The Dentist = Satan's Hemorrhoid

This is a picture of right AFTER Billy finished his dental appointment, and RIGHT BEFORE he kicked the dentist in the nuts.

So I go to the dentist today after several years of oral-hygienelessness caused by the extraction of my dental insurance by a cruel, one-percenter of an ex-employer. Did you understand that, O loyal reader? If so, I commend you. For you other pretards, that says, “I lost my insurance when I got sort-of canned by an asshole boss, who happens to be richer than the Queen of England and who doesn’t give a shit whether all of my teeth rot out of my head and my kidneys fail due to the ensuing infection because God knows he has more important things to do, like worry about the quality of his Dom Perignon and fucking caviar, you knave.”  

Anyway. The dentist. Oh, yeah. Really, really nice looking guy. Really. Reminds me of my childhood dentist who was too good looking to be leaning over my prone, adolescent body and putting things in my mouth. What is different about this guy is that he does all of the work himself. Except for the rinsing with that little squirt gun, which he delegates to his young and nubile assistant. Now, I don’t know exactly what is going on, but maybe the dentist has some PTSD or some repressed anger against women’s gums. Who knows what women’s gums did to him in the past? But why take it out on mine? Jesus. It’s like we’re filming a sequel to Marathon Man, and if you don’t know that little Dustin Hoffman gem, damn. You fail. Watch it as soon as possible and get back to me with your comments.

Anyway. The dentist. So he explains that he is going to take this surgical steel implement of Medieval torture and shove it up my gums in several hundred places, and am I okay with that? Now, what am I supposed to say? “No, let me fucking shove that multiple times up your fucking urethra, you fucking sadist?” My new insurance is paying for this, so I feel a little obligated to go along with the program. He gleefully jams his tool of torment into the teeninsy space between my gums and the teeth they are supposed to be holding in—over and over and over— while hollering out numbers representing the depth of each impalement. And, yes, I realize that “jams his tool of torment” sounds vaguely pornographic. But just stay with me here. The dentist’s song of suffering sounds something like this:

TwotwotwothreetwotwothreethreetwotwoFOURtwotwothreetwothreeFOURthreethreethreethreetwotwotwotwoFOURthreetwothreethreetwoFOUR.

The threes are somewhat uncomfortable, but those fours. Oh, those fours. Son of a buttfucking bitch. My mouth goes to a pain party to which I clearly declined the invitation, but there was apparently some mix-up. The fours are the pre-indicators that some major gum problems might be on the way, and I can’t even fathom a fucking five.

But the dentist is not finished with his persecution. He then whips out this electric device that has a tiny, little, sharp-as-shit head, which vibrates back-and-forth 20,000 times per second. Per second. “Take that, you fucking sloth,” says the vibrating tool to the humming bird.

Anyway. The dentist. He shoves the little head of the tool underneath my miles and miles of gumline and turns it on and off with his magic foot-pedal, and if the intensity of the gadget is any indication, his foot is made out of, like, I don’t know, elephant? It feels like he’s shooting pure electricity right into the nerves of every tooth. And he keeps asking, “How you doin’?” Like I can answer him with my mouth full of hands, and besides I would say words of acid that would peel back his pretty face skin.

Even after THAT humiliation and misery, the dentist has not yet accomplished as much distress as possible in the space of a thirty-minute appointment, so he then snatches another metal excruciation utensil and starts probing for soft spots, AKA cavities. What I just love is when he finds a suspected spot for which he could charge several hundred dollars to fill at a later appointment, he doesn’t just poke it a little to see if it is, indeed, a money-maker. No. He PROBES. He picks. He jabs the weapon into the delicate dental area as far as it will go just to be absolutely sure that, yes, it IS a cavity. I smell money, and my mouth tastes like a pocketful of change.

The dentist does “polish” my teeth after all of the bleeding finally subsides, but unfortunately he uses some kind of raspberry-flavored rock particles for the job. Everyone who knows me knows how much I despise raspberry flavor. I work extra, extra to avoid raspberry, and I must dig deep here not to gag and choke on my own bloody, raspberry-smelling vomit. And at one point, the dental hygienist squirts the soul-cleansing water into my mouth to rinse out the foul chemical, but no water actually comes out. I can’t really say anything, so I just pretend, and swish around nothing while the two pretty people hover expectantly over my face. It is very difficult to fake swishing liquid around one’s mouth while trying to keep tiny remnants of raspberry from falling down one’s throat. Go ahead and try it. I’ll wait.

See? Not fucking easy, is it?

Anyway. The dentist. Yeah. His proposed treatment plan requires an outlay of approximately $1800 from my pocket, so I’m guessing some meth mouth is in my future. And if you don’t know what meth mouth is, Jesus. What the hell have you been doing for the last decade? See Lindsay Lohan for photos. Allegedly. Nothing has been proved.*

*Thank you, Ricky-Gervais-at-the-Golden-Globes.