Sunday 30 October 2011

a bit of short fiction this time: ‘Dried, Chewy Squid Snacks’ (Inspired by traditional Korean bar food; written May 2008)


Dried, chewy, squid snacks; fermented and rotting vegetative matter; trapped strands of meat; ground peanuts. The inside of someone’s mouth is a place most people never want to see in too much close detail.

Why dentistry? His father was a surgeon; his mother a psychiatrist; his older sister had bagged gynaecology. One could say, his options in life had all chomped shut a long time ago.

No matter how far we are from what we would really like to be doing; no matter the mundanity of our work we must all look to find some meaning in what we do.

So, looking into his patients' mouths he no longer thought of the people they were part of. Instead the mouth was a degenerate, alien world; the saliva an ocean tide rising up the cliff edges of teeth; the tongue a writhing mollusc that had been disturbed inside its shell.

Lying in the bathtub at the end of the day, he found it difficult to shut out his work. The cold enamel sides reminded him of huge teeth which trapped him inside a cave's salivatory depths.

For instance, one night, a couple of hours after his usual bath, with a couple of
glasses of single-malt whiskey warming his breath, whilst kissing Sandra, (34, Human Resources Manager of 'Wimpy' South Western Division), he imagined his tongue not as his tongue, but as a solo muscular embodiment of himself slipping inside of Sandra’s mouth.

He was unequivocal about it, not prepared to miss anything as he clinically and systematically explored her every crack and possible cavity. The plaque along the ridges of her teeth aided his grip as he climbed, slipped and slid in a fantasy of dental rock-climbing.

Until, he remembered what he was really doing and pulled out of Sandra’s mouth so suddenly he almost bit her, prematurely ejaculating the only explanation he could, (and not for the first time)-

‘I’m sorry, it’s not you; it’s your teeth.’

4 comments:

  1. think i should re-write it and make it worse....

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  2. Very funny! If only there was a convenient acronym to indicate my noisy mirthful reaction to the above story.

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  3. Has blogging closed for party season?

    ReplyDelete