1. Saying Goodbye to #5
I’ve read a lot of accounts of people losing their faith in relation to a major life event: death in the family, experiencing betrayal, or any other great personal tragedy. For me, it was teeth. More specifically, tooth number 5.
Have you ever tried to flirt with your dentist? It’s impossible. Not just because your mouth is so full you drool on yourself every time you try to talk, but because it’s impossible to maintain adult dignity while you’re at the dentist. It doesn’t matter what you try: you can get a new haircut, wear a suit, strap a nine millimeter to your belt, and listen to eye of the tiger in your car as many times as you want. But when the dentist puts you in that chair, you lose all semblance of agency. You’re instantly a kid, no longer in control of your own body, no longer in charge, no longer an equal in the conversation.
That’s why I think people hate going to the dentist. It’s not the weird sensations of pinching, prodding, and cleaning. We regularly subject ourselves to far worse. We hate the dentist because we lose that sense of agency, the feeling that we have any control over what is happening. One second, you’re an articulate, thoughtful member of the intelligentsia with subtle taste and an intellectual mystique. The next second, you’re gagging on plastic tube while a highly trained professional explains to her even more highly trained colleague the exact ways in which the owner of tooth number 5 currently sitting in the chair is completely inept at basic human functions. Sure, it’s my insurance, my credit card, and my mouth that are making all this happen. But for the next hour, I’ll be quiet—the adults are talking.
Sitting in the chair, I found myself wanting to take a time out to explain all the things in life I was good at. I wanted to explain to my dentist that I have done very many impressive things, that I was an impressive person, and had we met under different circumstances, she would think very differently of me, potentially find me attractive, maybe we would hit it off, grab drinks, have a summer fling, decide to move in together, 10 years later, we’ve put the kids to bed, she’s laying in my arms after experiencing multiple orgasms, and whispers in my ear, I’m so glad you’re such an adult human being with so much control over your life who is almost as good at taking care of me as he is at taking care of tooth number 5.
Instead, I did what we all do, laid back in the chair, with my mouth open, drooling into my bib, letting the world happen to me. That was the first time. The first time it hit me that I had a real, honest bone to pick with the man upstairs, the one who filled my head full of teeth I didn’t ask for, teeth I was now stuck taking care of, teeth that were now causing me to feel the thing I hate more than any other. That was the first moment I knew I had to move on. The moment I first realized at least some part of my belief was dead. The moment I said goodbye to faith and goodbye to tooth #5.
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This revelation surprised me because as a whole, I like teeth. I like it when people smile, I like chewing food, I even can distinctly remember being on a date and having someone tell me that I have “nice teeth” and in an instant, years of braces and thousands of my parents dollars became worth it. I don’t hate teeth. Given the choice between having teeth and not having teeth, I think I would probably choose teeth.
But I didn’t choose teeth. None of us do. We all come flying into a new, bright world, figure out this whole drinking milk thing, and life is pretty damn good. And then, sometime between 6 and 12 months, babies start crying a whole lot more. And the parent goes to figure out what’s wrong: there are relatively few inputs and outputs with babies: food, sleep, excrement. Which one do I need to solve to get this baby to sleep? But at that critical juncture, the parent can only look at their child with soulful eyes, because they know what is happening. Objective reality is being thrust upon their child, the first time they are experiencing inescapable pain: they are teething.
There’s nothing to be done. It’s the first moment things start falling apart. And the parent can only know that this is the first in a long line of life screwing you over. Because after these teeth come in, more come in, then you get a nice full set, they stop cracking open your gums. But then the pain starts—older now—and you think, what the hell? I already have teeth? What now? And then you find out that not only are you going to lose all of these teeth, but you’re going to have to do the damn job yourself. And all you get in return is a dollar.
Then you get your real teeth. The adult ones. You ask, and they tell you that no, you don’t have to lose these, these are your forever teeth. You bond with them emotionally. You may even find out your teeth have numbers, if not names, and you might introduce yourself to the 5th one down the line, tooth #5. Until, if you’re privileged enough to have insurance, the orthodontist X-Rays you and sits down to inform you of all the ways in which your teeth are defective.
Defective, you say. You ask what you did wrong. You find out, nothing. You did everything right. And no amount of brushing or flossing is going to solve the problem that your teeth are defective. Fortunately, there is a way: it involves not eating your favorite foods, sitting in a chair while someone stuffs your mouth full of metal, and majorly altering the physical appearance of your face for the worse right as you hit your least secure stage of life. Oh, and it hurts.
So you get through braces, when you have the joy of being informed about retainers. Then the invisalign. Then yearly cleaning. And then you find out there are 4 other teeth stuck in the back of your jaw that decided to show up late for the party and not only do they serve no function, but they’re going to fuck things up for the rest of your teeth if you don’t do something about it, so we’re going to have to remove them surgically.
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The humor potential around the subject of wisdom teeth is pretty well flushed out at this point. But they weren’t why I drugged up, losing my faith in a dentist’s office. That one came courtesy of number 5.
Number 5 had kept me up for two days, and no amount of flossing, brushing, or coors light could talk him off the edge. He’d filed complaints before, ones I’d largely ignored, and it seemed like we had a pretty good system going. But then the pain started. And it didn’t stop. I flossed, I rinsed salt water, I googled answers, but nothing doing. After slugging through my second sleepless night in a row, and I cast myself on the graces of the only dentist I could book an appointment with online, who informed me I had the biggest abscess infection he had ever seen and that we would need extraction right away.
Laying in the chair, the image of the X-Ray smiled down on me, a doctors sloppy sharpie mark, “extraction on #5” with an arrow pointing at the offending citizen, and I realized my gripe. I don’t hate #5. I didn’t ask for him, either. In fact, while I benefit from the teeth in my head, I didn’t ask for any of them. I didn’t build the system so rigged against everyone born with teeth. But I’m grateful to have them, even if they were thrust upon me.
Maybe there’s an analogous negligence between my oral hygiene and my faith. Maybe my lack of attentiveness or nightly discipline lead to the slow decay of belief. But mostly, I find myself taking up my case with you, the one who is both word and flesh and word become flesh, for giving me teeth, then forcing me to get rid of one of them. For giving me a faith that, no matter how honest, would decay, and forcing me between scyla and charybdis, between pain and pain, between the pain of remaining in faith that no longer felt honest and the pain of ripping it out from my soul.
The pain of saying goodbye to number 5.