Forty years of smoking, drinking and gnawing on the carcass of unfulfilled ambition had taken its toll on my teeth but like the true professional that he was, Doctor Raymond Hu simply shook my hand and guided me towards the chair.
This was my first visit to a Canadian dentist, in fact, my first visit to any dentist in sixteen years. I was excited by the thought of having teeth that wouldn't bar me from working with children but my fear of dentists was deep rooted.
Growing up on an island on the western fringes of Europe, a land ravaged by poverty, starvation and Shane McGowan lookalikes, straight teeth were a long way down the list of life's priorities, while white ones were seen as a birth defect. According to my grandmother, who lost her teeth in a fight with a badger, "milky-whites," a polite term for yellow teeth, were considered stronger and far more robust when dealing with gale force winds, sub-zero temperatures or the occasional box in the jaw–all regular occurrences on the way home from the pub late at night.
When I was a lad, dental appointments resembled exorcisms—molars, like demons, were cast out, banished from the Earth. Dentists recited passages from the Old Testament while flicking mouthwash at the hapless, terrified patient. The appointment reached a climax when the receptionist and other administrative staff entered the surgery in a procession, holding candles and shouting insults and abuse at the patient, in Gaelic.
Doctor Hu (an easy name to grunt when your mouth is packed with blood-soaked cotton pads) never stopped smiling. Maybe he was advertising his own handiwork but that was allowed.
As he put on his surgical gloves, handpicked his weapons of choice and raised his mask over the bridge of his nose I suddenly felt compelled to prepare him by giving him a very quick fifteen second biography of my teeth, from early childhood to my most recent meal—a sashimi combo with a side of crab. By the time I'd got around to describing the trauma of being breast fed till the age of five the prodding and probing had already started.
I held my breath and looked into his eyes, longing for a reaction to what he was witnessing—disgust, distress, even an acknowledgement that 1993 wasn't such a long time ago in "teeth" years.
He probed and poked a little more. Suddenly, I saw a sign, in fact I saw lots of signs—dollar signs. Hu had struck gold, he pulled back, removed his mask and exhaled. "Cancel all my appointments," he shouted in broken English to his dumbstruck assistant who hadn't heard him utter a word in eighteen years.
He rushed to the far side of the room, opened a cupboard and took out a container. I was nervous. Childhood memories came flooding back—readings from the Book of Jeremiah, the Gaelic chants, the smell of incense. Was he rummaging for a scepter, fumbling for a crucifix? No. He was looking for his pocket calculator. Reappearing with a broad smile on his face, he handed me a bunch of his business cards. Hu had switched from dentist to marketer.
"You give these to your friends," he beamed.
"But wait," I pleaded, "what about my teeth, what's the prognosis, have I passed the point of...?"
He looked at me as only a Chinese dentist can—"your teeth are fine." I was astonished. "—but your gums are f**ked." Muttering to himself, he went to leave the room then he stopped, looked around and smiled–"milky whites are good."
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