Now for the surprising intersection of the Arbiter and “white trash”! I kind of don’t want to talk about it, but it’s a part of my story, so here goes.
Deep breath.
Remember the “one other significant appearance issue which I will speak of another time”?
This is that time.
I’ve spoken of how poor my family was growing up. One thing I don’t recall from those days is an emphasis on dental hygiene. I don’t think as kids we were ever taken to the dentist – at least I don’t ever remember it. I don’t even remember being made to brush my teeth, like, at all.
Even so, my dental issues didn’t really start until my mid-20s. At the time, I was working as banquet set-up for a local hotel – my job was to set up all the tables, chairs, and more for each event, then break it all down after. The pay didn’t break the bank.
I started to find cavities, and things went downhill quickly from there. Tooth by tooth, over the next few years, the cavities spread, dental cracks developed, fragments broke off. Piece by piece, I lost my teeth.
I feel so ashamed for my ignorance of the time. I want to scream at my younger self, “Do whatever it takes! Go to the dentist! Find a way to pay for it! Ask for help!”
But my younger self merely endured. There was a lot of dental pain, of course. I took to sucking on ice cubes to numb it. Maybe if I had been taught the value of dental hygiene from the start, I would have seen this for the calamity is was, instead of just trying to tough it out. Not that toughing it out was easy. I spent at least one night writhing on the floor of my little cheap bungalow in pain, wishing I was dead. But I got through it.
At one point, my mom became aware of my issues and offered to pay for some dental visits, and though I took her up on it, it was far too late. Most of my teeth were too far gone to save. The dentist extracted the remaining broken ones, leaving me with only six teeth left, all clustered in the lower front – my four lower front teeth, and the incisors on each side.
It made surprisingly little practical difference. I was able to adjust my speaking to still pronounce my t’s and d’s with my tongue against my upper palette instead of my missing top front teeth. I couldn’t eat tough, hard, or chewy food, but then again, I never had. I adjusted and accommodated.
But I learned not to smile – only grin. And I felt, I knew, that I was somehow now a lesser person – a man without teeth. All the comedians jokes about the subject showed me that. I had irrevocably been placed into the designation of “white trash” by society.
At one point I did of course explore dentures, but as luck would have it, I have a sensitive gag reflex that wouldn’t tolerate making the mouth cast, let alone wearing dentures. And implants, which would have been ideal, were priced way out of reach, even after I started working tech.
A few month before I became a Quantum, I went from six teeth to five and a half. That’s right, I lost half of one of my incisors in one unlucky bite.
Maybe I should blame myself, society certainly does. But I was caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of receiving no modeling or guidance on the subject growing up (likely due to our poverty) and then as an adult not understanding how critical dental care is – combined with no financial ability to provide it for myself anyways.
When you think of it, this is a real, living example of how a society’s bullshit fantasies have horrible consequences. I think it was John Steinback who said, “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
Idiots.
Of course it was the wealthy and their GOP pets who spread that lie, “Don’t tax the rich, because you won’t want to pay those taxes when it’s your turn!”
But it’s never our turn.
Had I been born into any other civilized country, I would have gotten the dental care I needed, regardless of my ability to pay. But in America, it’s every person for themselves, and fuck you, I’ve got mine, and don’t you dare take any of mine to help the unfortunate! If someone is poor, they obviously are either lazy or stupid, and don’t deserve to be taken care of.
The one-percenters are often vile, but worse are the deplorable half of the 99% who enable the greedy rich to victimize them, by voting for the 1%’s political pets over and over. They even elected the clearly unfit Dominic King as president.
If anyone deserves to be vilified by society, it’s the poor conservatives victimizing not just themselves but the rest of us with their inability to see bullshit for what it is.
If you want to know why the Arbiter gave up on democracy, now you know.
But prior to all this Quantum stuff, I was just a guy in America struggling to get by, with a core need for emotional and physical intimacy.
And a mouth that was the final absolute guarantee that I would never be permitted to fill that need.
They say that having a gun in the household increases the odds of suicide dramatically. I know that’s true, because on more than one occasion if I could have simply given up by pulling a trigger, I know I would have.
Before all this Quantum stuff, I’d flirted with the idea of suicide on and off over the years. Usually my misery was just shy of being enough to conquer my fear of death.
But occasionally the misery dipped lower and my pain rose higher and, for just a few minutes, I was actually ready to say, fuck it.
Add a gun to the equation, and I’m just not here on this planet anymore. But without the gun, the minutes pass and my mood changes just enough to not want to die.
It’s a good thing that there is no god, because if there was a god with a plan who made me need and crave the companionship I was denied, then I would have to focus my Arbiter powers on it. (Or him or her, as you prefer.)
I thank my powers for many things, not the least of which is the ability to make a difference in the world, but one of the greatest gifts they have given me – apart from immortality – is my teeth back.