Who Wants Their Teeth Done By the Marquis DeSade?

Warning--this is a little explicit. But not in the way you'd probably like.)

I had the worst experience I've ever had with any health care professional at the dentist today. It was awful. I kept think "Oh, this is the inspiration for the character in Little Shop of Horrors." By the end, I ended up crying and the dentist said "pull yourself together--I can't do your stitches unless you pull yourself together." So I managed to put on my iPod, and get together enough so he'd stitch me up. (And then I spoke to the supervisor and someone else will see me when I go to redo, in 3 months, what he botched today.)

It wasn't even so much the fact that he fucked up the operation, which made it much worse than it was supposed to be--he just kept mauling me. He'd catch my lips between my teeth and the drill. He used my nose for leverage to cut into my gum. Whenever he was done with an instrument, he'd just drop it on my chest, and then when he'd take it off my chest, he did it harshly, so it felt like I just kept getting hit a little bit. Not hard, but over and over. My lips aren't wide enough for him to fit his entire hand in my mouth and he kept shoving the mirror into my gums to try to make my lips wider. His assistant did the same thing, and at one point I put my hand up to pull my lower lip out of the way and he yelled at me.

Despite the fact that I had local anesthesia, I literally thought about walking out half-way through, but at that point I had a lot of blood and a large hole in my mouth, so it wasn't really an option. But for me to think about walking out gives you a sense of how bad it was. (The only time I've ever felt that way before was when I got my legs waxed in Puerto Rico and there were three women, but something wrong with the wax, and it just kept hurting. I thought it was all in my head because there were three of them, but I ended up with horrible welts for about a week. This time, again, I thought "it isn't so bad" until all of a sudden it was just much too much.)

Anyway, the thing that was interesting was the way I started numbing out. It put me into the exact same space that my ex would drive me to by the time we broke up (but not when we had our little fling last summer and fall). The Republican did the same thing to me with lots of little face slaps before one bigger one. It was something to be endured, to survive until it was over.

Today, when they told me I was going to have to go through it again in 2 months, I lost it. I started shaking all over and crying, and that was what would make my ex stop being mean and start being nicer. And at the dentist's, they both started patting me, trying to make it better. But it didn't--I finally told them not to touch me any more than they had to. Every 'pat' felt jarring and like I was being mauled.

When the denstist told me to pull myself together, it SO reminded me of the 2nd time I safeworded on my ex. The first time he was really sweet, and gentle and warm. But the second time he was just like "Pull yourself together. I'll give you 10 minutes."

I'm not sure if once I started looking for similarities, I created the similiarities. But the whole thing was eerily familiar. Just without any sense that I would ever allow myself to be in that situation again.

I also had far less stamina than I used to. I used to be "strong" and could handle shit like this. The dentist made it clear that I was a really wimp, and most people wouldn't have a problem. Now, I think he was a dick. But, I also think that most people probable have a higher tolerance for that kind of thing than I do now.

It seems like my batteries are still almost completely empty. And more than anything, I want gentleness and kindness. I was talking with a guy on the phone this week and I said "I can't handle anything extreme" and he kept saying "well, being a little extreme has it's place sometimes" and I was like "not with me it doesn't." And then we realized that what he considered 'extreme' (like nipple clamps) I considered 'par for the course' and what I considered extreme (piercing, and stuff that is about purposefully focusing on how much pain a person can endure), well he probably would have considered it insane. I ended up not wanting to go out with him for other reasons, but it was just interesting to see that difference.

I thought my lack of interest in kink was a phase. The Republican was about a year ago--you'd think I'd be over it. But if I now equate "worst day I've ever had at the dentist in my life" with "how I felt when I was doing S&M"--well, I'm pretty clearly not going back to S&M in the foreseeable future.

The problem is, however, that I haven't all of a sudden discovered an interest in vanilla sex. Having lost my interest in kink--it hasn't really been replaced with anything. I wonder if I'm just getting older, so sex isn't as big a deal. But since I know the day it happened (The Republican--but he was just the final straw--it wasn't his fault or anything) that isn't really a 'getting older' thing.

I miss that part of me. I was SO much more sexual than most women are--I'm probably about average now. But it I don't really now what that means or how to deal with it. It isn't how I understand myself and fitting my understanding to how I actually am is a continual challenge.