26.8.09

sneak re-peek

Two women on the train are talking in front of me. One’s holding a peach and she’s given up on her looks – grey short hair, no make-up, fat arms and legs in a pink tank top. Three stud holes in her ears make me think she’s had somewhat of a wilder life. Either that, or she is nearing fifty and unfolding her “before I die” checklist. I don’t really understand the aesthetics of many stud holes anyhow. You’ve seen one... The two women are talking about their dentist, Dominique. Apparently he’s very gentle. “my kids used to argue about going in to see him first,” says the other women. Little thinner, but with the same I don’t give a shit attributes – shorn hair, peppered with grey and a yellow tank top with with jeans and white, generic sneakers. She has taught skin though. Makes me think that she doesn’t work, she looks so well rested and unsacaved by the world. I feel more haggard at 18 than I’m sure she ever felt in her whole fifty or so years.
“He’s been so busy lately” continues three ear studs. “So busy, that he got that new dental hygienist.”
“Oh yes,” says taught skin, “isn’t she just gorgeous. You’d think she goes out all the time, but all she does is just sit around. She told me that. She said she doesn’t even go out to parties.”
“Really! But she’s so young and pretty.”
“I know, I couldn’t believe it either.”
They continue to talk about Dominique the dentist, how caring, how calm and good with children, how funny. You’d think they were auctioning him off.
“Oh he’s been so busy though,” repeats taught skin. “He doesn’t even say hello or hug me anymore…he always does that.”
“He never hugged me,” says ear studs. “Ever. I don’t think he ever hugged me. No, actually he has.”
“I was also invited to his wedding.”
“What! I didn’t know you guys were that close. I didn’t even know he had a wife, I thought he was single. I was hinting at setting him up with my niece last year. Now I just feel like an idiot.”
“But his wife left him since”
“What! How come I don’t know any of this.”
“Maybe you never asked.”
“Isn’t that a weird thing to do? Hug someone, but never tell them your personal issues?”
“maybe he wanted to keep them secret. I’ve been going to him for twenty years.”
“My kids have been going to him for twenty years."
“Maybe you should have talked to him about this stuff. What do you guys talk about?”
“I don’t know, the weather, the news, my new pool, the price of teeth bleach, regular everyday stuff.”
“Well maybe you should have dug a little deeper. We talk about family a lot.”
“At the dentist? Like while you are in the chair?”

Then, taught skin, in her ragged mental state, looks at me strange. I hadn’t noticed I had been staring at her coldly. Almost transfixed by the unraveling hypothet of a relationship she hadn’t known had been imagined.