Starved

by Katie Strubel

I have a hankering for latex.

The dentist is older, attractiveness unknown due to the mask covering his lower face. He’s married with kids, Mormon, and stimulates my praise kink (“Excellent gum health,” “Beautiful teeth,” “You mean you never had braces?”). But it’s not him that fuels my fire—not the laughing gas or the free toothbrush or the ceiling-mounted TV playing reruns of MythBusters. No, none of those things but rather a very specific group of five: thumb, index, middle, ring, and pinkie.

It could be anyone’s hand. The body attached doesn’t matter—doesn’t really exist to me. I open wide without being told, settle into the chair, and prepare for a man I see twice a year to touch in and around my mouth. A place foreign to me. Unknown and unexplored. The dentist begins the exam (doing his job) and I pretend that the sudden but comforting weight of his thumb on my bottom lip, gloved finger fish-hooking the flesh aside as he calls to the hygienist for one of his tools, does not sedate me immediately. In the moment, I think I might cry.

I’m pathetic, but in a twenty-something kind of way. I didn’t start looking forward to going to the dentist until I gained consciousness of what it means to feel like you don’t exist when experiencing touch is scarce. Touching happens at the dentist; it must. The environment is controlled and sterile, not the worst smelling, and the hygienists always refer to me as “sweet girl.” There are no caved-in couches or street parking, no texting I had fun with u today! later that night, no unspoken intentions, no surprises, no fear. Touch starved and desperate for an outsider’s attention, I take to the dentist like a newborn does to a nipple.

I text my friends that I’m at the dentist and send photos from the waiting room because even they find humor in my anticipation for the annual forty-five-minute window where contact is brief but guaranteed, in my loneliness. I gargle around metal tools and dentist fingers, answer questions when I’m asked, swish and spit, bite down, open wider. The hygienist swipes my lips with thick Vaseline and the dentist wipes off the excess that gets on my chin. Sometimes (when I’m really lucky) the dentist will leave his thumb on my bottom lip, distracted by clients passing by or a different hygienist calling for him over the headset he keeps around his neck like a stethoscope, and I’m left there wondering where my lip ends and his finger begins.

His hair, like scattered grass shoots in a patch of cracked dirt, becomes the focal point of my vision. I would close my eyes if I could, lulled by the steady pressure of someone touching me, a touch with no strings attached, but I keep my eyes open and open and open. I could be a ghost in the car ride over, sailing through red lights. I could be a ghost in the waiting room, floating through magazines without realizing I left my car keys in the ignition. I could be a ghost in the dentist chair, but right now—with my teeth out and someone touching me to get a closer look—I am alive.

Katie Strubel is a writer and school librarian from Idaho. She received an MFA from Western Washington University. You can find her on Instagram @ktstrubel.