Teeth

THE DENTIST was a tall, thin man who wore glasses and spoke with a raspy voice. "We're going to do the right side today, is that it?" he asked cheerfully.

"Yes," the patient answered. He had met the dentist once before, several months before, when the dentist--an oral surgeon, the nurse told him--had extracted two of his wisdom teeth. At that first encounter, the patient had hated the dentist, not with the hatred--that of the weak for the strong.

For at that encounter the dentist had not seemed a dentist, but a has-been, a once-dentist, brought back from the junkyards of time to haunt the fourth floor of the University Health Services, a green, sickly, pale no-good, who was only strong because of the arsenal of machinery around him. And knowing this, that only the power of the machinery made the dentist strong, the patient had hated him.

But now it was different. The dentist's causal greeting, his coy smile at the nurse who stood nearby, and his jaunty, almost arrogant manner took the patient surprise. He hadn't prepared himself for this. He started at the dentist's body, strangely supple and relaxed, felt his won body small and weak, and then saw the dentist reaching for the huge, infernal, hated, death-inferring hypodermic needle that the nurse held out to him. The patient knew what was different this time. He was afraid.

"Open, please."

As the patient opened his mouth, he thought of taking off his glasses to avoid looking at the steel glint in the dentist's eyes. But before he could, the rapid-fire, machine-gun-bullet orgasms of pain were exploding in his jaw. Jab! Jab! Jab! The patient jammed his eyes shut. His whole body was tight, as time after time he felt the needle piercing deep into his gums, driving its payload of novocaine into his bloodstream. "Just relax," he heard the nurse saying. The injections were done. He slumped back into the chair.

"The worst is over," the patient said confidently to himself, feeling the deadening novocaine take control of the right side of his mouth. He had a few minutes to think, and looked past the dreary green window curtains out at the drab, decaying, worn brick roofs of Cambridge buildings. "Soon I will be back out there," the patient thought to himself, "where there are real battles to fight, instead of the false battles in this etherized hell." With that though, he forgave his fear, and thought of women, and of whiskey.

BUT THE worst was not over. The dentist returned, and the patient, having taken off his glasses, could only see him dimly. "How does your mouth feel now?" the dentist asked matter-of-factly. Then without waiting for the patient's reply, he took a long dull instrument from his cabinet and, with it, gently pocked the patient's reply, he took a long dull instrument from his cabinet and, with it, gently pocked the patient's upper tooth. Feeling nothing, the patient relaxed and then, in an instant, realized the dentist was pushing harder and harder at the tooth. "My God, he's gone mad," the patient screamed to himself, as the dentist pushed and pushed, driving the patient up out of his sear toward some pain-embracing, nauseous state of being between ceiling and floor. He heard his tooth crack. "That's one," the dentist said. "Just relax," the nurse added. And the patient felt the dentist stitching the great hole in his mouth back together.

"One more," the patient wanted to shout. "There is only one more wisdom tooth left in my mouth, and it will be gone in a minute, and I'll be free." But even as he thought these thoughts, the patient felt the dentist begin to push at the last tooth. Harder and harder the dentist pushed, as he had pushed before. Only this time something was wrong. The tooth did not crack. "Jesus!" the patient screamed in his mind. "Jesus, make it crack. For the love of God and Norman Mailer and all the greasy hamburgers eaten in all the dirty joints of this screwed-up, Christ-forsaken land, Jesus make it crack." The tooth cracked.

"Just relax," the nurse was saying. And the patient wanted to scream, "You whore, is that all you can say?" But instead, feeling her hand on his shoulder, he put his hand on hers, and relaxed.