KONZUKO

As she sits in a chair designed to be sat in for no more than three minutes, the x-ray of my decaying molars frozen, captured on the screen behind her, I observe my dentist’s teeth. She’s young, when you take into account the maximum lifespan of someone of her social class; Indian, or Pakistani, I can’t pinpoint exactly, and considering history, maybe it’s not necessary. She seems to try to show that she tries to care for her clients. As she gaslights me, asking if I eat a lot of sugary foods, and not just sweets and biscuits, but sugary in general, I assume fruits as part of that example - a naturally sugar rich food, and as I remind her of my daily habitual use of electronic toothbrush with fluoride toothpaste, the dentistry classic, she transitions to the part of her script where she enquires about how often I floss. I don’t. Not really. If I eat some pork, and some of the hog gets stuck in-between my teeth, I will floss that day. But generally, no, I do not, I think and ponder, and narrate in my head. It elongates an already long nighttime process. No one flosses. She then highlights that all the places in which my 5 fillings, all in the top row of mouth, are hard to reach areas that would benefit from flossing, and I wonder how, after all these years, the easy-to-use tool, that prevents tooth decay, has not been invented, and to what extent that invention not existing benefits her entire livelihood and existence, and how I have suffered, and been plundered to the tune of thousands of pounds to keep her moderately endowed, parents would be proud, charade going?

I’m home now, and some of my earliest memories of my mum was her toothaches, her many dental appointments, and her eventual habitual use of dental floss in her nighttime routine. In this television show, Scenes from a Marriage, the father uses an electronic toothbrush, and the mother, a manual. Is this a means to contrast the mechanised methodical nature of the father with the emotional vibes-vibes-vibes nature of the mother?