For Jill, "Loss of Teeth"

[jporter]

I had a dream...last night. After I awoke, I decided that it wasn't too
surrealistic, but maybe I was just too hypnogogic to realize. It would have
been more surrealistic if my p.o.v. had come zooming in low across the
water, gradually focusing in on a tiny barely discernable speck in the
distance, along a narrow ribbon of Dover Beach at low tide, until finally, I
could see, against the looming cliffs, a dentist's chair.

But it wasn't like that.

Instead, it began vaguely, in a multi (but not too) storied professional
building. I think I had an office on one of the lower levels. A dentist
moved into a recently vacated office on the upper floor. Not particularly
old, but avuncular and slightly corpulent, with a deeper voice than mine, he
was black, and always wore dark (but not too) greenish suits. He was not the
Jewish dentist of my childhood.

Your first teeth are called milk teeth. They are replaced by your secondary,
or, mourning teeth.

I was in a rush, as always, with "clients" of some sort, in the waiting
room. I had just gotten back from lunch, or a meeting. My hair was wispy and
dry, but not yet noticeably thin. I was in the bathroom when I discovered
that one of my upper incisors was loose. As I felt it, it painlessly came
out in my hand. In the mirror my smile was not right. I decided to make my
"clients" wait, hurried out the back entrance and took the elevator up to
the dentist's office, hoping, as it groaned upwards, that he was competent.

The door was ajar. He was just about set up. There were still some boxes...
    "J--, nice to meet you. I have an office on the second floor."
    "Louis. Likewise."
I smiled and pointed to my smile. "It just happened."
    "Things do," he said, and revealed two perfect gleaming rows.

The office, which was more like a studio, was, for some reason, split level.
He told me to "go in there" and wait a sec. He would be right with me. I
went down a few steps and crossed a well lit room to a mirror and a sink. To
my horror, I now discovered that all my teeth were loose, and as I tried
them, one by one, they came out in my hands. There was no pain, but the
teeth- now free of my gums- seemed larger and more curved than they should
have been. I thought I detected hair around the roots of some. There was a
small tray by the sink. I arranged the teeth on it.

Louis came back and I showed him the tray. "Oh for heaven's sake," he said,
and told me to sit in the recliner. He took the tray and said he'd be a
minute. I leaned back and thought about my clients waiting down stairs, and
how I would face them. When Louis returned, he asked me to sit forward and
fastened something- a bib I thought- around my neck.

    "The past is solid but it's not gone," he said. "Take another look."

I got up and went to the mirror. My teeth were on a lovely gold chain around
my neck. I woke up.

jody