Tosh's Journal: August 15, 2023

Dental Work

If you have seen me in person, you know my teeth are a bit of a mess. I needed dental attention since childhood, but due to various issues, such as economic headaches, I never properly got my teeth fixed as a child. Crooked teeth are equally one to be shamed of, and knowing that makes you stand out in a crowd. To this day, I remember doing a children’s event with the artist George Herms, as his poetry expert connected to the City of Los Angeles, for a cultural event in Barnsdale Park. I was to recite my poetry to a group of children on stage, but behind the stage, they were all fixated on the condition of my teeth. Being children, they were open to exploring any issue that was in front of them. This means they kept asking me why my teeth were crooked.

The trauma of even exposing my teeth came to me in front of these little people, who, at that moment, became my moral enemies. Their innocent questioning of my being or existence struck me as a work of Satan and his little Demons. Innocent, yes, but honestly, I could see the roots of evil taking place. This happened sometime in the 1980s, and these now middle-aged adults, I suspect, are either criminally insane or genuinely horrible people. I don’t see how they could otherwise become ‘cool’ people. I often think of being able to track down these children and make them confront their horribleness and rudeness. But as I mentioned in my last post, let bygones be bygones. Still, I realize that maybe even myself is not that hot.

The issue of identity is deep as one’s childhood memories, and it’s hard to fantom why or what causes these insecurities. Being taunted by children my age, and then as a grown-up and still being made uncomfortable among these children, has stuck to me like a struggling rat trapped on a glue pad. I can’t remove myself from these feelings of shame, embarrassment, and plain awfulness. One of the reasons why I avoid children's parties organized by adults. It brings back memories of my childhood shyness and dealing with my age group, who are often not sympathetic to people who appear to be outsiders to their social grouping. A playground is a landscape that redefines the definition of playing and how one operates under an unspoken set of rules. I had a dream once where I was put on trial as an adult for something or another, but the judge and jury were all children.

They seemed to cut through the bullshit and see me as someone I didn’t want to be that familiar with. Alias, I have become more comfortable in my skin or teeth. I did some major repair work on the upper row of teeth, but dealing with the bottom teeth will be expensive (not a surprise there) and challenging due to my bite and the quality of my other teeth in that area. There have been times when I wanted to avoid being seen by others and communicate through email, snail letters, and social media platforms. I can have an appearance without being there in front of someone is something I greatly admire.

Still, I have a dental team and needed to visit two separate offices on a usual visit—one in the early afternoon and another in the late part of the day. In between, I visited a bookstore in the Pasadena neighborhood Vroman’s Bookstore. I purchased two books by the Argentinean/Parisian Julio Cortázar, his novel Hopscotch and a collection of short stories, All Fires The Fire. Without a thought in my head, except for anxiety dealing with going to a dentist to hear their opinion on my mouth, I felt an attraction to those two books and their author. I have read his poetry, which City Lights Books published, and the short story Blow Up, which was also a great film based on that narrative. But now, I don’t know why I wanted to buy these two books. I could have bought one, but I felt compelled to get the other as well. I think I felt that this may be the last day of my life on this planet, and why fight an urge that gives one pleasure? As I waited for the meeting in their dental office, I read the short story The Southern Thruway from his collection, which caused me discomfort because it deals with an endless traffic jam that lasts for weeks. Once I heard my name and was called in, I knew the results would not be good.

The bottom teeth will be difficult to rebuild due to the weakened and aged teeth I already have and the unnatural aspect of my deformed jaw. Although I didn’t want to hear the news, I was compelled to face this situation head-on and didn’t finch. I asked the Dental surgeon for advice; basically, there was too much happening in my mouth for a simple solution. Also, I must remember that I’m a senior citizen, and death is closer to me than a young person’s approach to their future or end. When I returned home, I was in my comfort zone of eating unsalted nuts and listening to records. With my wife, I watched Everything Goes Wrong; a Japanese film made in 1960 by Seijun Suzuki. A work about youth going wild in post-war Tokyo and how the future for them all is nipped in the bud due to the War. The trauma of losing a parent or changing situations due to a war weighs heavily in this film. As I tried to put all of this in perspective, I started to think about my mouth.