I bike to my dentist's office on Broadway and West 63rd.
I hate my dentist. (Not true) He is a cheat. (His bills are filled with error and confuse me)
I am too lazy to look for a new one.
One of my gum's has drastically receded.
I think that my gums may not like the Rilutek I've been taking twice a day.
I am worried about infection. I am worried about root canal.
So I suck it up and make an emergency appointment.
The dentist's office is in the same building as Ollie's. And a block away from a hopeful happy Pottery Barn store.
The last time I was at the dentist's (two months ago to get my teeth cleaned) I stopped in at the Pottery Barn to stare at the sofa arrangements and glumly peruse their sale items; chipped frames, faded Christmas ornaments.
That visit, I shopped along side the actor who plays the NBC page on that Tina Fey show 30 Rock. He was with his comely white bread parents kicking lounger chairs and sofa beds. The threesome looked so conservative and sweet. I was jealous that he had parents that went furniture shopping with him. That he was on a hit show. He is simply himself. That he's playing an NBC page and I WAS an NBC page and when I was an NBC page, I had thought about a show that takes place at 30 Rock.
According to Christian Science or Mind Science, there are no original ideas, man doesn't create anything original, its already there, available to everyone.
I like that view. I believe it too.
On the bike ride to the dentist I rehearse what I will say to the dentist. I'll be very neutral and matter of fact.
Today I will not see my regular dentist, I will see a substitute dentist.
My substitute dentist is pretty, poised, a Mediterranean ingenue. The kind of girl that might still use hair spray and wear pantyhose with white shoes.
Something (Marlo Thomas-That Girl) about her.
I present my dry monologue to here.
She nods to my confession with pretty painted on detachment.
She gets up from her chair and looks up my medication on the web to see for herself if it causes "gum hemorrhaging # 1".
She sits back down to examine me. She feels around my mouth and proclaims with the happy definite solvable solution, that I am the victim of a cracked filling.
That is great news for me. I am perfect. No need to panic. G-d is there for me. My mortal mind brews trouble.
I have a problem with this particular filling. This is the third time in five years I replace it. This new replacement will cost me 1 thousand dollars. (Isn't this the dentist's problem? It's only been in 2 years. I buy a tooth guard to wear at night for $300)
She suggest I get a gold filling. "It will last forever."
This is amusing to me. I'll take the regular one, I say.
We go to work right then and there.
I agree to a shot of pain killer in my gums... and thus begins my period of panic.
Because, my tongue and throat are lazy (I reason inside the dome of my head).
What if my tongue is too lazy to get out of the way?
What if I can't breath?
The dentist lady notices me sitting upright uncomfortably, my eyes dilated. The noise of the dentist office in the overwhelms me, complicates my busy mind.
I can hear Dr. Rajan lecturing my sister, " of course If he'd been responsible he would have read that people with a pending ALS diagnosis should never, ever take Novocaine!!!
I want it all to stop.
NOW!
I tell the dentist that I have no fears of dental work.
This is true.
My grandfather was my dentist. I feel safe at the dentist.
But now I am scared that my body (mouth, throat, tongue) won't behave. I tell the dentist lady that I'm worried I'll swallow my tongue.
The pretty dentist lady leans in, wearing a sympathetic smile (wearing professional makeup- I notice) and reassures me that I will be fine. Nothing will go wrong.
I stare at silent mini TV above my head. A game show! The host is the actor who played Peter Brady.
Los Angeles (where the show must be taped) is a vast uncontrolled land to pick up a paycheck... I think.
Later my substitute dentist comes back to me about my pending diagnosis.
'You must be in the early stages. Does it run in the family?" She asks trying not to display any fear.
I give her a mini version of the history of my illness, the tennis game sprain, the tiresome walking to work, the various doctors, the confusion. The lack of a gold standard for a diagnosis.
She puts the tongue compressor back in my mouth when I am done.
I pause.
And then I make her take it out again.
"of course I pray daily that it will change. There have been cases of it stopping and this is what I plan for me."
"Well, I hope so too" she says unsteadily getting back to my mouth.
I feel like the problem pupil in first grade. The teacher loves all her children, wants to love me, but this vulnerability is too much.
(I would prefer to keep my mouth shut. But feel I gotta spill.)
When I leave, I tell the dentist lady,
"Thank you... and thank you for your kindness."
I am a rattled, dainty, genteel Blanche Dubois.
I ponder for a moment, if by being grateful and respectful to her, she'll see to it that I don't get over billed.
Outside, I get lunch at Ollie's. And since I have forgotten my reading glasses, I can't read the menu. So I pick the random # 31 from the endless menu with pages and pages of tiny print.
True.
Ten minutes later, I receive a spicy hot beef and noodle soup in a big plastic tub. As I eat it, the sauce splatters on my new white tshirt. Little brown dots dribbling down (Pollock style. I will look like a moron for the rest of the day.
So I cross the street to the Gap and buy a new tshirt for $6.
It is a strikingly ugly yellow color. This yellow will never sell. It is SO ugly that I imagine it could be really handsome on me.
In my new shirt, I bike down the block to Barnes and Noble and read the play "Exit the King" in the cafe on the top floor. I borrow glasses that are for sale by the register on the main floor. I leave the hard plastic tag on, sticking up by the nose part. I sit in a table crammed in with dozens of people, like we're all waiting for the same flight. I enjoy the closeness, the company. A child at the next table stares at me and my glasses with the tag sticking up, like I might be a good play date. He steals looks at me with curious admiration. Kids are attracted to me.
Sometimes.
I sit at my table and read the play "Exit the King" by Ionesco because I'm seeing it tonight, at the Ethel Barrymore on West 47th.
I've never seen an Ionesco play.
Geoffrey Rush has won the Tony for best actor! This past Sunday night.
It's a hot ticket.
And...
I want to see an absurd play.
My life feels absurd. Like pickles and ice cream to a pregnant woman, I (in my confused state) have no desire to see or read about facts or linear stories but crave lovely confusion, rendered with humor and elegance. (I hope)
As I read, I discover that...
This play is an exploration of death.
I did not know that.
I hadn't really considered the topic of the play, just the French absurd part.
But there it is, the text lying in front of me with my tall green tea and a super sweet over buttery oatmeal cookie.
The play is a King's reaction to being told he will die "by the end of the play" and his various stages of denial and then his guided tour to his last breath.
The play is fantastical and also very real.
Some of the sections jump out at me.
At the theatre, I sat on the aisle and leaned my head into something wrought iron next to me.
I listened more closely than I usually do, noting comparisons and connections as the play went along.
The king is talking to the last surviving servant in his kingdom.
The servant describes how tedious and laborious her life is.
" I live in a windowless room, I have to walk down dark steps in the early morning before I can even see light".
The king in ecstasy replies,
"You get to wake up in the dark, and then take a step down into the light, discovering the light, each morning?!!!"
He is ravenous for the beauty of ordinary life, painful and gorgeous, that he is about to give up.
The beauty of life. The extraordinary beauty of being alive.
Apparently, Ionesco wrote the play when he was sick and near death, in 1962, the year I was born.
It offers no glimpse of ever lasting life. For an absurdest play, Ionesco writes a modern realistic version of what death might be, a journalist's report of the the final fight, the last thoughts, the walk into the white light.
And then nothing.
As I leave the theater, I walk into Sigourney Weaver. We catch eyes for a second.
Does she know me? Does she recognize my greatness?
Posts
