At a loss for floss

There's one thing that will send me into the cold sweats and make my sphincter shrink down to the size of a pin head, and that's the impending dentist.

I see that little reminder card - it's hot friggin' pink (the color of gums, or the blood the vampire dental hygenist draws when she gets to workin' with her assortment of hooks) so I really can't miss it - and begin to tremble as I realize the date is closing in on me, really suffocating to the point that I think I swallowed a bowling ball. Then comes the call to remind me that I have an appointment with the vampire, and the voice on the other end is sadistically cheery, I'm sure happy to hear my defeated "OK." She gets off on hearing the pain in our voice, and I'm sure she sits around the corner from the vampire's den of pain, giggling with when she hears my squeals of anguish.

The vampire, brandishing an implement that could disembowel a person from neck to nuts, nudges me along like I'm a prisoner of war into her room of pain where pictures of fellow tortured patients adorn the walls as a reminder to what happens if you speak up in pain.

"You don't have to strap me in this time, really," I say as I watch her hold the tie downs out so I can get into the chair.

"Oh no, buddy, I don't want a repeat of last time. Get you ass in the seat, or so help me, I'll shoot enough novacaine in your ass to numb it for the rest of the month."

She cinches me down in the chair and starts rifling through assorted hooks, spikes, picks and knives, holding up each one so I can get a look before she shakes her head no and moves to the next tool. She does this a dozen times before deciding on a link of rusty barb wire. I shake my head no and she replies with a toothless smile.

"Open wide, meat, it's go time."

My mouth is open as wide as an airplane hangar and she tells me that's not enough.

"I have something to help you out," she pulls out a hunk of a two-by-four and taps it between my upper and lower jaws. "There you go, now I have some room to work."

She goes town, "cleaning" my front eight, digging like she's expecting to find a vein of gold running through my gums. All the while she's gabbing about spring training baseball and how her family is planning a trip to a game this weekend. Great, I think, she's going to live it up at the yard this weekend, meanwhile I'll be slurping my meals through a straw for the next few weeks because this buthcher wants to carve her initials into my gums. She asks me a question and I try to answer before she stabs my tongue and pulls on it.

"If I wanted you to answer, meat, I'd tell you to answer. Got it? I do the talking, you do the bleeding. Ah, looky here..."

On the hend of her red-stained surgical glove his a hunk of of pepper the size of a Lincoln's head at Mount Rushmore, and then she asked me the inevitable question that lands me in hot water every time I visit the blood suckers.

"You haven't been flossing have you? Go ahead, I want to hear what you have to say for yourself."

"Well..."

"Silence, tooth killer! I will not hear your excuses!"

"But..."

"No more," she pulls out a Makita wireless drill and slowly moves it toward my mouth. "If you don't floss regularly before your next visit, I'm taking them all out. You can gum corn on the cob during those summer cook outs for all I care. If you can't take care of your teeth, you don't deserve them."

The vulture hygenist goes back to "cleaning" (I guess we have different ideas of what cleaning really means; to me I think of Windexing a window and wiping away the film, maybe scrubbing the tracks, while apparently the pain-in-the-mouth Olga thinks cleaning means sandpaper the teeth smooth before spearing bits of plaque and tartar). She pulls my cheek away from my molars and wedging her elbow in there so the cheek doesn't snap back. She pokes around my choppers, looking for something in particular it seems, and not finding it. I'm guessing the amount of blood she's sprouting is hiding what's hidden. It must be like a Texas oil field in there, with new geysers erupting with each poke and scrape.

"OK, meat, now it's time to polish these useless hunks of ivory. What flavor of polish would you like: rotted eggs or baby poop? Nevermind, I'll choose for you."

Once she finishes shining up my choppers, I'm left wondering if a buffalo carcass left in the desert sun would taste better than what she just used, and before I can ask for maybe a splash of scope to freshen up the taste she leaves the room and is replaced by the madman dentist who's wild hair and mangled beard leads me to believe they'll give a dental license to any homeless bloke.

"You have too many teeth," he says, "let's make some room."

"Here's the thing, Doc, I kind like this set. How 'bout we make a deal. I floss regularly, show you I'm worthy of keeping my set choppers in tip-top shape, and you let me go. If I don't maintain them to your satisfaction, the next time I show up you can rip away."

He laughs like I'm riffing onstage at the Improv. "Great idea, I'll give you six months."

They release me from their torture chair and hand me a bag with a tooth brush, a roll of gauze for the open wounds along my gum line, and of course floss.

And when Wife asked me how it went, I told her they're going to fill my pie hole with cement, effectively closing off the orifice, and forcing me to eat intravenously for the rest of my life.

"Finally," she says, "I'll get some peace and quiet around here."