I only had two wisdom teeth, two vestigial bones taken root horizontally in my bottom jaw. I tried so hard to numb the pain with ibuprofen, tylenol, weed, incredibly irresponsible online shopping, and the knowledge that humanity has caused irreversible climate damage and will likely soon be consumed by fire. But there is something about oral pain that cuts viscerally into your existence. Even if you repeat the mantra “I don’t have dental insurance” ad nauseum and try to spend your energy doing something productive like ignoring collections blowing up your phone, the pulsating, almost rhythmic sensations of these teeth trying to force their way in really takes over your life.

               I asked my mother what people in Vietnam with this sort of toothache did – it’s not like people have dental insurance there either. She said they live with the pain, going about their days to make a living, sometimes taking a break to moan in agony. They live like this until the pain stops or they have it yanked out by some local who does that sort of thing. So, I tried to dull my pain by wallowing in the guilt that so many immigrant children feel, which is a guilt heavily reinforced by refugee parents, that if they hadn’t come over and worked so hard, that you’d probably be begging on the streets for scraps, pooping out parasites, and having to feed ten children with two cups of rice. I’d like to think my guilt has an even greater depth, as my family are not only immigrants, but also Catholic, and I studied art at university (which is probably why I don’t have dental insurance in the first place, but I digress).

               It is such a marvel that every day our cells are dying and recycling, like we are phoenixes in a sense. Evolution occurs every second. I read the other day that eventually we may lose our pinky toes to the processes of evolution, and that more people are being born without wisdom teeth at all. I guess I am half evolved, as I never had my top pair of wisdom teeth in the first place, but it seems the bottom two decided to be extra difficult to make up for it. “Horizontally impacted” is what the dentist said, which means they are trapped under the bone, sideways, and may grow into my back molars and absolutely wreck them. As much as creative types can romanticize pain and suffering to a certain degree, oral pain really isn’t as sexy as getting shot by an ex-lover or subsisting off a diet of nicotine and craft coffee (or gas station coffee, depending on what type of creative you are). An ear-splitting toothache is a level of horrendous that sits on the borderline of existential pain. Though I do wonder what kind of yearning we would have for times of yore, if we lived in a world with no pinky toes. So perhaps this twenty-first century experience of insurance-less toothache is but a small morsel of humanity’s pain before we simply do not have any more wisdom teeth, and will probably romanticize them much like we do dusty Victorian orphans’ faces or wild west saloon wenches.

               I did end up getting those teeth pulled by a very kind oral surgeon whose practice consists mainly of people who pay him in cash installments. I knew he was a good one the moment I went to pick up his prescriptions for the surgery and there were no opioids. This was a man that cared about people. His office was in a building with a strip-mall feel to it, which if you know what kind of feel I’m talking about, you probably just grimaced a little bit. His office played top ‘70s hits and I drifted off into twilight anesthesia bliss to the dulcet crooning of Norman Connors’ 1976 hit, You are My Starship. I remember coming into consciousness at the taste of iodine all over my tongue, and cheeks full of gauze. I look up at the doctor and his nurse and ask, muffled and drunkenly, holding out my hands like I’m receiving communion, “Can I keep the teeth?”