Another filling escaped one of my tooth prisons a few moments ago. This loss is no mere chunk of tin. This one is symbolic.

I had an emergency root canal last Monday. My dentist, teetering on the verge of retirement, no longer does the serious stuff, just cleanings and cavities. He'd put me off for two weeks, packing my molar full of medicated paste over two separate visits, whispering sweet nothings about saving the nerve.

After those putty wads fell out, twice, and I suffered my third excruciating toothache with no opiates within reach, I resolved to get my fucking tooth drilled out. I called a root canal specialist. No more dilly dallying and gentle hearted thoughts about preserving nerve tissues. Numb it, shred it, and scrape it out in pulpy chunks. That was my thinking.

I hadn't been to the dentist in three years and I deserved every last bit of agony for my negligence. But still.

So here I sit, one molar hollowed out and packed full of temporary bullshit, awaiting a permanent crown, and of course another tooth decides to disintegrate on me.

I turned 35 two weeks ago. I am falling apart.

It's not just the teeth.

I have a bunion on my left foot. It came out of nowhere. Now, my big toe curves unnaturally inward, painfully, and my metatarsophalangeal joint's bursal sac is totally swollen up and ruined. It's a lot like having a bone stick out the side of your foot. I can walk normally most of the time, but occasionally I get a lightning strike across my foot that knocks me over. I usually have a really dumbstruck facial expression as my head gets closer to the ground. I try to rise quickly, mutter "foot problem" and move on, but I get weird looks. Can't blame 'em. It's embarrassing.

Fuck this bullshit.

I've grown a a magical pimple on my left ass cheek. It's more like a self-renewing resource, a never ending cyst full of beige mustard-like pus that I pop biweekly onto the hall mirror, admire the splash, then pop again on the same mirror when it refills. It doesn't heal. I think I've been through four cycles so far. I might have an abstract masterpiece in progress here. Silver lining?

These are minor symptoms of a greater systemic failure.

I carried thirty pounds of beer one mile last week (boxed, but no handles, furniture style) and I almost died. My pores pissed sweat painfully like they'd never been used before. I hyperventilated. I got dizzy.

I smoke, yeah. That doesn't help. But I'm 35. I shouldn't have danced on the edge of a goddamn stroke from such a minor effort.

I fart without prior internal warning now, kind of like pubescent boys have spontaneous boners. It's equally mortifying. I'll be lecturing a subordinate on proper procedure and attention to detail and mid sentence I'll raspberry stutter a nasty wet shit cloud from my jokester anus. It's hard to be taken seriously when you're shifting back and forth due to a desperate need to maintenance wipe, all while your audience can smell your awful insides.

All my life I've heard the cliches and the attendant resigned moaning about the slow degradation of the body, the pollution of the flesh, the final descent into human pudding, and the ultimate inevitability of death, but I never cared. Now that it's happening to me, I'm pissed.

I can't wait to turn forty. Maybe by then I'll be skinless and possess the ability to puke out my ears.


12:56 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
2 Comments :: - post comment