There is a kind of person. A woman, older than me, though I myself am older and getting older all the time in a way that I am both unaware of and overly consumed by. This woman will ask me a question about my plans after this appointment for my long COVID symptoms when my plans are to see the new Exorcist film, or this same, other woman will see a gleeful selfie I have posted on Instagram from my solo birthday cinema trip to see Black Phone, and this woman will shudder. Visibly shudder, even in text. And this woman will say. “Ooo.” (Or “Oh.”) “Ooo. I can’t do that. You’re brave.” They will shudder and wish me luck as if they are sending me off to war.
At that COVID appointment she had introduced herself and made it clear she was not actually an employee of the NHS but part of a private firm contracted by the NHS to run these special tests to tell people their long COVID symptoms were long COVID. She said “Oh I don’t know how you can watch that. It’s horrible.” (She was right in that the new Exorcist film is an insultingly pale incarnation of the original and its previous two sequels, but that is not what she meant.) I didn’t actually know the appointment was just to tell me I had long COVID. I already knew I had long COVID. I don’t know what that appointment was even for, or why her private firm got money for it. It seems like I could have done that for free.
In 2021 my friend Sarah and I started watching horror movies together online because Sarah does not watch horror movies alone and because I had long COVID and was trying not to get more COVID. I still try not to get more COVID even though we are not supposed to be trying not to get it anymore. When I go to the cinema, I am masked. Not in that Black Phone screening because I was the only one there. Which was part of why I had posted that selfie. My face out, gleefully ageing.
Near the end of 2020 there was some reporting from big news sources about people’s teeth falling out after a COVID infection. Anecdotal, because it was a brand new disease and everyone was terrified and baffled all the time, including science. Lots of people at home going online and searching “is COVID making my teeth fall out” or similar and then finding groups of other people whose previously healthy teeth were falling out with no associated blood or pain. Just like they were never there.
"Their Teeth Fell Out. Was It Another Covid-19 Consequence?" New York Times, November 26 2020
There’s also evidence that the emotional upheaval of the pandemic caused an increase in stress-induced bruxism, which is when the body decides an appropriate reaction to overwhelming fear and uncertainty is to clamp the jaw as tight as possible and use the barrier of teeth to slow the flood of whatever is slowly drowning you. Solutions include mouth guards and stress reduction. I had this before 2020, so you can imagine.
Here’s a question that will ruin your life - where does your tongue go? In your mouth. When you’re not thinking about it.
When I am not bruxating, my tongue now forcefully pushes against that barricade of teeth, forming vulnerabilities between them for the flood to rush through. I am a tongue thruster, which is the name of a horror movie not yet made that I would absolutely watch and one in which something shocking would happen. I could point to it and say, look at that horrible shocking thing that just happened in the motion picture Tongue Thruster.
This horror movie is about a serial killer and it may or may not be supernatural.
This horror movie is about time being non-linear.
This horror movie is about not knowing you're dead.
This horror movie is about demonic possession and how it makes you say and do things.
This horror movie is about a killer deep sea creature but someone is likely to fall in love with it or it falls in love with somebody.
This horror movie is about generational trauma.
This horror movie is also about generational trauma.
This horror movie has insects or spiders in it and we will shield our eyes depending on what kind, it is out of our control even as adults.
This horror movie is about the undead and what they want.
This horror movie is about structural inequality.
This horror movie is about a different kind of structural inequality.
This horror movie is about powerlessness. They are all about powerlessness.
This horror movie is absolutely nothing.
Titus Andromedon's Trident gum audition from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
I know I am writing about teeth and I am writing about COVID and I am sure you don’t want to read about either, but this is what I am writing about. As I type, my tongue is pressing against my front teeth and I keep deliberately placing it somewhere else in my mouth it maybe is supposed to be. Seriously, where does it go? In your mouth? When it is resting.
I hear the Ani DiFranco song “Untouchable Face” in my head but with the alternate lyrics Fuck you / and your American teeth. Is this something?
I am aware there is a thing about American teeth. I am from America and I think I mostly accidentally have American teeth, more straight than crooked despite the bruxism and thrusting and lack of orthodontics growing up. I had three teeth capped in my twenties to erase gaps that in the last few years have reappeared defiantly and more prolifically in other places.
The gaps in my teeth increase with the gap in access to healthcare. Is that something?
There is also a thing about British teeth, which I think is unfairly less about dental health and more about how those individual teeth are arranged. I love a wonky smile but culturally cannot abide it in myself. This and the fear I have when accessing medical care are two of my most American qualities.
David Bowie and artist Jessine Hein's sculpture of his original teeth
My English husband and I saw the same NHS dentist for years but at some point during the pandemic the practice turned private and kicked us out. We didn’t even know it had happened or when. A lot of relationships suffered at the beginning of the pandemic. I ask friends if they have an NHS dentist and they all say no. I see people online saying these things, too. All anecdotal, because more and more we are mole people periodically looking around bewildered asking if it is as bad for everyone else.
Leave the World Behind (2023)
“Dentists are private contractors to the NHS, which means the dentists buy the building and equip the surgery, hire all the staff and pay all of the running costs including wages, materials and insurances, to provide an NHS dental service.” That’s Wikipedia.
“In January 2016, more than 400 dentists signed a letter arguing that the NHS dental system in England is unfit for purpose and are whistleblowing publicly, to warn and expose the centralised failings to develop a proper national dental health and prevention strategy. In May 2022 the Association of Dental Groups, a trade association. published a report on the gaps in NHS dental provision (or “dental deserts”) in England. It indicated that the number of dentists conducting NHS work in January 2022 was the lowest for a decade. It highlighted the areas of England with the lowest number of NHS dentists per 100,000 population and expressed the need for a levelling up of access.”
The myth of American teeth is perpetuated by the unilateral visibility of monied teeth. Those teeth do not sprout untouched from the gums of North American soil, like working class or poverty-stricken American teeth. They are straightened, whitened, sculpted from whole cloth in expensive procedures for full, unashamed visibility. They hide previously healthy, though imperfect, teeth ground down to nubs to make room for gleaming crowns. Do not feel shame when fear is just as valid. The mouths of movie stars house withered graveyards under shiny new builds. They left the bodies and moved the headstones.
Teeth are nightmarish things. Teeth are the stars of nightmares. They wiggle and fall out in front of people and we wake up checking that they are still there.
Many, many years ago when I was still reading magazine features on kissable actor boys, I read an interview with John Cusack that included a discussion of nightmares. The interviewer asked him when was the last time his teeth fell out in a dream. And John Cusack replied that he had very fine subconscious bridgework, actually. What a brilliant thing to say, the beautiful liar. All of our teeth all of the time fall out. When is the last time your teeth fell out? Where is your tongue?
I think there are those who can sit in discomfort and those who do everything they possibly can to avoid it. There are those who practice and train to withstand and those who become more and more nimble and capable at avoiding trials. I want to be clear, I am not claiming a moral superiority for one over the other. Unless one has enough money to be clearly unethical and uses that money as fuel to pretend their access equals moral superiority. Those people are wrong. Also the people who chide the uncomfortable for not being more nimble. Fuck them. There are those who use all their energy to serve as scouts for a terrifying end point, who are the ghosts of Christmas future, who track distressing patterns as a form of comfort that they are not simply imagining. There are those who shudder and say “Oh, I could never” and wish you luck as they send you away.
A plaster cast of my pre-COVID teeth
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