Like anyone else, I don’t enjoy going to the dentist, but it seems to me to be worth a regular visit to keep my choppers intact. My favourite dentist is a South American (in fact, almost all the dentists around here are Argentinean. The Chinese handle the egg foo yong trade, the Rumanians control the musical entertainment, the Italians lead the linguini business while we Brits seem to be chiefly in charge of ‘consumption’. It could be worse.). My Argentinean will say ‘open wide, yes… not so bad… (scratch, scratch) yers, it’ll do. That’ll be twenty euros!’ Well, who can argue with that?
This time though, I’d woken up with a terrible toothache and thought I’d better go to one of those fancy places in Almería. It was going to be, at the very least, a wisdom tooth extraction.
With my intestines fairly bulging with half digested pain-killers, I drove the ninety kilometres to the Big Al at record speed, arriving half an hour early for my appointment and was asked to sit quietly with some old magazines to play with.
Why do dentists always have such dull magazines? My barber is the same: a load of women’s fashions, some ‘Cor, look at the famous’ mags like Diez Minutos or Hola, some very old current-event revistas with covers asking if Franco is dead yet and, if you’re waiting to see a lawyer rather than a dentist, something called ‘Toga’ which I don’t think is recommended reading for the general public.
They should scatter a few Playboys about. As long as they don’t catch you staring at the centrefold when they come for you, things should be all right.
Well, it wasn’t a wisdom tooth after all – the x-ray revealed that I didn’t have any left after, I now remembered, a particularly savage couple of weeks when I was twenty-one and living in Cairo. It was some kind of a gum thing – and a bloody good cleaning would no doubt take care of everything.
Just sit quietly while we go and find the cleaner.
I had visions of Mrs Mopp coming in to have a go with her bleach and sponges as I lay upside-down bathed in a bright light. The sort of light you are apparently meant to see just at the moment of death. I felt myself ready to float upwards – towaaards the light…
Just then, a misty angel swam into view. ‘Hello Richard’, said a sweet, sweet voice, ‘are you comfortable?’
Open Wide
I stared up at the small portion of her face that wasn’t covered by a mask and fell instantly in love with her. Possibly the fastest case of Stockholm syndrome on record. Long before I emitted my first shriek I knew I had to see the rest of her features. On her (no doubt perfect) chest, pinned onto her bulky uniform, her name, Berta, sent me into brief rhapsodies of poetry (that is to say, when the pain allowed it). Now, what on earth rhymes with Berta?
I was once seen to by a Swiss dentist on his yacht who was wielding a hand-drill, while I was being held steady by his wife standing behind me with her hands gripping my neck as the floor gently swayed from one side to the other. I have worn ‘braces’. I’ve had teeth pulled, poked, prodded, scraped, scratched, filed and filled. But I’ve never much felt like going back for more.
Ah, Berta, I shall return for you in six weeks…
