Dependence Day

“You don’t have to fill that if you find you don’t need it, ” he says to me as I suppress the urge to giggle with glee.  I have just been given a perscription for 15 oxycontin and I wonder if this man knows something I don’t, or if he is just the best dentist ever.  Fifteen oxycotin for a root canal?  Seems a bit like overkill, doesn’t it?  And why don’t they give these out before the procedure.  That seems like the more approprate time to do it.  I should back up.

It is 11 am and I am debating perhaps permanently putting off a procedure to alleviate the pain on the right side of my jaw that has been there for 18 months.  It is really now or never, as my health insurance runs out in seven days.  I got fired from my job again (that’s 2 for 2 since I graduated college, if you’re scoring at home) and I doubt employment that offers health insurance is in my near future.  My appointment is at 2, so I have three hours to decide.  Fuck it, I’m going.  But as the hour approaches I find that my nerves are getting the best of me.  So I do what I normally do when I don’t want to deal with reality.  I just think of something else.  Usually something that doesn’t exist.  My feet know the way.  My brian doesn’t have to be along for the ride.

I sit in the dentist chair and the assistant reclines it so that I am now flat on my back.  Then she leaves.  I sit there for about 10 minutes wondering if I should just lay here like a prat or if I can get up and wander around for a bit until they are ready for me.  I should have brought a book.  When the dentist enters I learn that this will be the first root canal his assitant has seen.  Terrific.  Did she go to dental school?  What do they teach there if not root canals?  Fortunately this dentist is a pro ( I guess technically they all are) and the only thing this assitant needs to do is make sure not to drop the burn instrument on my face.  Oh, and this procedure apparently involves a burn instrument.  I am not calm right now.

I make the dentist give me a double shot of novocaine.  I don’t want to feel this at all.  Not even a pinch.  I am a baby.  I don’t care.  I going to my happy place with my spirit animal.  That shit better work.

I’d love to tell you a story about how painful this fucking thing was and how tough I am for enduring it, but it would not be true.  It actually wasn’t that bad.  But in a related story, I also cannot feel my face right now.  And this is where that perscription comes in.  I make my way to the nearest Duane Reade, resisting the urge not to jump in the air and click my heels along the way.  Fifteen oxycontin.  I don’t want to know what happens when I can feel my face again, but in a way I kinda can’t wait.

Tomorrow we celebrate the birth of our nation, and I choose to celebrate by leaving planet earth for 24 hours.  After about two hours, I regain feeling in my lower jaw and immediately am thankful for the 15 magic pills in a bottle next to me.  I take the first one and then it is nap time, but for some reason I can not bring myself to fall asleep.  I sort of fight it for the next few hours and half watch tv.  This is odd.  After a while I decide I need something stronger.

I get in to my bed and put in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a movie I have never watched sober and perhaps not surprisingly, have never finished.  I have read the book however, and I am acutely aware that perhaps everything I have ever written and everything I will ever write is a direct rip off of Hunter S. Thompson.  In fact I think that much of what you see in current pop culture is the evolution of this man’s ideas.  Gonzo journalism has now evolved into reality television, blogs, youtube, all of that.  The idea that you are the story, that I am the story, has changed the way we think and interact.  The idea that I could write anything outside of my own head is foreign to me in the sense that I am pretty sure I could not do it.  I don’t know how Stephen King or Tom Clancy write.  I could never do that.  They have a talent.  For right now, I have a bottle of gin.

I never really liked gin until right now.  I haven’t had it in years.  This bottle was given to me.  Kind of.  But right now, the taste gives me an idea.  I bet I could cut this with Absinthe.  And some lemon and seltzer.  Excellent.  The label on my bottle of oxycontin tells me that is may cause drowsiness and that alcohol will exacerbate this feeling.  It is almost midnight.  Almost independence day.  Sounds like a plan.

It occurs to me that I have not eaten anything all day and that this might be a bad thing at this point.  I am not going to eat anything now, because my mouth is not ready for it, but I will make some jello for tomorrow.  I boil some water and take a seat.  As I wait, I realize that I can no longer see straight.  That’s kinda fun.  Before I know it, the water is boiling and it is time to mix this all up.  By the time I get the jello in the fridge I am so nauseous that I need to lay down on the couch.  After a few minutes it goes away, so I decide to make my way back to bed.  Wow.  Apparently horizontal good, vertical bad.  I barely make it into bed.  I’m starting to wonder if this was a bad idea, but before I can give my choices a thorough evaluation I fall asleep.

My dreams are predictable in the sense that they are all over the place and extremely vivid.  I enjoy dreaming like this.  I like it better when there is a storyline, but on this night none emerges.  All I can remember is that a seahawk was involved.  Whatever the fuck that is.  It is was bold and sleek and it was my job to tell the world about it.  So that’s what I’m doing.  Not sure what else to say.  I wonder if my subconscious is telling me that it is okay to draft Shaun Alexander if he is available in fantasy football this year.  That’s the only thing I can think of.

I awake about 14 hours later.  It is July fourth.  There will be no fireworks for me today.  I emerge from my dungeon of a room into my cave of an apartment and I discover that the sun will not be shining for me today.  It’s just as well.  I’ve got twelve pills left.  I’m going back to bed.