Wearing Out The Mollusk

I had this great groaning in my teeth. It was this drone that, as soon as I put out the lights, would press its forehead to its knees. A fetal girdling that tightens vibration into aching. Waking up was too much of a symptom to be a solution. And it was the worst kind of insomnia: fake; painted on the inside of heavy lids.

What happened -- well, the treatment I opted for -- was this. There's a ropy, purple felt, or maybe velvet, that oozes over the lips and makes a kind of sock around your tongue. Have you ever tried to mix up the fruit at the bottom of your yogurt cup using the bendy end of a drinking straw? Then you know what I mean. After awhile, your fillings bond with the pile and your panting dries out the hollow core they need to fashion a new mouth for you. (One that is semi-soft. It relies on a transfer of your own palate's heat to remain more the viscosity of cartilage than of bone.) To free your chin, its almost always necessary to waggle the ball of your palm against it.

To complete the procedure, every night you have smile into this holographic dental X-ray until the spokes are completely crusted. A shaving mirror really helps firm up the necessary simulation. As soon as your saliva goes numb and turns the color of milk, you'll need to turn on your side. Try not to pucker or sigh. After awhile, you don't hear the cymbals going 1234, 1234, 1234, 1 and 4, 1 and 4, all the time. Gradually, you will feel the chitinous tentacles make their way towards your sinus cavities and, ultimately, your olfactory bulb. Under ideal conditions, this should be an internal process; if in the morning you detect a white-to-light-blue precipitate around either or both nostrils, you should retract the appliance and go back to using your old apparatus.

It usually takes from between 4 and 6 weeks to fully secrete a new uvula, and anywhere from 3 to 4 months for the platelets to gel into a mandible. Regular stool samples and occasional blood-work during this adjustment period are simply routine precautions. They're looking at salt melt levels and for any evidence of bits broken off fossilized valves and canals.

Yep, now I'm one of those guys who can no longer swallow involuntarily. Plus I'm losing my hair to what I'm absorbing. It's all a trade-off. My cochlea has gotten most of its mass back. I don't bruise as easily as I used to, no matter what the dark tosses my way. The doctors say my R.E.M. states were pretty vestigial to begin with anyway; soon the last spines will drop off of their own accord.

Maybe you've seen me billowing above the covers? Maybe you've wondered what I'm revolving around? When you were a little kid, did you ever swallow a penny? You didn't feel sick, but you could feel the metal sloshing around inside you with every step? Like a loose clapper inside a cracked bell? I wish I could pretend you didn't know. Then I could shake you by your shoulder and tell you all about it.

By Joe Milazzo