Preferring the hernia surgery that kept me in bed except for crawls
to go pee at nine years old, preferring the allergic reaction to poison
oak that plagued me with blistering scales not unlike purple sunburn,
preferring even the colonoscopy I will need to schedule up my rectum
when middle-aged to the mustached, apple-juice smelling orthodontist,
whose office had lemon wallpaper with images of hot-air balloons
piloted by dogs and a radio playing love songs while a plastic tube
sucked spit from my cranked-open mouth and I counted to five hundred
eighty eight but still twitched enough for a mask to lower laughing
gas in mist into me and never once make me laugh but rather float
above my body clothed in Winnie-the-Pooh turtleneck and plum flared
pants and velcro shoes with a patty of dog crap flattened on my sole
up to the blinding lamp shaped like a praying mantis and grow afraid
in this blood-fizzing, cotton-mouthed limbo with a Bee Gees soundtrack
about having the thing not unlike squeezed toothpaste happen behind
my zipper as the female assistant fingered my limp tongue and saliva,
I now feel obliged to express my upmost condolences to the lady
who lost her retainer somewhere among the cubicles in the black glass
cube where I work near the 405 in Irvine because I, too, was born
with an overbite, fitted by latex hands for a fake-gum-and-wire contraption
that chipmunked my face for the duration of my grade-school career.
The female assistant called my retainer Frank the Frankel. Her pamphlet
showed a grinning cartoon: two blue doe eyes above keyboard teeth,
legs in leotards, no arms, ventriloquizing in a white speech bubble,
Hi, I’m Frank, your new best friend! Frank was a talkative son-of-a-bitch
given his unremitting rictus. He boasted a chichi past life of adventure
in disguise as a dental agent, spying on diabolical cavities and causes
of gingivitis before turning in his fluoride gun, floss whip and retiring
to my mouth. I came to trust him—the attractive balance he might grace
my countenance, boy smile. Then, in third grade, I lost Frank. Abandoned
him in the cafeteria with the bok choy nobody ate, leftover corn and milk
on my tray. Mom had let slip Frank was expensive, a half month’s pay,
a grand to be exact. Suffice it to say I freaked. My crush, the brunette
in the desk behind me jabbed my neck with an eraser, placed a paperclip
across her teeth and said I found him, I found Frank, in gruff baritone
not unlike a sea otter. I cried. I could not focus on penciling in cursive
Mr. Zebra trots over the savanna in the hot summer sun of Tanzania
for the life of me. I was exiled to the hallway until able to gain control
of my eyes and pluck up like a strong young man with good manners
and penmanship. The janitor waxing the tile floor took sympathy
on my plight. He dove into a dumpster under the afternoon’s menu
and with the superpower sense of people other people refuse
to see, discovered Frank in a tangle of red-marinara noodles. Mom
gave a crisp Andrew Jackson to the janitor, whose one son my age
had rubber-band braces. We sanitized Frank at the dental office.
I promised the female assistant never ever never again to forget
my Frank unless I wanted to attend high school with a rodent face
no cheerleader would ever date. My teeth are basically straight today,
but I have a rotten understanding of love and labor and I never smile
in family photos. And so dear lady suffering uneven teeth and gloom
at losing one more prosthetic hope, know that I will celebrate
your downcast profile with silent gleams of hello when we pass
in different occupations along the well-brushed white hallways
of our cube. Maybe we will meet in the elevator one day and why
not kiss? Between floors I will breathe up your overbite and make out
a minor note from our sympathetic pressing mouths and we will part
with mint smiles after a lifelong minute of shared probing, carefree,
yes, until our next checkup.
Photo by Jonathan Khoo