Off To Find Out About My Poor Tooth

I was up at 8am, listening to idiot DJ’s as I have lost Radio National as my set station. Oh where is it, I thought, as I struggled to lose the cheerful, blabbermouth morons who never stop… never stop... never stop... NEVER EVER STOP – it's one of the problems in the world today, too much talking and not enough silence – until I want to puke, or throw the radio at the wall, or slash my wrists, or all three. (What would I look like after that?) It is the only time I listen to the radio, it wakes me up.

I switched it off. Silence. Easy, I thought.

Shane has been doing early yoga mornings with David and all the other airheads in Prahran, but his bedroom door was closed, which may indicate that he has missed class this morning and is still home.

I had to be at the periodontist at 10am. I'm hoping I have the morning to myself, which means no Shane, so I can take it leisurely.

I’m just going to make coffee and then have a shower straight away, then, when I am dressed and clean and ready, I can piss the time away and be able to leave within a moment of deciding it is time that I left.

I was feeling depressed this morning, depressed about my tooth – you know with a front tooth missing I could perhaps have banjo music prerecorded to play whenever I enter a room? Depressed about selling my mum’s investment property in a weak market – I hate real estate agents, lying, blood sucking bastards who still managed to get us to sell it below the price we vowed not to go below. Depressed about the prospect of getting a job – throwing my life away doing something I don’t love. But probably, primarily, I’m depressed about my tooth, truthfully. The presenting problem. I was sure that the periodontist was going to say that the tooth had to come out.

I made coffee and prepared my muesli. My stomach churned on slow grind.

I switched on my computer, despite telling myself not to until I had had a shower and got dressed. I started reading the news, despite telling myself that I wouldn’t. Ben Cousins is having drug problems again, apparently. He was taken to hospital after a fall in rehab. He’s in rehab? “Fragile Ben, all of his friends are worried about him.” I thought, lucky Ben, doesn’t have to worry about the world and the troubles there in. I wondered how long it was going to be before we read the headlines, “Ben Cousins dead at 33. Troubled star succumbs to his addictions.” It was now inevitable, I thought. An ex-landlord, allegedly, complained about the syringe ridden apartment that Ben had left behind.

Apparently, Molly Meldrum is able to have limited conversations with his brother. He has some idea that he is in hospital, but probably doesn’t understand what has happened to him yet.

I wonder if he is going to recover fully, you know, back to the old Molly that we all know and love?

The clock is ticking towards 9am. I should go and have a shower. I should... I should... I should...

I hear the front door open and close. Shane walks in, back from yoga. He starts to prepare his breakfast.

He’ll want a shower, I must go and have one first, which I do, before he fucks up my schedule, such as it is.

I hear Shane come up the stairs as the water is still falling on my back. I have a certain satisfaction in being in the shower and being able to hold him up rather than the other way around.

I hear him come up the stairs again a short time later. Oh, what am I doing, I think? I turn off the water and get out. What is wrong with you, I think? Shane has to go to work. I don’t know how my mind works, sometimes. I've got a mean streak, to be sure.

I dry myself quickly and leave the bathroom.

I hear Shane head into the shower almost immediately.

I get dressed and head down stairs.

Shane leaves for work.

It is 9.15 when I switch on my laptop again. It’s an easy walk, it shouldn’t take me more than fifteen/twenty minutes to walk it, to the top of Collins Street. What number Collins is it? Twenty something.

At 9.30, the wind picks up outside and starts to blow the garden around. A short time later, the blue sky turns grey and the rain starts to fall... heavily. Like machine gun fire on the tin roof, which may just prove that I have no idea what machine gun fire, actually, sounds like. At nine forty'something there is a winter’esque storm.

I’m heading to the front door, I'm starting to panic, a little. I’ll have to catch a tram, I think. I look into my wallet, as I head out the front gate, to see I have silver coins only. Groan. That’s it, no gold? Dam! I keep walking. I shrug and raise my hands in the air, what it is that I am going to do?

You are going to catch a tram with no money? Is that the plan? Really? WTF?

I head back inside and get an umbrella, telling myself that I have no choice but to walk now. Move! as Sam would say to me.

I head up Napier. At Victoria there is a tram, just sitting there with its doors open, waiting. The universe is telling me to get in, clearly. So I do. The tram moves off. At the next stop, I have my wallet out and am looking for the coins I know I don’t have. A woman in the first set of seats looks over at me and gives a faint smile, as if to say been there, done that. My acting must be good? The tram moves off again, turning into Gisborne. I’m not sure who I am acting for? I look up and pretend to be pissed off, annoyed that I don’t have any coins, as though they should have been there but some how they had been spirited away. I’m acting for any inspector secreted away amongst the passengers who may be watching, ready to pounce? The woman starts to look in her handbag. I wonder if she is going to offer me coins. I check the rest of my wallet and then my pockets. The tram moves off from Albert Street. The woman closes her bag and rests her hands on top of it. I presume my apparent difficulties have given her reason to check where her own ticket is and not prompted an act of generosity on her part. I shrug and pretend that I am resigned to getting off the tram. The woman is still looking over at me. I get off one stop before Collins, one stop before my desired destination. It's easily walkable from here, no use pushing my dishonesty.

Silly the things we do, hey?

I find the building in Collins Street. It is one of those old ten up style buildings, which I’m sure scum of the earth property developers want to get their hands on and, no doubt, will one day to enhance their private banks balances at the same time making the city poorer for their efforts. I look at the directory on the ground floor, I can’t remember who it is that I am seeing, as the periodontist I was referred to isn’t the one I am actually seeing. He moved to his rooms in horrible Brighton, where the worst of the Melbournites live. Horrible, rude people. The new rich. Ghastly! I don't want to go there. I get out my phone and dial the receptionist’s number.

It is 10.05. I consider that to be on time.

It’s one of those dingy old professional suites... narrow hallways, small rooms, mostly painted grey white.

“Have my records been sent from my dentist?”

“No.”

Of course not. “Should I reschedule then?”

“No that won’t be necessary.”

I don't want to waste my time. “But he will need the x-rays to see the problem, clearly. Surely?” I'm still not at all certain that jumping the periodontist ship, so to speak, off my own bat is a wise idea.

“I’ll call and see if we can have them sent over electronically.”

"I see."

I fill out the new patient form… less than convinced. The only question I give an answer to other than “no” is the smoking question. I write that I am an ex smoker.

I’m ushered in to see the periodontist. He is older than I expect, grey-haired, although that can happen to a twenty something, seemingly not far off retirement. He looks like a kiddie fiddler, although doesn't everyone 2nd person now a days. Around every corner, hey?

He glances at the new patient form. His first question is when I gave up smoking.

“Please don’t tell me it was yesterday?”

Wow, perceptive. “In the last few years, I have essentially given up, although I have smoked on and off.” Last month.

“Are you going to tell me you were a 40 a day smoker.”

Direct, I like that. “Um, no, I don’t think it ever quite got to those levels, 20, or so, maybe… but I was an enthusiastic smoker.”

He laughed. “I’ve never heard it quite put like that before.”

My dentist's receptionist emailed my records but forgot to attach the information. Every other person is one, of course, a dope, we know that. He checked my gums, while we waited for the information to be resent.

I have evidence of periodontal disease. And diseased gums lead to a greater incidence of heart attack and stroke in people with diseased gums, especially if left unchecked. And something about inheriting gum disease, or the predetermination for it, from our parents in the first, however many, months of life after conception, or something. I didn't quite get the finer meaning of these points other than I had it and I needed to have it treated.

“You haven’t given up smoking for too long, there is evidence on your teeth of recent smoking.”

“Oh… um.”

He said my tooth was saveable. “Of course, it depends if you get in that seat when I tell you to.”

“Oh, I will.”

“And if you turn out to be a non-smoker, that would help a great deal, of course.”

He reminds me of my next door neighbour, Jackson. It is a little disconcerting.

“I’ve stopped smoking cigarettes pretty much, it’s just been joints lately, over the last few months.”

“Don’t put tobacco in them.” He smiles.

I was a bit taken aback, I didn’t expect him to say that. “Well, it’s difficult when I have friends who roll the joints with tobacco.”

“I’ll need to see you every four months to start with. Then I will be able to assess how often I will need to see you after that. Okay?”

"Okay."

"Any other questions?"

“No, that sounds fine.”

“It will be an on going maintenance situation, though. Don’t think there is any kind of quick fix.”

I head out into Collins Street. I go to the pharmacist and get brushes to clean between my teeth.

The sun is now shining, I head towards home. My stomach is still in a knot. I’m still stressing, I can feel it.

In my street, there is water lying in pools in the gutters from the rain this morning. The gutter is blocked, next to the wheel of a car, with an old newspaper and an accumulation of leaves. I move the blockage with the spiky end of my umbrella and the large pool of water starts to run down the street towards the big drain. I find it strangely satisfying. Another blockage dams it up a bit further along the street, so I walk back down the footpath and unblock that with the end of my umbrella, as well, and the large volume of water starts to move again. There are several more blockages before the drain further down the street and I unblock them too. I head down to the drain itself and clear away the build up of leaves at the entrance to the drain and the water makes a gurgling and splashing sound as it falls freely into the large grated cavity. I clear away the build up of leaves on the other side of the large square drain and water splashes into it noisily. Not since I was a kid with sticks in the rain have I played dam busters in the gutter, I feel like I have achieved something.

I think about folding paper into boats.