It’s an unfortunate reality that during the most awkward moments of your life, you are often in the hands of a stranger. Giving birth, having your legs waxed, or placing a discreet enquiry at the pharmacy.The indignity is bad enough when the person is sane, if a little desensitised. For example, when your first-ever gynaecologist grabs latex gloves and an instrument shaped like a giant duck and asks you, in a bored sort of voice, where you go to school. Or when a beautician casually tells you her kids’ names whilst pouring hot wax into bits you didn’t know you had.
I don’t think human beings are made for this kind of encounter. We’re not socialised to expect it. The horror is compounded when you throw into the mix a practitioner who is just – for want of a politically correct term – flat-out cracking nuts. I’m not talking about a person who is so used to their job that it makes them a little insensitive*. I’m talking about completely oh-my-God-get-me-out-of-here bananas. (Like a proctologist who can't stop talking about his ex, or a psychologist obsessed with antique china poodles.) And yet because the situation is already so completely fucking weird, your brain doesn’t have anything on file for what to do with an added element of crazy - it is already in full-out suspension of disbelief. It digs into its database for notes on Stranger With Latex Gloves (Customs officer – stop breathing, do not attempt humour), cross-references it with They Are Very Angry About Their Divorce (nod and smile) again with Near Your Naked Buttocks (run), and lastly with You Are Paying Them For It (no results found). In the end your brain merges all possible answers and winds up with this:
Often, you end up just combining a random selection of known social behaviours, hoping one of them will turn the scene normal again.
My biggest 404 came about two years ago, when I had to have a root canal. Because it had been botched previously by my regular dentist, a colleague recommended the province’s root canal specialist. “Go to him,” she urged. “He’s dishy. You’ll love him.”
Now, there are a few phrases in the world that should instantly set off alarm bells for any halfway intelligent human being. One of them is, “You can’t miss it.” Never has anyone using this phrase given me directions that didn’t land me in the middle of Malmesbury with a bright red light flashing on my what-the-fuck-o-meter. But it’s even worse when someone says, “You’ll love xyz.” Because whatever it is, not only should you know that you will not love it, you will also feel duty-bound for the rest of your life – whether it’s the person’s hairdresser or a particular kind of pudding – to validate their assessment and pretend you did love it.
In fairness to my colleague, I admit that when I first cast an eye over this root canal meister there was a fleeting – very fleeting – resemblance to George Clooney. Something about the greying hair and the Strong Masculine Jaw. But I should also have remembered that my colleague was rather more open-minded than I was and that no sane human being would ever specialise in root canals. It’s just not normal. Alarm bell 2: he did not once, during our entire encounter, smile. It was as though he had a permanent dose of Novocaine in the base of each cheek, keeping his expression and tone of voice eerily soft and static. Alarm bell 3: no assistant. Alarm bell 4: he started working at 5am. Call me prejudiced, but I just don’t trust people who are functional that early in the morning.
Maybe it was so that nobody would hear us scream.
On the morning of my appointment, I walked into the deserted building at 6am, took the deserted elevator to the top floor, and found him waiting alone in his rooms. “Hello,” he greeted me, starting off well enough. “Won’t you have a seat? We’re going to be about an hour.”
“Thank you,” I said, still all small talk and good humour. “Do you have a toilet I can use before we begin?”
“Certainly,” he answered evenly, and handed me a key.
Incongruity #1: Dangling off the keyring were several human teeth. A little brown in places. Attached to a pink, plastic gum-guard.
My brain, finding nothing in its filing system to cope with this, went straight to Default Setting – Give a Compliment. “Nice keyring,” I said warmly.
“Thank you,” was his deadpan reply. “They were a patient’s.”
On the toilet, I took a few moments to think about whether to run and pretend the whole thing had never happened. But denial (“maybe he’s just a little eccentric”), and the fact that my handbag was still in the reception area, led me back to the waiting room. It was the last moment of that appointment where I didn’t feel sure I was in the hands of a serial killer. His actual surgery room – and I don’t want to exaggerate, now – looked like a morgue straight out of Law and Order. Everything was pale minty green, oddly dilapidated and peeling in places, and reeked of formaldehyde. Icy fluorescent lights. Unnatural silence. The tinkling instruments being sharpened.
I sat in the chair. I was cool. I had done this sort of thing before.
Now the thing with a nerve-wracking situation is that your brain seeks any – any – aspect of familiarity for comfort. So the way to send you completely over the edge is to tamper with the little things. The things you expect. The way the light looks, or the angle of the chair.
He turned the chair upside down.
I was strapped in, dangling at an 80-degree angle to the floor, head at the bottom and feet pointing absurdly into the air.
“I find I work better at this angle,” he said darkly. “Don’t you?”
I didn’t have time to answer him, because the next thing I knew a dental dam had been clapped over my nose and mouth. Now, if you’ve never had a dental dam, I’ve got one word for you: don’t. You can’t breathe because it’s covering your nose and mouth, and if you’re this particular root canal specialist, you’ve rigged it so that the patient’s jaw is locked in position and it is very uncomfortable indeed, and you’ve strapped their limbs in so that they can’t poke you in the eye and run for their lives. I tried to mention that I was claustrophobic.
“Mbbrldble,” I said.
“I know!” he said. “Much more hygienic!”
Now the thing with dentistry is that it’s ideally suited to monologuing. The patient can’t say anything – especially if their jaw is locked around a dental dam – so you can basically treat them to any subject you like.
“Where do you work?” he asked, just a little hungrily.
“Grgle,” I said.
“Oh I know already, I read it on your form,” he nodded gleefully. “But I noted it because I have a story for you! Headline news!”
And he started talking. And talking. And talking. Turns out he was not just a root canal specialist, but also an amateur sleuth. And his deductions had led him - in travels spanning approximately 65% of the globe – to believe Brett Kebble was still alive.
“I know where he is, too,” he said smugly. “I know where he’s hiding. And I can get his bank records.”
“Grgh?” I asked.
“You bet,” he said. “And I’m not telling yet, either. Because my time will come. And I’m going to out him. I’ll make millions. I’m the only one that knows. But because I like you, I’ll give you a clue. I found the answer on a mountain in Switzerland.”
He flashed his drill thoughtfully.
“Of course, I guess I could show you. You wouldn’t tell anyone else, would you? I don’t really like people. But we could make a trip of it. Get the newspaper to pay. Take some pictures. Sell the story. Share the money.”
He paused. “But I’d need to finish your teeth first.
“Can you see my probe anywhere?”
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* Witness the teenager ahead of me in the pharmacy queue this morning, who exhibited telltale symptoms of Embarrassing Itchism – fuschia -coloured ears and an inability to form audible consonants. Not that I needed the clues, because the doddering pharmacist nodded, smiled, and bellowed: “SORRY DEAR, I CAN’T HEAR YOU. IS THAT ORAL OR VAGINAL?”
