I Need to Quit Doing Drugs
because right now I feel so happy. So very, very happy. And I can’t tell if it’s out of sheer relief that my tooth has stopped hurting for a moment, or if it’s only because of the drug.
I do have plenty of things to be happy about. And, as always, I have hope for the future. Right now, on Darvocet, without the tooth pain clogging my brain, I can so plainly see that things will only get better. There are only two things I need to add to my life in order for it to become perfect.
One – a house big enough for everyone to have his own bedroom. Twelve-year-old Josh needs a bedroom in which to think his private twelve-year-old thoughts and display the little rocks and turtle figurines on various shelves. If Dallas had his own room, he’d thumbtack it all over with the signs, diagrams, and schematic drawings he’s so fond of making. Rory needs a wardrobe for his clothes, with a bedroom attached. The attached bedroom should have a mirror. He says he’s going to be an actor.
I wouldn’t move my boyfriend in, but he does need a room for his weekend visits. I would put in his very own room just for sleeping, so he can sleep the way he likes. He needs no windows and no sounds. Just a cubic womb with a surface to hold his contacts. His bed on the floor. An automatic machine thing to wake him up before his sleep-apneatic nightmares stop his breathing, maybe.
As for me, I need a bedroom with windows, with blinds that make those often-written-of slatted sunlight polygons on the wall. Make my bed high. And it will always be made, so I can have something smooth to lie on if I flip through magazines during the day. Like I used to do with my Aunt Sylvia. I miss her. I think I told y’all that…
The second thing needed to make my life complete is a garden. I don’t think I’ll describe that. Either you know what gardening’s like, or you don’t. Until you do, it’s hard to understand. I couldn’t understand it, when people tried to describe, until I tried it for myself. Just like I can’t understand baseball or golfing or smoking cigars, no matter how hard people try. Y’all keep those secret pleasures for yourselves, and I’ll keep my hopes for a garden.
I don’t want to be happy if it’s only a chemical reaction. I want to be happy because I’ve worked and strived. But I don’t want my teeth to hurt, either.
My teeth are always having issues. They don’t just have issues – they have a subscription! as my friend Brie told me they say on TV. They’re very dramatic, my teeth. I don’t know why. I say they’re just weak and they need to be removed from the rest of me, but my dentist doesn’t agree.
I like my dentist. I’ve been lucky enough to have good dentists, usually, throughout my life. If I have a dentist who isn’t good, I leave him and find someone else, because most of them are good, and I deserve a good dentist to work on my teeth. My insurance makes me worth it.
My dentist enjoys the part when he can talk and his patient can’t. I don’t know if he confesses that to everybody, or just to me. Or if he only enjoys that part when he’s with me, because I talk so much when I don’t have dental instruments in my mouth. But he says he likes it, and he gives me little monologues about things that happen to him as a dentist, and things he thinks people should do, and his hopes and fears for the children in his family and for those of his friends. He’s an oldest child, and I’m an oldest child, and it’s probably because of that that I usually agree with him.
My dentist sees each of my teeth as a personal challenge and/or mission. When they give him trouble, he stops talking to me and talks to my teeth, instead. Last week he worked on the top left molar all the way in the back. It was rotten almost to the core. He wanted to save the walls and the nerve – save it from a root canal.
“Come on… come on,” he half wheedled and half threatened my tooth. “What do you got in there? You got any more? Come on, baby.” I kept my mouth in the exact position he said to keep it in and the sharp, sharp drill worked back and forth. My dentist skis. I thought of him navigating a slalom course and hoped for the best in his hand/eye coordination.
That tooth is fixed, but now my bite is a little off. That sounds like no big deal, but it can actually be one of the most horrible things in the universe, tooth-wise. A slightly off bite can jack you up, man. One tiny bump will dig into the tooth below it like a stream digging into a canyon, bit by bit tearing that shit up. Ouch. Then, while you sleep or do some mindless job, your jaw will try to help you out by shifting ever so slightly… scooting things around to make them fit. And that will lead to a whole jacked-up skull. TMJ, baby. Headaches. Seeming earaches. Fear of blood clots in your brain. Extreme, 24-hour sadness. Someone please yank out all my teeth out with a pair of freaking pliers. My insurance won’t cover that? Aw…
He checked my bite before I left but I said it was okay. I thought it was, at the time. Now I know better and I have an appointment for Monday. Because I don’t think I can fix it by myself with an emery board. Not this time. Because he’s out of town – otherwise I’d be there, listening to him advise me and my teeth, right now.
Did I tell y’all that my dentist is my boyfriend’s brother? He is. Once in a while my boyfriend will accompany me on my appointments, and then the brothers fight. Or, well, argue. Or, at least, they pick on each other, like all brothers do.
“Don’t talk to my dentist like that,” I tell my boyfriend. “Y’all quit fighting,” I tell them, like I tell my kids. Why do they have to pick on each other? Only they know, because only they’ve been knowing each other as brothers for so long.
The last pill is wearing off now. But watch me – I’m gonna keep being happy, anyway. It might not be as obvious a happiness, but it’s still there.
