the Musings of the Gus home | musings index | feedback | other journals
March 1997 index
previous | next

March 11, 1997, Tuesday

Thing to say today: we wake from sleep always a little surprised by the role in which we're clothed.

The whole night at work I felt really crappy from the pressure exerted by the foul substance that accumulates in my gum lesion. I did some medical research on the web and found out that my symptoms bore the hallmarks of tooth abscess. I became rather concerned about the possibility of complications such as infection spreading into my brain and thus made the decision to visit a dentist. The problem: I don't have a dentist. So I did a search for "Charlottesville Dentist" in Altavista, and managed to track down only one dentist's web page, Dr. David Dalley. From reading the page, he seemed like kind of an odd character, especially since he appears to be an outspoken practioner of Sufism (a sort of new age or hippie variant of Islam). In other words, he was my kind of dentist. At 8am, I scheduled an appointment and had one scheduled for 3:45pm the same day! I would be seeing one of Dr. Dalley's assistants, a woman whose name escapes me. I'm terrible with names, especially when under stress.

It's not every day that you experience exactly what you're going to smell like after you die.
Back at my house, I drained my lesion again. The substance produced had the odour of a rotting animal. In this case the animal in question was me. It's not every day that you experience exactly what you're going to smell like after you die. In draining my lesion, suddenly pressure is removed from a nerve that goes to my ear and I lose much of my discomforture accumulated during the night.

During a period of sleep recently, I had a fantastic if ultimately frustrating dream of walking from Oberlin to Elyria in Ohio. I was walking along a large highway when I came to the marvelously junk-cluttered ruins of a sort of hybrid between a fairgrounds and a casino. But once I had thoroughly explored the ruins, I found it almost impossible to resume my walk; my progress was arrested by a fence made of numerous high tension wires.

In case I needed cash for today's dental appointment, I went to the bank and withdrew a tidy wad of money. Then I drove to Dr. Dalley's Dental Office in the Wellness Center on Preston Avenue (maybe only six to ten blocks northeast from my house). Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Katherine DeGood had runk 4 ounces each of generic K-Mart brand tussin. It was a way to make their spring break a little more exciting. Yes, it's Sping Break at UVA, and those left behind here (including myself to an extent) feel like we're missing out in some subtle ways.

In the waiting room I read in Time Magazine about the philisophical paradoxes introduced by the breakthrough of mammal cloning. It struck me as eerie that doctors still aren't sure yet whether Dolly the cloned sheep will be able to live as long as a normal sheep or whether her cells are all "pre-aged" from having all come from six year old cells.

if you are eating food, PUT IT DOWN NOW!

The lady dentist (I know I know, this term is needlessly offensive, but she was in fact a lady dentist and I don't recall her name because I was scared) prodded and pushed at my tongue and looked around and didn't even see the lesion since it is WAY DOWN there almost at the floor of my mouth on the inside of my teeth arch, hidden behind a bony protuberance that is apparently supposed to be there since I have one on each side. I had to give her detailed instructions before she found it, but even then she thought it looked like a minor toothbrush injury. She couldn't smell anything odd either. But it only produces the acrid fluid when deliberately drained. It's like a tight little asshole in my mouth. I know that's disgusting, but we animals are kind of gross don't you know.

She ended up taking an x-ray, which revealed no abscess to be present at all. Apparently it's just some sort of especially severe gum infection, perhaps the result of an injury at the hands of a corn chip or a chicken bone. The Dentist scraped at my calculus build up and suggested I come in for a cleaning and also to have a number of cavities filled. Neglected as my teeth have been, I agreed. If the bills have been paid, supposedly I have dental insurance through my place of employment.

As for the gum infection, the dentist said it will probably just heal on its own.

So I was scheduled for a big two-hour dental session on April 29th. April 29th is not a lucky day for me and the world I know, since something bad related to fire always seems to happen either on that day or in the week leading up to it. My dorm room caught on fire April 29th, 1989. The LA riots happened on an April 29th. David Koresh and his followers went up in smoke on April 29th a few years ago in Waco, Texas. And I severely burned my left hand a year ago on April 20th during a huge party at Peirce and Nellie's place and a week later I attempted to destroy the Downtown Mall in a one-man riot and ended up in jail. In general, I have to fear late April every bit as much as Cæsar had to fear the Ides of March.

The bill for today's work was only $32, and it may be completely covered by my dental insurance.

I was so overjoyed at not having a tooth abscess (even though nothing was really done about my gum condition) that I purchased a 12 of Molsen Ice.

Armed with a glass of gin and PMS tea, I did much musings work in UVA's Cocke Hall. Then I returned to the Dynashack. As I approached from the west on Wertland, I came upon Monster Boy and the two tussing girls, Elizabeth and Katherine. They'd become impatient and gone on to drink an extra three ounces each. That made a total of seven ounces each. That's a lot. I'll have to find out how that went. No doubt they completely lost their minds.

I know too many intelligent people who work as dishwashers.
The girls continued on their tussin-wanderung while Monster Boy and I went back to my house to drink Molsen Ices (which Monster Boy hated, by the way). We talked of maybe finding a house to live in together as housemates after my situation in the Dynashack comes to an end in June. I also said he should find some job that takes advantage of his computer graphics skills and quit being a dishwasher. I told him that I know too many intelligent people who work as dishwashers.

I slept from ten pm until my shift at Comet.

I had a wonderful conversation with blixa in Sam 'n' Ellas Punk Rock Chat (which hadn't been working last night). I noticed that the HTML features had all been eliminated though, and that kind of sucked.

back to the top
previous | next