My Body in Nine Parts

by Raymond Federman

  In the case of a tooth, the writer must first spend time examining the inside of a mammal’s mouth. And then he has to find the right words to describe what he has examined. To come up with a word tuberculated takes some thinking and some research. The choice of words makes it clear to the rest of us, uneducated in the subject of teeth, how molars function.

  Even more interesting in this definition of a molar is the term grinding. What a perfect word to illustrate how our molars function. The molars grind food just like a mill grinds grain. The guy assigned to describe molar teeth for the dictionary must have been a poet and a dentist.

  Anyway, now I am certain that it’s one of my molars that broke. The third on the left on my upper gums. One of my favorites.

  Of all my teeth, I like my molars best. Especially those to the left of my mouth because that’s the side I usually chew my food. Grind my food, I should say. It feels more natural to grind on that side.

  I have no idea why I favor the left side of my mouth over the right side. It’s instinctive. I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that I was born left-handed, but was forced to become right-handed when I broke my left arm at a young age.

  [For details about my being born left-handed, and becoming right-handed see My Nose.]

  Could it be that I chew mostly on the left side of my mouth because of a nostalgic remembrance of my left-handedness? My gaucherie, I should. Since it was certainly dumb of me to fall off a cherry tree and break my arm when I was a boy.

  [For details concerning the fall from the cherry tree see My Scars.]

  In any case, today the dentist really hurt me. It was my second visit. Of all the doctors one has to see, the dentist is the most dreaded. Dentists cause pain.

  Actually, last week, when I went to see my dentist the day I broke the tooth, he didn’t hurt me at all. He only examined the damage, and took an x-ray of the ruins.

  After he looked at the films and showed me exactly what was left of that tooth, he proceeded to squeeze some kind of soft cement around the broken tooth that felt like rubber when my tongue touched it.

  The dentist explained that he put that rubber cover on my broken tooth so that I wouldn’t cut my tongue on the rocky debris. The next time he will cover it with a crown.

  So I spent a whole week with that caoutchouc stuff in my mouth before my second visit today.

  Well, today the dentist really hurt me, even though he put that part of my gums asleep with a shot. When his hands were not in my mouth, my tongue rubbed against the gum that was asleep and it felt as if a piece of my mouth was missing.

  Before starting his vicious work he asked me with a little cooing giggle where I would prefer to be right now.

  On the golf course, I said. Even if I thought something else. Especially since the dentist’s assistant was rather cute, and well-rounded, and she was there next to me, in her tight white uniform, ready to stick her fingers inside my mouth. She didn’t say much during the entire procedure. But the dentist didn’t stop talking.

  After he explained in technical dental terms what he was going to do me, he hiked the dentist chair all the way down so that my head was now lower than my feet, and he inserted all kinds of metallic instruments inside my mouth, while the assistant, now masked like a terrorist, pulled my jaws wide open and slid a plastic tube on one side that sucked in the water she kept pouring in on the other side with another plastic tube. It felt like I had a mini-tornado in my mouth.

  The cutie was brutal. She did her assisting with ardor and force. Meanwhile the dentist introduced another metallic object inside my mouth which I immediately recognized as a drill from past experience when my tongue touched it. My whole body tensed. And then the dentist turned on his cruel drill and started demolishing what was left of my tooth.

  Instinctively and defensively, I closed my eyes and held on tightly to the armrests of the dentist’s chair.

  At first the drilling did not hurt. It was just teasing me in apprehension of the pain to come. And the pain came when the dentist, also masked, I forgot to mention, pushed harder with his drill into the ruins of my tooth. This time it really hurt. I tried to make a little cough in my throat to indicate that maybe he should stop a moment, but the gargling going on in my mouth prevented the cough from emerging. All I got was a splash of turbulent water on my face.

  Not a moment of respite. The dentist was drilling furiously now, round and round, and up and down, and even sideways. But my molar, or what was left of it, was resisting. It was not going to let itself be annihilated without a fight.

  Not this molar. One of my favorites.

  I started counting in my head. If the dentist doesn’t stop when I get to 50, I told myself mentally, I’ll pull his drilling hand away. And I’ll do it decidedly.

  Finally, I managed to let out a little groan when the assistant pulled back her tubes a little.

  Just a bit more, the dentist said, as he pushed further into the tooth, the disappearing tooth, I should say, all the while asking me about my golf, my handicap, my social life, and at the same time inserting his own golf, his own duffer’s handicap, his own boring social life between his questions which, of course, I could not answer with his hands in my mouth.

  How can he concentrate, gabbing like this? I wondered. Maybe he’s drilling the wrong tooth? With my gums in a state of torpor, how can I tell which tooth he’s demolishing so violently?

  Meanwhile, or rather at the same time, the assistant continued to drag her plastic tubes all around the inside of my mouth.

  Once in a while she grabbed my tongue with two fingers and pulled it sideways so that the dentist wouldn’t drill holes into it.

  I couldn’t stand it any more. I was thinking, if they don’t let me spit out the debris of my tooth deep in my throat, I’m going to choke. Somehow I managed a few faint groans to indicate to these two terrorists of the mouth that I was choking. I made fists. I raised my body up from the chair. I twisted my ass. Nothing doing.

  That masochist dentist said, just a touch more, as he descended further into the hole of my tooth, while his sadistic assistant pulled my tongue further away from the drill.

  This time I was choking for real.

  But then the infernal drilling stopped. Just like that. The dentist took his metallic instruments out of my mouth, and the assistant pulled her plastic tubes out, and they asked, as they removed their masks, if I was okay.

  Instinctively I told them I was okay, as one always says reluctantly in dental situations. But in my interior monologue I cursed them, I called them brutes, animals, murderers, assassins.

  Then came a moment of reprieve. My tongue explored what was left of my molar. Oh, no! Just a miserable little pointed piece of tooth left, like a miniature stalagmite, or rather a stalactite, on which, the dentist explained, next visit he will put a crown, while I rinsed my mouth with the disgustingly sweet-tasting green liquid the assistant handed me in a paper cup, and spat into the sink the debris of my late favorite molar which was so essential to me, since, as I’ve told you, I chew mostly on the left of my mouth.

  In fact, excuse the digression, but it was while biting a piece of chocolate that I broke this molar. The delicious Swiss chocolate I always bring home to my wife when I travel to Europe. I had bought it at the Zurich airport in the de-tax store. I often bring her something sweet to make up for the time that I leave her alone, but it’s me who usually ends up eating the chocolate because she says it’s too fattening.

  In any case, unlike most imported chocolate, that piece was so hard that rather than bite into it with my incisors, as one normally does with a soft piece of chocolate, I had to bite it with my molars.

  And yet, this tooth, as I told the dentist when I first came to see him last week, seemed in real good solid condition.

  The dentist found that it was not in so good condition after having examined old x-rays. He pointed out that, in fact, it was already cracked, and that it was inevitable that one day it would break. Hence the rea
son that it now needs a crown. Which will cost approximately $800, he told me, after I politely inquired about the cost.

  Personally, I think my dentist is a thief, and he wanted to put a crown on my molar even before it broke.

  Why not simply pull it out now that it’s broken, I asked.

  Oh, no. I never pull teeth, he replied. I always try to save them.

  Well, he could have saved me money by pulling it. He only charges $200 for that. That’s what he told me when I asked. But he insisted that he never pulls teeth, like other dentists do when they see a broken tooth.

  So he’s going to put a crown on that broken tooth. A porcelain crown, not a gold one like I have on the right side of my mouth. Also on the third molar from the end.

  That beautiful gold crown was put there in Tokyo by a Japanese dentist.

  I cannot tell you now why it was a Japanese dentist, it would take too much time. Some day perhaps I will tell the story of the gold crown I got in Tokyo, in l953, when I was serving with the occupying forces, while biting a piece of Japanese chocolate, and how that molar was totally pulverized. The Japanese dentist explained that many people in Japan break their teeth because Japanese chocolate is much harder than occidental chocolate.

  This shows how much I like chocolate, but how chocolate has been detrimental to my teeth.

  But let’s return to today’s visit to the dentist.

  After the drilling, the dentist said he would be back in a short while, and he left the torture chamber.

  You know what that means when a dentist tells you, he’ll be right back. Dentists are worse than barbers when it comes to making you wait.

  The assistant also disappeared. Maybe that was all for today. But then she returned again her face masked and with rubber gloves on her hands. Oh, no! No more!

  Now it’s her hands I have in my mouth. She tells me that she is going to take an imprint of the tooth for the crown. And so I feel one of her hands entering my mouth while the other pulls it open, and she presses some kind of gooey chewy stuff around the pointed piece of tooth I have left up there. It feels like tasteless chewing gum. Then she orders me to close my mouth and bite hard on that chewing gum, and to stay like this, without moving my jaws, until I hear the little bell behind me. Then I can open my mouth.

  And she disappears again.

  So I stay like that, teeth clutched hard, for an infernal time. I am counting the seconds. Must be ten minutes already, or more, before I hear the bell go off. I open my mouth, but not without difficulty, because my lower and upper teeth feel like they’re stuck together.

  The assistant is back. She literally jumps inside my open mouth, well not all of her, otherwise I would have swallowed her, to pull out, what am I saying, to extirpate forcefully from my mouth the chewing gum which has now become like plaster, and taste like plaster, and then tapping professionally on the cheek, she says, well done.

  Oh I forgot to mention, my current dentist and her assistant are not Japanese. They are Americans. I didn’t want you to confuse them with the Japanese dentist.

  I don’t know if this well done was addressed to the courage I had shown during this torture, or if it was a self-congratulatory well done for her dirty work.

  Okay, I’ll skip the details of the rest of this dental séance, and what the dentist and his assistant did to me, and how I literally staggered out of their office, out of their torture dungeon, completely annihilated, with a piece of plaster in my mouth, and how I must now continue to survive, until the next visit, in two weeks, with that phony crown on top of my broken molar.

  An ugly crown. I just looked at it in the rear mirror of my car. That one has no character, like my real teeth. It looks false and out of place. And on top of that it’s not the same color as they others. It’s greyish. I’ll have to live with it, temporarily.

  In two weeks I will have to go back to the dentist for the final crowning. But before he can put the real crown in place, that torturer will have to remove the fake one. With his drill, of course. The poltroon that I am anticipates that dental moment, Dantesque moment, I should say, with little enthusiasm.

  I think, not to suffer in advance the pain that my brutal dentist is going to inflict on me in two weeks, I am going to examine another part of my body. My ears perhaps. Yes, maybe I’ll tell about my ears. I have been told on several occasions that they are sexy.

  Or maybe I’ll discuss my belly-button. We’ll see. I haven’t yet decided.

  MY EARS: SUPPLEMENT #3

  I noticed the other evening while cleaning my ears with a Q-tip that my left ear is much more receptive, much more sensitive, I should say, than my right ear.

  My right ear doesn’t seem to care for anything. She barely listens most of the time. She closes herself to the exterior world. I suppose she hears interiorly, best I can do with that. She makes me hear what I mumble to myself in my endless interior monologues.

  My right ear is mysterious. Distant. Vague. Self-involved. She doesn’t really like it when I clean inside her. She shies away. She gives the impression that she would like to close upon herself. Like a clam. To invaginate herself, if I may borrow a word from Derrida. One of his better inventions: L’invagination du texte. She resists when I penetrate her with my Q-tip. So usually I don’t stay in very long.

  My left ear, on the contrary, loves when I clean her inside. She gives herself completely to my Q-tip. She abandons herself to it. And so my Q-tip rubs her inside gently, caresses her in slow circular motions, but being very careful not to go too deep and burst the tympan.

  Some people have commented that my ears were well placed on my head. Symmetrically placed. Squarely in line with my eyes.

  One person, a musician, even compared the placement of my ears on each side of my face with the perfect placement of speakers in a living room in order to obtain the best sound from the pick-up.

  Others have noted that I have nice ears because the lobes are not too big and not overly twisted, and do not stick out too much on either side of my head.

  And it’s true that my ears do not extend beyond a reasonable distance from my face, and as such make my face more harmonious than it really is.

  My ears bring a certain balance to the incongruous other parts that make up my face, whose story I have already told.

  Though lately, with age, and the efforts one makes to hear more clearly, it seems that my ears have gotten bigger. Almost as large as my nose, and that’s saying a lot.

  Yet, a few people even told me that I had sexy ears. Well, mostly women told me that when the envy takes them to kiss one of my ears, and even lick it. Which I sort of like, but not when the tongue of the one who is kissing my ear makes it all wet. My ears don’t like to be wet inside. Especially the right ear. The insensitive one.

  The other thing I also noticed about my ears, besides their difference of character, is that my left ear is much more sensitive to music than the right one. Much more responsive too.

  I didn’t notice this the same day I noticed how different my ears were one from the other. I discovered that sensitivity to music after I became conscious of their different personalities.

  Erica and I had gone to our first concert together. So that goes way back. Just before we were married. It was a Mahler concert. The Fifth Symphony. That day, during the concert, I noticed that I heard music better, more distinctly, more clearly from my left side.

  From my right side the music sounded more distant, more faint, indistinct, even when the percussion blasted.

  This is how I found out. At one point during the concert, in the middle of the second movement, when the music reaches a sublime moment that crescendos to a bombastic percussion roll, I turned my head toward Erica who was sitting on my right, in very good seats by the way, ninth row center, a great view of Boulez conducting, I turned my head towards Erica to see if she too was enjoying that musical moment as much as I was, and that’s when I noticed that I was hearing the music better with my left ear facing the orchestra, than w
hen listening facing the orchestra. This was confirmed when I turned my head all the way to the other side to listen to the music with my right ear. From that side, the music was not as clear, the notes not as precise. The sound was fuzzy.

  Now, you are going to tell me that perhaps I was going deaf in one ear and that’s the reason why I heard the music better with the other ear which was still normal. To this I will answer, that the day I heard Mahler’s Fifth more clearly with my left ear than with my right, I was still too young to be losing my sense of hearing, and besides, I had just had my ears checked a couple of days before the concert. If you don’t believe me I can show you the calendar in which I wrote all my appointments that year. I still have it. I keep all my appointment calendars for future reference. Every year I get a new one. The year in which I noted in my little book the appointment for my ears to be checked was 1958.

  So you see.

  Incidentally, that’s the year I met Erica, and we discovered we both loved Mahler’s music.

  But to come back to my ears. That day at that concert, I heard the music more clearly, more precisely, more harmoniously with my left ear. And not as clearly, not as precisely, not as harmoniously with my right ear.

  I know, you’re going to say, it was simply that when I turned my head to the right, the orchestra played a louder part of the music, and a softer part when I turned my head back the other way, and that’s why I was under the impression that my left ear heard music better than my right ear.

  Well, I will tell you that I repeated the experiment several times during the Mahler symphony, and each time I could tell the difference, and it had nothing to do with the music getting louder or softer.

  I would try the experiment when the music was constant for a long moment, several bars. For instance during a long violin solo tremolo.

  And I will also tell you that since then I have experimented this way many times while listening to music, at other concerts, or on a disk at home on my pick-up, or in night-clubs. I am certain that my left ear is more sensitive to music than my right ear. More open to it.