CAVITY
You don’t notice it until you notice it. You feel just fine. You feel, like, really super normal. Bliss. You don’t know the exact moment you realize it either, because very few people are consciously tongue-checking their teeth all the time.
Still, conscious or not, the tongue is active in the mouth, going round and round, performing a surface check. Then you become aware that something is different. The alarm is triggered, and you are consciously exploring the anomaly. First you think ah, damn. There’s something stuck in my teeth. I hope nobody saw it, and your tongue goes busily to work to dislodge whatever popcorn kernel or scrap of salad lettuce is stuck back there. Then, the gradual realization, the sinking feeling.
That isn’t lettuce.
Once it registers, everything falls suddenly into place.
There’s a gaping hole in my molar.
I had this realization while driving home from work. My tongue found, identified, was offended by a massive cavity in my top left wisdom tooth. As soon as I tuned in to what was happening in my mouth, it was immediately the only thing I could think about. How long had it been there? How am I just now noticing this, and by accident? Hadn’t I just been to the dentist, like, last month? Was it visible?
I smiled grotesquely at myself in the rear-view mirror. Foolish, impulsive thing to do. It was a wisdom tooth, in the very back of my mouth. I’d need to pull my cheek back and probably use a flashlight to see the tooth at all, let alone find the cavity. No matter how large it felt, I knew I wouldn’t be able to see it in the rear-view mirror from several feet away while driving. Still, I felt an absurd sense of relief to see that I still had teeth.
I couldn’t keep my tongue away from the tooth, as if maybe I would feel and suddenly go oh! That’s not a cavity at all! That’s just…
But all it did was keep the cavity at the front of my mind, causing me to narrowly avoid hitting a merging SUV, and draw the tiniest bit of blood from the tip of my tongue.
When I got home, I went straight for the bathroom, the only mirror in my apartment. I put my face real close to the glass and pulled my cheek back, tilting my face back towards the overhead light. There it was. An ugly, jagged hole in my wisdom tooth. No flashlight required.
* * *
We didn’t sleep together.
By which I mean, that’s exactly what we did. We slept together. There was no sex to it at all. She just crawled into my bed at four in the morning, fluffed my pillows and shut her pretty blue eyes. I climbed in after her and she pressed herself against me.
It had been a bizarre string of events that lead to this moment. Not truly extraordinary events, of course. We hadn’t met smuggling narwhal tusks into the country or anything like that. It was just unusual. Or maybe it was just unusual for me.
Laying in my bed, just a little bit drunk, with this beautiful girl in my arms, the significance of the moment came crashing down on me. This was the fruition of a story that been four years in the making.
We’d worked together at the same neighborhood grocery store when were both in high school. Seventeen years old, I had considered myself freshly awakened. At the close of my first real relationship, I was heartbroken and fired up. I’d discovered art and marijuana. I was angry and horny all the time. And I was tied to the work by nothing more than apron strings.
In other words, I was pretty awful.
We were both baggers then, or “courtesy clerks”, as the management insisted on calling us. She was just as disenchanted with the job as I was, so we got along pretty well. I used to pack my guitar into my trunk and play it on my lunch breaks. Sometimes she would listen.
I asked her out on a date in the summer between our junior and senior year. She agreed and I picked her up from her parents’ house in the early afternoon. She wore a black sundress, interesting contrast in style and color, that showed her off nicely. I don’t remember what I wore, but it was nothing like as stylish as her. We took a walk along the river parkway, fed bread to ducks, were awkward teenagers. I hadn’t paid the parking fee for the lot at the river entrance. On that date, I got my first parking ticket, still my only one to the present moment. Knock on wood.
At a picnic table sometime later in the day, I really laid it all out.
“So, look” I’d said, “I’m sure you can tell, you already know, but I’ve been really into you for a while. I like you a lot, and I…”
“No.” She cut me off. That was it. I didn’t even finish the question. Shut down quickly, deftly, entirely. Like a sniper. Clean kill. I was miserable, but polite. I drove her home. I didn’t cry.
It’s important to note here my personal history with women. This is not a boast, but a statement of fact so that the significance of this rejection can be seen, and the events which transpired from it can be taken in psychological and emotional context. Like everyone, my love life has had ups and downs. I’ve loved and been loved. I’ve dumped and been dumped. I’ve been adored, scorned, worshipped, supported, detested. But never, never had I been rejected, flat out like that. Again, like the parking ticket, she’s the only one to ever tell me “no” to present date. Just a flat “No”. Flat as they come.
It was her right to do so, of course. She wasn’t cruel or dishonest. But, because she’s the only one who has ever done it, the memory of the date and the unfulfilled wanting has stayed with me, vividly. In my mind, I think I always felt like that story wasn’t finished.
Hell, I never even finished the question.
* * *
I hate teeth. I hate teeth with a disproportionate passion. Teeth disgust me, frighten me, repel me. The dental chair is my personal hell. Cursed images of a handful of teeth or teeth growing where they don’t belong make me want to vomit.
Teeth are a problem that evolution is yet to solve. They don’t last anything like a lifetime. We are given these mouth-stones to mash our food, and then they rot. What kind of bullshit evolutionary oversight is that? Besides, the idea of these sharps bits enamel and cementum pushing through my soft pink gums like so many hard mushrooms is enough to turn my stomach.
On top of that, my teeth have naturally deep grooves, which makes them more prone to plaque build-up and eventually cavities. The pain of a cavity that has reached the nerve is one of the most unpleasant sensations I have experienced. Because I’ve experienced it so much, the mere anticipation of that pain makes me squirm.
I knew that messing with the cavity would bring the pain, and yet I couldn’t stop myself. My tongue continued involuntarily, incessantly, insatiably to explore the hole in my tooth.
And I sat there, waiting for pain.
* * *
Four years since we’d worked together. Four years since we’d really talked. Four years since that train-wreck of a date. We’d both moved on with our lives since seventeen, had grown up at least a little bit. We’d dated other people, worked other jobs, lived other lives.
She never vanished entirely, though. At first, maybe only as a thought in the strange, murky twilight between waking and sleeping.
And then, one day, there she was. In the flesh. Tangible. A customer in the coffeehouse where I was working. She appeared suddenly, and we didn’t talk except when I took her order. I couldn’t tell if she recognized me, if she remembered or if the memory meant anything to her like it did to me. She became a semi-frequent customer for about a month. She would sit in the corner, sipping her coffee, working on her laptop, never looking at me.
And then, one day, she spoke.
* * *
The funny thing about getting a cavity is the defensive phase. The guilt is absurd. I spent more than an hour justifying my cavity in my head.
I have deep grooves, so it’s prone to happen. I brush my teeth two, sometimes three times per day. I cut soda from my diet, really cut down on my sugar intake. This can’t be my fault! I’m not some disgusting, unhygienic animal. There’s got to be some mistake. Wisdom teeth are notoriously hard to brush.
Why hadn’t I gotten my wisdom teeth removed years earlier, when the consultant suggested I do so? He’d said they were coming in straight, so my wisdom teeth weren’t going to crowd my other teeth, but they are hard to brush properly. That wasn’t why I didn’t do it, though. I avoided that surgery that so many people underwent out of fear. Fear of needles in my mouth. Fear of the tooth pain.
Standing and staring at my teeth in the mirror, I remembered what my dentist had told me at my last visit. The decay building on my wisdom teeth could affect the rest of my teeth, could infect them with the same plaque-ridden pestilence that was weakening those massive molars. I had a sudden, disturbing mental image of a mouthful of cavities.
So much for wisdom.
* * *
“Susan died.”
The first words she spoke to me in four years. I was sitting on the patio of the coffeehouse where I was working. My then-girlfriend was inside using the restroom. She was leaving, stopped and told me this fact without facial expression. The first thing in four years, the death of Susan.
“Oh,” I didn’t know what else to say, “That’s too bad.”
Susan, may she rest in peace, had been a cashier at the grocery store where we worked together. Susan looked as though she’d smoked two packs a day for the last sixty years. Her skin was pale leather. Her eyes stared wide at nothing at all. We all loved her and her exquisite simplicity. But I wasn’t close to her by any terms. The news, while sad, didn’t rock me. People die. It’s what they do.
The first words in four years.
And then she vanished again. Life continued. I dropped out of college when my first novel got published. The coffeehouse fired me. I broke up with the girlfriend who’d been in the bathroom when I learned of Susan’s demise. I wrote a few books. I dated a few other people, briefly and shallowly. I discovered alcohol. I didn’t see her in person anymore.
But still she refused to vanish entirely. She continued to exist, and I knew it.
* * *
You can ignore a cavity. It is possible. As long the pain hasn’t hit yet, it’s very easy to forget the hole in your enamel. But, at random intervals, you remember the cavity and your tongue rushes back to it like a long-lost lover. Nothing hurts, not yet. Just the memory, the realization that there’s a hole in your tooth all over again. The private embarrassment, the baseless guilt and justification all over again. No amount of shame, no amount of guilt, no amount of natural circumstances or tooth-brushing can remove the fact of the cavity now. It’s there. Whether or not you remember, whether or not it’s at the focal point of your consciousness, there’s a hole in your tooth.
Put off the phone call as long as you like. You still have to make a decision. To let the cavity ride and spread, to get it filled and swear to better with your brushing, or to undergo the dreaded surgery and get the problematic wisdom teeth removed, as was originally recommended.
The reality of the cavity is one of the most grounding things in the world. Face your reality, punk-ass.
* * *
I don’t believe in the uncanny. Neither does she. Horoscopes, zodiacs, ghosts, superstitions, religion; none of it. But there was a connection between us which I called uncanny, and she agreed. This was her uncanny ability to reach out to me every time I was freshly out of a relationship. She’d done it three times without fail. After I was fired from the coffeehouse, when I had broken up with probably the most serious girlfriend I’d ever had, she was reaching out to me within a month. I hadn’t posted anything about the break-up on social media. I’m not one of those. She just reached out to me out of the blue. Beautiful, beautiful timing. We caught up, in as far as one can catch up virtually over Snapchat. And then I did what I do best: fall ass-backwards into a new relationship. She stopped texting me, again unrelated to my relationship status. She was entirely ignorant to my relations the entire time. This pattern continued through two “girlfriends”, as 2020 continued to wreck humanity. The final time, the “now” time, she reached out to me, I had been dating a girl that I was working with. Foolish. We broke up, as office romances are doomed to do (and by office, I mean deli), and work was tense and uncomfortable. I was considering quitting, but the specialty grocery store where I was working offered full time at above minimum wage, and the virus had hit so opportunities to work elsewhere were limited. I had to tough it out. I was seriously depressed for a while, waking up every day with the dread of facing the gauntlet of passive aggressive work-place torture that awaited me in the narrow deli where I made my bread.
Until, once again out of the blue, she made contact. Again, her uncanny timing was immaculate. My hands were clean now, I could talk to her as sentimentally as I pleased.
She asked me if I remembered the date we went on when we were seventeen.
I told her that of course I did, as she was the only girl that had ever rejected me.
And she told me that she only rejected me because she was afraid of how strongly she felt for me.
I said that we ought to get coffee sometime.
She told me that she didn’t live in Sacramento anymore, otherwise she would totally get coffee with me.
And so there we were, relearning the world about each other.
And the next day I found myself singing at work, which I hadn’t done for quite some time.
* * *
Facing down the phone, fighting the invisible fight. Since I was a child, my mother had made my dental appointments. This was a new one, since I had moved out of my parents’ house, since I had turned twenty-one, since I was a full legal adult. I had to call the dental office, schedule an appointment.
But an appointment for what? Was I just going to have the cavity filled? Was that the decision? I hadn’t really made a decision. The logical answer was to have my unnecessary wisdom teeth removed and never worry about them again, but that required calling a different number, required a number of factors to which I was ignorant. It required a lot more effort and a lot more discomfort.
Ahhh!
Tied to the responsibilities of adulthood by a hole in my tooth. And there was no escaping. I could ignore it as long as I liked, of course. The thing about being an adult was that I didn’t have to do anything. I could let my teeth rot if I wanted. But I knew I didn’t want that, so the decision, terrible and immense as I stared at the blank screen of my phone, was pressing itself on me to make.
Just make the decision.
Go on now.
Make the decision.
Be an adult.
Be a man.
* * *
She was on her way to Sacramento, by plane. She was a pilot. This was a real option for her at any given moment. She could fly a Cessna, a Piper, a jet if she wanted. She could fly from Cotati to Sacramento in thirty minutes. She told me that she was flying into Sacramento and asked if I wanted to hang out. I said yes, of course I wanted to hang out. She warned me, from the cockpit of the plane, that she was in her pajamas. I told her not to worry, that I would pick her up in my pajamas if it would make her feel more comfortable. So that’s what I did. I picked her up in flannel pajamas and slippers. I brought her back to my apartment. We drank beer and caught each other up on the last four years of our lives. She’d been working as a flight instructor in Cotati for the last year, was loving her life for every airborne minute it was worth. She was so far out I couldn’t believe it, and yet there we were, sitting on my sofa in our pajamas. After four years, the first time we really saw each other was in our pajamas.
Immediate intimacy. Indescribable intimacy, right from the start. I felt some type of way from the beginning. I didn’t dare say it, though. I didn’t want to scare her away. I didn’t want to wreck this like I had wrecked so many other relationships.
We drank beers until four in the morning, and we were sitting out on my front porch in the middle of night. She came out with me while I smoked my cigarettes, even though she didn’t smoke and it was late and cold. Maybe because she didn’t want to be alone in my place or maybe because she felt the significance of the connection like I did. We were talking existentialism into the small hours. She lobbied hard for the lack of free will, was not willing to budge an inch. I thought about it. Maybe neither of us had the choice but to be together. Maybe it was what was meant to be all along. What a strange turn of events. What an unpredictable outcome that had been there from the start.
Predestination.
I didn’t want to step on any toes. I didn’t want to cross any boundaries. I really didn’t want to ruin any chances that I had with this marvelous girl by making too hasty or making presumptions or cheapening the experience by transforming it into another meaningless hookup.
So, I offered her a plethora of choices. I offered to get her an Uber to her parents’ house, which she didn’t want. I offered to let her crash on my couch, which she also didn’t want. I offered to let her sleep in my bed while I crashed on my own couch. She didn’t want it. She wanted the bed, with me. So, I watched as she, pajama clad from the start, crawled into my bed, fluffed my pillows, and laid herself down to rest. I crawled in behind, unsure. She cuddled up to me and I put my arm around her, and she was already asleep, breathing deeply, those gorgeous eyes closed and resting. There was no chance of sex, and somehow I was relieved. I didn’t want to just fuck this girl. That thought made me sick. It couldn’t be like that. Not with four years of buildup.
We snuggled until I fell asleep too, and we slept long and deep, without dreams.
* * *
I still haven’t made the call. I am still suffering under the weight of indecision.
The hole in my tooth remains, festering in its own putrid kingdom of filth, threatening my smile, because I still will not pick up the phone.
* * *
In the morning, I couldn’t say who woke first. I had nowhere to be that day, and she seemed to have all the time in the world. We lay silent, side by side for a long time. When at last I was sure she was awake, I raised myself up on one elbow, looked down into her pretty face, into those oceanic irises, and I told her.
I said, “I’ve wanted to kiss you for four years.”
We kissed. There were no words then. Just long, slow, deep kisses. As the sun rose and cut into the bedroom in diagonal stripes through mostly shut blinds, we kissed. I’ve never known kisses like those, kisses with four years of prelude, kisses with so much psychological bearing. Kisses that meant so much, and yet were so unexpected. Abstract art kisses, kisses that meant nothing beyond themselves. Kisses that were not leading to sex, kisses that were not a rehashing of old I-love-you’s. Kisses that were pure and wholesome, the way God imagined the kiss. Kisses that promised a hope of emotional intimacy beyond anything I had ever imagined.
Finally, as morning passed lazily by, she intoned that she had to get back to her life. I rose, drowsy, in need of nothing, desperately in need of caffeine and nicotine. Junky, junky, junky. I was perfect then, messed up hair and satisfied soul, blue balls and happy heart. I drove her back, and she flew.
She went back to Cotati, after promising that we would keep talking.
I went back to my apartment, got back into bed, felt suddenly empty. That was what I had been needing, what I had been missing without knowing that I was missing it. I had a lust for intimacy. This purely wholesome hook-up had been my awakening. I had no lust for pleasures of the flesh now, just for that intimacy, that crawling under sheets at four in the morning, that trust of another person to be soft and safe. Now that she was airborne, headed back to her life in Cotati, now that she was a moderate road-trip away, I recognized the hole in my life. I recognized my need.
The cavity finally registered.
And, once again, I had to make the decision before I made the phone call.