HOLY FLOSSING - Elizabeth Callahan

A dentist is a sort of priest.
 
My grandfather was a dentist. And a eucharistic minister, too—gave out free dental care to nuns. He said the rosary while driving to work every morning. Went to mass every morning before that. He would stand at the altar, beside the priest, holding up the body of Christ—transmuted into little wafers—placing it in the palms of parishioners. Or putting it right onto their tongues. He was used to that kind of intimacy being a dentist.
 
He believed that taking the eucharist was redemptive, that it heals the body. Catholicism can be prescriptive like that—like dentistry.
 
Dentists have a sermon: thou shalt floss, thou shalt abstain from sugar, thou shalt brush your teeth twice a day. The dentist's chair is like a confessional booth. I did not floss. I did not avoid sugar. I did not brush my teeth--the brave patient admits, as the dentist hits a button, lifting the chair to heart level, then drilling the sweet-tooth for penance.
 
I never understood how someone could fear the dentist. My grandpa always let things slide. He’d give me chocolate covered donuts for breakfast, then filled my sugar-coated teeth with amalgam when he found cavities. My saccharine sins were forgiven. According to my grandpa, I had soft teeth: as if my enamel weren’t made of calcium phosphate—the hardest material in the human body. He never blamed my poor hygiene, my poor flossing. Susceptible to cavities, he would say prodding the divots of my molars with a scraper. He showed me mercy. He injected so much novocaine into my gums that I didn’t even know he was drilling—or that getting a cavity filled even included a drill. I was blissfully unaware in the dentist’s chair.
 
My grandpa, the dentist, would pass out on the couch with frosting coating his teeth—like a bad fluoride treatment. I think it's because he knew most of his patients lied when he asked whether or not they flossed--yes, they’d say. But he had a scopic view of their mouth. He knew they didn’t floss religiously. Because he didn’t floss religiously.
 
We lie to dentists about flossing—the way we lie to priests when they ask for our sins.
 
I mean, he’d eat two slices of Price Chopper sheet cake and drink multiple whiskeys each night. Hell, he even smoked a pipe. Brushing and scraping other mouths all day long, I can understand the indulgence, the temptation to neglect his own—having one less mouth to tend to.
 
It's like the priest, who, after sitting through an addict’s confession, prescribes a hail mary, then tumbles off to his whiskey cabinet in the rectory. Priests and dentists absorb our sins, but we never question if the dentist has cavities behind his mask. Or who absolves him of them. Don’t be misled by their white regalia, and their sermons of care for the sacred body—dentists and priests are people, too, with cavities. Temptation escapes no one.
 
Father Koonz was a priest at St. Agnes, where my grandfather attended church every morning. It came out that Koonz took advantage of altar boys. My uncle was an altar boy. I always wondered if my uncle was a victim. His eventual spiral into addiction suggests that he was. I don’t know if my grandpa ever had any suspicions, but I do know my grandpa was good friends with Father Koonz. He gave the priest free cleanings. I wonder what my grandpa saw looking down the throat of that horrible priest: the lies, deceit and manipulation layered like plaque. I wonder what lies Father Koonz told my grandpa while he was laid out flat on the dentist's chair. I wonder if he lied about flossing, too.
~
When my grandpa died, I stopped going to church.
 
I also stopped going to the dentist, until I had to. An ache along my right jaw sent me to a new practice. When I opened my mouth, my new dentist could see right through me. Well you’ve been partying haven’t you, the stranger said from behind his mask. The overhead light blinded me, haloing the masked dentist. I nodded against the dental probe, then scheduled an appointment for three fillings. They sent me home with handfuls of floss. Enough to string fifty rosaries.
 
Dr. Frasca, my new dentist, didn’t give me as much novacaine as my grandpa would have. I could feel the drill entirely and it would shock my nerves when it got too deep—jolting me for what felt like an eternity of suffering. I felt ashamed of my soft teeth.
 
I made my body suffer in my early twenties. I didn’t take much care. I’d sleep with my mascara on, staining my pillowcases in big charcoal peonies. My unbrushed mouth opened wide and fuming. I had no faithful routines. Besides partying. I’d fall into my bed around four in the morning without washing my face or brushing my teeth. Eileen Myles, in her essay, “Live Through That?!” describes a feeling of being “overwhelmed” by her “desire to do everything” which caused her to drink. It numbed the overwhelm. For me, living in New York City, my thirst for everything--for every dive bar and concert and bottomless brunch mimosa—got in the way of myself. Everything numbed everything.
 
A drinking routine usurped my bedtime routine—some routines are louder than others. They sweep you up off your feet and make you forget the rest of your life. Care gets forgotten. I didn’t feel good. On Sunday mornings, while churchgoers prayed, I rolled out the door for salvation from a Gatorade and a bodega-bacon-egg-and-cheese—another day on the habit cycle. Then a cigarette to stain the teeth and I’d be ready to drink again. I’d wake with shame and then pump myself numb with laughing gas.
 
Maybe that’s why my grandpa grasped onto the rosary so tightly. He felt relief from the beads. He could circle them in repetitive prayer until the sharp feelings smoothed.
 
When I visited him as a child, my grandpa would count my teeth in the kitchen. A grown adult has thirty two teeth, a child has about twenty. The rosary has fifty nine beads. Two mouths could almost say the rosary all the way through.
 
I started seeing a therapist who was keen on exploring new rituals for me to latch onto—to replace secret shots from the freezer that I used to numb everything. Routines of faith, of compassion. She suggested a consistent bedtime routine. I started by standing before the bathroom mirror each night, with a toothbrush, a washcloth and the sink running to steam—at the altar of self-care.
 
I flossed my teeth and they bled. I washed my face before bed. I started to wear sunscreen in the sun and my skin began to look better. I drank water. I was becoming faithful to myself. Like Myles, who reclaimed her body through toothbrushing: “I am a mechanic now, doctor, friend. This skull is my friend.” Self-care is sacred and devotional. It is personally religious. To be in a body is holy and mundane.
 
Eileen Myles says, “I found myself in my thirties leaning into the mirror one night and cleaning away and I thought: fuck, is this what I lived for—to floss.” I know the feeling, temptation. There is so much more to do than floss. And our lives can be pulled at any time—why spend time on the mundane—on flossing? “It’s more interesting to floss.” Myles suggests, “Because I face my face, myself, and I spend about seven minutes—first flossing. . . and at some point during this ritual I begin to feel better . . . It’s the most intimate expression of care that I know.”
 
I count my teeth, as if following the rosary. Eight incisors, four canines, eight premolars, twelve molars—I still have all of my wisdom teeth. I’m pretty sure they’re impacted. But I am wiser for every one of them. My left incisor is chipped, and my canines are shifting over each other from over-clenching my jaw. I scrape my tongue with a spoon. Sometimes I am tempted to swallow the mouthwash, but I spit it out—the way I had to spit the wine into a metal bucket at my first holy communion. I brush my teeth in a cross—up, down, side to side.
 
For our teeth will outlast us, and cavities are a living hell.