In the foulest regions of the blackest Hell, there is a Dentist's chair...

As you may have figured out, I went to the dentist yesterday. I had seven cavities filled. Yes, SEVEN. Most of them were superficial, below-the-surface types, but there were still fucking seven. This is yet another example of how I irresponsibly screwed my life up in my twenties.

I have always hated the dentist, but who doesn't? The drilling, the nasty banana-tasting anbesol stuff, the mile-long needles coming at your face, the drilling, the smell, the lockjaw, the always-too-cold-for exposed-nerves water, and the scary straw thing that sucks your face up and removes water and debris from your mouth. I was surprised to see that there wasn't a mini-sink thing anymore. I remember trying to spit in that thing all Novocained-up when the doctor told me to rinse. Now they have a thing that sucks the water up that the dental hygienist gagged me with several times.

At first I tried to pretend I wasn't there. By the time the hour mark rolled around, I was too fascinated as to what the HELL was taking so long. At one point they used some hairdryer-looking ray-gun with 3M stamped on the side that made the doctor put on protective glasses to protect himself from the radiation. As for the drilling, there were two types: the whiny, high-pitched, mosquito-like stuff of your worst nightmares one, and the one that made it sound like there was a NASCAR competition going on in my head, including a cheering, drunken white-trash crowd. At one point, the dental hygienist operated a mysterious thing out of my eyesight that sounded like a lawnmower. I figured it was something that was destroying all of the evidence because it smelled of burning and ozone and I saw her dropping things in it. I ran out of novocaine once, too, and he got the big needle out again so I wouldn't feel the drilling on one of my lower teeth quite as much.

Afterwards, I was whiny and sore and felt like the left side of my face had enlarged to elephantine proportions. I decided I would NOT be returning to work because I didn't want my co-workers to see my hideous visage until I had prepared them with either an in-office memo or a flyer for my upcoming freak show. As I walked home I wondered if I should take on a jaunty, side-stepping, knuckles-dragging stance to match my newly-acquired mongoloid features. I drooled on myself a couple times, too. At a traffic light a woman gave me a quizzical look and then quickly turned away, so she wasn't caught staring at the freak. I wanted to tell her I had just been to the dentist but it would have come out: "Jussh wenn doo da dendishht..."

Yes, friends and neighbors, it sucked bad!! The sad thing is and my stomach lurches in anticipation, but this was the first of 3 horrific visits I have to undergo. Use me as a cautionary tale: Get regular check-ups so that you don't have to go through 3 horrifying visits.