America's Next Top Model

Hello, everybody. Today is my second full day without Vicodin, and my first full week without my bottom two wisdom teeth. (The surgeon decided, after slicing my upper gums, that the teeth there could and should stay put, leading me to ask, what did he see in there that wasn't on the x-ray that changed his mind? Did my upper teeth have protection from the Insane Popes?)

As my legions of readers know, I was excited to realize my life-long dream of being put under general anesthesia; I’m happy to report that I was not disappointed.

I was led into the operating room – a tiny, square space, entirely colored in the lightest shade of grey and almost exactly what I picture when I contemplate what Hell might look like, though without the constant re-looping of “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” piped in, which I have decided will be the soundtrack to my eternal damnation.

I relaxed back into the chair and the surgeon and his nurse went to work prepping the scene. I stared at the fluorescent lighting, noting that sticker tags were still inside the fixtures, which struck me – I imagined that, if I were to have an office building of my very own, I wouldn’t want ugly manufacturing stickers glued willy-nilly over my establishment. Did these practitioners of dental artistry have no pride? Or were they so focused on peering into dark depths of mucosal tissue and alveolar bones that they never thought to cast their gaze upwards into the blinding brilliance of tubes of excited mercury vapor that adorned their ceiling and lit their paths? I mean, you guys – kind of tacky, okay?

I am not alone.

I wrote the above sentence then leaned to my right, peering into what once was my kitchen and is now something resembling Dresden after the bombing.

And so it goes.

How this guy has managed to cram a huge ladder into a kitchen so small I barely have room for the second Pop Tart included in the packet, is proof that he is no amateur. (This is what I tell myself, hoping for the best.)

Sonically, I am hidden deep inside my iPod, which just made a seamless transition from Marvin Gaye & Diana Ross’ duet album (titled, mysteriously enough, “Diana & Marvin”) to that inescapable Amy Winehouse record. Every once in a while, on average twice a decade, I find myself enjoying the same album as the rest of the country. Such is the case with “Back to Black”. It makes for boring copy though; I mean, do we really need to hear anymore talk about it?

The answer is “no”, and thankfully there’s a workman in my kitchen providing us with stories.

Last week, amidst my well-documented Vicodin haze (I’m feeling much better these days, thank you), I walked home from Amoeba, as I always do (unless Patti Smith is performing), for lunch.

Whereas normally I am greeted by the meows of my “cat”* I instead walked into a scene from “Brazil”.


Ruling out the possibility of a suicide bomber (I realize they go through a lot of training, but I live on the fourth floor of my building) I found, amongst the sea of bric-a-brac, cleaning supplies and dishware - normally so organized in my kitchen - a lone man doing to my sink and walls what I imagine Jeffery Dahmer would do to a dinner guest.

And I’ll say this about myself: I really am polite. Even when faced with an un-announced stranger tearing my home apart, I start with a simple hand-wave and “Hi,” – waiting for the appropriate social cues from the other person to indicate we can proceed to a conversation. Perhaps about the weather, last night’s game, or maybe why he’s mistaken my kitchen for a newly discovered Egyptian tomb.