Forty-nine years ago today…
It’s amazing one seemingly random day would stick with me forever, its events still so vivid in my mind regularly demanding recollection due to their strange disconnect yet not so strange importance and effect. So they’ve been locked in semi-cold storage but I decided I could not wait till the 50th anniversary to liberate them. I assume but can’t guarantee they’d still be available next year but fuck it, the timing just seems right.
I was a 20-year-old incoming college senior working in the supermarket and spending much of my free time hanging with friends, getting high and eating bad food, listening to music and playing guitar. Oh, and in the dentist’s chair. Prior to that summer it had been several years since I’d been to the dentist as it was not something I enjoyed and was also expensive, but my mother had recently landed a job with the NYC Police Department which came with insurance. No more excuses.
I had 28 cavities in my 32 teeth. Fortunately my front teeth were spared but that meant multiple teeth had multiple cavities so my dentist and I co-authored a battle plan with the idea of minimizing the number of visits. We agreed to start off slow to see how I tolerated the Novocain but he then offered up nitrous oxide to expedite things. I liked that idea as I enjoyed nitrous from the first time I experienced it at age 11 when I was treated to an endless parade of chanting, goose-stepping Nazi soldiers, likely due to too much of Cronkite’s “The Twentieth Century” which I watched every Sunday night. It was a perfect gateway drug so what the fuck…I wasn’t quite there with pot yet.
The first couple of visits were easy…small dose of Novocain accompanied by a few minutes of gas. I was almost sad it was so quick so I asked him to do more the next time. Still OK…the extra gas time was fun despite no hallucinations but the Novo took a little more time to fade out. We upped the ante and decided he’d drill and fill whatever he could on 25 minutes of gas with enough Novo to cover any overage.
I thoroughly enjoyed that episode, happy to be making more rapid progress and was feeling good enough to go straight to work. I was still a little numb but figured it would wear off soon enough and was about to punch in when the manager looked at me and asked if I was alright. I didn’t understand the question until I went to the bathroom and stared at the mirror…I looked like I had a stroke with one side of my face totally drooping with saliva dribbling down my chin. He sent me home claiming he couldn’t let me deal with customers looking like that which he was able to get away with since it was years before the Americans with Disabilities Act came to be.
Summer was moving quickly and there was still plenty of drilling to be done. My next visit was on a day off so the plan was to crank out as many repairs as possible with no fixed schedule, the only caveat being I had to get to a concert that evening. He shot me up, put the mask on and got to work. I felt nothing…I was so numb and so stoned and seeing I didn’t flinch he took full advantage and kept going for an hour, the longest stint under gas by far.
I awoke from my stupor without any memorable hallucinations, only a huge headache, dizziness and nausea. And I was sure I didn’t look too good either but had no interest in verifying that…all I wanted was to get home, sleep it off and make sure I didn’t scare people that evening. I stumbled back to my apartment, ran out to the terrace, sat down and spent several minutes hyperventilating. So that was how oxygen deprivation felt. The fucking guy should have known better but maybe I gave him too much credit. Time was money and I was ready, willing and able to aid and abet his greed and incompetence.
But I looked and felt normal enough to make it to the show that night and we drove out to NJ to see Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. We were doing what we typically did at outdoor shows while enjoying the music when there was a sudden break and dead quiet till Graham Nash announced that Nixon would be resigning the next day. The place erupted with joy and relief as the opening chords of “Long Time Gone” came blasting out….fucking unreal. “Long time” indeed….that rat-faced scummy, crooked piece of shit took us hostage in ’68 and dragged us into the darkness but it was finally over. His henchmen got theirs and he should have gotten his as well but fuck it, as long as he was gone and rotted somewhere I didn’t care where.
Funny how history repeats albeit not exactly. We have another bigger, uglier, scummier piece of shit we can’t shake stuck to the bottom of our shoe for even longer than Nixon. It’s a different time and place and media and political environment so trying to extricate that fuck has been a brutal process, but the hits have been piling up with the hope it’s only a matter of time. But I don’t want him riding off into the sunset. I want that fat, lying, scheming fuck to get everything he deserves for all the shit he’s done to us the last several years. The cancer has got to be dealt with once and for all…there will be a ruckus and lots of pain initially ultimately followed by joy and relief once again.
Just like dental work.
I’m a lot older and my teeth are mostly fine so my summer hours are allocated differently. Hanging out with friends and working are still there, as are cocktails in lieu of pot, playing guitar and listening to music, all augmented by other adult activities and random demands on my time. Like babysitting and incessantly seeking out and praying for any glimmers of movement towards his ultimate demise. When it comes I hope it’s as brutal as he is, and I would love nothing more than having that old tune loudly serenading me once again, hauling me back to that evening with even greater euphoria.
But I’ll pass on reliving that morning’s events…near-death experiences don’t suit me.
On second thought, maybe a couple of tokes and just 10 minutes worth of gas for the occasion. Why the fuck not?