GOD'S TEETH (From Magic Harbor by Don Berry)
Among the water rats, teeth tend to come in two varieties: bad and false. I don't know why so many of us have bad teeth. And since we also tend to laugh a lot, a social gathering of water rats can become a distressing display of -- dental irregulari ty. God, how the middle class dreads dental irregularity. It makes a mockery of the perpetual meaningless smile that is the very foundation of their social world.
A more charitable valuation might be that the teeth of water rats display a refreshing, freedom-loving variety in style, shape and color. Politically correct mainstream teeth, when you think about it, are pretty dull. They invariably point north and south, are some shade of white or off-white, and stay in the same place most of the time, much like the middle class mind.
Not so among the water rats. Our teeth tend to a richly varied color scheme of warm earth tones, from the most delicate ochres through profound browns like well-oiled teak, to a kind of mysterious tar color, highlighted with glints of reddish undertnes.
And as to direction, our teeth sail full-and-by. (I should probably explain that "full-and-by" is an old term for sailing without a predetermined course -- sails full and by the wind's whim.)
The teeth of water rats do not meekly line up side by side like some platoon of intimidated Boy Scouts. Our teeth have minds of their own, and any given day may find an incisor drifting off to the southwest in a kind of mandibular scouting trip to se e what it can see. Our teeth never seem to be satisfied where they are. < p> A few years ago one of my own incisors went off on such an exploratory trip. It was rather like watching a person trying to get out of a row of movie seats. He stood up, leaned forward, and then started pushing his way past his neighbors, slowly, bu t with clear determination to be someplace else, closer to the molars. It was apparently not a successful trip, because he eventually dropped out of both the race and my mouth.
The eyes, they say, are the windows of the soul. But I guarantee that when a grown man with no front teeth grins at you, you get a glimpse into the very depths of his being.
Why is it that a three year old with no front teeth is charming and a fifty year old with no front teeth is an object of contempt and pity? Ageism, I say. Fair play for all, I say. If no front teeth is charming, then by god it should be charming fo r everybody. I would even settle for cute. This is a philosophic campaign I do not expect to win.
Age certainly has something to do with the bad teeth of the water rats. There are not many young water rats, by which I mean people under forty. The young have admirable energy, but they lack the patience and endurance that makes it possible to live successfully on the water. Also, in this society, the concept that people should be responsible for their own lives is utterly foreign, particularly to the young, so the water life has little appe al.
The customary poverty of the water rats is also a major contributor to bad teeth, of course. A visit to a dentist costs more than most water rats spend on food for a month. And I have never heard of a water rat with medical insurance. In choosing a life that is independent of the mainstream, we also relinquish certain benefits the mainstream takes as given.
Still, for all the glamor and romance of rotting teeth, they do poison the hell out of you. By the time you are ready for false teeth it is more than just a spiritual rite of passage, it is an incredible relief.
When I was getting ready to have my own teeth yanked, Dale of OBLIO commented, "Best thing ever happened to me was sex. Second best was getting rid of those god damn teeth."
I knew exactly what he meant. During my last year with my own teeth I lost 25 pounds, partly because of having my own toxic waste industry, partly because it had become so difficult to eat.
I don't actually mean "my own teeth." I consider the teeth I was born with as merely on temporary loan from God. Those were God's teeth, and it was a bad deal to begin with, and He is welcome to them. Bunch of damn worthless scraps of bone. My tee th, my really, truly own teeth, are honest, noble epoxy, bought and paid for.
Why is it that nobody has ever written a paean of praise to the pleasures of false teeth? Why, for that matter, does nobody even mention false teeth? People with a coronary bypass will chew your ear off about it. Experimental intra-ocular implants are also good for conversation, as are kidney dialysis, chemotherapy and, as used to be, the use of monkey glands for improving virility.
But America as a whole is so deeply, profoundly embarrassed about bad teeth they can't even use the word. At most, somebody may mutter something about "dentures", and scuttle nervously away with their eyes down. But "dentures" is just another word i n our obsessive Anglo-Saxon tradition of creating Latin euphemisms around everything we're ashamed of. Well, "false teeth" was good enough for George Washington, and it's good enough for me. He didn't even have epoxy, but he knew false teeth when he wo re them.
When I look in the mirror with my false teeth, I see clearly I am of the stuff of Cary Grant; I feel a spiritual oneness with Tom Cruise. I look just like all those ranks of handsome, debonair heros that parade endlessly across the TV screen, smiling , smiling, smiling. Perhaps not totally, absolutely, exactly like them, but there is at least a little more similarity than there used to be.
And I can bite off a hamburger; a bacon cheesburger even, if the bacon's done enough.
And I can whistle again, an incredible fog-piercing spear of sound, after years of merely hissing.
And there are even considerable pleasures in not wearing my teeth. Sometimes when I am particularly grieving for the mediocrity, the conformity, the greed, the rotten values and intellectual bankruptcy of this society, I'll go ashore without my teeth . It is an ultimate gesture of rejection.
Because there is nothing in the world so subversive to the American Way as some old curmudgeon in their midst sailing full-and-by, toothless and unrepentant.
end
God's Teeth
©1995 Don Berry