My mouth, from an early age, has been unduly molested, poked, prodded, drilled and bled in the name of dentistry. This has made me despise dentists and the Lexus cars they drive (they all seem to drive a Lexus). Now I’m not sure anyone particularly enjoys going to the dentist, but I really despise it and the sadists lurking behind their drills, and I believe the amount of money that has been paid out to these gentlemen in my name and the time I have spent suspended upside down in their chairs has made me an expert of sorts, or at least qualified enough to expound on the subject from more than just your casual dentist patient.My teeth are a dentist’s wet dream. Due to a bad set of genetics, my mouth is too small for the number of teeth that I have, so they did not come in any normal and acceptable fashion and instead decided to grow in crooked and far too close to each other. This has made me the subject of several extractions of perfectly healthy teeth, braces, jaw spreaders, cavity fillings, and god knows what else that was perscribed to me under the pretense of dentistry and the dentist’s desire to pay off his Lexus sooner.
Dentists have to be sadists. Everything about the entire experience is completely disheartening and everytime they begin to destroy my mouth and self esteem, I question my sanity for subjecting myself to such an obviously demeaning way to spend an afternoon. First it begins with the uncomfortable waiting room furniture, the worn copies of US magazine, the overly chipper receptionist who for some unknown reason (because I wouldn’t want her touching my mouth) is dressed in scrubs. If the dentist is especially full of himself, he might post his degree on the wall next to a painful portrait of him with his family, dressed in a cheesy Christmas sweater that would shame Clyde Huxtabel. After fliping through half an issue of US magazine and deciding that America is going to hell, you will be called back exactly seven minutes after your appointment was supposed to begin and escorted into the back room where all the drilling and filling awaits you.
The actual room where the dental magic happens always looks the same. The walls will be painted in some soft and unobtusive tone such as brown or grey and will have a generic framed nature scene picture of a brook skipping over round stones in a wood hanging. If the dental technician is a woman (they all are) and especially sentimental (well, she’s a woman, so yes) there will also be a picture of a puppy with a droopy face, or small children doing amusing things, or small children with a puppy, affixed to the cabinet containing supplies with clear scotch tape. Always, and I have never ever been to a practice of the dental arts without this, there will be a small radio, approximately 15 years old, tuned to the easy listening adult mix FM station playing extremely tinny sounding music at a volume just loud enough to be audible above the drills. This tinny music will play throughout your procedure and will remain your only solace as you are subjected to excrutiating oral pain and will drive you absolutely crazy and cause you to buy an over sized hunting knife after your visit which you will forget about, but put under your front seat. The station will begin with a generically bad song from 1987 as your mouth is lubed up with orajel, continue on into a Kenny G song as the dentist enters and says (without fail) “Lets have a look at what we got here,” and ultimately crescendo with a late 90’s Phil Collins classic as you are gripping the arm rest for dear life as the dentist goes to town with the drill on the numb side of your face.
The chair they use is not entirely uncomfortable, but you spend most of the time upside down, and by the time they are on the second filling, you have lost blood flow to your hands. I just don’t understand the upside down chair. Why? I understand the bright lights, the gauze, the orajel, the silver filling substance they invariably spill on my tongue. But the upside down chair, not at all. Couldn’t they just lie me prostrate, and then adjust the level so its’s at their height?
And then there is the numb mouth. There is nothing like having a numb mouth and walking around drooling like a stroke victim the rest of the day. I think dentists have an inside joke about us, when they see us at the supermarket drooling on ourselves as we buy a can of cambells soup and chef boyardee (because we can’t eat anything more solid), they probably watch for a long time, holding back their laughter as much as they can, and then run around to the next aisle and laugh uncontrollably for hours on end. Those sick dentist fucks. I hate them.
Dentists will continue to exist because Americans are shallow and vain and have an oral fixation and love men poking around in their mouths. We all need to feed our inner masochist from time to time, and every six months or so we get our chance. Plus, taking care of our teeth is important because there is nothing more nauseating then a SeaBond denture strip commercial on daytime television.
