Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [39]
Moments later, I was in a cab to her Park Avenue office.
Dr. Bridges sat me in her dental chair and forced me to explain my self-surgery to her. She did not approve at all, and she let me know this as she inspected my curiosity. Finally she said, “I think you need to see Mac. He’s the oral surgeon next door. I think he should take a look at this. Let me give him a call.”
Five minutes later she returned. “Guess what. It’s your lucky day. Mac can see you right now. So you wanna just leave here, then walk two doors toward Park. He’s number twenty-seven. Tenth floor, suite twelve.”
Mac was a large, hairy beast of a man. He was disheveled and sweating profusely. His shirttails hung out of his pants, and I knew that he used them to wipe the considerably thick lenses of his glasses. He didn’t shake my hand but instead said, “What did you do?”
There was something about his facial expression that made me feel he was either brilliant or insane. My brother is a true genius, so I am familiar with the look.
Mac inspected my mouth. I again repeated my tale of selfsurgery, only Mac didn’t seem to find this so odd. It was almost as if he felt that there was nothing wrong with self-surgery as long as a person knew what he was doing, which I pretty much felt I did.
I glanced around his office and saw that there were piles of books everywhere. They were so high in places they nearly reached the ceiling.
I decided that Mac was not insane, just brilliant. He probably read science fiction novels and then wrote the author, pointing out flaws, just to demonstrate his superior intelligence.
“Know what this is?” he asked, sliding his chair back on its wheels.
“What?”
“I see this a lot. You’ve got a cyst there that was caused by the bones in your palate shifting. How old are you?”
The bones in my palate shifting? “Thirty.”
He grinned in a self-satisfied fashion. “I knew it. That’s when it happens. Thirty, thirty-three. See, what it is, is a congenital abnormality. It’s the same thing that would have caused a cleft palate, but for some reason in the womb, that didn’t occur. But the bones have shifted, and that’s what created the cyst.”
All I heard was cleft palate.
I could have been born with a harelip? That would have changed my entire life. People with harelips are not often seen in public. Like conjoined twins, they tend to stay indoors and order in. Exactly as I would have done. I came this close to living my life like a shy Japanese girl, covering my mouth constantly and blushing, though from harelip shame.
But by some fluke of nature, perhaps because just as it was happening my mother rolled over on her side, thus knocking the genes apart, I was spared a life of deformity. I said, “What do I do?”
“We need to clean it out up there. It won’t take but ten minutes. You have the time to do it now?”
I said, “Sure,”
He brightened. “Great.”
I sat there and clasped my hands on my lap. While I did feel a sense of betrayal that I was genetically defective, I also felt grateful that I somehow got off the hook. After Mac cleaned out my mouth, whatever that meant, this whole thing would be behind me.
A moment later he reappeared holding a needle that was at least a foot long. Suddenly, he no longer looked brilliant. He looked insane.
Before I could say anything he stuck the needle into my mouth, instantly ending all sensation above the neck.
Then he produced what appeared to be a common art director’s X-Acto knife, and the roof of my mouth was opened back like a car hood. I didn’t feel anything, but the sound was hideous: like sawing through Styrofoam. Plus, I had the very new and unnatural sensation of feeling the roof of my mouth lying across my tongue.
There was intense pressure as he began pulling at something with pliers. “We’re just gonna