Dentist's Office Lolita - Gather Writing Essential

Dentist's Office Lolita

My upper left molar has been disintegrating for a year.? The decay has spread around the huge old filling until the filling itself has fallen out.? Now there is hardly anything left above the gumline.? I can?t leave the house without a tube of Orajel in my pocket.? It?s time to face the music and have the old girl yanked out.

The waiting room is a study in ochre and ecru, a big screen TV running Nickelodeon high on one wall, a couple pieces of nondescript waiting room art on the other walls.? A wooden plaque high above the receptionist?s desk says, ?God Is Great.?? I sit on an uncomfortable window bench and wait; after a few minutes, the door to the inner sanctum opens and a young woman pokes her head out.? I do a double take.

It?s Take-Your-Daughter-To-Work Day, I think.

She leads me back to a cubicle and bids me sit in the dentist chair.? She could not be a hair?s breadth over four feet tall.? When I sit in the chair, we are face to face, so I am able to?in fact, can?t help but?study her in minute detail.? ?Her features are those of a twelve-year-old girl.? She has a roundish babydoll face, a pixie nose, and what looks for all the world to be the immature Chiclet-shaped teeth of a twelve-year-old, a little crooked, cute as a button.? Her brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail and on top of her head are a couple tiny droplets of rain.? Her garb does nothing to dispel the impression of schoolgirl youthfulness, consisting of a floral print smock and blue scrubs pants.

The first thing she does is drape the lead bib over my torso.? How sweet they let her do that.? I am still waiting for the real assistant to appear.? Then she (let?s call her Miranda?I never did get her name)?then Miranda starts quizzing me when did I last have a full set of x-rays.? I try to remember the name of the dentist whom I saw only once last spring, and failing that, explain where the clinic was, with not very much success.? Can we just yank this puppy out today, I ask?? Dr. Alma comes in and explains she wants to do a full set of x-rays today.? Okay, fine, I say.

One by one, Miranda places an array of variously colored and shaped plastic gizmos half into my mouth and asks me to bite down.? The thought dawns on me:? you?re actually a technician.? At one point, I wince and try to adjust my bite.? I say something about the plastic digging into my soft tissue.? She says something empathetic, like, ?I?m sorry.? I wish those things were softer.?? Something is strangely incongruous about that remark.? Then I realize what it is.? That sort of empathy is not something you normally find in a twelve-year-old.

I try to make sense out of what I?m seeing.? How old could she be and still look like that?? Fourteen?? Sixteen?? Has she dropped out of high school, gotten her GED, and taken a crash course in dental assisting?? Freudian, Nabokovian thoughts start clamoring at the edge of my skull, demanding I let them in.? I look for physical clues to her true age but find none.? I look for some hint of a profile underneath the shapeless uniform, but for all I can see, she has the body of a twelve-year old:? no chest, no butt, square waist.

Her accent is almost indiscernibly clipped.? Perhaps her parents are from Eastern Europe.? Maybe her name is Klowesoff.? I had been frustrated before by her blue latex gloves, but now as I sneak a peek I can see she has a ring on her wedding finger with more diamonds than I could dream of affording in a lifetime.? Damn!? I try to picture her husband (fianc??).? I wonder if her husband?s name is Oliver.? I wonder what Miranda looks like with Oliver Klowesoff.

Shut up!! Shut! Up! I scream interiorly at my runaway brain.? She?s going to catch me leering at her, then I won?t be able to come back ever!

Now (God have mercy on my soul!), Miranda is sitting down gently beside me.? She has her fingers in my mouth.? She is squirting cool liquid onto my tongue.? Her sweet, soft voice asks me to close my lips around the suction tube.? Miranda, Miranda, Miranda.? Could you love someone 40 years your senior?? Could you ever learn to love someone against whose bloody tooth-pit you pressed a square of sanitary gauze?

Oh well, I muse hopefully, there?s a cleaning appointment coming up?

? 2012 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved. ?Please share this on Gather.com, and elsewhere on the web by means of a link back to this page, but please do not copy. ? Doug's latest book is The Depressed Guy's Book of Wisdom from Chipmunka Publishing.

Doug's Gather Group is Depression and Creativity, devoted to creative writing about depression and related illnesses, and creative writing as therapy. ?Please consider joining. ?You can read more of Doug's posts there, or here.

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