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February 14, 2003
The Tooth, The Whole Tooth, Nothing But the Tooth
I really didn’t think my life could get any worse. Two days ago, I thought the worst had already happened when it rained unstoppable style on my boyfriendless birthday. I thought to myself, tomorrow will bring sunshine, more certainty with my relationship, and as I look ahead on the horizon I see a chocolate-filled joyful Valentine’s.
Wrong. Dead wrong. Actually dead and wrong might be better than still breathing and wrong. But alas, I get life plus all the headache of this terrible day. Instead of kisses, I get kicked. And hard.
Yesterday, I experienced living death. And today, Valentine’s Day, it looks as though I am inching closer and closer to just jumping off the cliff. Why stay on the edge talking shit to myself about how life is grand?
It isn’t.
Yesterday morning, I awoke and said the words out loud, “Thank God my birthday is over.” I figured I had had the most depressing birthday any one girl can handle, and that this day, February 13, would bring me a kaleidoscope of laughing babies, pink roses, free health care, Marc Jacob shoes, mascara that comes off clean, fluffy down pillows – all the things that the world needs now and are about equivalent to love sweet love.
No.
February 13 brought me pain and suffering, empty pockets and a broken tooth!
I was leaving Coral’s house to get ready for our day of fun. We planned on visiting a colorful friend in the valley (details later), going to the mall to purchase ridiculous goods with our gift certificates, walking around on clean hardwood floors with brand new high heels, eating PF Chang’s, just having a blissful day.
I rushed out of her house with my head up high, knowing that the tragedy of my birthday would be no more.
I threw on my high heel boots at the front door. I whisked the door open to face the small amount of sunshine that was peeking through the clouds and proceeded to take a small step forward onto the porch to greet my new day. The porch was slippery from the previous night’s rain, and I was carrying a tote bag full of magazines, my paperwork (a lady’s got to have her paperwork on her just in case), lotions, dumb shit in a bag. Coral has a small flight of five steps on her porch. I proceeded to fall down the entire flight of stairs.
A fall you say? Oh, just get up and hope that nobody saw. Nope. Wasn’t that kind of fall. It was an emergency care necessary kind of fall.
As I lost my standing, I could see the pavement rushing toward my face. My body beneath me failed to find support on the handrail, and for some strange reason I didn’t want to drop the stupid tote bag. Within seconds, my left wrist, the not strong one of the two, was bent all kinds of ways to catch the fall. I tried to put my hand in the way of my face so that my face, eyes, nose, mouth, and most importantly teeth (that I just spent $5000 of my own money fixing in my adult years) didn’t suffer tremendously. My wrist didn’t save me. I fell face first onto the pavement, my wrist was beneath my right cheek, but my front left tooth had a date with the concrete and would leave my mouth, its loving home, this tragic day. I chipped ¾ of my left tooth off falling down a flight of stairs on the day after my 26th birthday. A small tear of mixed emotion, pure comedy and sadness, is trickling down my cheek, the one good one, as I write this.
I looked at the piece of my tooth on the ground, and I glided my tongue across the inside of my top teeth and felt the jagged edge of my ¼ tooth and immediately started crying hysterically like a small child. As I tried to lift my awkward body up, my knee wouldn’t budge. I had skinned my knee, much like a small child would, and the blood and the skin was stuck to my tights. I managed to get up and open the door to Coral’s apartment screaming:
Coral! Coral! I fucking fell! Coral! My tooth. Oh my God!
I ran to the nearest mirror, opened my mouth and discovered that I now looked like an uneducated wreck of a person with a broken tooth to match my stupid broken birthday heart and I cried and cried.
Coral had just jumped in the shower, to get ready for our day of joy remember? She yells from the shower, “Are you okay? What’s happening?” While crying hysterically, I scream, “My fucking tooth. I fell down the stairs. Oh my God! My tooth. What is this? Why are you doing this to me?” Coral runs out of the shower, soaking wet, and somehow in a pair of panties. Just a pair of panties. She’s holding her boobs in one arm, and trying to console me with the other – mind you – soaking wet and just as hysterical as I when I flash her my new smile. She scrambles to find the yellow pages. She says that our day of joy is off and while naked, rips the first page out of the dentist section and calls them.
“My friend just broke her tooth,” she cries! I’m in the background screaming, “Why! Oh my God! My fucking tooth. This isn’t happening to me? Where is the tooth?” Crying hysterically, I spit out one long diatribe after another about how my life is just over.
Coral, still on the phone, is screaming over me, “She needs to have this looked at today. She’s on TV every day, man! This is my friend!”
I start screaming, “I don’t want the fake tooth that turns yellow or gray. I don’t want that. I want my tooth back.”
Into the phone, Coral says, “She doesn’t like the fake gray tooth. She doesn’t want that. She wants it to look good TODAY. We also don’t like Jerri from Survivor’s teeth. We don’t want that.”
I chime in, “And I don’t want them thick like [insert famous comedian's name]." My teeth are already bad (nowhere near what I would call a pretty smile) with all the work I've put into them, I can't afford to make them even slightly worse.
Coral runs into her room, puts her clothes on, and I attempt to call my thought-you-were-my-boyfriend-the-other-day-but-now-what’s-happening-person who is halfway across the country on business. He can’t hear a word I am saying because I am literally a stack of tears and anguish. Coral grabs the phone and says, “She’s okay, but she fell and her tooth is broken. Melissa done broke her tooth! We’re leaving now.” She puts him back on the phone with me while she dashes around looking for my keys (her car was stolen, remember?) and getting my sweater and my shoes together. He’s telling me it’s going to be okay, trying his hardest to console me but I am just non-stop waterworks. Dude, this is my tooth. The same one that I’ve had for two decades now. It’s cracked up on the sidewalk, i.e. not in my mouth. This is terrible. But I find myself laughing and crying at the same time. What is this? Pointing at my tooth, I continue to scream those words. What is this?
Before we get into the car, Coral grabs her camera and I scream, “No still photography. No moving photography. No pictures. NOOOO!” She apologizes and says, “There ain’t any batteries anyway. I thought you just might want a picture for later.” I don’t.
As we are getting into the car, the phone still on my ear, my boyfriend-are-you-my-boyfriend-though is still trying to console me, and I start laughing hysterically through the tears. I said, “Coral, when my tooth is fixed, this will be really funny, but for right now, it’s really bad.” We start laughing and I scream, “Who the fuck breaks her tooth on the day sandwiched between the most miserable birthday and an anticipated stupid Valentine’s Day, who? Why in the hell am I still breathing? When will the lightning strike? When will the fire to my head be lit? Somebody please take my lifeless body away from this place!”
Coral makes some phone calls to cancel our plans, and I go, “Don’t tell anybody about my tooth! Nobody can know!” She says, “Girl, I just had to call my mama. I won’t tell anybody else.” I agreed that her mom could know, and we headed down the road like two crazy people.
We jet over to the dentist place. Why has Coral chosen, albeit accidentally, the best cosmetic dentist in the richest neighborhood? She’s just looking out for me. We walk in and suddenly the whole place is captivated by my tooth. We’re hysterical. I look like shit because I am in pajama pants, tights, Coral’s too-big flip flops (too scared to put the high heel boots back on) and no makeup, morning hair, and hello! A jagged edged tooth dangles in my mouth! I look around, knowing this is a famous people dentist, and I go, “Is there anybody in here who has no business seeing me this way?” And we laugh. Sure enough, some hot dude off of Melrose Place shows up for his appointment. Go away sir.
I sit down in the chair. We rehash the story to the 9 personnel who are standing around helping us, some gawking, some putting on gloves. And within an hour and a half, and $400 worth of uncovered by my dental insurance dentistry later, I emerged with a fat and bruised upper lip (the swelling kicked in after I believed that my face escaped without injury, just throw me a bone, give me something), a swollen and bloody knee and a new fake tooth.
Everybody is enamored with this new enamel. Even Melrose Place guy appeared in my dental cubicle talking about “Oh man” as he stared at my ugly before pictures. Again, go away sir. I am happy because it looks better than Jagged Dumb Tooth, but it is still fake and I still have to face $1500 worth of cosmetic (uncovered by my PPO) work ahead. This fake tooth is temporary, and it feels that way. I am scared to eat or drink.
Later that evening, my significant other person told me that he thought that because we were going through a rough part of our relationship, it’d be weird to send me something for Valentine’s. So, today, I had planned on sitting my black ass right here, icing my knee, my wrist and my upper lip (before a 3 pm appointment where I have to impress strangers in a room) until at least 7 waiting for my Valentine’s gift. And now I know there will be no such thing. A sasquatch is more likely to appear at my door. Hopefully one does and attacks the shit out of me.
So, to all you people with all your teeth in place all cuddled up with your homie on the couch, you can kiss m-- no. Let me not be bitter. You have a blessed day. Cherish the love you have. Eat your chocolates. Smell your dumb flowers. I’ll be here, alone, waiting for Bigfoot.
Edited to say: Thank you a million times over Coral for your unconditional love and support through this trying time in my life. Really. And I know you asked the dentist to email you the pictures of my before tooth. Please send those out at a bare minimum. :) I would have never survived yesterday without Coral. Trust.
Posted by melissah at February 14, 2003 11:08 AM