IN THE LABYRINTH

1 2 7 R I N T H E L A B Y R I N T H H E N R Y S L O S S For fluttering legs the practiced nurse tap-taps the shoulder of her supine charge, channeling into empty Morse the pooling, overflowing pain. Well-spoken, tall, of Czech extraction, the oral surgeon goes to work after a thoughtful sixth injection: back molar grasped, tugged at, loosed, jerk. Thus bringing to an end for now long weeks of (bungled?) dental care: that pricey gold crown capped (who knew?) what needed root canal to cure. That too failing, the human costs mounting, a specialist remarks a fatal fissure and insists the tooth come out: You can’t fix cracks. I didn’t feel it when it came from my jaw, achingly agape, but saw feet fall that I’d seen comb the air as in shock therapy. ii. Certain intriguing details keep coming back to the convalescent, hint at a labyrinth’s inscape to be eschewed. But I just can’t. 1 2 8 S L O S S Y The nurse’s whispering scrubs, pleatless behind and high on the full thigh, brushing my arm – erotic lees beneath the veritas of thought. The jaunty specialist’s reminder, o≈ce-wide, that his Fridays hinge on ‘‘the girls’ mood,’’ what they’ll endure in being delayed. ‘‘‘Wretches hang’!’’ I pointed out through cupped cheek, sheer helplessness. Probe in hand, aloof (proof against Pope), he hummed with Cher the chorus from ‘‘Life after Love.’’ The blunt technician, her mask down: ‘‘Discomfort is a sort of tithe patients pay. Take your Vicodin. The dentist’s job is to save teeth.’’ iii. Dickensian if not Dantesque vignettes I read as undermining authority, the fervent task of the hurt child seeking hurt’s meaning. (Found in adult incompetence, misunderstanding, plain ill-will; the pain and powerlessness of patients may have evoked that child.) Meanwhile I keep seeing my feet flying and feeling what I couldn’t feel, knowing as body knows – the yin to the mind’s yang perhaps. Awful. I couldn’t feel the su√ering there were sure evidences of: am I, is self, do my acts spring from unfelt feelings’ potent life? I N T H E L A B Y R I N T H 1 2 9 R One mustn’t mention Freud these days, the phony. But how dear, how dear. To think of adults as the dues paid the wrung child. What an idea! iv. Should that be ‘wronged’? That’s what I felt and, hurt or pained, what I feel now; I want to blame someone, find fault with higher-ups. Not much is new. I think of injury (perceived) less grown out of than grown into, and hear strong feeling’s speech derived from child-and-parent Esperanto. Don’t those ham actors – ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ – still dominate the murky play of forces in the adult deed? Isn’t an adult a child’s plea For help? Isn’t all pain referred from childhood or referable there? (Sorry. This is what I’d feared: getting mad, acting like a baby.) Hurt and anger, anger and hurt. How to undo the tangled duo? How to convince the seething heart to bid the teething child adieu? v. Now, then. After ten days my mouth’s state stops preoccupying thought; the referred pain ends too, the months of keen misleading clues gone through. The jury’s out – dining no doubt, having condemned the ‘‘wretches’’ (ii) – on the first dentist; I’m in debt to him in one sense, maybe two. 1 3 0 S L O S S Y Mine may have been a trying case, the truth about the tooth elusive; should we blame people just because they can’t save what they’ve tried to save? Isn’t trying what parents do? Children perhaps cannot be spared the tragedy, the comedy of errors they themselves inspired. Who turned two cool fun-loving dudes into decisive ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’? Who still turns painful episodes into love’s timeless pantomime? vi. The minotaur remains to be explained, as does the sexy nurse...