The Dancing Dentist
Stillness does not come easily for me. I like the idea of it. Of sitting. Meditating. Breathing. I am enamored of monks and yogi who sit upon mountains in distant lands, becoming one with the universe. I am amazed even by those who can sit through a play without crossing and re-crossing their legs. Sadly, such a fate was never to be mine. I can hardly keep eye contact during a serious conversation. I look about the room, fiddle with a paper clip, perhaps, or the label of a beer bottle, maybe some old pen cap, until the object trapped in my possession be completely destroyed, and I look about the place for a new victim. I tap my toes, cross my legs, rise, sit, fidget, and pace.
You can imagine that dental cleanings rarely go well for me. There you lie, mouth open, staring at the ceiling, trying your hardest not to move, not to talk, not to swallow. You are expected to be still for nearly thirty minutes, perhaps more. True, you can wiggle your feet, cross and uncross them. Your thumbs are free to twiddle. Should you be forward thinking, you might even keep your hands busy with some object hidden in your pocket.
But your mouth. Your face. Your tongue. Your epiglottis. These you may not move unless directed to do so. These must remain still. These organs which you spend your life not considering, which you will cease to consider the moment you leave the dental office, become the source of your constant and unceasing thoughts as you fight against your instincts to please this person looming over you, this person you have never met, this person responsible for the torture you are putting yourself through for their sake, this dental hygienist.
Such was the position in which I found myself the day I first met Calpurnia Fasso. This was before her dancing dentist days, though, even as a dental hygienist, her spirit was impossible to hide. Like me, she spent her life more than a little antsy. Unlike me, however, she did not allow herself to be bound by the protocols of the dental hygiene office. Not in the slightest.
I must admit, that first experience was more than a little frightening. Imagine, lying on the examination table, holding open your mouth, waiting for the delicate fingers of the hygienist to pick up just the right metal pick to begin her scraping, and seeing, not the slowly encroaching tool, the larger than life hands just on the edge of your vision, so close they seem disembodied, but rather a flash of metal sweeping across your mouth as she who wields the pick flies over you like a specter. Imagine a leap that ends upon your bed, her legs straddling you as she turns her body to the music, contorting herself sideways toward your teeth, scraping in perfect time. Imagine seeing her, one moment perched upon you, the next above and behind, leaning over your face, her body unseen, seeming almost to levitate as some new tool comes from the wrongest of directions before whispering, “Close,” as she swings before you with the suction stick.
The first time she brought it across my face, I thought I had missed the suction entirely, and longed for the days of my youth when I could sit forward, lean to the side, and spit into a bowl. Well, times change, and we must change with them. Only after she had swept it out and nearly sung, “Open,” did I realize that my mouth was once again dry and ready for further detailing.
The experience was astounding, really. Unexpected. Frightening. Exciting. She was gentle with her touch, effective with her tools, and as efficient as I have experienced in any cleaning before or since. More than that, I must say, she was a vision to behold. I don’t mean that she was pretty. As I think back, I can’t say I remember if she was or not. What I can say is that her motion was beautiful. Elegant. My heart stirred at the poetry she exuded with every movement. I smile at the memory of what little I could see of her as she swept across my vision, even as I did my best to stay frozen in place.
The music I had never heard before, and will not attempt to describe. I would only ruin the memory. What mattered to me then and now, what I recall as that smile creeps across my lips, is her ease. Her flow. How she became one with the music, with her tools, with the room. With my teeth. She inhabited that space as if she were born to it. As if she were a fish, the dental office her sea, and my teeth the coral upon which she fed.
When she said, “Doctor Benz will be with you shortly,” and left the room, some small part of my heart broke off and tumbled to the floor.
We’re old now, Purny and I. We don’t see each other often, though we do sit down together for the odd game of cribbage. Not an easy thing, that. For, though we are older, we are both as restless as ever. While I am satisfied with the endless shuffling of cards, however, Purny cannot help but flit about the room, often with cards in hand. She pretends to do things. Pick up the odd glass, glance at a framed something on the wall, perhaps a trip to the toilet. I am not fooled. We have now known each other too long for that. She must move, she must dance, she must stretch herself out into the space she inhabits. It is simply her way. It can be infuriating if what you care about is the game of cards.
But we are old. We have learned not to care about the game of cards.
It was over an afternoon of cribbage and coffee that she told me about Lina Basurto, the one the papers called Lina Ballerina. It was an eponym well earned. Like her namesake Angelina from the children’s stories, Lina danced her way through childhood, and into leading roles at a renowned ballet company. Had the comparison stopped there, however, I think it unlikely that the press would have named her. Unlike her famous namesake, you see, Lina continued as an adult to dance her way through life. Through dinners, photo shoots, and interviews. Through shopping trips, movies, and walks in the park. Like Calpurnia Fasso, she was never not dancing.
At the time Purny and Lina met for the first time, Purny had become, against all odds, a successful and widely respected dentist. I say against all odds because, prior to gaining her degree in dentistry and hanging her own shingle, Purny had been fired from no less than three hygienist jobs. It was not that she was a poor hygienist. Or tardy. Or insubordinate. She was none of these things. She was, perhaps, the finest dental hygienist of her day, and certainly in Rome. There were even those, like me, who regularly requested her services. Rather, the style which so captivated me drove most others to complain. Overwhelmingly. They were appalled by her lack of decorum. No, they would say, it was true they had not been hurt, but they could have been. How could any respectable dentist let such a menace grace their rooms? Her bosses were always sad to see her leave, but felt as if they had no choice. After all, one can hardly run a business if the customers refuse to return. After repeated firings, Purny saw nothing for it but to seek further education and go into business for herself.
Calpurnia Fasso, the dancing dentist, drew an odd mixture of patients, it cannot be denied. Rare is the person who will willingly have their teeth examined by a dentist who, regardless of how good she is, cannot stand still. Rarer still are those who can appreciate art in unexpected places, who will give up the security of the predictable for the risk of the extraordinary. To do so from the vulnerable position of the dental chair is almost unheard of. To sit patiently as their dentist dances about, popping in and out of their mouths so quickly it is hard to believe she never missed, sharp instruments always barely skirting disaster. Barely. No, such patients were rare. Nevertheless, there were some. Not many, but enough to keep this most unusual of dentists in business, if only barely.
Large cities, after all, have no shortage of weirdos.
Lina Basurto was on tour. I don’t recall the company, though I have vague feeling it was American. She was one among many dancers supporting leads she hoped one day to dance herself. It was a wonderful experience, but not without its share of anxiety. Thousands of miles from home, even the greatest city in the world can feel frightening, doubly so if you don’t speak the language. So it was for Lina. For though she had some small smattering of Italian she had learned from her grandmother, it was hardly enough to order dinner, let alone describe her intense tooth pain to a dentist.
And the pain was intense. In the mornings, she did not want to get out of her hotel bed. At meals, she would watch as her fellow company members picked at their food, afraid to take bites for the suffering she knew would follow. Throbbing filled her mouth and pushed spikes of pain to her forehead. She could not concentrate, and she was beginning to make small mistakes. She had danced her way across Europe as she fought through the pain, but it was getting to the point where she was no longer sure if she could perform. She was distracted so much by the pain that she found herself constantly on the verge of her small mistakes becoming critical ones, the sort that would not only hurt the performance, but the performers, including, notably, herself. At last, the company manager insisted, and Lina had no choice but to seek help or leave the tour.
It was not a prospect that filled Lina with joy. Or relief. Or confidence. For Lina Basurto had a growing history of failure with dentists. It wasn’t that she feared them, as so many of us do. No pain from a well meaning dentist could possibly be worse than the agony she was living with day by day. It was simply that she could not sit still. In other words, it was not that she feared dentists, it was that dentists feared her.
I just need you to, ok, ok, just hold your mouth open, yes, good, no, please hold it straight, yes, like that, good, no, straight please, yes, like that, oh, please, please, miss, please hold still, good. Now open your mouth and just stare at the light. Good. I’m going to, oh, I’m so sorry. Did that hurt? I really am trying the best I can, but you must work with me. I can’t do this for you. Ok, let’s try this again, but please hold still. Yes, just keep your head, oh, mercy, can you hold still for one moment?
And so on.
So when the time came to seek help without the benefit of a common language, Lina Busurto was beyond despair. The first dentist sent her on her way without ceremony. The second was kinder, but no greater help. Lina was hopeless as she went back to her company manager a third time, looking for help finding yet another dentist to try.
“Alright, Lina. We’ll try this one more time, but if you keep getting yourself kicked out, we’ll just have to send you home. You have a regular dentist at home, yes? Someone you can trust?”
Lina just shook her head in shame. She had never found anyone to care for her teeth other than herself. It was one of many parts of her life that had been undermined again and again by a body that just would not sit still.
“Here,” the company manager said, “Fasso. Dentista Danzante. Funny. Maybe she specializes in dancers. I wonder we haven’t heard of her. Maybe she’ll be more understanding. Let’s give it a shot. What have we got to lose?”
And Lina made her way to the office of Calpurnia Fasso, DDS. The Dancing Dentist.
Inside the empty examination room, as she waited for the dentist, Lina paced, turning herself about occasionally, although with less joy than usual. She opened drawers filled with toothbrushes and floss. She fingered paintings along the wall as she swept past them. She ran her fingers along buttons that soon enough sent signals to motors and moved the examination bed into strange configurations. When Dr. Fasso finally came in, Lina leapt with surprise.
“Oh my goodness, you scared me!”
Purny smiled graciously, apologized, and invited the dancer to sit. Lina, with no Italian to speak of and no idea what was said to her, continued to stand, smiling awkwardly. Purny tried again, with no luck. Lina, thinking the dentist was asking her what the problem was, did her best to answer in English.
“Well, it’s just so painful. My tooth. I think. Well, the pain is near my tooth, anyway, but more so underneath it. Somewhere. Somewhere I can’t find it. Do you know what I mean? Like there is this sharp throbbing down in there somewhere, but I can’t point to a specific tooth. More like it’s between them, or, I suppose near them. I thought I could just, I don’t know, live with it, but the pain has gotten so bad I can hardly think. Oh, there it is. Right, oh, now, that’s what I…ow…”
And Lina put her hand to her jaw. She was not surprised to find herself no longer face to face with the dentist. It was her way, after all. She merely assumed she had been pacing as she talked, and had turned away in the course of her monologue. What she had not imagined, however, was that her dentist had done nearly the same thing.
Without notice, Lina found a hand on top of her own, as if to feel the pain for itself. The hand was connected to an arm, but where the arm went was a mystery. Purny slipped around, the hand remaining in place as her body twisted about to face her patient. With the slightest of pressure, she encouraged Lina to the table. Lina obliged, and lay down before her doctor, who began her usual process of examination. She touched, she looked, she prodded, all while moving about the table, one moment atop, the next astride, the next behind. For a moment, it looked as if all might go well.
Then Lina did what she always did. Her head turned. Her body scrunched. She changed position on the bed. She fought herself, tried to remain still, knew she was doing wrong and demanded that her body obey her mind, but to no avail. Her body just would not listen, and she soon found herself sitting up.
Gently, again, Purny persuaded the body of Lina Basurto back to the table where she might begin to prod with her tools. Pick in one hand and mirror in the other, Calpurnia began to look for the clues that would lead to cure. With grace of movement never seen in another dentist, she swept across Lina’s face, touching and releasing, glancing and removing, feeling and observing, even as she flitted about her patient like a butterfly dancing from perch to perch.
It was, perhaps, the fourth or fifth pass when, coming in with the pick, Lina Basurto, overcome by the needs of her body, sat up and turned directly into the sharp tool, bringing forth blood from her gum. Calpurnia Fasso, the dancing dentist, mortified, witnessing the first true failure of her professional career, gasped and drew back to the other side of the room.
She apologized profusely even as her patient did the same, each in their own language, though, as most apologies are, unmistakeable in any tongue. Across the room from each other, they stood, such as they could, regarding each other. Staring, wondering, even as they paced and circled each other, each did their best to study the other.
Purny again approached her patient, this time with only the mirror, and did her best to see what she could while her patient continued to stand. It worked. For a moment. One moment. The next, Lina was turning, unconsciously as always, keeping her dentist from seeing inside her mouth. Calpurnia withdrew again.
She approached a second time, this time with no tools at all. She danced about as she came closer, not so much a straight line as the sort of path a fly might take as it crosses the room. She looked at her patient from one angle after another, coming closer with each moment, always hoping to hold her attention. Hold her attention, however, she could not. For even as Purny flitted about from spot to spot, creeping upon the dancer, Lina could not help but take the signal and flit about herself, almost as if dancing together with this new partner.
Not until the third approach did Dr. Fasso find any success.
Taking the lead from her patient, she danced about room, turning, twisting, leaping, rolling over the table, and, forgetting her patient for a moment, simply enjoyed herself. The truth was, she was frustrated. She needed time to think. To calm her mind and look for a new way to approach her problem. She had not yet found her solution. She was only dancing her way through thought, the way you or I might pace about our rooms as we think something through. Well, the way I do, anyway.
As she did so, Lina, too, relaxed herself. Lina, too, danced about the room, sometimes near her dentist, sometimes turning away. She danced for herself. Like Purny, she danced out of frustration. Unlike Purny, she also danced to mask the unbearable pain throbbing in her mouth.
And soon enough, the two were dancing together, a pas de deux in this small sterile room, crowded with tools, tables, lights on giant arms, and a bed that took up nearly half of it. They took one another’s hands and let go. One would spin about and lift the other. They shook and grooved and found their art in motion even as they continued to study one another. And with the deepest of breaths, Calpurnia Fasso, DDS, the dancing dentist, dove into what she knew would be the greatest challenge of her life. Coming around, she once again took in hand her pick and mirror, and, with the grace that can only come from the most poetic of artists, worked upon her patient, even as her patient continued to dance gently about.
Two dancers. Dancing. One with sharp, dangerous implements designed for fine work in the stillest of mouths, the other with open mouth and great pain. One prodding. One prodded. One studying. One being studied. Turning, twisting, falling, rolling, arms above, beside, below, akimbo, stretching, curling, step upon step. Two dancers working upon one another. Regarding each other. Making space for each other even as they encroached. Two dancers. Dancing.
For Calpurnia, the fear continued to grow. She knew what was coming, and was not sure she could do it. Not sure she could cure any patient in this way. The thought of anesthesia was promising. Laughing gas. It was necessary, after all, to kill the pain. To numb. But it would not be enough. For, while it would numb the pain, in no way would it kill this dancer's urge. It might soften her, slow her down, but it would also make her sloppy. The chance for error, for bloody mistakes, traumatic injury, would rise with use of the gas. No. It was far too risky. Her gaze then turned to the needles needed for the local anesthetic. To the drill. She looked at her patient, still dancing with her as they swept across the room, and her stomach twisted with fear.
For Lina, it was not until Purny had filled the first syringe that the real fear crept upon her. For what could a syringe mean but some difficult and painful process that must follow? Upon the delicate and unstopping motion of the injection, even as the body giving it continued to swirl about the room, Lina’s fear allayed. Her trust grew. Perhaps it took a dancer to treat a dancer. For the first time in her life, Lina relaxed with her dentist. After all, if this dentist could anesthetize her as they both danced through the procedure, how could anything be amiss? Heart in hand, Lina Basurto gave herself over to faith.
And Calpurnia Fasso, DDS, the dancing dentist, picked up the drill.
It was the moment of Calpurnia’s life. The moment everything else had led up to. She was not confident. She was sure she was about to destroy forever the career of this promising dancer as well as her own. She was about to rip apart the mouth of her own patient for the first and last time. She held in her hand the implement which would tear through her patient’s mouth with one simple slip. Or her brain. Or throat. In her hand, she held an instrument of torture and death, and knew she had not the skill to wield it. Not on a woman in constant motion. Certainly not in the hands of a woman in constant motion herself.
One more deep breath, and she raised the drill above her head, set it in motion, and allowed her arm to sweep forward as her legs carried her about in lazy circles. Then, with a boldness that came from she knew not where, Calpurnia Fasso allowed the drill to swing toward her patient’s pain, and likely her death.
Enough. You’ve heard enough. Is it necessary to tell you of the look in Lina’s eyes as Calpurnia first approached her with the drill? Do you need to know how Purny came in and out with the drill, one moment to the next, here drilling, there swinging it about her head from across the room, gaining momentum to bring it in again? How close they came to unmitigated disaster, again and again, always just avoiding it? Do you need to know how deep the drill went, how the two danced together, rolling across the examination table even as the drill worked its way to Lina’s root? No. Your stomach is already churning as badly as Purny’s. Surely it is enough to know that, as the greatest dancers do, the two of them became one being, working in synthesis, a single creature floating about, here walking, there rolling, always flying, as one took the pain from the other in the greatest dance of dentistry the world had ever seen.
Purny and Lina became friends for life that day. Not simply doctor and patient, dentist and victim, but friends through and through. The kind of friendship that comes only from kinship. Not kinship of blood, but of something stronger. Something closer to who we are than who we came from. Of uncommon bond.
Perhaps it was the miracle of that day that saved Lina Basurto’s career. That evening, with her company manager’s blessing, she joined her fellow dancers on stage and danced the finest performance of her life. She was not dancing a lead, not yet. She did not stand out against the chorus of dancers of whom she was a part, not meant to rise above, call attention to herself. Yet, her fellow dancers knew. That night, she had something special, something that could not be counted, but which shone nonetheless. On a night when she could have been on a plane back to where she had come, her career in tatters, she shone like the star she was destined to be, and which carried her to heights only a star can dream of.
By the time she was Lina Ballerina, leading tours of her own, known around the world for the joy which only the greatest of artists gift us, she carried with her the inspiration of her truest friend, a soulmate, a dentist of great renown, who dreamed of visits from her beloved Lina, the only patient who dared to dance as well as she.
As Purny reminisced over cribbage and coffee, as she remembered again this moment of meeting, of not only her success but of, perhaps, the greatest dance of her life, a smile crept across her lips. It was a light smile, a smile that came not only from her mouth but from inside as well. A smile not entirely unlike the one that creeps across upon my own as I remember our own first encounter. Beyond the smile, though, there was something greater. For, as Calpurnia Fasso, dancing dentist, remembered the great triumph of her life, even with her back turned from me in the midst of her constant motion, she could not fail but to warm the room with the memory that shone from her eyes.