Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado Read Free Book Online

Other drugs, sure, but not this one in particular. It seems to me that because I have failed so much, been weak so often, I am prouder of those things I have managed to avoid. It’s doubly bad, then, to be accused of the things you
haven’t
done.)
    Never mind that I had none of the other signs of being a meth addict; my skin, while not exactly in great shape, lacks the
huge fucking sores
you get while on meth. My face, while much slimmer in recent years, isn’t skeletal. I’m sometimes a bit energetic, but I’m never tweaked-out twitchy. In short, calling me a meth user because I have bad teeth is about as valid as calling me a genius because I’m a fast reader.
    This dentist had come to her decision, though, no matter what I said. She made a point of telling me that they didn’t make dentures as discolored as I’d need and that I’d have to get used to having everyone see how dark my teeth were in comparison with these shiny white front teeth I’d have on the right side. She told me all this, with her poky metal shit in my mouth, and I wondered whether she was intentionally hitting the sore spots. I’m sure she dispensed actual medical advice at some point, but I stopped listening. Instead, I wondered whether she’d bother to take out all the bone fragments that needed removing or whether she’d just let them heal over and cause me trouble. I wondered how many people came back for this kind of idiocy.
    So I had my surgery, got a denture plate in place of my front teeth, and never went back. Call it weakness, call it cowardice, it’d be true. There is a shred of dignity that I willnot let go of. I will not intentionally put myself in that situation again.
    And that’s why I don’t like dentists. I have never in my life felt more attacked, more vulnerable, trashier than I did in that dentist’s chair. At least when people on the Internet call you a meth user, you can console yourself with the fact that these people are idiots, as evidenced by the fact that they have nothing better to do than cast aspersions at strangers online. When a dentist does it, drill in hand, it’s impossible not to worry that maybe that person is a serial killer, and fuck that. Not doing it again. Not even risking it. And it’s not like there’s a huge pool of dentists out there who will treat someone like me on a payment plan. I can’t just shop around until I find one with a decent bedside manner.
    My denture from that surgery broke about two years later. It just snapped while I was trying to eat a hamburger, separating the plate that fits on the roof of my mouth from the actual visible teeth part. I superglued it together for a while, until it wore down around the raw edges and wouldn’t fit properly. Now I just use a lot of dental paste and try to never consume anything in front of another human.
    So that was kind of awful. Worse, my teeth are actually one of the things I can honestly say aren’t my fault. My destroyed teeth are the result of a car accident nearly a decade ago, in which the other driver was drunk and high and had been busted for those things so many times they’d revoked his license. There was no question of liability.
    I was in the passenger seat because I hate driving in citiesand always let others take that honor if possible, and my jaw hit the dash so hard I exploded the airbag. Over time it became clear that I had nearly exploded my jaw along with it.
    I had car insurance, sure, but it only covered liability and uninsured drivers. (Thank God for
that
extra five bucks in coverage a month!) I needed a car to get to work. So when the insurance company offered me a settlement check, I didn’t think twice about signing the waiver (which, it turned out, meant that I had no right to future damages). I took it and bought another car. I didn’t realize that check would be it—that there was no more money coming to take care of the damage the other driver had done to
me
. I thought they were just separate