Christian Szell in the Unmarked Center

This chair I’m sitting in, it’s pretty comfortable. My jaw is numb from like the upper right-hand side through my cheek to the surface, across the right side of my lip, and most of the way down just about to my bottom jawline. I’m at the dentist, and I wouldn’t be here on this day were it not for my having told him that the edge of one of my upper back teeth felt sort of jagged. He hadn’t even noticed it, was, in fact, done examining my teeth after their fastidious cleaning at the hands of Lucy, his plump but cordial hygienist. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I see it now, will just have you come in for a little filling and get that taken care of.”

There I was, taking myself into dental work. There I was talking myself into a big, fat payment due after the insurance company shelled out what they thought seemed reasonable.

Only a dentist would call it a “little filling.” Anyone else, anyone who was, say, the fillee, might see any filling as a big one.

So, in the chair, mouth numb, trying to somehow reconcile my sanity with the fact that two middle-aged strangers were huddled mere inches above my face, staring into my gaping mouth, draining my pooling saliva and collected bits of tooth, and working the chipped tooth with a drill loosing forth a slightly familiar and also quite disturbing burning smell, I am revisiting the merits of saying nothing.

Tis the season, in case you haven’t heard. Dentists have a thing about trying to get you to relax. I’m sure it has less to do with their concern for your comfort and ease than it does with their wanting to get you over with and out the door. This means that when I step into the office there is music piped through the ceiling into your ears, courtesy of Sunny 99.1, the station that has a blood pact with the devil himself, the music so sinister and infectiously degrading. No infernal messenger would ever think of denying the chance to spray a captive audience with the horrors of Christmas music. So as I stared at them staring at me, we all enjoyed the sounds of the season.

Occasionally, my dentist would get up to piss or jerk-off or smoke or check up on another patient, or whatever the fuck it is that they do repeatedly through every visit I’ve ever made to dentists in my life.

Whenever he would make his exit, there would be this agonizing, drawn out length of time during which the assistant and I would sit there quietly pretending as if we weren’t both struggling in our discomfort.

One of us would break the silence with mundane chatter about family, the weather, and of course the music on the radio.

Before long it became apparent that she was the built-in DJ of the office, the one who must list the name of the performer for every song that is played. She was so ingrained in that office as the go-to gal with the artist trivia that whenever a song came on that the dentist couldn’t immediately name, thus circumventing the implied dominance of the assistant, the dentist would stop drilling and look at her for the answer. As it were, I began to look to her as well.

“Ronnie Milsap. Johnny Mathis. Tony Be… no, wait… ah, Frank Sinatra.”

And then back to the drill.

It might clarify the insulated opacity of being a dental patient to point out that when the drill was on, I could not make out the song. This meant that unless a new track started while there was a lull in the Marathon Man festivities, then I was unable to ply my own substantial trade as a musical storage bin of corrosively awful pop music.

So the drilling continues, but now I begin to realize that there is a palpable tension between the dentist and his assistant. Better still, he hates this bitch. It’s obvious now. And the deal is iced when she says – on the third day of December – that Christmas is in two and a half weeks.

I am doing the math and it’s not looking good.

Is it just an oversight on her part? It must be. She can’t possibly be that out of touch, or, gasp, stupid, can she? There is a pause in the drilling. The dentist adjusts something on his drill, starts heading back into the fray, and then drops his hand.

He looks up at her and says, “Pat, Christmas is in three and a half weeks.”

“Are you sure,” she says.

“I’m sure, Pat. Now think about it,” he’s pissed, it’s obvious, “Today is the second, Christmas is on the twenty-fifth. Three weeks is twenty-one days. Christmas is in three and a half weeks.”

There it is, a stilted silence worse than any she and I had shared previous. All eyes now on her. She is looking down momentarily, and then, she looks him in the eye.

“I still think it’s three and a half weeks.”

The man hates the woman. For the most part, the woman is ambivalent about the man. I am wondering what it all means for my jagged tooth and the future of my mouth.

More drilling. More suction. More numbness.

Another lull.

The song has ended in perfect time with the drill’s silencing.

A new song comes over the room. The dentist doesn’t know it, so he gives her the obligatory, defeated glance. She is lost. She doesn’t know it either.

“Jameth Taywer,” I slobber forth idiotically.

The dentist turns to his assistant, smiles, and says, “Sweet Baby James.”