The Savage Dentists

Dreams, dentistry, and the destruction of Tonga

Sorrow cannot survive death, but cavities are forever

I had a strange experience at the periodontist last week.

I was reclining in the dental chair, tears streaming into my ears. The doctor had just shot me full of Novocain so I wouldn’t feel any pain when she sliced open my gums. I’d broken a tooth in a bar fight, I mean, while eating a cashew, and exposed a metal filling. If I’d fractured the tooth all the way to the roots, the doctor informed me, it would have to come out, but the X-rays were inconclusive. The tears sprung involuntarily from all those needles that had been jabbed into my gums.

Years of getting tattooed have given me some experience with sitting with discomfort that is constantly crossing over into pain. There’s a zone where the pain is tolerable and you learn to hover on the edge of that threshold. It depends on where on the body you’re being attacked, what nerves are involved, how long it lasts, the size of the wound. It has nothing to do with how tough you are, but it feels like training for trauma.

The doctor and her aide left me alone in the room while they attended to another patient and my fear of losing the tooth and anxiety over how much it was going to cost and the shame of knowing this was to some degree self-inflicted combined with the sensation of tears running down my face caused me to think about my mother. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s my final image of her. Her dentures floating out of her mouth as her spirit left her. Maybe it was the intensity of all those emotions, which felt very close to the surface. If the doctor or her aide had walked into the room and said, “How are we doing in here?” I would have burst into tears, which would have been awkward and confusing for everyone.

I did not burst into tears. I focused on relaxing my body. I had a book that a friend had recommended to me. I didn’t read it but I held onto it the way a child holds a doll. I didn’t look at my phone for the same reason I don’t look at my phone when I’m getting tattooed. I felt an obligation to be present. The chair was very comfortable and it was easy to relax. I wondered if I could learn to lean into dental work the way I leaned into getting tattooed after I got sober and had to learn how to process the pain without whiskey and tequila and beer.

I drifted off for a bit. I dreamt I was trying to register for college classes but I was late, so so late. I had a brown leather satchel that in real life my mother gave me as a kind of graduation present. I was wearing a sweater vest with a short sleeve shirt. I kept getting lost. I entered a vast hall and thought, This must be the place. But it wasn’t the place. There were television screens mounted on the wall that purported to show the erasure of a South Pacific island as it was swallowed up by the ocean and disappeared forever. An entire country, gone. I think it was Tonga.

I came to my senses, a phrase I’ve always loved, how wonderful to have those gifts returned to you, even if it’s only the sights and sounds and smells of a dental office. The doctor and her aide went to work and it wasn’t long before my mouth was crammed with instruments. When I’m getting dental work done I have to focus on my tongue or it will probe the area being worked on like a stray dog with a nose for danger. I have to will my tongue to stay put in the bed of my mouth while the doctor says things like “Open wider!” and “Turn your head!” except she didn’t say “Turn your head!” She said “Eyes right!” I remembered that we talked about how she was in the Army and I was in the Navy. A small understanding we shared.

Every so often I would realize that my entire body was clenched like a fist. When I became aware of this I would relax and settle into the chair while the doctor worked on my mouth and the aide sucked blood from it with a tiny hose. Where does the blood go? I didn’t want to know.

I sent my mind on a mission somewhere else and the place it kept returning to was a coffeehouse in a version of Flagstaff, Arizona, that doesn’t really exist—neither the city nor the coffeehouse—because it’s a scene from my work in progress. I thought about how much my character likes it there, likes coffeehouse in general, which differ from cafes in ways that I can’t really explain. Coffeehouses are cluttered with people, have idiosyncratic décor, and possess a communal vibe that encourages customers to make themselves at home. I didn’t stay long in this imaginary coffeehouse. I had orders to follow—”Eyes right!”—but each time I uncoiled from the full body clench I returned to the coffeehouse and it became more real. The kind of place where you can always find a newspaper laying around. The kind of place where the employees give the day-old pastries to people who need them. I could see a young woman with a pony tail staring at a work schedule posted on a grimy wall in the back room and she wasn’t happy about her lack of shifts, not happy at all.

The work in progress is coming along quickly, perhaps too quickly. I’m leaping over plot holes and telling myself not to look down or back or anywhere but forward. Parts of the story feel insubstantial, hazy and half-cooked, but this coffeehouse is like the first room you go to in a video game, intensely familiar to the point of becoming real.

Through the hiss of the espresso machine the doctor called me back. She had good news for me: she was able to save the tooth. She stitched me up and gently chastised me about my oral hygiene and told me what I needed to do next: today and tomorrow and for the next several months. I need more people like this in my life.

The doctor put me on a liquid diet. When I got home I made a smoothie and watched a terrible movie and ate ice cream for dinner. I didn’t make any progress on the story I kept returning to in that dental chair, but it’s got a coffeehouse that’s as real as any I’ve ever set foot in. Maybe someday we can all go there and drink espresso out of tiny cups and talk about the rest of the book, how it made us feel, how much closer we all are to death than we realize.

Are you going to be in LA this weekend? I’d love to see you Saturday at Skylight Books at 5pm. I’ll be in conversation with Nolan Knight about his kick-ass new collection of crime stories Beneath the Black Palms.