TheBanyanTree: The Dentist

[Monique]

I need to go to the dentist. This is a fact of life. I need my teeth
cleaned, and I need a crown. I'm avoiding the entire issue at the moment. I
have an abnormal fear of dentists. They don't give me nightmares like the
insane toilets of my childhood (long story, but here goes: when I was young,
I was often chastised for making noise in the middle of the night, so I
often dreamt, or maybe just once, but it's a dream that has stuck with me
ever since, of angry loud toilets chasing me . . . and people wonder why I'm
scarred) but it is an abnormal fear nonetheless. Or perhaps not so abnormal
. . 

When I was 30 I had braces. To make my teeth pretty and straight. It worked,
far as I can tell; my bottom teeth no longer look like a picket fence that
has seen better days. It was not a good time. Suffering for beauty is not an
uncommon American trait, but it was also, so they tell me, so I could keep
my teeth in better shape.

This is a lie of course. It's how they suck you in. 

Shortly after having the monstrous metal installed in my mouth I was called
off to paralegal training in Mississippi by the Air Force. Perhaps called
off is an inaccurate term. I went into the reserves on a whim, wanting to
keep the NCO status I'd earned as an active member. 

Why I would care is a mystery. 

At the physical, in San Francisco, I was one of the older recruits. Somehow
I managed to pass, despite my metal mouth. I assured my recruiter it was not
a problem.

It wasn't, of course. In fact, over the six weeks I spent in Mississippi, my
braces were the least of my problems. I grew comfortable with them. I
learned to eat foods that I'd been unable to eat since the monstrous things
had been installed. (That was what it was, an installation.) Sub sandwiches,
for one, something that required a flexible mouth. I ate. And I drank, but
that's a different story for a different time. And my braces were fine. They
stopped hurting, for the most part, and I almost forgot the torture I'd
endured during the installation. They were a part of me. 

Then I finished my six weeks, wiser in the ways of the military legal system
and suffering from just a slight hangover. And I went to my orthodontist. 

And I discovered that the installation was nothing compared to what would
happen after six weeks away, six weeks of letting the installation slack off
into a comfortable existence. There was tightening. There was much
tightening. There was pain. There was me, wondering what I'd been thinking
to have had this done at all. 

And there was me, losing weight once again because I couldn't get any food
past the damnable metal that lived in my mouth.

I can barely stand to have my teeth messed with these days. A cleaning now
and then, that's fine, though it isn't fine at the time, my hands clench
whatever is available, the inside of my head rebels, and I am sure that if
there is no surcease I will begin to scream in order for it to stop.

I never do, or haven't yet, actually screamed, but the thought is always
with me. It's the scream I suppress whenever something horrible is being
done to me and I want it to stop. 

I need to go back to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned and get a crown.
If you come with me, I promise not to break your hand as I clench it
tightly. That will be before there's any activity in my mouth. Once
someone's hand or some sort of torture device enters my mouth, there are no
guarantees.

M7