Salient

What I Did Last Summer - Brannavan goes to the Dentist

By Brannavan Gnanalingam | 27 Feb, 2006

‘Twas a dark and stormy day, full of passion and hunger. Mainly hunger, because Brannavan forgot to eat lunch before undergoing the torment of the drill. He was worried the sexy dentist R*** would not take him into his arms if little bits of lunch were left clinging to his teeth. Brannavan walked in with trepidation, waving a cheeky grin at the secretaries. They smiled back weakly, sensing his smile was a front for the dangers that lay ahead. Either that or they thought he was hitting on them. He sat there waiting, the time being teased out as a form of foreplay, the tension rising. Brannavan was reading a crime thriller, turning the page with a perfunctory swing. He didn’t care about Jack Vincennes’ crisis of conscience at that moment. He just needed something to take his mind off the impending pain, and he doesn’t smoke.

R*** called him in, his smile hiding his true motives. R*** couldn’t wait to stick his big tool into Brannavan’s mouth. Tight, wet and smooth. He laid him on the seat. With a gentle caress, he fondled around in his mouth. Brannavan, heart pounding, was being lulled by a documentary showing penguins being hunted by leopard seals. Suppressing a desire to yell out, “watch out, penguins!” Brannavan feared R*** would think him less of a man. He also couldn’t talk because he had an instrument - shiny and throbbing - playing around in his mouth. He could die of hunger - he craved it, full, rich, creamy substances. Brannavan planned to go to the bakery afterwards.

But R*** finished quickly. He suckled the saliva out of Brannavan’s mouth, leading it out like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. His Faustian dance confirmed by the money Brannavan was forced to pay. He asked for his soul, his je ne sais quoi, his… EFTPOS card. R*** tossed him out, without so much as a thank you. No compliments on his performance. Nothing. Instead Brannavan was cast out, as if he was John Merrick. With his mouth just as swollen, he could see the taunts of all who saw. “Would you like to come back on Saturday for the x-ray or would you prefer after Christmas?” the secretary asked. She was laughing at him with her eyes, knowing Brannavan’s inability to move his lips, let alone mutter the word Saturday that she was panting to hear. He pointed, not at her, nor at himself, but at the calendar, blushing underneath his dark and mysterious exterior. “Saturday it is”.

Brannavan walked out into the harsh world, as if he was punished like Adam and Eve for eating too much fruit and forgetting to floss afterwards. He walked past the man whom he had insulted by assuming he wrote for Salient in the TV column and saying how he was a good writer, and then being told that he was instead, the queer columnist. The queer man said “hi”. Brannavan, unable to talk, was unable to reply. The queer man walked away, cursing eternally the self-important nature of Brannavan. Tears started welling in Brannavan’s eyes. He loved the world, but it seemed that no one could accept a man like him - a man with a puffy jaw, unable to face the taunts of this cruel world. O to die, to sleep.