Story of My Life

Because my teeth, they’ve always been ambitious, problematic, expansive. I never have had enough room for all of them and so out they’ve come: milk teeth, adult teeth, wisdom teeth. Handfuls of them over the years, practically a whole piano’s worth. Of course, when I was a kid they still gave you gas for extractions – general, potentially fatal, anaesthetic gas administered, in my case, by an elderly man with unhygienically hairy ears who would bend in at me, eerily grinning, and exclaim – every single time – ‘Good Lord, dearie, they’re some size, those teeth,’ while he flourished that black rubber mask and then cupped me under it, trapped my mouth in one hard, chilly pounce: ‘Breathe deeply, dearie. Count backwards from ten.’

I’d shut my eyes and picture his tufted, werewolf earlobes and count until I’d reached as far as seven or so before I’d see these angles of tilting grey that folded in towards a centre point, bolted and sleeked at the backs of my eyes and then rolled me down and away to the dark.

Now, as it happens, I’m not good with chemicals. No choice here – I am made the way I’m made. Sensitive.

In the chair they’d give me nitrous oxide and it put me out nicely enough. I’d swim deep through a cartoony, bendy blank while the dentist did his work – the tugging, the twists – then I’d float straight back up and just bob at the surface like a tiny shore-leave sailor: changeable and land sick and absolutely smashed.

My first experience of the freedom within incapacity. That swoop and rock and thunder of delight. It’s always best to meet your pleasures before you can tell what they mean.

As I came round some nurse would be attending with her kidney dish and towels: a bit broody perhaps, protective – the motherly type but not a mother and therefore idealistic, if not ridiculous, about kids. She would, shall we say, not entirely expect the violence of my post- operative dismay: my tiny swinging fists and my confusion, my not unjustifiable sense of loss.

I have no idea what I shouted on these occasions – a small person turning expansive, losing it, throwing it, swarming clear out into beautiful rage. I’ll pretend, while I tell you the story, that I know.

I’ll say I produced – at great speed and with feeling – ‘You get away from me! I’ll have you! I’ll set the Clangers on you. And Bagpuss! Taking my teeth out...no one ever takes me out – except to the dentist – to take out more teeth. I need my teeth for the tooth fairy – I’m only five, for Chrissake – that’s my one source of income, right there. How else can I save up to run away from here? I could go on the stage – be a sideshow – my manager would want me absolutely as I am – The Shark Tooth Girl: the more you pull, the more she grows: ivory from head to toes. I’d be laughing.With all of my teeth, I’d be laughing.’

This is untrue, but diagnostic – it helps to make me plain.

Because I wouldn’t ever want to hide from you.

The surprise of my own blood, that’s true – thick and live and oddly tasty – I never did get used to that, my inside being outside – on my face, my hands. Even today, if I take a tumble, suffer a lapse, my blood can halt and then amaze me. It’s almost hypnotic – seeing myself run. And persons of my type, we run so easily: bird’s hearts thumping in us and broad veins full of shocks.