3-12-22 UNDER THE MASK

Masks.

We’ve worn them… and then we’ve worn them. The N95 variety that protects us from viral spores and protects everyone else from ours; these have become so commonplace we don’t even think about it. For the past two years, if we wanted to go out, we went out with masks, unless we had viewpoints that bucked against scientific data, in which case I made sure to stand at least six feet away from you.

My friend Nancy got braces just before the pandemic, and now they’re off and so are masks. Perfect timing, Nancy! I, on the other hand, am back on stage and gigging a few times a month and we are no longer required to mask up: all this just in time for me to lose a tooth. And not just any tooth, one right there in the front of my mouth.

It started when my dentist said I probably needed a root canal. So, yeah, I went in and they numbed it up and started drilling. And drilling. And drilling, until two hours later the dentist said

“I don’t think we are going to be able to complete this root canal. We’re going to have to pull the tooth and do an implant.” 

So, since we were already numbed up, I said go ahead and he yanked out that tooth and started drilling and drilling for another 2 hours until tears started squeezing out the corners of my eyes. It took two weeks for the pain to subside.

So here I am, with a toothless grin. They gave me a fake tooth to fill the space, but the base covers the roof of my mouth and dramatically alters the way I speak and sing. So I’ve been battling within to decide if I want to look bad or sound bad. I have to speak/sing at a fairly large conference next weekend and I’m trying to decide if I want to just tell them to take a good look ahead of time, try to adjust their human tendency to judge, and then just sing without the fake tooth. The problem is that “F’ and “S” and “T” come out funny sounding when a front tooth is missing. (First world problems, I know).

Anyway, it appears the base of my implant is failing and I’m headed back to the dentist in an hour. If that’s the case, they’ll have to do a bone graft, and then another implant, and it will be nine more months of this.

I didn’t think I had a big pride issue. I mean, I let myself be who I am, though like anyone else I hope to appear clean and have some measure of dignity. But I guess I have more pride than I thought.

Last December, at one of my Christmas concerts, conscious of the fact that I would be under unforgiving stage lights, I slathered on makeup, painted my lips and cheeks, and applied a set of magnetic fake eyelashes. They even looked pretty good, relatively speaking. But halfway through my concert one of them started un-attaching on the outside edge. I blinked my way through the song, and one more, until finally I confessed to the whole sold-out audience that I’d had it with these ridiculous fake eyelashes and ceremoniously plucked them off. The whole audience cheered. No pride.

In reality I think it’s not so much that I have no pride, but that I have a pretty strong need to be real. I recognize it takes a certain level of confidence to be wholly real. In the case of my on-stage eyelash removal, I felt the love and acceptance of my audience, and that empowered me to make myself comfortable at the risk of rejection. None of us wants rejection, it’s against human nature. So we hide ourselves, and live through all sorts of discomfort. This does not make us evil. It makes us human. And we must resist passing judgment against those who look meticulously put-together as much as we must resist judging pretty raw looking folk.

I’m not loving having a missing tooth right in the front of my mouth. It keeps me from smiling. It definitely makes me pause before I throw my head back in a public belly laugh. And that sort of makes me sad. So, in a strange way, I am celebrating the wearing of masks. Ones made of fiber, and ones that go deeper. Sometimes they give us courage to go out in public when we are lacking a bit of confidence. Not everybody can ignore the desire to feel accepted. Frankly, wanting to be accepted is a bit of a sign of respect to the people around us. We just tend to carry it too far.

So here ya go, unmasked, unfiltered. and thankful.

Don't you think I look a little bit like Albert Einstein?