.. vim: set syntax=rst: .. get word count like this: :w ! wc -w I went to the dentist today. ---------------------------- I told my boss Brian last week how I needed the morning off because I had a dentist appointment. He was indifferent. It might have been weird if he knew how big of a deal this was a big deal for me. Now that I have a regular job, in an office, I realize that people around me have no idea where I'm from, or what my background really is. They're all normal people and they think I'm one of them. And normal people go to the dentist. Growing up I went to the dentist exactly once. I was maybe twelve years old or so. It was a public clinic. The guy said I had some teeth that needed to come out. They hurt like hell coming out. I still remember feeling how the roots moved around inside my jaw as they came out. I remember riding home in the car with a mouthful of bloody gauze stuffed into the holes in my gums where the rotten teeth used to be. I was delirious, but I remember how my mother was yelling at me for making her look like a neglectful parent. If I had taken better care of myself, none of this would have happened. In retrospect, I wonder.... did I really make her look like a neglectful parent? Or was it more accurate to say she was in fact a neglectful parent, and this time, I failed to cover for her, like I usually did? I remembered all this because today in the waiting room, I had to fill out a form that asked for stuff like who was my previous dentist, and when was my most recent cleaning. This waiting room had a nice fish tank in it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I watched some bala sharks swim back and forth while I waited. Eventually, they called me, and I went back, got in a chair, and after some chit chat that I could barely understand, the dentist started cleaning my teeth. At first it was no big deal at all. But then he started digging along where the teeth met my gums. The pain went from minor to intense to almost beyond what I could handle. This next part is hard to explain. I had my eyes closed tight, and I was trying to breathe deep to stay relaxed, but it hurt so bad that I could barely resist the urge to shove this guy off me. And then I wasn't at the dentist any more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Or, I was physically, but I was also somewhere else. It was night time. I was sitting on the ground outside, against a brick wall of some kind of gas station parking lot. Then I heard the dentist asking me a question. I didn't understand him at first. I opened my eyes and I realized they were full of tears. Everything was blurry. The lights in the room were brighter than I remember, too. I forced myself to relax my grip on the chair. I had squeezing my leg muscles too. He said something again. I think he said, "How are you doing? How's the comfort level?" It seemed so euphemistic. This guy was causing me so much pain I was floating in and out of an altered state. I had to think about what words to say. After a moment, I said, "this is too much." I had my eyes closed tight. I heard the dentist say something like "Too much, huh? Well, I guess I can use some nitrous oxide." Then he looked at me, frowned, and just waited for me to reply. I recognized what was going on. He was trying to see if I would assert myself enough, or if he could just make this socially awkward enough so that he wouldn't have to use the gas. This guy was a heartless son of a bitch for sure. Was he always this way, or did a life time of practicing torture cause this? I said, "I'm about to walk out of here." and I stared back at him. He flinched and got up, saying something about how it would just be a minute. In a minute, he came back with something that almost looked like a big red clown nose attached to a big tube and put it over my nose. He told me to breathe deeply through my nose for a few minutes. I felt the gas coming in through the nose mask. I breathed deep. Gawd I forgot how quick nitrous oxide works. I felt so good after just a minute. Of course I've never done it in this context. We used to inhale the gas from whipped cream. That was one big shot of gas, followed by an intense delirious euphoria that faded in a few minutes. This was a steady stream of the gas, mixed in with oxygen. This was less intense, but so much better. Then I realized I wasn't about to stand up and walk out. The pain a few minutes ago was making me so crazy I might have gone completely eral and attacked him. I wonder if he saw that. Now, I felt great. I felt clear. My head was calm. I felt OK in my own skin finally. Gawd, this is why I used drugs. And here I am now, in the dentist chair, stoned again. He asked, "you ready for me to start?" I held up a finger. Fuck this guy. He can wait while I enjoy this. I haven't felt this good in years. I closed my eyes again. Made sure to relax my grips and my legs and just settle into the chair. I felt the cleaning start again, and it still hurt, but it was not nearly as intense now. And then I was back in the hallucination, sitting on the ground, back against the brick wall. And then it got really weird. ----------------------------- Because I was because I was sitting next to somebody else, but I somehow knew that he was me. He was smoking. I watched. He really enjoyed it too. Long slow drag, then exhaled a plume of smoke. I watched it disipate against the starry sky. He saw me, and it was as if he had been waiting for me to show up, or regain consciousness. He said, "Don't worry, you're really high right now, but this doesn't mean you broke your streak. You're still clean, OK?" I watched him enjoy another long luxurious drag. "In fact, I quit smoking, just like you, but while I'm here, I'm gonna enjoy this." * add more explanation of what the hell is going on... the avatar from the other timeline is here to say how I need to stop hating myself. "Let's just review the facts, OK? We were a miserable kid. We were raised to believe in all sorts of crazy shit. Eventually we figured out all the adults around us were either lying, or believing in the lies told by others. "You agree with all that at least? I nodded. I grudgingly admired this other version of myself. He seemed more relaxed than I am. "So we were all alone then, remember?" Then he said something like "But you know what? You somehow latched on to this belief that what you used to be, back when you were getting high, that was the wrong part. "That's an incorrect you needed me... it was either let me take the lead, or what... suicide? what other options did you think were available? have you forgotten how we used to feel? before me, we were still wondering if the church was right, and angels and demons were all around! "Or how you were so convinced of your own awful sinful nature? "You, you, me, us... we, ... that kid... whatever. Remember all those nights spent in prayer, crying and begging for god to fix us? "If it wasn't for me, we'd be having this conversation in an asylum. You needed me then. "And you need me now, too. You're disciplined, but you're fucking dead inside. This is the exact fucking thing we said could never happen, but here it is. "You working really hard but you have nothing you're working toward, other than what you think the people around you want you to do... but, here's the truth... nobody even cares about your sacrifice! "All the shit they tell you in those meetings, and during rehab, you know it's all lies. "So even if it works, it's still a fucking a deception. Somebody had to have made it up. Is that what you want? You want to spend the rest of your life servicing, praying to, worshipping a fucking illusion? In my haze, I shouted "I know!" just to shut him up. I couldn't handle everything he was saying. It was all true. Then my awareness returned to the dental office. ------------------------------------------------ I remember realizing I was squeezing my eyes shut as hard as I could, and slowly I relaxed them, and then I saw through very blurry eyes, the bright lights above. I realized I was still in the dentist's office. I could taste blood in my mouth. I felt soreness all over my mouth. The dentist was still working. I winced and groaned. I kept my eyes open so that I wouldn't lapse back into the other world. Then I just started thinking about what that version of me had said. I thought about how he looked. He was older than I was when I got arrested and then went to treatment. I was wondering if I was going to push the dentist away from me when I realized in my dream, the other guy wasn't from before I got arrested. It was instead me now, but if I hadn't gotten caught. He's me from the universe where something else happened. I imagined a hundred possible other things. Like maybe I didn't bring the acid back to my dorm. Maybe I sold it over the weekend, or gave it to a friend to keep. And the cops would have raided, but found nothing. I still maybe would have gotten expelled, but so what? No felony charge. No nightmare tour of the criminal justice system. All this flashed through my mind while I started at the receptacles for the bright lights in the ceiling. The pain kept getting worse. it reached a point where I closed my eyes. I didn't flash back to the weird alley again. I still felt the pain. I groaned again. The dentist said, "Oh sorry, how is the comfort level now?" and he took the tool out of my mouth. Get this -- this is the truth. He said he had the gas all the way up, but then he looked at the tank. And I could tell something was wrong and I could tell he was trying not to act like it was a big deal, but it really was a big deal. I said, "the tank's empty, isn't it?" ------------------------------------- I didn't know if I should be getting angry or if I should think this was all a funny story. But I was just so glad that he wasn't cleaning. He said "It must have just run out, because I checked it before we started, and this dial said we had adequate pressure. This cleaning is taking longer than expected." He asked if I needed the gas. I wondered how he could ask that. Hadn't he seen me grimacing, and gripping the hell out of the arm rests, and kicking my feet? This was a fucking torture session. I told him "yeah, I need the gas." I imagined he would have to drag away this tank and do a bunch of work. But then I watched him fiddle with tubes for like five seconds, and then he said the gas would start flowing again into my nose piece. I started breathing extra deep again through my nose on purpose. Why was this dentist such an indifferent fuck? It was like no work at all for him to switch out the tanks. Why didn't he just do it automatically, rather than ask me? Does he not care if he causes this much pain to people? I remember inhaling deeply and then feeling the nitrous wave hit me. I did love this feeling. I started thinking about the other world. I wanted to try to figure out where it was. I remembered finally. It wasn't an alley. It was the side of the gas station where we bought cigarettes when we were younger, and then later, we bought booze there too. That was the place that had the special deal of two bottles of malt liquor a pack of cigarettes for like $5. Was that actually a special, or was that just the price of those three things? Did I tell them to make it into a special? Then the other version of me returned and said "yes, you made that up, but the manager liked it, and that's how the special got started. Remember, we had all those different names for it, like poet on payday, or debauchery discount, or the white rapper starter kit, or whatever." This was a memory that I completely lost. That gas station. I went there for cigarettes and I'd be high and I'd talk the guy that worked there. I'd ask him crazy questions, like what would be a good life, or how can there be so many religions and they all think they're the right one. And I think if anybody else would have tried it, it would have come off like they were fucking with him, but that dude knew I was on the level. Omar! That was his name! Yeah, Omar had a respectable view of the world. He got up, went to work, sent money home to his family. I remember now how I pointed out how they had that hot dog and coke special, but they oughtta do a lot more, like give people half off of a drink if they buy gas, because once people come into the store, they grab a bunch of junk that they don't need. And sure enough, Omar tried it out, and it worked. And that's what led to the $5 two quarts of beer or two forty ounce bottles of malt liquor and a pack of smokes. While I sat in the dental chair I grinned thinking about that whole thing. Then I heard just the voice of the other me again. He said "yeah, see? we're the same... I was just more bold about it." Then he said something like how he wasn't gonna tell me what to do with my life. That's the whole thing, remember, he wasn't gonna make up the bullshit lie that the preachers and counselors and sponsors all say. They all say they know what's best, because god told them, and I oughtta trust them. And guess what, I need to give them my money and time, too. No! This other me wasn't gonna do the same thing. Wasn't gonna cross through different verisons of reality to try to convert me to his way. He said something like, "let's just agree we deserve better than this."