The Chair

A visit earlier this year to a certain professional practitioner inspired the following essay.

For weeks the dread gnawed at me, slowly consuming my internal organs. My date with the enemy, once too distant to worry about, now was 12 hours away. Friday night, normally a time to unwind and relax, instead brought paralyzing anxiety and fear. A sleepless night lay ahead.

When the alarm buzzed at seven o’clock Saturday morning, I had been awake for hours, lying in bed and praying for a natural disaster to strike. My prayer specifically ruled out any loss of life; it petitioned only for enough mayhem to close every road in the state, thereby crippling all commerce and industry. No such luck, however. My wife Joan, knowing what awaited me, hugged me and kissed me, then sweetly said, “Get the hell up and face this like a man!” I didn’t want to; I wanted to bawl like a baby. I was a dead man shaving, a living corpse on the way to the embalming chamber. What should I wear? Does it matter? Does anything matter anymore?

8:00 A.M., time to depart. I embraced Joan so hard I nearly broke her back. Painfully she said, “Honey, you can do this, I know you can. Believe in yourself. I’ll be here when you return.”

But would I return? And if I did, would I be the same man who left? We’d know soon enough. Quivering and shivering – it was February in New Jersey – I set out to engage the dreaded adversary.

I arrived 15 minutes early, taking a seat in a pleasant enough anteroom, actually too light and cheery for the horrible business conducted there.

“Jack Shea?” I heard the female voice first, then the human form appeared. “Come with me, Jack.”

Do I have to? I thought, unable to muster even an ounce of courage.

“How are you this morning?”

“Oh I’m fine, I guess”, when really I wanted to say: How do you think I am, you twit? I have been unable to function for two weeks, and this morning I prayed for the end of the world. How does that grab ya, Sweetcakes?

“We’ll put you in here, and he’ll see you in a few minutes. Can I get you anything, a magazine maybe?”

“No thanks, well, how about a shot of whiskey?” She laughed nervously and ran from the room.

The room contained a single place to sit, in the chair of honor, a chair designed for one thing and one thing only. I noticed on the wall in front of me a painting by Leroy Nieman; it looked like a sailboat capsizing. Just perfect, I thought. What am I doing here? Run for it, to hell with the shame, the disgrace, the reputation reduced to rubble. I can live with that. The walls were covered with smiling faces, mouths opened so wide a good-sized bird could fly through. Why were these people smiling when, in mere minutes if not seconds, legal torture was about to take place?

As promised, he entered the room, smiling as grotesquely as the wall people. After a quick hello and a shake of my sweat-soaked hand, Dr. Edward Smith, DDS, said, “Okay, Jack, open up and let’s take a look, shall we?”

So there you have it: my semi-annual dental checkup was the source of my fear. I have nothing against dentists personally; I just abhor the profession they chose. You see, I am a gagger, one who feels death by choking is imminent when a human hand enters one’s mouth. For me and those similarly afflicted, an innocent dental checkup makes waterboarding seem like a walk in the park. Gagging is an awful problem, for the patient obviously, but also for the poor dentist and hygienist. Once it starts, it doesn’t stop. They can tell me to breathe through my nose until the cows return home, but that awful reflex keeps on keepin’ on. I wish he could put me to sleep, do his disgusting work, then slap me awake and send me off with my new toothbrush and supply of floss.

And then there are the dreaded x-rays, when they outfit you with that 50-pound vest that could stop a barrage of bullets. With that thing on you couldn’t run 10 feet before the weight brought you down. So you’re trapped, forced to endure the unendurable. Those 10 seconds – between the placement of the choke-inducing apparatus in your mouth and its release – are a damned eternity.

So how did I do? Not bad, actually; at least I didn’t throw up this time, or cause the hygienist to quit and find another line of work. I returned home to Joan with my masculinity not completely eviscerated. But guess what? I was told to come back in two weeks for a full set of those wonderful x-rays. I immediately started praying for that natural disaster to strike.