Musings from the Dentist Chair

I had a post all lined out for you lot. It was nearly done – all about creepy underground places and why they appeal to us. In fact I was thinking of that post and how those places are a recurring motif in my stories as I sat in the dentist chair this morning. Distraction, much? That’s when it hit me. There must be a bazillion BDSM stories that use the dentist chair for fun and games. The one and only real BDSM dungeon I’ve ever been in had one – black, leather, sinister-looking. Oh, and let’s not forget all the great torture scenes that involve dentist chairs and tools. I shiver at the though. In fact I shivered at the thought while I sat in the dentist chair this morning with the threatening whirr of the drill going at it against my numbed molar, me white-knuckling the chair arms, every muscle tight enough I could have been one Medusa’s statues.

 

The creepy underground post was a great distraction. I relaxed a bit as I began writing it in my head. It took my mind off the general unpleasantness of my circumstances. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a weeny when it comes to pain and, even though there was relatively little in the minor procedure I had done this morning, I still wouldn’t call it pleasant — certainly not meditative. Because I was thinking about all the times I’ve used abandoned underground places in my novels, about more yet to come as Magda Gardener’s world unfolds in my head, I closed my eyes. I might have even relaxed my suicide grip on the chair just a teeny bit. That’s when I noticed that my Muse, with her big stick, was standing right next to the dental assistant who wielded a mean suction tube and wore a storm-trooper face shield lest one of my teeth exploded or I had a general Aliens moment.

 

It’s a strange place to be inspired, when someone has your mouth pried open and sharp electric instruments whirring around in tender places. But lets face it, with the suction tube, the little water squirter-thingy and a drill all stuck in my mouth at once, I was happy for whatever distraction I could get. As the dentist excavated, I thought frantically about creepy underground places and their psychological associations. By the time she finally got around to scaling and cleaning my teeth within an inch of their lives, I thought about all the great horror films set in underground places, all the fantastic thrillers. Her face was up close and personal to my own version of a dark cave complete with stalactites and stalagmites. Okay, poor analogy, but you get the picture. And all of a sudden I was totally intrigued with what has just happened in my head, in my imagination, while I’d been Dr. Veena’s captive audience.

 

As the litmus paper went into my mouth and I bit and tapped, as the dentist ground all the uneven bits away, I thought about dental scenes in films, in books, in cartoons – everything from outrageous comedy to nail-biting thrillers and all
stops in between. Like the creepy underground, the dental chair also has psychological connections to the scary parts of us – to the scared witless parts of us, to exposure and vulnerability and torture and sex. That delicious sense of vulnerability, that fear of pain, that fear of what we can’t see – even if the dentist can — is always going to titillate and make our hearts race a bit.

The whole procedure took less than thirty minutes, and then I was rinsing and carefully probing my numb mouth while being pronounced of sound dental health once again. My mouth is still a bit numb as I write this post, but I’m still
smiling, albeit a bit lopsidedly, at the strange and wondrous places from whence inspiration comes.

 

Oh, and the creepy underground post? You’ll get that on Friday, bigger and better and much improved thanks to a little inspiration in the dentist’s chair.