Part One
Orthodontics.
I went to the dentist today, which is a thing for me. I’ve suffered dental trauma in the past. Childhood stuff. I’ve had dental experiences that are not as bad as some, but certainly worse than most. I shall chronicle the agonies below. It is a tale told by an idiot. The language – orthodontics. My tale of woe begins thus:
“His baby teeth aren’t falling out. We’re going to have to pull them before we can get the braces on.”
The next couple paragraphs will go into exquisite detail about my mouth woes. It will be prolonged, skip it if you wish. I understand. If only I could have skipped it myself. There will be mixed metaphors, poor punctuation, too many adjectives for sure, rambling. I’m turning off self-editing in favour of a purge twenty-seven years in the making. There’s a fair amount of swearing, too. It feels good.
I had braces in the time of headgear. 1991 – 1997, RIP. Gansta Rap, goth, and grunge wove an unholy trifecta of parental panic, eight people in my school had a cellphone (though beepers were mysteriously everywhere), and I was in the awkwardest of my awkward high school years. Someone cut the brakes on my erections, pimples grew on top of each other, and I was at the beginning of a growth spurt that would take me from 5’9” to 6’3” at a speed of two inches a year. Clothes fit me as poorly as my body did.
During that time, that fucking time, I wore an apparatus for three months. The Device. It was designed by an ambitious, multilevel, cross-circle, interdepartmental collaboration of demons in Hell. An initiative meant to open up space in my gums. It was a blue elastic strap and a wrecking yard of metal. A thick arrangement of wires and bars curved to fit around my face and plunge into my mouth. They ran in a riot of supporting beams to the back molars where they’re squarest. There they fit into sockets glued to my teeth. At least they let me pick the colour of my elastics. Super cool.
I was a cyborg nightmare. Boy and machine. The tension from the elastic wrapped around my skull hooked into the metal to yank teeth backwards into my mouth. I kept envisioning my tooth being plucked from its socket to be slingshot into my throat, the wires crucifying my cheeks. Sleeping was a treat. The braces themselves were bad enough.
“What can we do for my child?” Cried my desperate mother who had to wash the browning bloodstains from my pillowcase every other night.
“Apply wax to the child’s already bulging teeth,” was the response. And so we waxed my braces.
Imagine a slightly more pliable birthday candle pressed into my braces to create a smooth surface my enflamed lips could rest on. My cousin’s orthodontist gave her a mouth guard. Mouthguards wouldn’t fit over my outdated equipment.
“This is just the type you need is all,” was the response I got when I asked the orthodontist why.
So I woke up spitting a mix of lip-blood and candle some mornings. It was better than the waxless nights at least. I had to set my alarm-clock half an hour earlier so I could get all the wax out before school. Floss, toothpicks, special brushes. Experiences like this are only character building if you don’t repress them, which I most certainly did. Until I lay on that chair today that is, hence the purge.
Braces of that nature were not meant to be worn for as long as mine were. Two years max, on the long end. I didn’t know that going in, and neither did my parents. This was before you could just Google how long people should wear braces for, back when you just had to believe motherfuckers. My orthodontist had hoped to retire around the time I should have been done. Apparently, his financial skills matched his orthodontic skills and retirement had to be pushed back. For four years he made problems, then fixed them. It ended in court and took another two years for a real orthodontist to undo the fuckery (which orthodontist #1 was court-ordered to pay for in full, I’m happy to report). Also, he never wore gloves when he worked on me. I remember the hairs of his knuckles tickling my tender lips. I was too self-conscious to complain at the time, but it was gross.
In the meantime I couldn’t brush properly. Metal bands had been wrapped around molars at the four corners of my mouth. Jagged metal beartraps were set in a row. Brushing was like trying to get troops past barbed wire. There were nooks and jags amongst the metal; straight lines and hard angles butting up against the natural curves of my teeth. There were impossible to reach spots. This is one of the reasons why those types of braces were only meant for a couple years, it leads to decay. It also leads to scars, both physical and mental. Lip scars. I could have been an inside-lip model, wearing all the latest fashions worn on the inside of your lip. Were it not for the scars. Every cavity I’ve ever had has been on those anchor teeth and the places where their neighbours touched them. It was one of those fillings that needed to be replaced – the neighbour’s. A house fire next-door spreading to your roof.
I haven’t had a cavity in forever, even after my hot loathing kept me from the dentist for six years. I came back to the reclining chair with some tartar build up, but no cavities. I avoid that bullshit at all costs. I floss and brush myself away from that trauma pit as diligently as possible. Dental health is no joke. It’s electric blue pain darting to your brain at a million RPM. The drill’s whine riding copper wire past your eyes. Today wasn’t that bad. I was in my early twenties when I had my last new one, but my real memories are from getting fillings with braces. They’d have to take them off in places and I’d get the tiniest flash of what it once was like without them. Then drilling.
I turned 40 recently. Laying on that chair getting hollowed out was a strange revisiting of a dark nook of my late childhood. I’ve never thought back on it, because why would I? That’s the stuff you want to forget. But it’s also where I first realized conformity does not serve my best interests. It took a few tries. The bad orthodontist was just the first.
Part 2 to follow.
M. W. IRVING 