Shouldn't You Test Drive the Other Model Before You Pay the Open Tab?

You know what it’s like when you go to a dentist for the first time.  The hygienist straps you in, puts tv remote in hand, and before you know it, you’re rooting for the gay boy—who is clearly a stow away—on Redneck Vacation.  This was me about 6 months ago.

I’d cracked a tooth on a popcorn kernel the weekend that Rotel came.  Somehow (beer), I made it through the weekend and into the chair of a new dentist the following Monday.  My old dentist was a white male with thick fingers, and he liked to talk about how Newt Gingrich was the only guy who deserved to be running for President.  Hmmm.

My aunt—who you met in “Life’s Gay Impressions”—always encouraged me to support female professionals.  “If you don’t know who to try out first, give your money to a woman.”  Maybe this was her way of finding and serendipitously supporting lesbian business owners.  But after living in 6 different states, I’d not yet found one with this random approach.

I’m strapped to the CW version of Survivor when she comes.  She’s wearing boots.  Soon, we are talking about Texas.  

“I’m from Corpus.”

“I’m from Corpus.”

Luck would have it—we were born in the same town.

I can’t turn to face her, and it wouldn’t matter because she’s wearing a mask and plastic eye guards for the people who gleek.  Somehow, I just know she’s attractive.  I can feel it in the back of my throat.  

“I don’t think I’m ready to date,” I remind the chorus in my mind that has been asleep for months but is wide awake and giddy.

“We’ve already married this cutie,” my democratic collective counters and trumps.

“We could take trips to our hometown,” I give in too easy.  I begin to wonder what kind of music she’ll want to listen to on the long trip to South Texas where we’ll drive by our old high schools.

While I’m navigating through questions about our potential long-term goals, she begins to talk about her recent marriage.  He is from Mississippi. Luckily, they both like horses.

“Yuck,” the ‘me’ chorus descends.
“Has anyone told her that she’s setting off supersonic gaydar beams?” I raise my shoulders a bit to search for sane people in the dental dungeon.

I look at the assistant. But, she’s definitely not going to call out her boss.  She’ll wait until break when she can ante into the hygienists’ pool.  I imagine a white poster board with a matrix and these words in big, bold, black Sharpie, “WHEN WILL A CLIENT FIND THE KEY TO BREAK DOWN OUR GAY BOSS’ CLOSET?”  There are three old posters— 2009, 2010, 2011—, collecting dust under the break room table that has smeared queso from last month’s Thanksgiving party.

“I have the key!” I think today.  “I can stop this hellish game and unlock her closet!”

I’m in the chair—between cleanings—waiting to be fitted for a new night guard because I left the old one at a Hampton Inn where I live part-time.  Gopher couldn't find it. I'm sure it got wrapped up in the sheets, and the lady in charge of Laundry found it under a knot of wet ones when she transferred the load.  I wonder what she did with it. E-bay?

I try to think back to the details of her recent marriage to a "man." I count the months and wonder if she's Catholic enough to get the church to get her out of this pickle.  I wonder if there's an "I'm Gay" box to check on the Seeking An Annulment Form, 2012.

"Maybe it's not a man," me offers. 

“Did she say her fiancé's name?”  I can’t remember, but I remember that she said 'he' while the hygienist was sitting in the room.

“Maybe the staff covers for her, to maintain a professional reputation?”

“That’s stupid. People are homophobic, but this generation isn’t going to go along with an outright lie.” I answer me and then look to the wall and find the clue I'm not wanting to discover.  On her diplomas are two last names, hers and his.

“She’s soooo willingly crawling into bed with him every night.” 

After I pull the silly putty from my teeth, I twist to face my dentist who is lingering.  She’s always in the next room before I get a chance to wipe and remove my bib.  But, she's leaning on the wall, offering things to talk about. This is the first time that I’ve actually seen her.  All of my peripheral impressions, had built a collage face that was an inadequate representation.  (Being the excellent professional, she wears a mask—unlike the nasally dentist at Longhorn Dental in the summer of 1999 who breathed onto the back of my throat for a full hour with hot after-lunch gastric juices and gave me the worst flu my body cells have ever known.)  Bam!  The collage collides and smashes between us. She is strikingly beautiful. 

And, I stare.

I’m not sure if she was responding to my (subliminal) acknowledgment of her beauty, or if she was shaking from the transference that we shared.  It's like the lady on the elevator today. Sure, she looked like a frumpy house wife, but she picked those props to hide her basketball coach inner child. She did a good job of avoiding my eye contact, but I did a good job of pseudo-psychically letting her know that there would be other days in this rising and lowering box, and she would have to share energy & truth with me sooner or later.

When two gay people swap energy-truth, they can’t deny the unspoken recognition—and you know what I mean. For me and  Dr. Love, it was like someone took the gaydar and turned the knob all the way past the “Hellllrrrr!” mark.  There was no doubt about it.  She was sending it and I was feeling it. (That's when I began to collect images of her college dorm mate.  Dr. Love tries to erase it all, pretending that the tryst in Palm Springs didn’t place the bar a bit too high for all future vacations.)  I mean, she was sending crazy gaydar my way.  Even the straight hygienist must have felt the earth move.  She was already changing her bet for the white poster board and inserting my name. 

When I got home, I decided to vacuum the leaves and work out some restless energy.  Pushing the mower, I thought about how excited I was that my sacral chakra did in fact still work.  But, I was sad too.  I thought about how my alarmingly attractive dentist has made a choice that screams, “WRONG!” [to me]. 

“Nature before Nurture,” I always say.  More often I say, “Function before Form.” In a sense, that applies here too. 

But, Dr. Love picked this wicked winding path, bought the white dress, and paid the open bar tab for a bunch of crazy relatives who don’t even appreciate Nature, or Texas, or Whataburgers.  Now, she’ll have to go her path.  When faced with a fork in the road, she’ll have to make a choice [after each sexy lesbian client [like me] gets strapped in].

I aim for a row of leaves and smile, realizing that I am due for a cleaning in 4 months.  I'll have to get a pair of boots, rough them up with dirt and dust, and torture her something crazy, ").