get your teeth into it

The day I went to have my braces installed I walked through the streets of Buenos Aires past billboards advertising the English version of “Betty La Fea”, the tv series. The ugly duckling frumpy secretary who will be transformed though the series to triumph, and who in the Colombian version was the country’s most gorgeous actress rendered unrecognisable.  This Betty grinned with train track braces that loomed alarmingly out of her mouth and out of the advert, a cruel parody of the originally elegant parody of homeliness.

The byline:  Esta más fea en inglés  (She’s even uglier in English).

I hoped to prove that billboard wrong, to perhaps go without talking for one year and emerge a swan.

Why would one, at the age of 35, elect to have braces for a year? Not those sleek invisalign, but big thick arch wire and brackets (albeit transparent, also with metal showing). The decision was made easier by the numbers of locals sporting orthodontics. People in their 20s and 30s and beyond; English students of mine, throughout Latin American countries. A friend once joked that you could tell if someone was in their 30s and legally employed in Chile because they’d have braces. In the last decade it has become a sign of professionalism, a status symbol.

I was managing a boutique hotel run by a British retiree, a haven for his similarly retired ex-stockbroker, or antique dealer friends who cannot return to their countries of origin because of monetary, legal or romantic impediments. Many guests’ unfortunate European dentures gave me the courage to ignore their jokes.
- Reminds me of my first kiss.
- Ah, she had braces did she?
- No, I did.

What I’ve learned, through researching my own situation and seeing examples such as our friendly joker above, is that our teeth drift forward as we age. Regardless of corrective devices in earlier years the forward movement of teeth still occurs. Mine always crowded to the point of stripping any floss. Eventually I found that as I spoke, my tongue hit a tooth that was edging ever inward, creating an awkward lisp. The entire treatment, fortnightly visits, cleaning, and retainer after the event to maintain discipline, was to cost the equivalent of 1000 American dollars. Adding up to 2 month’s salary at the time I still saw the value. I was to have something the millionaires surrounding me did not! Reasonable teeth!

Keeping your own teeth in your head in a straight or otherwise configuration seems a relatively modern notion. My grandmother had all her teeth pulled as a young woman as a remedy for recurring headaches. In fact, it isn’t at all a recent phenomenon, more that it has become more accessible through the use of adhesives and plastic brackets, instead of wrapping teeth individually in stainless steel or gold.

Guests at the hotel started inquiring about dental work and there was a fluoride frenzy. Implants, near impossible to procure on the British National Health scheme, were the most popular, followed by crowns. My sister had her teeth cleaned at the fraction of the cost an Australian dentist would have asked, and hasn’t smoked since. I tried to convince other friends to visit and have their annual checkups, as crowns and caries and holiday would cost less altogether than the treatment alone elsewhere. I became a living advertisement, a bridge, interpreting between dentist and non Spanish speaking patients, effecting bank transfers and appointments.

When you’re inside the treatment it is interminable, the child in January waiting for Christmas. Only at the end of what transpires to be 10 months and not 12 do I pluck up the courage to send “before” and “after” photos to my parents. The overwhelming majority of blogs on the subject wax lyrical about how BIG your teeth feel when braces are removed. This is true! They sprout like saplings, a new picket fence.

Joan Collins said “The problem with beauty is it’s like being born rich and getting poorer”.
Once one improves one thing, as is so alarmingly possible nowadays, is it the start down the slippery slope towards obsessive beauty procedures? I don’t think so. I don’t think that orthodontics ranks with cosmetic procedures much as many insurance schemes want to call it that to wriggle out of coverage.  Months of mouth ulcers, gingerly brushing away the fear of gingivitis, choosing food for the chew factor before taste, all indicate a health concern with ‘beauty’ as a side effect. I can speak now without worrying about spittle or tangling on the stray tooth. Ease of cleaning is spectacular. Best of all, I still look like me, and other people don’t notice the change.
Maybe my Betty wasn’t so fea after all.

johnnie walker

sometimes it’s hard to smile

the holiday is over

.

acrid smell of human urine and rubbish

a hot slap to morning sensibility

the pay rise is a ruse

office awaits, a yawn of malcontents competing in bad posture

.

then they pass

the pack of dogs routinely walked

their testes bounce

a syncopation

of client satisfaction

petal

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Sunday 13th December

Exercise 1 hour “Yo sé todo – I know everything”

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Kicking aside his boxer shorts as he turned to put his left arm into the shirt sleeve he saw the sun catch on the silver on the cat’s collar, trembling as she stared out of the window at a bird exploring the hot asphalt. Early morning and already a stifling heat, his shirt sticking between shoulder blades where moisture started to collect.

He wouldn’t be the first to arrive at the building. The building that sat at the water’s edge, gleaming in the sunlight a cat collar disk that trapped them inside like so many pigeons. The first would be the Italian manager who arrived at 6.30am, driving his car the 3 blocks from where he lived in a serviced apartment also on the water’s edge, opened the underground carpark with the security key that only 4 people had access to, and went upstairs with nothing in his pockets but a worn Montblanc. He wouldn’t be the first to arrive but he would be one of the last to leave, having seen all come and go and knowing all their secrets.

.

It would be a long journey to the building, not 3 blocks but a train and then 2 buses and final sprint. He knew he’d stand on the train so as not to crush his perfectly ironed clothes. Looking at the cat again he carefully unbuttoned his shirt and hung it over the long plastic drycleaning bag hoping there was no dust accumulated by the static. Once, a long time ago, he had noticed halfway through his working day a fleck of grey, a fish scale that when he tried to flick it off dug in, permeating the shirt with a rotting smell and seeming to spread in indelible greyness across his professionalism like Tiger Woods’ shame.

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If he knew all the secrets of the people in the building the cat knew his. She observed from the window how he swore when the newspaper slipped from his lap whilst on the toilet, the ungainly reach to reorganise sections and pages reminding him what he was really there for. She saw shirts come on and off 2 or 3 times before he left the apartment in the morning, the smell of drycleaning chemicals so alike that of Whiskers she licked the bottom of the bags that hung on the wardrobe door. Sleeping once on a discarded shirt he’d forgotten to hang, she left a nest of dark hairs to torment him upon his return. This morning he organised her food bowls, slipped into the shirt again and out the door, leather shoes reflecting brief winks and her pigeon tv show continued.

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He hoped he might catch someone today. Those days when he caught someone were the best. There was a reduction on normal days, he had them all in his pocket, the nervous accountants on the 9th, the early empty handed Italian on the 5th, all the unfulfilled secretaries and posturing sales. Not that he thought he owned the place, this was no exaggerated power. Sometimes, there was a surprise, like the English teacher that arrived in a rush at 10 to 6 hoping to be early for some executive’s evening class. He’d have to stop the peak hour flow, interrupt his whole system and make space for her like she was some kind of celebrity. That wasn’t a problem anymore now that Carlos had told him how to do it – pass the bag over as if the teacher were leaving with the rest of them. See through to her jogging shoes and two sweaters, sunblock and pot of yoghurt, sanitary products, some makeup although not as much as the secretaries and nothing compared to visiting Mexican women – if you didn’t stop the flow you’d have a better chance of having the day expand from this system, put her through backwards and you’d catch a sales – invariably sales -

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there was a gift his aunt from Chile used to bring from a childrens’ specialty toy store that was really for adults – a shell closed that was to be dropped in water and a coloured paper flower would unfurl in slow motion filling the glass

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a little black box the laptop ready to slide through unnoticed

Hey Pancho, what did you think of the football results?

and he’d make a hand signal to Carlos who understood and flicked the switch corresponding to this guy’s floor, in silent fast motion the sweep across the 7th would wind back to half an hour ago when they were all packing their desks and the black box, so unobtrusive Pancho knew to look for it, barcode lifted with a penknife that got through a few weeks ago under the pretence of removing a computer case to repair something for a colleague, could be seen being zipped into the briefcase. No bells nor alarms nor panicked shouting, just a smooth frond uncurling and he’d pass the English teacher’s bag to her, wondering at the weight of it and whether she had a sore back, and say

I don’t know much about football, but I know everything about you. Carlos will take you out the back where you can explain to us why you have Telecom property in your briefcase.

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Stunned, there would be no way to leave the building and Carlos silently smiling at his side whilst his colleagues pushed past through the turnstiles, dinners to be made and long journeys endured.

The security man glanced down the perfect crease of his shirtsleeve to admire the legs of one of the girls from 12th, they seemed busier showing each other up than anything, bags always a neat display of hair comb and mobile phone as if to tease him, and felt with satisfaction the stretching of the first frond unfurled from the little shell flower in the glass.

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acorn

There’s something about cigarettes
you have to
be slim hipped and suck
like you’re
really gonna keep a secret
Osvaldo my tango teacher
emaciated coathangerman
who will die his lungs
fluttering a sparrow banging around
in his chest which is really a lion’s when he dances

or Oliver
midnight online gambler
out of a job thanks to US economy
lack of credit card
nowhere to squirrel the winnings
all virtual
what’s real any more is tobacco
his lips creep inwards and he’s 50 years younger than Osvaldo
and just alike

Victoria Hotel

April 1995 (editing)

Lunch with Nana and Pop at the Victoria Hotel I ordered martini and remembered vividly Nana telling me – before I was allowed to drink – a lesson in etiquette –  that vermouth and tonic was her favourite. A long drink to sip over hours.

I ordered martini and waited for the frowns but Nana said what a nice name I think I’ll have one too. She couldn’t remember the vermouth and tonic, which she’d spent years elegantly sipping, risking neither pocket nor virtue. I watched her struggling with the names
What was it Fred, that drink?
I don’t know May, I think I’ll have a beer.
I said Nana could taste my martini but that she’d probably prefer a chardonnay.

Pop worries about her forgetfulness. He thinks she may have had a stroke – sometimes when I phone she slurs and mumbles and can’t process what Pop is saying in the background to repeat it to me.

I like to think that I have just woken her up when that happens, but I know that she’s going to sleep.

Nana’s going to sleep

her eyes half closed like a woman seduced

cataracts sliding over – a cat’s inner eyelids

I watch her face, her glistening pouted lips and her cheeks that bring to mind the perfumed cream oil of ulan so strongly to me even thinking about them, when I acted as Antigone and had to kiss the pimply cheek of a classmate on stage I held firm to Nana’s face in my mind …

“Let me kiss you Nana, your cheeks are so soft they remind me of rosy withered apples” (Anouilh)

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She measures time by how good the food is.

Funny how we measure time. As if nothing has happened until we recount it to someone else. Or write it. Checking that their memory is the same, that we didn’t get it wrong somewhere.

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Nana told me another story, she was visiting us and we were sent from the room for making too much noise. As a three year old I was chosen as spokesperson “I’ve never seen anything like it – you Lee, so boldly coming and standing at the door with your back straight and hands clasped behind you saying “I want to see my Nana”.  Then you marched across the room and sat on my lap. Adrian followed timidly a few minutes later.”

My grandparents were so young then, in their early 60s. We used to hide behind the door and listen to them both snoring. Stifling our giggles and thinking of the arguments that would come later as to which one it really was.

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Nana taught me how to touch.

Caressing my knee for hours whilst watching tv and I wouldn’t want to move for fear she’d stop – that perhaps it was some kind of absentmindedness.

But it wasn’t. I could get up and make her a cup of tea and when I came back her touch would move to my shoulder. Gentle. Insistent.

.

I know she’s forgetting things because she does it to the table now.

muscle

The beach always

strong sun

stinging sand

sharp nutmeg on the promise of

custard tart made by Nana

and waiting for its moment.

her eyes bright on Adrian at the top

of the wave as if she was

still incredulous at the thought of

having grandchildren

whatever we did held her in thrall

whatever she did, to us seemed superhuman

.

She’s got biceps bigger than Popeye

Did you see?!

when she turns to lift the eskie

and showcase the dessert

.

sensuous satisfaction as I ate it

turned her arms again soft and plump

mine

You open yourself to me

the carpet of dreams

ethereal sugar violet

me only, and also the woman in

orange doing tai chi

She doesn’t belong there

orange like the other blossoms

that smell of rotting on the cars

in the street

she doesn’t belong there

my jacarandah

humidity can’t crush you

nor the storms these last days

just that intentional inertia

and deliberate steps leveling

your happy colour

outlook

sometimes no-one calls

I feel like a house gutted

that people walk into and leave quickly

a carcass of a house

something in it that

they don’t like

.

Sometimes

he calls all the time

and clamours

when I don’t respond immediately he

pulls out all the stops

all smiles stopped together

big old demolition ball

afresh

how I used to enjoy a new

packet of cigarettes

open that film just as if

it were a packet of tampons

promise of renewal

and

the Thai exchange student

would glide down the university corridor

suggesting the fire escape

again

- You going for seegret?

oh yes

cramp

apparently the heart is
“a muscle and it pumps blood (like a) big old black steam train”*
I am the sloth
wanting to be perfect before setting
foot in a gym

a gentle embrace is a harsh squeeze

he cups elbow to cross the street

it will plop to the sidewalk (like a) stewed

mash that forearm

or pat a knee in the car
which, spitting juice as from a blister
multiplies teaming bruises
across the soft pear flesh of mine

*Frank Bennett stole from T Perkins
I stole from them both