The Glittering Gala

I am a dental chicken.

I must amend that. I am not so much one chicken, as the entire cast and crew of Chicken Run, down to the lighting cameraman’s pesky kid cousin whom they’d agreed to hire as a temporary runner to keep him out of trouble until school re-opened.

Photo by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash

I come by my cowardice the old-fashioned way. I grew up in post-World War II London where adults, heady with the end of wartime rationing, rained candy and cookies on children like the bombs that had fallen in the Blitz, and the resulting dental cavities were addressed by drills the size of jackhammers that for years bore directly and agonizingly into our unanaesthetized teeth, and who were we to complain? Our parents had fought The War, after all, and what could compare with that?

When I was in my early teens, our family dentist produced a needle resembling a bicycle pump, which he would shoot brutally into our gums, but which at least numbed the pain for the subsequent procedure. A few years later, he was replaced by a younger practitioner to whom it had remarkably occurred to insert the needle in a way which wouldn’t hurt in the first place, and who further endeared himself to me by shouting at my brother and making him cry. (Score). But by then the damage was done, and my transition into fowlhood complete. Throw some Henhouse Reserve into the corner of my coop and I’ll lay you a nice speckled egg for your tea.

When I first came to America, young and broke, I was able to avoid dentists for several years on the shamefully convenient grounds that I could not afford them. But at last pain overcame frugality, and even fear.

“Dental care in Britain is free, isn’t it?” said the dentist I consulted, inspecting the inside of my mouth with horrified fascination.

“It is,” I affirmed.

The silence that followed reverberated clear across his clinic, surged over the freeway, and landed in the deepest canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains, where they say that on a clear day, you can sometimes hear it still.

Two years and more money than I care to recall later, I could rejoice in a newly acceptable smile and a firm agreement that stands to this day, that where the dental profession and I are concerned, we will all be a great deal happier if I prepare for any but the most basic procedure with a prescription for Valium.

To be clear, I take Valium only and exclusively when I have to go to the dentist. I take an Uber to the clinic and back, and when I return I sit on the patio and read Dorothy Parker until the effect of the drug has worn off. I do not then go scavenging through the neighborhood trash cans looking for half-filled heroin needles; I do not wake up the next morning, trembling violently, to face polka-dotted zebras and purple peacocks springing from the bathroom mirror. I simply take the pill when I need it, and then go about my life.

Recently my current dentist, a lankily mild-mannered soul I’ll call Dr. Toothbrush, broke to me the glum but hardly unexpected news that the bombardments of sugar that had torpedoed my youth had at last declared their victory and that he would be required to replace a couple of my front teeth with a bridge.

This is by no means as bad as it might once have been: even the temporary bridge works just fine and at first looked more than reasonable too. However, over the weeks while I waited for my permanent, its appearance had gradually shifted from a unremarkable creamy white to a color that could only be described as green. It was an attractive shade of green, mind you, the vibrant emerald of moss after a healthy rain shower, and if you were to see it adorning the whitewashed wall of a cottage swept by the salt sea breeze, you might even find it somewhat pleasing. As part of the smile I preferred to exhibit to the world, not so much so.

“Can Dr. Toothbrush do anything about this before the permanent arrives?” I asked the nice nurse, Mary, over the telephone.

“He can,” said Mary. “But he’d probably have to take the temporary out to do it.”

“I’ll need a Valium for that, won’t I?” I said.

Mary has been with me through many an appointment.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “You will so need a Valium for that.”

Except that the prescription for the Valium never arrived at the pharmacy. And when I telephoned the office to check up on it, I was answered, not by Mary, but by a new nurse, whom I had never met before.

“Dr. Toothbrush doesn’t want to prescribe you Valium,” she said. “He doesn’t think it’s necessary for this procedure.”

This was something of a surprise to me: I have been consulting Dr. Toothbrush for some years, and he is well aware of my pusillanimity.

“It might not be necessary for most people,” I said. “But I’m an unusually nervous patient and Dr. Toothbrush always recommends that I take it.”

But it appeared that the new nurse was not merely a new nurse, but a whole new sheriff come to clean up Dodge City.

“Dr. Toothbrush has decided people take too much Valium,” she said. “And for this procedure, he thinks it would be unnecessary.”

Dr. Toothbrush has been known to go pale when I walk into his office with my pupils at their normal size.

“Can I talk to Dr. Toothbrush?” I said.

The new sheriff sighed.

“He’s with a patient,” she said. “But I can go and ask him again.”

She pressed hold and for the next several moments I could hear her polishing her badge and humming Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling as she perused the Wanted posters. At last, she returned to me.

“Dr. Toothbrush says a Valium would be unnecessary for this procedure,” she said.

And that was that.

On the appointed day I presented myself at Dr. Toothbrush’s office.

“You want me to clean your temporary?” he said.

“I want to know how you’d go about cleaning my temporary,” I said.

He told me. A drill would be involved.

“I’d need a Valium for that,” I said.

At the sound of the V word, Dr. Toothbrush’s eyes widened in alarm, and he looked nervously over his shoulder towards the nurses’ station.

“You don’t need a Valium,” he said loudly, carefully angling his voice towards the new sheriff’s desk. “People take too much Valium. This is a very simple procedure.”

“But it’s not simple for me,” I said. “It’s never simple for me.”

“That’s only because you get so nervous,” he said.

“That’s why I want to take a Valium,” I said.

Dr. Toothbrush’s expression escalated from alarm to ill-concealed terror as he once again looked to the nurses’ station.

“A Valium,” he declared ringingly, “is not necessary for this procedure.”

“Maybe not for most people,” I said. “But you and I both know that I have a special condition, and if we’re going to do this, I’m really going to need something for my nerves.”

Dr. Toothbrush was now ashen with anxiety. He turned back towards me and lowered his voice.

“We don’t have to do it at all,” he said. “It’s only two or three weeks till the permanent will be ready.”

“My teeth are green,” I said.

A vein had begun to twitch in Dr. Toothbrush’s forehead.

“They’re not very green,” he said. “Not if you don’t smile too much.”

Dr. Toothbrush is a kind-hearted man and under normal circumstances, I would have felt sorry for him. But by now I had had enough.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’m a responsible adult, and all I want is to go into the world with normal-colored teeth and for both you and me not to have to visit hell to get there. I have a couple of business meetings and a birthday party to attend this week, and I think I have the right to want to look acceptable for those. And if you really believe …”

“Hold on there,” said Dr. Toothbrush. He was still pale but something in his eyes had shifted. “Did you just say you have an event coming up?”

Truth to tell, I’d only thrown in the birthday party for good measure. It was for Mr. Los Angeles’ BFF Pete, a rocket scientist from Wisconsin who has a map of Middle Earth hanging in his living room, and is married to a lovely woman called Misty, who is part of a trio that sings Old Icelandic folk songs. We four would be meeting at the local Mexican dive, where tongue-scorching salsa and toe-curling jokes would flow free, Misty and I would revisit the charms of Viggo Mortensen, Pete and Mr. Los Angeles would compare the finer points of Plan 9 From Outer Space, and the chances of anyone’s even noticing my teeth were roughly on a par with those of Gandalf’s taking up square dancing. Although we all planned to enjoy the occasion immensely, it was unlikely to have the organizers of the Met Gala spending sleepless nights mulling the competition. But in the dictionary definition of the word event, it incontrovertibly qualified as an occurrence that would be taking place. I even had it written in my diary.

I drew myself up in my chair and summoned all of the hauteur I could muster in squinting down the pug of my London Irish nose.

“I have,” I announced icily, “an event to attend.”

Dr. Toothbrush exhaled. Color was returning to his face, and he was standing straighter.

“Well,” he informed the new sheriff’s desk. “If you have an event to attend, we need to get you looking your best, don’t we?”

He stood taller still and raised his voice.

“And if a Valium is what it will take,” he cried, “then in this particular case, I see no alternative but to prescribe you one.”

He closed the door to his examination room, and leaned forward confidentially.

“I’ll even prescribe you two,” he whispered.

Safe behind the closed door, we both snickered quietly into our fists.