Relentless - Tumblr Posts
Come Hell or Fucking Dental Floss
"This is not fucking happening."
It was seven o’clock at night and I was staring at my reflection in the mirror. He looked kinda cut (my friends tell me more than kinda, somehow I can’t quite seem to believe them) he had on some cute shorts and he was dripping with shower leftovers. I’d have thought that I looked pretty sexy, if only there wasn’t a piece of dental floss lodged between my lower two left incisors.
"Fucking derp…aaaaaaaa"
I opened my mouth wide as I plunged the tooth with my finger like a cyclops in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” trying to catch the male lead as he hides between two rocks. I didn’t get my eye poked out and my treasure stolen, but I otherwise experienced the same level of success. I impotently dragged my fingernail across my teeth trying to snag the waxy, shredded bit of string and got nothing more than little wisps of it. Twenty minutes of derping like a Harryhausen monster, to no avail.
"It doesn’t really hurt, if I just sort of brush it into the tooth it’s not noticeable. Fuck it I just need to do this some other night, someone up there is trying to tell me something."
Nope. Not this time. I’ve spent enough nights settling for something that “will do.” That wasn’t going to be tonight.
"I know I own some fucking tweezers," I mumbled as I rummaged through a cardboard box full of bathroom goods. It didn’t take long, I made the deliberate decision to own tweezers with red handles for just this purpose and I drug them out of the box and held them aloft like Link finding the Boss Key.
I walked back into the bathroom as though I’d just solved the Water Temple and opened my mouth again. There it was still, putting unpleasant pressure on my teeth like I was at the orthodontist and making my lower incisors look greener and more muppet-like than ever before.
Wouldn’t do for tonight, I had a mission and I needed to look right for it. I teased one part of the string out from the lingual side of the dental arcade and reached in with the tweezers. I got hold of it and tugged like a cobra striking at a mongoose. I brought away a little shred of it. Fucking Riki-tiki-tavi piece of string was wrecking all my eggs.
"Fuck! How can this literally be like pulling fucking teeth!"
It was, in fact. It was like I was learning goddam dentistry for one night on the town. It made sense though, this was too important. I spent another half hour trying to coax the floss out of my teeth with the tweezers.
"No dice huh. Maybe I really am staying in tonight after all."
Not an acceptable answer. “Alright, here we go’” I thought, “I’m that idiot asking the internet how to get floss out of his teeth.”
Made sense really. I’d spent hours googling all week to get ready for this objective, I’d interpreted a dozen different scenarios and how they’d fall out and what I’d say for each one, bounced my line off my friend. I had identified via internet 5 events suitable to propose in the next three weeks, if scheduling made the first, second or third choices unworkable. Scheduling wasn’t going to be a thing, this would be a yes or no question. I had over-prepared and meticulously planned, because that is what I do when I have a goal.
To be stymied because a piece of 1.99 string from Kroger didn’t get the goddam memo? I think not.
With the internet knowledge in hand I left my desk and went back to the bathroom. I took a large length of floss from the dispenser and tied a knot in it as had been suggested. Then, I set the string between the affected teeth and gently, carefully pulled it through the gap.
"Fuck."
It didn’t work. But relentless people don’t accept “can’t be done” so I tied a bigger, double knot in the string and pulled it through again. It was a little painful, it was difficult and it was scary for just a second and I feared the possibility of literally ripping a tooth out of its socket. Not a great way to spend 8pm, let me tell you.
It’s the only scenario that I hadn’t prepared for- I’d thought of “what if he says no” or “what if he’s talking to someone right now” and I’d thought of “what if he’s just not into you?” I was cool with all those possibilities. I wasn’t latching my sense of happiness on asking one guy out on one date, I just needed to ask. I wasn’t an impoverished student living at my mom’s place anymore and I could shoot for the moon, I was entirely prepared to lose some astronauts in the process. What I was not willing to accept was failure to launch.
I took a deep breath, set the floss with the larger knot between my teeth again and began gently tugging at it. Like a bell had gone off and there was such a thing as quittin time for inconveniences, the bit of floss slid out of my teeth and off to whatever wild and wacky Saturday night it had in store. Most likely hittin on the honeys in the bottom of my rubbish bin.
By the time I found him, I’d ended out spending the evening talking to some friends and walking High street in intermittent rain with them, which was okay because my shirt was white and evidently it just got a little more devil-may-care looking as I got more and more wet as I actually got complimented on it. I hit a couple spots where I figured I could find him, no luck.
I was about resigned to going home and watching a chick flick in defeat (Married Life, yeah it’s a chick flick but this is me, I like em with attempted murder) as I was walking away from the last bar I’d figured to look at- which given that I’d only looked at two was pretty weak but whatever. They had some atrocious cover to get in and I wasn’t desperate, just determined, I’d just try this some other night.
Then, as I was walking away, it dawned on me: he had been here. He’d been here and he’d found out about the atrocious cover and he hadn’t paid it either. I saw the incident in my head, a “fuck that” grimace and wandering off with friends in tow.
Wandering to where? Well he was gay and in Columbus and trying to party like a drunken 19 year old, so if Axis wasn’t gonna happen…
Union. “Of course,” I thought as it came into view. “No guarantee but I’ll just make a pass through, one last college try for the night and then I’ll go home and wait to do this later.”
It was crowded as always, Union is the meat market bar in this town and it’s always slammed with at least 120 fags and their friends, drunken straight girls and awkward straight guys trying to look like they're cool with all of this so their date will think they’re not a homophobic tool. A for effort guys, you’re not the losers on Park street, you go home with your head up high if that skanky number in the cocktail dress turns you down.
It was about 11:30 but the time I found him and he was drunk the drunk of partying gay boys. Sort of falling over, participating in de facto karaoke, and dancing with his (friends?) (guy he’s seeing?) (holy shit abort this is an awful idea Adam).
"No, Other Adam, tonight I’m doing this."
And I did. Now there’s an entirely real possibility that the “done, whenever you want to” I got from my drunken quarry won’t be binding on his sober counterpart. Hell, five bucks says he doesn’t even remember it tomorrow (today, it’s 7AM now) or that if he does he’ll still blow me off, but that’s not what matters.
I went out to lie a monster of a crush in its grave and that’s exactly what I did, come hell or fucking dental floss.
