All of my problems were real problems. But some of my problems were only in my head. I went to see a dentist. Sexy Dr. Swenson on Josey Lane. It had been eleven years since I'd been to the dentist. Except, of course, it had been thirteen.
“According to our records you've missed your last twenty-seven appointments."
“Yah," I said. “Something came up."
While sexy Dr. Swenson went to work with her drill, I watched home renovation shows on HGTV. Sarah and Todd were on a tight budget but a breakfast nook was non-negotiable. They would have to sacrifice their ten-minute commute.
At the end of the day, these shows are all about compromise.
When sexy Dr. Swenson began drilling my front teeth, I realized I should have been paying a little more attention when she explained what needed to be done.
[]
Good morning! It's 7:28am on Tuesday, August 4, 2020, and I'm writing to you from sunny Carrollton, Texas, a little town outside of Dallas that I assume was founded by Carol. I would like to take this opportunity to say, “Thanks, Carol! Nice town!"
Nobody has ever heard of Carrollton. I've barely heard of it. And I live here.
The most famous person to come from Carrollton is the shitty white rapper Vanilla Ice. He went to high school at R. L. Turner, not far from where I'm writing this now. Vanilla Ice described his time in Carrollton this way: “I was in Miami."
My wife and I moved here last July, into a small duplex off Jackson Lane, near McDonald's. It's me and her and our cat and our dog. As part of our rental agreement, it's our job to keep the lawn alive. If the lawn dies, we have to buy a new lawn. I don't know how much a lawn costs. $30 seems reasonable.
[]
In June I turned 33. In August J turned 36. Like you, I am a little surprised how quickly my life is going by. I have tentative plans to change the air filter in our HVAC system. It doesn't seem pressing.
“Once every three months," the guy said.
“What if I wait longer than that," I said.
“That's probably okay," he said.
“What if I wait a lot longer than that," I said.
“That's probably okay too," he said.
“What if I never change it the entire time we live here," I said.
“Honestly," he said. “It doesn't really matter."
One interesting thing I've noticed about life is that our actions don't seem to have consequences.
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction," Sir Isaac Newton said in 1686.
I would like to say now, in 2020, to Sir Isaac Newton: “No there isn't."
[]
I was surprised, after moving to Carrollton, namesake of Carol, secret hometown of Vanilla Ice, how quickly I felt at home here.
“Why is that surprising?" J said.
“I guess I just thought I'd feel at home somewhere else," I said. “Like Manhattan. Or Europe."
On the weekends I go to the grocery store. They're having a special. Buy two bananas.
“What happens if I buy two bananas?" I ask the guy.
“Nothing," he says. “Just please buy two bananas."
Not long after we moved in, we met K, the woman who lives in the other half of our duplex. She's in her seventies. Soft spoken. A survivor, I assume. Of what, I don't know. Sometimes when I go to the grocery store, I pick up a few things for her. Yesterday's list:
1 zucchini
1 pint of sour cream
1 slice of cake
I don't think it's productive to feel sad about other people's lives so I just leave the groceries on her front porch and tell her how much she owes me. She writes me a check. I don't know what to do with checks. I give them to J. I don't know what happens after that.
K and I are both watching our sodium. She texts me low-sodium salad dressing recipes, usually at 4am. She tells me about No Salt. It's just like regular salt except there isn't any salt in it. It's possible, I've noticed, to have it all.
Sometimes K calls me up and we end up chatting for a while. Turns out she's a fucken nutjob. Trump supporter. Conspiracy thinker. The whole thing. Last week she sent me an article: Hydroxychloroquine Cures Type 2 Diabetes. It's almost like you have to decide. Do you want to like people? Or do you want to get to know them?
“Had too many avocados," K texted me last night. “Left one in your mailbox :)"
[]
At night, J works on her PhD in our little make-shift office and I sit on our back patio reading Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie, Didion's Salvador, Didion's After Henry, Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Burroughs’ Queer, Burroughs’ Junky, Burroughs’ The Soft Machine, Davis's Essays One, Buford's Dirt, Finnegan's Barbarian Days, Doyle's Eight Whopping Lies.
Someone said to write the books you want to read.
Okay, I think. But first I'm going to read the books I want to read.
“I am," I tell myself, about this part of my life, “getting my reading done."
It's taking awhile.
[]
Before sexy Dr. Swenson glued two new crowns into my mouth, porcelain replicas of my drilled-away teeth (upper back, stage left) I asked if I could see them. They came in a little plastic case. It looked just like the one I put my baby teeth in after they fell out twenty-whatever years ago it was now.
“So, what, you like order them from some guy and he makes them in a shop or something and then he sends them to you in the mail through like FedEx or whatever and then you glue them into my mouth?" I said.
“Yep," she said. “That's how it happens."
“Oh," I said. “That's weird."
[]
The other night I ran into K out front while I was untangling the hoses. In this heat, you're supposed to water three or four times a week. I'd missed the last eighteen to twenty-four waterings. The grass seemed ok though. A little crunchy.
“I forgot to tell you," K said. “Try adding vinegar to the salad dressing."
“Vinegar," I said.
“Yeah," she said. “For some pop."
“Pop," I said.
It's a little surprising, I think sometimes, that I happen to be living this particular life in this particular place and not, for example, a different life somewhere else. Not that it's bad or anything. Just that the odds were against it is all.
[]
After three visits to the dentist over the course of a month, getting various teeth drilled out and filled in by Dr. Swenson, who I no longer consider very sexy, not very sexy at all, I walked across the hall to the dental hygienist, a middle-aged woman named Janet.
“I've cleaned the teeth of the most beautiful people in New York," Janet told me.
“And now you're doing it here in Carrollton," I said.
“Where?" she said.
[]
Books pile up around the duplex. They look like stalactites. Or stalagmites. Whichever one is correct.
The cat tries to jump on top of them. He's getting old though. And he wasn't a great jumper to begin with. Usually he just knocks the books over and I threaten to kick him out of the duplex.
At night we all sleep together in the big bed. A California king someone gave J and I as a wedding present. That was ten years ago now. Except now that I think about it, it was more like twelve.
“I think it might be time to buy a new mattress,” J says, just when I’m finally starting to get used to this one.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret about all these mattresses,” a mattress salesman told me once years ago, and I am telling you now. “They're all pretty much exactly the same."
MIKE NAGEL
Mike’s essays have appeared in apt, Hobart, Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, and The Paris Review Daily. Find selected nonsense at his website, below.
WWW: michaelscottnagel.com
IG: instagram.com/misternagel
