An interesting Valentine's Day

About eight months ago I went to the dentist for a check-up and cleaning, and the dentist found a cavity in the side of my second molar on the left. I am notorious for putting off dentist visits. Not so much because I’m scared of them but because I am not ever thrilled at the bill that results. The receptionist always says in such a soft, soothing voice: “Sweetie, It’ll be $450 today.” So, I scheduled appointment the next week to have it filled. When the dentist got to drilling, he found that the tooth was more than he could fix. He said the cavity was too deep and that I’d have to have a root canal; he puts a temporary filling in it. The words “root canal” always strike me with a little fear and apprehension. So he says that he know a good dentist in Albany (Georgia). I’m like whatever. Dr. Jones’ same mellifluous receptionist made me an appoint for two weeks later. Well, you know, things get crazy, things happen, one gets busy, the tooth’s not really hurting much at all, the dog needs to go to the vet, the house needs a’cleaning, the homework need a’doing, etc. The week of the appointment came, but I had a little too much going on to break away. I think I had to finish some Thoreau and translate a bunch of Latin or some lame-ass excuse like that. I cancelled the Albany appointment two days ahead of time. I told them I couldn’t make it and would just have to reschedule. They were fine with that and added that I shouldn’t wait too long.

Fall to winter turned;
Winter turned to spring.*
Why have I never learned,
To listen to one single thing?

*(February is pretty much the beginning of spring here.)

Then, three weeks ago, this second molar on the left with the temporary filling started hurting like hell right out of nowhere. I must have bitten down on something or maybe a cold drink hit it. Who the hell knew? All I knew was that I had this excruciating, throbbing, hot pain one the whole left side of my face. It was rough. The tooth had never hurt until now, but I guess it had just reached the point of no return. Little second left molar was screaming in my ear. I can stand a lot, but this was too much. At times, the pain seem’d to abate or lessen. I tried Tylenol. It helped a little, but the throbbing throbbed on. I called to reschedule the appointment with the root canal people. “We can’t work you in until late next week.” I was thinking, “Yeah, thanks, bitch.” Of course I didn’t dare say that though. I was nice and wrote down the time and day. The pain radiated on down to the neck. One night I was almost to the end of the rope. This one puny tooth had me still awake one night about two A.M. The later it got, the more it hurt. Eureka! My dad has some pain killers stashed somewhere, I thought. I found it in the pantry; Oxycodon, that’s a real good narcotic prescription drug! So I popped one of them and was out in about twenty minutes. No pain, no nothing. Luckily, this was on a Friday, so I didn’t have to get up the next morning. Good thing, for I didn’t even roll over until about ten. I was out.


A nice opiate sewed it up right,
The ravel’d and torn sleeve of care.
The poppy defeats tooth’s might;
I’d not ever before known such despair!

My appointment was at 9:00 this morning. So that means I had to leave by 7:30; so that means I had to get up at 6:00 because I had to e-mail some stuff to someone that I’d promised on yesterday. And drink coffee a while, etc. Alright, I get to the Albany “endoscopic surgeon” just on time. Of course they have to do X-rays and such. Fill out some forms. Some questions. The doctor went to Loyola. I don’t know why that’s important, but her degree had the motto “Maiestas Maiora Dei” on it. That’s pretty. I wanted a root canal after I met this doctor. She was so kind and so gentle that I was completely relaxed. Her assistant was rubbing my shoulder during the local anesthetic, the needle in the gums. I had never had this kind of dental treatment. It was like a spa or something. The only downer was that I got my hair caught somehow when she was reclining me back in the chair. So they have this cool system where the X-rays come up on a computer screen and can be viewed. I got to see all that right along with the doctor. So she’s plotting out the length of the tooth and all this. She takes a look and mentions that she need to prod around and see what going on because the now-eight-month-old temporary filling looks funny. She looks all down in there for a few minutes and decides that the tooth can’t be saved. The temporary filling fell out! I think I knew that somehow this might happen beforehand. It was “rotten to the core,” literally. She said I needed to try to get in at my regular dentist today if possible since this tooth could easily become infected. She put in a temporary filling…where have we heard that before. The only thing is is that my dentist is in another town forty miles away. I asked if there was another dentist close by who might could get me in today. So they call a colleague down the street.

A prescient mind I have not,
A good imagination perhaps,
At least to know a tooth might rot;
But how my logic did lapse.

Dr. Smith down the street, a “maxillary and dental surgeon” can take me. I drive down there, but by this time the local anesthetic has had the effect of making the entire left side of my face numb as well as somehow affecting my vocal cords. So I really can’t talk clear. I kept putting “nt” sounds in words. Odd. Another few forms to sign and fill out. Another X-ray. I think I may be glowing. This doctor has this X-ray machine that looks like something out of Star Wars that one stands in while a plate rotates around your head all the while making a cool, spacey sound and takes a panoramic view of all the teeth. Then I wait a while longer. The doctor comes in and asks a few questions. He leaves. I’m reading plaques on the walls here too. Looks like he was a Navy dentist at some point. His plaque says “Facilitas Ad Marem.” I’m not too sure about this, “Easiness at sea,” “Good-naturedness to sea?” Whatever. He brings in the anesthetist and says that they will need to put me to sleep since my teeth have really long roots. Who knew? Ok, so I’m here, the tooth has to go, and I can’t put it off. BUT . . . but I have to pay FIRST! I guess they’ve had some experience with bad accounts. Pull out the plastic. They do an IV drip for the anesthesia. I’m out cold in no time. I wake up; however later it was, I don’t know. The good thing was that my pants weren’t pulled down and the nurses weren’t laughing when I woke up. The tooth came out in four pieces. My mouth’s full of gauze. I fell back asleep. The dental intern with a red beard came in and asked me if I was OK. I was just like let me sit here another minute. They told me not to drive anywhere just yet, and I agreed that this was a good idea.

Damn you puny tooth!
Now I’m $900 in the hole;
O tell to me sooth,
How might I this day thole?

I had an idea. I’ll call my best friend. I can get him to take me over to his house where I can hang out a while. I get him on the phone. He’s on his way to quote some jobs. I’m like please come get me. He’s like Ok but you’ll just have to ride around with me. Fine. He wants to go to Wendy’s. For Chrissakes! I’m starving so I ordered a hamburger although I had no idea how I’d eat it. As we were riding from one place to the next, I began to come around and ate the hamburger over the course of an hour. Well, while we were riding around, this guy who’s building a new racetrack in town calls and asks my friend if he wants to bring his car out to the track and try it out. HA! My friend races super late models, the highest class of dirt track cars. But two weeks ago, he got the crap knocked out of him when racing down in Brunswick. The front end of the car got hit by some kid who came from the bottom of the track to the top and hit the left front. It bent the frame, and it’s not yet been fixed. So he looks at me. I too have a car. I built it four years ago. But I ran out of money. Mine’s much less sophisticated, more of a stock car. A ’78 Camaro with a full cage and x-braced chassis and Chrysler leaf springs and Chevy engine bored out to 0.60 over and all that fun stuff. The car’s ready to go pretty much and has been. Last year, I let my friend race it a time or two at the local asphalt track. Our deal was that he get me a rear-end gear. All good. But, I’ve never driven it. So, as much as I wanted to just go lay down somewhere, I agreed that we’d take my car out to the track and let him drive it. When you let someone else drive your racecar, it’s kind of letting some other dude sleep with your own girlfriend or wife. That sounds strange, but when you work on one of the damn things so long, it’s like your baby. So we get out there and he goes out. It’s just a ¼ mile track, so you’re not on the gas long. Fun stuff. The only thing is that the car’s rear brakes have never worked well. All front brakes. All front brakes causes a hellacious push on corner entry. Then you get back in the gas on exit and it gets loose. I just watched all this go on. It was fun to see the old car actually being driven. It wasn’t like we were there to set a track record, so he just drove it the best he could.

My jaw began to throb again,
Another dude was in my car!
Around the little track he did spin,
I hoped the paint he would not mar.

For some reason, I began to feel better. The guy building the track wanted to drive too. I thought he’d not wreck since he’s actually got some driving experience. He goes out, makes a few laps, and drives pretty smooth. While I’m watching this, I start to think that I ought to just get in my own car and try it out. It is, after all, my car. The anesthesia’s worn off. We right here. This is a good opportunity. He pulls in. I get in. I had to borrow a too-small helmet and damn if it didn’t pull my hair when I was putting it on. I finally got it so there wasn’t tension on my strands. One hitch. My friend put a clutchless transmission in the car when he raced it. Here’s the modus operandi of that devil – Crank the car. Put it in gear. To get it going in first, push the clutch in at the same time as you give it gas. Stay in first till you gain speed, then with the clutch still pushed in, shift to second, release clutch. Sounds easy. But it’s so backwards. I got it after two stall-outs. Wow! I had a good time. I haven’t driven a racecar in five years and I’m inept at it anyway, but just playing around with it was a blast. I didn’t want to come in. I just kept making laps and trying different lines. I spun it around on the front straightaway once. That’s always fun. So I got my fill of it. How ridiculous to have built a racecar and not to have even driven it one time until today. Racing’s like doing crack, only more dangerous and more expensive.


What’s the point of all this? Here are some potential morals:

Don’t sleep with another guy’s wife but once and only if he gives his permission.

Root canals from hot dentists could be fun.

Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

An ounce of prevention might not prevent the need for a pound of cure except in the case of rotten teeth.

The bird builds her nest on the highest roof beams, but the spider lives there too.

A loose racecar’s a fast racecar, unless it’s not.

Red bearded, red headed.

The more the risk, the more the gain.

"Cybele comes to Rome"

In the tradition of Dryden’s Vergil, Longfellow’s Dante, and Thoreau’s Pindar, I have adapted into couplets and retold my rather free translation from an excerpt out of Ovid’s Fasti (4.183-281) along with a verse epilogue based on Livy’s prose account (29.10-11, 14) of the same legend.

Erato, my muse, advise me I pray, whence Cybele came,
Or has great Rome always been her home, the same?
“Our mother always loved Dindymus, Cybele, those lofty mounts,
Her Ilian kingdoms, and high Ida’s cool founts.
When Aeneas carried Troy’s sacred gods to the Italian land,
The Lares in his barks, Cybele watched from the strand.
She felt her divine powers not yet called to Latium in turn;
In Phrygia, her accustomed home, stood she firm.

Now mighty, favored Rome has seen five ages of prosperity;
Her legions subdue all the world, now shaking in temerity.
A hallowed old priest hears the fateful Euboean song,
A fated message, laconic, terse, not long.
‘Romans, seek your mother out, I order you, she is absent from your land;
When she comes, receive her – with only a chaste hand.’
The city fathers wonder at the obscure Delphic lot –
‘Which mother, and where is she to be sought?’

Paean Apollo is consulted: ‘Summon the mother of the gods;
Find her on the Idan mountain, its peak in the clouds.’
Roman princes are sent. Phrygia’s held by Attalus the first,
But he denies the Ausonians the right of their birth.
The earth then shook, trembled, with a sounding, violent rumbling;
Thus spake the goddess from her shrines crumbling:
‘I myself wished to be sought. Let there be absolutely no delay.
Rome is a fine place. Forthwith, take me away.’

Attalus quakes in terror and says, ‘Still you, great one, are ours;
It’s from us Dardans that Rome derives her powers.’
Immediately to cut the Ilian pines for wood, countless axes began,
Just as had done Aeneas, as from Troy he ran.
A thousand hands come together to build the ship, a pious task,
Finished in burnt colors, the goddess in her safe cask.
Most guarded, she sails through the waters of Poseidon her son,
First along the great straight of a sister, the Phrixean.

Then by broad Rhoetum, she skirts wide shores, the Sigean home,
Next Tenedos, and the ancient works of Eëtion.
The hardy sailors greet the Cyclades; waves by Lesbos roll,
The fishy waters only broken on the Carystian shoal.
And she crossed the swelling waters where Icarus lost his wings;
His fateful resting place, that sea with his name still rings.
She passes Crete to the left, rocky Peloponnesus on the right,
And seeks out Cythera, home of Venus, love’s might.

Now the seas gird round three-cornered Sicily, a bounteous land,
Where three giants forging white iron eternally stand.
Then by African seas she coasts; Sardinian fiefdoms she spies
But holds for those dear Ausonian lands, her prize.
She reached Ostia, our port where the great Father Tiber divides,
Where ever to greater depths by Latin fields he glides.
Knights, senators mixed with plebs, to the shore comes a throng,
To greet their mother at the Tuscan river’s mouth so long.

Mothers, daughters, and daughters-in-law to the shore proceed,
Along with those Vestals who keep the virgin’s creed.
Men heave and ho with tough ropes stretched ever so taut,
But in the shallow waters the foreign ship is caught.
The Latin land was in a drought; burnt now was the Faliscan grass;
The ship’s weighty keel was trapped in a muddy morass.
Each pious Roman pulled and worked more than his share,
But strong hands loosed not Cybele from her watery lair.

She sat as a steadfast island situated firm in mid-ocean;
The astonished men panic and tremble at the omen.
Claudia Quinta had to Clausus traced back her well-born clan,
Only nobility marked her brow, her face’s entire span.
A chaste Vestal lady through and through, yet not always believed;
Vicious rumor stalked her, of a false crime not reprieved.
With ornate hair and well-dressed she always went about;
This told against her, besides her quick tongue to an old lout.

Her clean conscience laughed at the mendacious rumor,
But we are a crowd who believes in fault sooner.
She then proceeds from the host of venerable mothers so chaste,
Drinking the pure river water, only a taste.
Three times she wets her hair, raises her hands to the sky.
(Anyone would think her mind had gone awry!)
Into the face of the great goddess Cybele she does stare,
On a knee, uttering words, while tossing her hair.

‘Kind, prolific mother of the gods, of your supplicant dear,
Under a condition, accept this simple prayer.
They all deny my chastity. If you do me condemn, I can hold no grudge,
I will punishment deserve, from the goddess as a judge.
Yet, if I am as faultless, blameless as I make the claim to be,
It then must be you, goddess, who will follow me.’
Thus spake she. With little effort on the hempen rope she pulls,
Same task, not doable before, with even the strength of bulls.

The goddess is wrested from the mud; the boat’s movement, Claudia’s praise.
Sounds of joy waft up amongst heaven’s fire-bright rays.
The tired band finally reached the damp Father Tiber’s Hall,
Sitting on a promontory to the left, surveying all.
Night had come; they bind up the rope to an oaken stump,
Giving themselves to sweet sleep, bellies plump.
Light had come; they loosed the rope, undoing their knot,
But before proceeding, burned some frankincense, just a jot.

Here is the place, where into which the slippery Almo flows;
Almo loses her name to the Tiber; he everyone knows.
Here the ancient, aged, sacred priest in his purple toga robed
Washed the goddess in the Almon waters as they flowed.
As he washes her, the priestesses howl out; a furious flute is played;
And soft hands strike drums, across them leather splayed.
Claudia leads the parade, beaming. Hardly believed in her chasteness,
Now with Rome’s first goddess as her witness.
Cybele is faithfully carried to her new home by way of the Porta Capena,
By yoked heifers sprinkled with flowers, to her new arena.”

Epilogue:

As the mysterious Sibylline Books had foretold, in long ages past:
“If ever a foreign enemy descends into Italy, holding her fast,
Bring Magna Mater into Rome, from her Phrygian home
By way of Neptune’s frothing sea foam.”
Cybele saved great Rome from her hated Carthaginian foe,
Always to her a great debt shall we owe.
With the Megalesian games we honor our great protectress still,
Lest ever she decide to depart down the Palatine Hill.
Great Rome, ruler of the world, land of lands, land of light,
Always maintain piety to our mother’s delight!