Statesman > XL Blogs > Archives > 2005 > January > 10 > Entry
The molar express
The sound and sensation of a tooth cracking in your mouth is something like biting on a rock. I eat rocks, so I know this.
Yet on this day I was eating plain pizza, that least hard of all foodstuffs after soup and marshmallows. Crack! the tooth went. I bounded to the bathroom to gaze at the wreckage and play with it with my tongue. A full quarter of a molar had snapped itself free from its homeland, like a section of glacier falling into the sea. It was still attached to the gum and I wiggled it in place, pulling it away from the tooth, then placing it back. I did this until I got nauseous.
It’s all fun and games until the dentists sticks you with a $431 estimate to fix the broken molar. That’s the price after insurance. Within 48 hours the dentist, a cheery, athletic guy who climbs mountains and considers me an absurdity, was jabbing a needle into my cheek, numbing the entire left side of my face until I couldn’t pronounce “stop” or “help.” I wasn’t comfortably numb, but I was psychologically ready for the doctor to chisel the broken molar to a bony nub, then cement a crown over it.
“You keep calling it a nub,” the mountain-scaling mouth magician clucked. “It’s not a nub. It’s just a smaller version of your tooth.”
Like I said, a nub.
The moment he detached the broken sliver from the gum — he used that tiny pirate hook thingy — I slobbered that I wanted to see it (“Caa ah see et?”). The assistant regretted to inform me that she had just sucked it away with her handy vacuum. I slobbered a bad word.
“Did you want to make a necklace out of it?” the doc asked. I hadn’t until he mentioned it. This guy’s a genius. (I’m reading Jim Harrison’s novella “Revenge,” and in it an old Indian woman gives the hero a coyote-tooth necklace to ward off evil. I wonder if my teeth are magical.)
Back at work, half my face drained of feeling, I tested out the long-lasting novocaine with a thumb tack. I pricked my lip and chin. I felt nothing, unless you count the thrill of grossing out co-workers, which I certainly do.
Has anyone else put Emer’gen-C, the fizzy vitamin C energy booster, in a beer or cocktail? Be careful. Unless you pour a beer very, very slowly over the powder, it turns the beverage into a foaming mad scientist’s experiment. But it sure has a fruity tang.
The cleanest bathrooms in a would-be dive bar shine and sparkle at the cool new Mean-Eyed Cat, near MoPac on West Fifth Street. Named after the twangy Johnny Cash song, Mean-Eyed Cat is a cozy, shacklike joint with a pool table, juke box and amazingly cheap beer. It wears its Cash theme overtly and with weathered style. The usual pictures and memorabilia are joined by small, unexpected gestures to the late black-garbed deity.
Friendly-eyed owner Chris Marsh opened the place five months ago, and it appears already to have regulars whom Marsh greets when they step inside the battered-wood main room. There’s a small food menu, but no hard alcohol. That’s the only particular Cash might’ve frowned at.
Last week an older gent called me at work and asked point-blank who starred in the film “The Rose Tattoo” with Burt Lancaster. He thought it was a Hollywood starlet, but I promptly corrected him. Loud, zaftig Italian actress Anna Magnani played the passionate widow in the 1955 screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play. I was the caller’s new hero.
Almost on cue, I surfed upon “The Rose Tattoo” on Turner Classic Movies a day after the call. I loved the film the first time I saw it in 1992 and fell into its lusty, outsized energy as I watched it again. Magnani and Lancaster are like dual sunbursts, gesticulating and laughing and chasing each other for practically the entire movie. Lancaster hams it up magnificently as Magnani’s suitor, mouth open and teeth gleaming. His physical performance is about 70 percent throaty guffaws. He’s simply mad.
I wish I laughed like a maniac that much. But you need a fortress of teeth as formidable as Lancaster’s to pull it off. I can assure you his molars never cracked.
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