by forbidding my participation in the following night’s pagan festivities. I was ripe with indignation, so when my mother left to run an errand, I seized each of the pumpkins that my father intended to mutilate in the name of Jack’s lantern and smashed them on the kitchen floor. The orange yolk stuck to the pristine wallpaper and the seeds scattered themselves irretrievably into the crevices of the mopped marble floor. I proceeded to throw all the dishes, pots and pans to the ground with a crash and resounding clang. I smashed the windows with kitchen utensils, and threw the eggbeaters, spatulas and cheese-graters out of the jagged apertures. My mother, upon her return, was not pleased, so she, to put it lightly, forcibly and permanently exiled me from her house. Threw me out on the streets, nine years old, nothing to do but swallow balloons for drug-pushers. But I was an ambitious young fellow, the American Dream having been well imbued in my spirit by this time, so I grew weary of being nothing but a courier. I would defecate, confiscate and then sell the goods for my own profit, which almost got me killed multiple times by the time I hit puberty, of course. But I was positively rolling in dough. I was the envy of all my former acquaintances, not just because I could buy out entire sections of any candy store, but also because older women were quick to direct their attentions to me.
But it wasn’t all fun and games, I tell you that much. I ran from and followed the devil, lord, I went down a treacherous path. Felt God’s wrath. Never learned how to do math. Slept in and ate my own waste and that of others, you know the story, and it was all cuz of that dentist a-hole. And that’s why I haven’t patronized one since, and every time I chance to meet someone who claims to be a dentist I stab them a few hundred times. It’s not that I’m crazy or violent or anything, in fact I am quite sensible and meticulous in my procedure. I carry a duffel bag every where I go so that I can dispose of the body by bringing it home and feasting. I eat all their flesh, starting with the toes, and up to the face, until they are nothing but teeth. I cackle as I smash and disintegrate the pristine knoblets with a sledgehammer.
This is my daily ritual, my new fix after all the years of money and drugs. And I am a fulfilled person because of it. I am indulging in pleasurable excesses at no expense to my mental or physical health, while simultaneously avenging the root of my wayward past. How many dentists can you kill with one stone?
And now I had to pay a visit of less sanguine motives. When the buzz registered, I stepped into the office, gagged psychosomatically, and nearly spit up my lunch (which of course consisted of one of his colleagues) on the pristine polyester floor. His secretary batted her elastic eyelashes, but did a double-take when I opened my mouth to inform her of my presence, because she saw my teeth, punctured, jagged, yellow, black, and gangrene after all the years of abuse (dentists have particularly strong bones, rich in calcium, which are detrimental to chew, especially when you are in your twenty-seventh year of boycotting toothpaste).
She called the dentist out of his lair. He cracked a few goofy, dry jokes and led me in. He gasped when he saw my teeth up close with the concave mirror, and inquired whether I had been brushing lately.
I could’ve killed him then and there, but restrained myself, and merely answered, “Look, asshole, just fix this one tooth up good and leave the missionary process alone. I will not be a dupe of your heinous conspiracy.”
He seemed offended, which I thought was silly considering how lucky he was to be alive. He anesthetized me and dug a scalpel into the offending molar. I passed out, and woke up painless, aside from the thought that he had probably molested me in my slumber, because dentists thrive on immorality. He told me to check with his secretary for the bill, so I countered, now how about he not charge me a cent if I agree to save him millions of dollars in a sexual harassment suit?
He was befuddled, chuckling questionably, as if trying to decipher my peculiar sense of humor. So I removed a knife especially sharpened for the occasion and slit his throat, and every other space of his body. I lapped the bountiful blood from the floor like a ravenous dog, left the lair, and did the same to his secretary, because she would’ve called the cops and I haven’t been to prison since I abandoned my wayward lifestyle, and I don’t want to go back either, and plus, she was an implicit accessory to the dentist industry.
I fetched my jacket and duffel bag from the coat rack and stuffed her in and then went into the dentist’s lair and stuffed him in and went out to catch a subway. When I got home I opened my silverware drawer and took out the knife sharp enough to cut through calcium.