Got a donation for $100 with nothing I could interpret as a topic, but I wanna earn my $700, so here’s 1000 words on… The Tooth.  The Tooth!

The German word for toothbrush is Zahnbürste, which literally translates into toothbrush. But to me “bürste” sounds like an explosion, so my mind, which cannot “speak” German after years of trying to fuck with that in duolingo, translates the word halfway and gets to “tooth burst.”

Teeth might as well burst.  So fragile.  At least, if you don’t do right by them.  I can’t handle the tooth.  I grew up in a dysfunctional family, and my parents never made hygiene part of my routine.  When your kids say “I don’t wanna,” the answer should probably not be, “Fine.  Rot in your filth while I read romance novels or smoke drugs.”  We didn’t get a lot of sugar because the parents didn’t let us choose what we were eating much, so my teeth held out pretty well in the face of never getting brushed.  At first.

Flash forward to an even more dysfunctional situation as mom is out cheating, using lunch money to get out of having to prepare food.  (Don’t even ask why dad wasn’t preparing food lol.)  So we got to choose what we were eating, and the sugar began.  Pop, candy, still with terrible hygiene, equals dental wreckage.

Years later, my dad tried to make up for letting that situation happen, by working out a deal with a dentist.  He painted the guy’s house for a break on services rendered, and that guy spackled my mouth with fillings, yarded the unsalvageable stuff out of the back of my jaw.  Clean slate!  I was ready to start a brand new future of sorta having teeth again.  There was a word of warning.  “Some of these fillings really shoulda been crowns.  This work will only hold up for so long…”

It did hold up a real long time.  That dentist was a real craftsman.  But time’s arrow goes one direction, and passed through my mouth along the way.  It’s like in a cartoon where Tom the cat’s teeth all crack to pieces and fall out of his mouth for yuks, but slow motion.  I’ve had dreams about my teeth falling out before.  An interesting thing about those dreams is the strong sense of taste and touch.  I can feel the texture of my teeth with my tongue, feel the liquid sensation of blood and drool going down my throat or coming out of my mouth.  I can taste the saltwater and iron of the blood in my mouth, very richly.  I’m not even panicking about it, usually just like, “at least now I can get dentures and be done with the whole fucking deal.”

But I’m not there yet.  It’s just more piecemeal work.  Drill drill fill fill.  Bzzzzz.  My teeth are not ready for prime time; they do not look good.  Kinda passable at a distance.  As I began to make more video, I’ve been wondering if I should get veneers, make the front look nice. But applying them requires shaving some enamel, and I can’t afford to lose any of the structure I have left.

People always use “root canal” as a symbol for the ultimate experience in grueling pain. This is far from accurate.  You get anesthetic so it doesn’t hurt while you’re getting it, then they literally kill the nerves that are the source of dental pain, so it doesn’t hurt coming out of it.  Give me a mouth full of root canals.  I fucking love ’em.  Why in hell do we need nerves in our teeth?  They’re bullshit, yard ’em out.

I always iron-man dental sessions.  Transit is a snip for me because I can’t drive (too gay), so the more work can be done in fewer sessions the better.  I was at the dentist for hours on the day I started this fundraiser, which is why my judgement was too impaired to just set up a fucking payment plan until they’d already run my card.

Oops, now it’s time to do some verbal soft shoe for the people.  But you deserve it.  FtB still has a commentariat, a following, and while a fraction of what it possessed in the halcyon days, it’s something.  And it’s you, so thanks for reading!  I’ll keep writing ten words per dollar you donate.

Here’s a wacky tooth-related piece of trivia about my life:  If I had gotten my teeth fixed sooner, I might have ended up in a long-term relationship with a young lady, which might have saved her from alcoholism.

I recognized a sexual flexibility in myself and it seemed like it was just easier for gay guys, so I vowed that if I didn’t get a regular girlfriend again by the time I was thirty, I’d go gay.  Shortly before I turned thirty, I hadn’t gotten my teeth fixed yet, so I was too self-conscious to kiss people.  I had a date with this nice girl, at her house, watchin’ movies for hours.

Was it a date?  We hadn’t used those words.  But if a lady gets you in her room, hanging out on her bed for hours, probably she would like you to kiss her at some point.  Not a given, but a distinct probability.  If I had kissed her, we might’ve started dating.  I didn’t, we didn’t, and a little while later I had my dental work done.

I called her up and was like, hey, wanna go out some time?  She said, “I’m with a guy now.”  We chat for a bit and it comes out that their idea of a good time is getting drunk.  She wasn’t into that before she got with this guy.  So if she’d gotten with me instead, less alcoholism in the world?  Maybe.

About then the clock had run out and it was time for me to be gay.  Been happy with the same guy ever since.  The end.

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