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

claims or something. I’d never filed a major insurance claim before; I had no idea what I was doing.
    So that’s how I found myself with a mouthful of fucked-up teeth and no resources to deal with them. Truthfully, even if I’d known what that waiver meant, I’m not sure that I’d have made a different decision. If it was a choice between my teeth and my car, I had to choose the car. I could survive with bad teeth, but I’d starve and lose my apartment without a car to get me to and from work. That said, I never would have imagined that dental care wouldn’t be something I’d have access to for nearly a decade.
    So I got the car (which turned out to be a lemon,
because of course it did
)
and kept working, and over the years my teeth have continued to decay. I’ve brushed, flossed, rinsed religiously. And the cavities spread regardless. I bought a Waterpik. I bought made-for-TV mouth-cleaning tools.
    Nothing helps.
    My teeth are, since my story went viral, a thing I now talk about. But until the moment that I went full fuck-you gutterpunk and took them out for the whole Internet’s viewing to underscore the effect of my dental problems, I hid them. I spent years learning to speak with my mouth closed, learning how to fake eat in public when I couldn’t avoid it. I rarely told anyone when my mouth was hurting. It’s not like I have an option now, but there’s nothing that shames me more than acknowledging that I have failed at this too—this basic idea of keeping your own bones and enamel to yourself, of
having
them at all. Nothing is worse than eating in public, because I mostly can’t eat with my broken denture in. I usually eat alone, at night, tearing off bits of food and bolting them down without chewing whenever my stomach tells me that it can’t wait any longer. There is no joy in food for me anymore; it is a necessary evil, something I consume to stay alive but lacking in anything like taste or texture. I don’t eat much.
    I’ve lost a lot of weight. People keep asking me how I’ve done it, and I always wonder what I should say. Mostly, I tell them that it’s just losing baby fat now that I am out of my twenties. Sometimes I seriously consider telling them that they really ought to try a nice strong periodontal disease (it does
wonders
for your thighs!).
    I don’t smile. Someone found a picture of me smiling from back in 2006, before my front teeth went and a wisdom tooth cracked off. It is one of the last times I smiled on camera, if not
the
last. I don’t allow people to take my picture anymorebecause nobody can ever just take a picture. Everyone wants you to grin like an insane person. They will cajole and wheedle and bring the whole group photo to a screeching halt until you finally, shamefully, admit that you can’t, that you don’t want a picture of you like this to exist. Or you have to be an ass, irrationally angry about a seemingly innocuous request. That’ll get you out of it too. I actually don’t mind being in pictures and I wish I had more to remember my friends and milestones with, but I’ve spent the better part of a decade telling everyone that I have a huge aversion, that it’s best not to ask or expect, because I don’t want to deal with the inevitable “Smile!”
    Actually, never smiling has had an interesting impact on my life. I can’t repress laughing with my friends, the people who are safe, who can see a broken mouth and not notice it. But among people who don’t know me, about half of my jokes fall flat, because I am not doing the human thing and grinning my way through, making clear that my dry observation is meant to be amusing rather than cutting. So I learned to stop telling jokes, because while I have a lively sense of humor, I can’t properly express it with my face.
    It even messes with my relationships. My husband, for obvious reasons, would like to kiss me. I, for obvious reasons, feel like kissing is the anti-sex; once I have been reminded that I have