This Thursday I made the pilgrimage I often venture upon these days, heading to the den of functionally-retarded incompetence and over-sterilized instruments of torture and misery known as my dentist's office.  I trekked out to fucking balls ass nowhere in the unseasonable global warming-inspired temperatures that are sure to melt the polar ice caps any day now and cause volcanos and the ubiquitous El Niño to become angry and erupt, spewing molten hot magma and blue cotton candy all over the place while flying monkeys stab us repeatedly in the face and hands with pitchforks and recite the lyrics to obscure Prince albums.  I was quietly dreading the horrible fate that awaited me in the quiet back rooms filled with sadistic assholes, cordless power drills and fucked-up unnecessarily-graphic posters depicting some poor bastard in various stages of an obscure and particularly nasty type of gum disease.  The experience was only made worse by the deep-seated knowledge that I had signed up for this shit, and that the horrible machinations I was soon to fall victim to would be a punishment I willingly walked into;  That whatever hardships and tribulations I would face were torments of my own doing.  I gritted my hopefully-cavity-free teeth and attempted to maintain some semblance of composure as I walked through the large oak doors into a waiting room that Dante Alighieri could have mistaken for the Fifth Circle of Hell, the one reserved for "The Wrathful".  I myself am generally not used to anything beyond the Second Circle ("The Lustful") or maybe sometimes the Third ("The Gluttonous").  However you look at it, I was at least two layers out of my league.

The waiting room at my dentist's office.

All things considered, nobody likes their dentists, unless of course said dentist is related to them by blood and/or marriage.  I understand this.  I have had many different dentists throughout my increasingly long and meaningless existence, and have generally harbored a level of disdain for them that is generally reserved for exceedingly-wealthy teenagers, angry leprechauns and Nazi collaborators.  I don't believe this makes me an Anti-Dentite bastard, but rather just an average member of the American populace.  However, the foul conglomerate of professionally-trained and licensed practitioners of oral torture and relative incompetence I visit these days hold a special place above even these heinous villains.  I strongly believe that you would be hard-pressed to find a more irritating and douchebag-ish group of dentistry rejects this side of a bad horror movie or an impoverished third-world country that believes in shamans and medicine men and have those stupid little stones that are supposed to magically cure everything from toothaches and impotence to catastrophic axe wounds and malaria.  But I digress, which is standard operating procedure for this website.  Explanations are in order, and I am just the man verbose and rambling enough to explicate.

First off, just getting an appointment with these jerkasses is like pulling teeth (nyuk nyuk) from a rabid rampaging bison during mating season using only your index finger and a two-inch strand of fishing wire.  You would think that a health clinic operating on a level of ineptitude that surpasses even the most brain-dead and downtrodden trained chimp would have some modicum of difficulty drawing patients, but trying to work your way in for an appointment with these ass jesters is only slightly less difficult that obtaining a half dozen Israeli nuclear warheads on behalf of the government of Iran.  Seriously.  It's like, "um, listen fuck-o, you aren't guarding Fort Fucking Knox here.  I'm not seeking an audience with the Pope;  I'm just trying to get my damned teeth polished.".  Like, you'll call them and say, "yes sir may I please visit your glorious holy establishment and have one of your highly-trained and not-at-all-annoying or inneffectual dental health technicians perform unspeakable horrors upon my gums and teeth?  I require my six-month check-up and my last appointment was back in June", and they will promptly set you up with an appointment for January 13th 2015.  If you tell them that doesn't work for you, they will tell you they have an opening on the 16th of that same week if you'd rather do a Friday.

Um, what the fuck?  The fact that they schedule your appointments at least six to eight months in advance is more retarded than a seven dollar bill and makes about as much sense as a helium submersible.  They could probably see the entire fucking population of the city of Boston between now and then, and STILL have time to work me in the schedule.  Dentist appointments take ONE MOTHERFUCKING HOUR - and you guys are open for 960 hours in a six-month span - are you seriously telling me you have absolutely nothing available in the next half of the year?  Really?  Are you fucking with me?

Generally the delay in scheduling is actually a blessing in disguise, however.  It's a slight reprieve from the grotesque instruments of abhorrent misery that so anxiously await to do unutterable harm to anyone they come across.  A stay of execution, if you will.  For even upon setting foot in the foul waiting room, mere mortals are overcome with the uncontrollable desire to barf themselves to death in a horrible and disgusting way while being stabbed to death by coked-up cannibalistic Amazonian princesses dressed like the Partridge Family.

The first obstacle you face in your visit is the horrifying Gate Keeper.  This ghastly wretch sits behind the front desk like a vulture waiting to pounce on a dying animal, looking for any reason at all to prove her unbelievable superiority over you.  This in itself doesn't really cause any problems for me;  I'm the same way whenever people come to visit me in my office.  What bothers me is that this unconscionable bitch goddess has the power to make you disappear faster than a self-absorbed power-hungry Chilean dictator's "Death List".  Whether it be through her unfocused desire to exact misguided vengeance on those who would seek to displease her or just sheer uselessness on par with the human appendix, with effortless ease she can (and will) say, "Um, I'm sorry sir, but we have no record of your appointment" and dismiss you with a wave of the hand and a wry, knowing grin.  She will sometimes also add that you can set up an appointment for some random time six months from now, but deep in your heart of hearts you know she isn't even going to write it down, simply so that she can re-live the buzz she's feeling for crushing your spirit.  She is a malevolent demon wench who feasts on that shit like it was a dump truck full of meatnormous sandwiches and teriyaki-style beef jerky.

If that heinous psycho bitch finds it in her black heart to wave her hand, grunt disapprovingly and grant you passage, the next barrier serving as an impediment to your well-being is the disgusting disgustingness of the dental waiting room of disgustingness +2.  The entire waiting room is seemingly more squalid than the interior of a McDonald's dumpster and is generally permeated by the unique sort of stench that can only be achieved through the combination of body odor, halitosis and farts.  The unwashed masses, who I generally disapprove merely on principle alone, are there en masse - with the greater majority of them either being cranky old homeless people or bitchy, talkative college kids whining on their cell phones to their parents.  It's like I'm the only person there between the ages of 25 and 65, and it totally creeps me out.

I can make it through the waiting room, however, and the inevitable hour (at least) you have to sit there.  Seriously, even if your appointment is at 8:30 and you get there at 8:00, you still won't get called until like 9:30.  But whatever.  A little waiting never killed anybody, and as long as I have my Game Boy or whatever I can make it through without having to make eye contact with someone, which I have found is the best way to avoid having a homeless dude spit emphysema acid in your face.  One thing that is generally unavoidable however, is the fact that the waiting room music is like listening to a CD of songs you would have heard if you died and went to Hell in 1983.  You've got Kenny Loggins, Queen, Madonna, Bryan Adams, the Culture Club... it's the sort of thing that would almost be funny if it wasn't grating on your soul like nails on a chalkboard or the shrieking of infants.

Then your dentist arrives.  This is where things get hairy.  I have yet to mention that the dentist's office I visit is attached to a University, and that almost the entire staff is composed of dentistry students, many of whom have never actually treated a live human patient.  Does this scare you?  It should.  If it doesn't, consider this:  I have visited the dentist five times since I had this insurance plan forced on me like a pissed-off German Shepherd attacking a couch.  Five times, a different dentist-to-be has oafishly stumbled into the waiting room clutching a sweaty chart in his uncoordinated, potentially improperly-trained hands.  Five times they have held the chart in front of their faces and called out my name in a shaky, unconfident voice.  Five times have they pronounced my name differently.  I have so far been called:

• Ben Thomas


• Ben Johnson


• Bane Tomb Soon


• Ben Thomason


• Ben Thompson (my most recent visit.  The chick I had was the only competent person I've encountered here.  She was totally awesome, and just my luck, she's moving away in January.)

Holy shit.  My fucking name is BEN THOMPSON.  I'd fucking spell it phonetically for you retards if it wasn't SAID EXACTLY THE WAY THAT IT IS SPELLED, YOU GODDAMNED MORONS.  What the fuck?!  I have the 17th most common last name in the entire fucking country and you can't even say it correctly?!  What the fuck does that say about your skills as a dentist (or even as a functional human being in general)?  I mean, if you can't be relied upon as having the reading comprehension skills of a 3rd grader, how the fuck am I supposed to relax while you're clumsily wielding sharp pointy hook-shaped objects inside of my mouth like some kind of goofy intoxicated slasher movie villain?  WHAT THE FUCK.

And there I go again with the digression.

Once your name (or some completely fucking butchered semblance of it) is called, you then must wade into the repulsive lair of the beast.  The "dentist's row" as I like to call it is completely unlike any place of medicine this side of an Army field hospital in a bad sci-fi movie or the rehab ward of the state penitentiary/asylum.  Basically there's like a gigantic fucking hallway lined with dentist's chairs, and you sit in one of the chairs so they can get started with the drilling/torture.  There are little screens that separate you from your neighbors the next chair over, but these screens have not been deployed once in any of the five times I've been there.  So when the "dentist" asks you to turn your head ninety degrees to the side because he's too fucking inept to get himself into the correct position to work on your molars, you are treated to a nice close-up view of either another dentist's ass or something vaguely resembling this:

It is... unpleasant.

What's even worse than getting a fucking front-row seat to some old homeless woman's root canal is when my douchebag hygienist person attempts to have a conversation with me.  These guys are almost always complete dumbasses, and say the stupidest shit at all possible times.  They'll ask you if you caught "the game last night" without specifying even what sport they're talking about, or they'll tell you about some of their other patient's oral hygiene practices.  One guy asked me if I smoked a lot of pot.  I had another guy tell me about his fucking plans to go work for his father, who is a private practice dentist in the midwest somewhere.  Guess what, dipshit?  I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK TOWARDS A ROLLING DONUT.  Stop talking to me.  I don't give a crap about you, or anything that you are interested in.  Just shut your hole and concentrate on not stabbing my gums with that stupid metal thing, you uncoordinated buffoon.  I'm far more interested in that than anything you could possibly say to me.  Not to mention the fact that you can't even respond to them because they've got like eight fingers and two giant six-inch metal probes all up in your fucking grille.  So like when you start retching and they condescendingly and disdainfully ask you, "Oh!  Are you a gagger?", you can try to say, "no, fuckface, gagging is what happens to most people when you slip and accidentally jam a fucking giant chunk of metal into their esophagus, you untalented hack.  I hope you trip and fall face-first onto your dentist's tray and then fail all of your qualifying exams because you are a fucking incompetent shitburger", but you will almost always just come off sounding like Frankenstein's Monster when he's wigged out on quaaludes and some villager accidentally burns him with a torch.

An interesting note here is that before I started going to this dentist, I never had any sort of dental problems.  But every time I've been to the teaching school, they find a "cavity" or some other stupid thing that requires like an hour's worth of work and drilling and shit.  I'm absolutely convinced that they're lying to me and manufacturing shit just to get these n00b dentists some real-world experience.  Fuckers.  God damn I hate my dentist.

Sadly, my insurance has my balls in a vice grip.  It's the ONLY option on my dental plan, which probably makes sense since if anybody actually had a choice they would run screaming from this hellhole like Starr Jones making a mad dash for a freshly baked pan of brownies hot out of the oven.  So I guess I'll just keep on subjecting myself to voluntary torture, but holy shit I fucking hate that place.