by Quentin Cockburn Esq
Went to a party the other day. It was for an old family friend. He was the administrator, (sort of governor) for the Northern Territory. A real-life Poo-bah. The evening was excruciating. People and conversation defined by what school did you go to? And then with stifling boredom, polite conversation endured somewhere between small talk and interrogation. I suppose it was all they had left beyond the tissue of respectability. As I left I was collared by his daughter, she could’ve been beautiful, but middle aged respectability and a lifetime of academia had denied her that. She was spark-less. Christ, I had to get out of there! Yet in the back of my mind there was something, sinister, disturbing, it was the ghost of a John Wyndham Novel stirring within me.
Then, in a flash I got it! They all had PERFECT TEETH!!
Realisation hit me. I was now firmly on the outer, ‘Nice people’ have perfect teeth. They obsess about orthodontics. They are the standard bearers of the campaign bordering on the hysterical proclaiming that imperfect teeth will shorten your life. Statistics prove those with imperfect teeth will most likely to lead to a predisposition to heart attacks, diabetics, pleurisy, rickets, aneurism, syphllis, lumbago. The list is endless, the point all consuming, it says, “You shall be punished for not having perfect teeth, you shall be ostracised, and struck off the “decent persons register”.
What bullshit! Of course people with imperfect teeth are liable to figure highly in the death statistics. For the simple reason, people with imperfect teeth are POOR. Poor people die at an earlier age than wealthy ones. And with the current orthodontics bill at $8k and counting for my daughter, (who MUST NEVER have imperfect teeth) the cost to society? I wonder. Food getting stuck in the crevices, the tendency to bathe the listener in a fine mist, and the debilitating requirement to feel self-conscious. I ask, is it worth it?
My father had grossly distorted teeth, it reminded me of tank traps, an incorrectly sharpened bush saw, a triceratops in profile. Theres a sense of it on rustic bridges, the jagged serrated profile of rocks, part defensive, part utilitarian. With Dad there’s an excruciating sense of un-corrected bloody mindedness. You see, my Dad, imperfect in so may ways, believed straight teeth were affectation. He passed this conviction onto me. A gift you might say.
Once, all individuals in society had imperfect teeth. On trams I marvelled at the gold teeth, the clackers, the gummy embrasures of the old, afflicted, life-worn. Teeth descriptive of a real person to define and delight. More engaging than fingerprints to distinguish personality, the visual DNA from the masses. I’m enthralled by ancient newsreels. A favourite, the rescuing of the BEF from France. Smiling at the camera, a cavalcade of imperfection, gaps, and rotted, by wear, life, experience. ‘In khaki we we are a mass, but when we smile, and give the thumbs up, for Britain, for mums and dads, for the kiddies back home, we are individuals.
I imagine that those newsreels transported back to the U.S, repelled their American audiences, “How can those limeys clutch victory in defeat with teeth like that?” I think that alone precluded Americas entry into the war by two and a half years. I believe that famous photograph of the general executing the Viet Cong spy, with a bullet to the head, was more instrumental in shocking the American public into a realisation of the horrors of war, it conflicted like nothing else, because the general and the victim, had teeth more crooked than the Mighty Mekong.
We are now all Americans. Imperfect teeth a symbol of inner defeat, you shall be humbled by allowing yourselves such neglect, such abrogation of self. And so we live in a society of the brain dead. Moment obsessed, the consumer, and every one of us is encouraged to do the same. There’s social pressure and conformity, we pretend that we’re rugged individualists. In reality we’re all just in-dentured slaves to standardisation, uniformity and mediocrity.
A representation of a proper party.
Guests, resplendent to be seen, sans orthodontia
