Teethpaste

Lumps of brown enamel tumble off my brush and cascade down the basin.

The teethpaste has decayed again.

Damn.

Since the tariffs, Chinese tooth imports have shrunk, all Mexican molars are getting stopped at the border, and the Canadians have responded with their own tooth-for-a-tooth restrictions. All I can afford is this nasty, flaky paste made of ground-up 'Murican dental waste and crack-hen's teeth.

Meanwhile my own teeth are bellyaching:

"Oi, caries don't heal themselves, buddy!"

My jawbone throbs from trying to silence them.

"Ignore the conspiracists. We need fluoridation!"

I try to brush off their criticism.

"That ain't a gentle rotary motion!"

But the reality is: I need to see a dentist.

The thought of it sets my teeth on edge. And what use are sideways teeth?

Lately, all my dreams have been about my teeth falling out. They say that's a sign of anxiety. Of course I'm anxious! Aren't we all? I awaken every day into an unfolding nightmare.

I open my front door and grit my teeth. (The grit silts up around my tongue and the salt makes my gums retract.)

The streets are swilling with indebted and indentured dental assistants flashing their autoclaves at me.

I blush as unlicensed hygienists stand on corners offering bloodless oral pleasure.

Sign-spinning 'tooth fairies' offer instant ¢A$H FOR ¢ANINE$ – any age, any condition.

News billboards strobe home dentistry horror stories at me:

Florida Man Drowns In Own Root Canal

West Elm Offering In-store Veneers with Free Side Table

Man Removes Wife's Teeth With Jack Russell Terrier

I wrap my scarf to muffle my own screaming teeth. They've almost chewed through the fabric when I stumble up the steps into my dentist's lobby.

The dentist has jock teeth. Straight and white and arrayed like linemen.

Pinned to the ceiling behind his head is a stock beach image. Golden, vacant, pacifying. The poster too.

"So your teeth are getting out of line, huh?" he asks then answers himself: "We need 'em outta there!" – with a gesture like a baseball ref.

A young dental assistant with a nitrous twinkle in her eye, stabs a needle into my vein. "Just a little fentanyl. Needle's clean. Pretty sure…"

I struggle in the chair and the dentist soothes me – "Relax, they grow back. Just kidding. Hahahaaaaaaa…" – as the walls and ceiling fade into a beautiful tropical Oasis.

The dental assistant, who is Noel Gallagher, strums the opening of a lūʻau version of Wonderwall. "Tooo daze gonna be thuh dae–"

"Open fookin' waaaaade," says the dentist who is Liam Gallagher.

My teeth shake like a Jeffrey Tamborine.

"Trust me, I'm an actor," he says, through his unusually small lips.

I feel like I'm on a forgotten Amazon Prime reality show, which no one is sure if it was actually cancelled:

Real Mouthwives of Beverly Hills.

Establishing shot [as the fentanyl hits]:

a drone pulls back high into the sky above the Hollywood sign which is made of huge, chipped, smog-stained incisors.

A pair of choppers swoop over the city. Miley Cyrus's veneers are strapped to the undercarriage, projecting the brightest white known to mankind.

The searchlight swings across Boyle Heights where ICE raids are separating the baby teeth from the adults and throwing them in braces.

Then my dentist's chair lands heavily, skidding into the fast lane of the I-5.

We're speeding bumper to bumper. I shrug to the passenger of the dentist chair in the next lane, whose drool threads uncontrollably between his dental gag like a wind-flapped dog.

Suddenly sinkholes gape in the median. In their depths, I see trembling uvulae and reddened tonsils, their wet cavities sprouting stinking, calcified tonsiliths.

Dot matrix signage diverts us to Figueroa where the tunnels open wide and say:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

My teeth scream back in a discordant tritone:

Ââââââââââââââââââââħħħħħħħħħħ

My dentist pulls up next to me, pedalling rapidly on his Lyft bike.

He's tossing my teeth into a grinder attached to the front basket. I hear a pop and crunch as each one is reduced to powder.

"We'll have a tubeful in no time. Fresh, locally-produced teethpaste. Just what the doctor ordered! [then whispering:] Although technically I'm not ACGME-accredited..."

My toothless chin flaps as I choke on washer fluid and tire particulates, eliciting a hacking, barking cough deep in my chest.

Suddenly my lung erupts out of my mouth. All my major organs follow like a string of flags. I am being turned inside out like a flesh sock. As my eye sockets invert they glimpse my empty tooth sockets.

With a jolt, I awake in the dentist's chair. Noel and Liam and Jeffrey are gone. The tropical beach is back on the ceiling where it belongs.

The dentist hands me my tube of teethpaste and sweetly sings:

🎵 Got your teethpaste, got your brush,

🎵 Better not hurry, better not rush.

– then a choir of supersoprano voices emerges from the tube –

🎵 Just make sure your teeth are clean,

🎵 Front and back and in between.

My brain spins out in the fentanyl afterglow.

🎵 When you brush for a good while,

🎵 You will have a happy smile!

My face splits into a stupefied grin – ragged, bleeding, gummy and broad.

Written for Vocal's Absurdist Awakening