Free Dental Care at a Cost

I was thrilled to find inexpensive dental care.  At the medical building on the upper west side, the young black woman dentist jogged around busily.  I followed her up and down spiral stairs to tell her my dental woes.  The offices were decorated brown, in a seventies style.  She stopped and asked to see my teeth.  I opened my mouth.  “Oh yeah,” she said nodding and stepping away quickly as if able to determine the extent of my problems.  “We’ll get that fixed right away.  In fact we have a program.”  She said I qualified for a pro bono program.  I was in heaven.  “Let me make a call” she said, picking up the receiver from the multi-lined phone on the large brown reception desk.  The receptionist had left for the day.  Most of the lights in the reception area were turned out.

The woman the dentist called came quickly.  She was a middle-aged short, stocky woman in a brown suit with sensible shoes.  “Hi Sandee — yes you qualify for our program,” she said smiling.  “You’ll fix my teeth for free?”  “Yes indeed,” she said.  I couldn’t believe this was happening.  I felt like I had won a lottery.  She asked also if she could see my teeth.  She moved in and put her hand on my waist near my behind.  She asked me to open my mouth.  She peered inside then stuck her tongue in like a lizard.  “Wha?!”  I pushed back.  “Wait, come, I have to see.  For the program,” she said officiously.  I felt like a prisoner about to be raped.  She grabbed me and stuck her tongue in again.  I pushed her off and wrestled her to the floor before running out of the building.

I stood on an abandoned avenue, shaken and out of breath after running.  Above was bright blue sky and thick white clouds, but everything was gray.  Gray concrete slabs of sidewalk were crumbling and pieces were missing.  I walked to an area with a fence that had a destroyed building behind it.  The area looked like war torn Bosnia, with dilapidated, smoke-colored abandoned buildings and crumbling tenements.

Young men and women came out onto the street from a door on the side of a dilapidated building.  They had hair to their waists.  They were thin like high fashion models, dressed in pink, turquoise and yellow flowing clothes.  On the crumbling sidewalk by the fenced area, they set up children’s rocking horses with bright colored manes, a toy trombone and toy drum set.  The models played the toys like they were in a band.  They banged the horses and drums with sticks.  The ones playing the horses and drums stooped to play their instruments as they were so tall.

This was my dream.  I didn’t include the part before the dentist’s office where I’m on a seventies styled bus on my way to the dental office.  That would’ve made this already long post longer; besides, I didn’t think I needed to use that part…  Thanks for reading!  What kinds of crazy dreams do you have?

A Luddite on Twitter, Emoticons and Facebook Editing

🙂 😦

I finally figured out how to make smiley faces with a colon and close parenthesis symbol.  After my frustrating search on the wordpress screen for buttons to click that would yield me the yellow orb of idiotic expression, with or without teeth, I looked for clues in the comments section — you guys really like those things in the comments section.  I found nothing, after peering at length for any clue that might be hovering around the yellow heads.  Scrolling, scrolling downward — I get more comments these days — I spotted it — a naked colon and close parenthesis symbol — what the?!  Why, this must be it, I thought.  But somehow it didn’t take in this person’s comment box — it didn’t flesh out.  Putting my analytical mind to task, I concluded that sometimes having an ellipsis at the end of a sentence interrupts the full fleshing out of these amazing creatures.  This poor person may not have known this.  I practiced in my own box — as I always do — and — blam! — I got a head.  I was so proud of myself because I even figured out if you use the colon and open parenthesis symbol, the reverse, you get a frowny face.  But my excitement was muted when I saw that someone had festooned their box with a live animated head, with the ability to open and close their mouth in hideous, mocking laughter.  I got over it however because today I figured out how to edit a comment on facebook!

I’m only on the blog and facebook and the twitter for four months.  And while I have a twitter account I’m too overwhelmed to use it now.  So it just sits there at present.  I swore up and down Broadway that I would not succumb to any of it.  But I realized that if I would be publishing a homemade book, that I had to do my own sorry-ass piss poor marketing — so the twittering, facebook and blogging it shall be!

A Late 19th Century Street Walker Pirate

 

Okay look I need $50,000.  My teeth are rotten.  I’m being dramatic — they’re not ALL rotten, but I do have teeth issues from a childhood illness.  I’m lucky since my teeth have always looked okay, and I don’t have halitosis.  Ironically, when your teeth are really fucked up you take good care of them, flossing and brushing constantly — I should probably say, that after you find out how fucked up they are, you scramble to ‘make it right.’  But as I say, mine aren’t like this because of neglect, they’re like this because of the achalasia that I had as a child, the disease that I was given because that’s the way life is — fuck!  Okay so achalasia is when your esophagus closes up, and it’s a rare disease.  This is a great.  I have this distinction.  I won’t get into details because I might have to take out that self-pity violin.  But couldn’t the hell I have been some other rare GREAT thing, like a rare talent or genius????  (I discussed this in another post.)  When you spend a third of your life in dental surgery, it puts more focus on your teeth.  I tell the dentist ‘Why don’t you just yank ’em all out — give me fake ones?  I’m sick of this shit.”  The dentist says, “Oh but you take such good care of your gums.”  You see too, I thought if I had them yanked out, my boyfriend would favor that — ya know ‘ot ay mean?  Wink wink.  For now I just fancy myself as a 19th century street whore, or a pirate.  Arrgh!  You see back in the day if you had weak teeth and no money, while you were essentially fucked, you just kept on hooking, kept on pirating.

Send donations to repair Auntie Grandma Sandee’s rotten ass teeth to:

The Land of Make Believe

New York City, New York

P.S. I’m off to the dentist on the morrow!  Wish me luck mateys!

A Nice Story for Mother’s Day

 

 

Your Spawn, Mona

Mona played chess with the computer, listened to death metal and ate quinoa.  She’d eat soft food until the pain from her root canal stopped.  She moved her black knight and the computer’s white queen checkmated her.  “Arrhhhhhhhh!!”  When Mona screamed there was a stabbing pain in her jaw.  She winced and flung the quinoa bowl onto the floor, and herself behind it, writhing like a junky kicking smack.  She cried in an intense implosion, not to allow her neighbors to hear this sad, desperate woman living alone breaking down in an act of humiliation and defeat.  With tears and snot on her face, she crawled back to the computer and turned up the volume on ‘Fall into Decay’.  The music was severe and celebrated decay, which she loved and could relate to.

Her pain lessened now and the internet station played one after another of the songs she liked, ‘Reality Distortion’, ‘Under the Rotted Flesh’, and ‘Nocturnal Dominion’.  She saw humor in this kind of anti-music.

The cell phone vibrated on the sofa.  “Who the hell’s this?  I hate everybody!”  It was her sister, the only one she could stand talking to when she was like this.

“Ma’s sad you’re not speaking to her.”

“I’ll go on ahead and email her some death metal songs for Mother’s Day, okay?”

“Ain’t no good, gon’ come to ya,” her sister said, and they laughed.

She didn’t think it would be mean to send her mother these songs.  For all of the issues between them it baffled her to no end that her mother was one who understood her – this woman who had betrayed her on different levels.  In the body of the email, she pasted links to the songs, ‘Seeds of Suffering’, ‘Thanks for Nothing’ and ‘Where Humanity is Cancer’, which had screams of agony and a great chaotic rhythm.  Happy Mother’s Day! she wrote in the subject line.  Above the links to the death metal songs she wrote:  Dear Mom, these songs celebrate my existence and are a tribute to your being the channel to my glorious life.  Who has five rows of teeth, bile colored toenails and squiggly hair?  Your spawn, Mona.

She knew that her mother would listen to all of the songs.  She hit send and called her mother two hours later.

“Yeah Happy Mother’s Day,” Mona said.

“Yeah you too bitch,” said her mother, as if possessed, her voice affected with  darkness.  Her mother’s usual was a lady-like manner and sweet voice.  And she rarely cursed.  The departure was exhilarating to Mona.

“What?”  Mona laughed until gasping for air, coughing finally, wiping tears from her eyes.  What her mother had said was even crazier because Mona had no children.  She was caught off guard at these moments when her mother allowed herself to go with her brand of cynicism.  She realized that this was one way of connecting with a daughter who had distanced herself by focusing on the wrongs inflicted on her throughout the years.  Mona relished the sound of her mother’s demonic giggling through her own spasmodic laughter.