Untimely #9 - Norman Mailer Toothache Nightmare

For a week and a half, he had been forced to starve himself. Two teeth less sat in his mouth than before the operation and their absence meant that he could not chew a thing. He had been excommunicated from the delicious, awkward wonders of gnawing on bones or of forcing great boulders of meat and potatoes down his gullet. He had been posted out into the bitter loneliness of the Soup Gulag. Since his arrival he had been forcing himself to slurp and suck and struggle his way out, desperate to better a lightly coated piece of bread. And what delight that bread delivered. It was a madman’s first kill. It was divine inspiration. It was a lightning rod that pierced to his very core; a force that punched his soul in one ear and screamed threats into the other until it finally got the message, leapt up, ran out and got on the road. That week and a half had nearly done for him, but now the bread drove him on. Now he front-toothed his way through soft pasta with nothing sauce, hacked at ham with his tongue and his pre molars, and plain bled his way through sausage patties with fried eggs and home fries. There was no sense of enjoyment, just the sheer determination of a man who will not have things taken from him. On the twelfth night after the operation, he almost tore his fading stitches anew. He could feel his very jaw bucking at the feat it was being made to perform, the horse so sure the jump was too huge, veering away from the ridiculousness of the beef burger before him, but he would not submit. A final wriggle of the jaw while he attempted to flatten the slavering monster between his hands, and in it went. The feel of the fat coating his remaining teeth, the way the seeds of the bun instantly sought out and tunnelled into the last gaps left by the removal, and, most of all, the pain endured in the tasting of that ground flesh and gristle finally brought a smile to his face.

His long journey back to life was over. He had come home and now he could eat anything he chose to. The world was his oyster and he would slap it in a roll with some hotsauce and it would be gone in two. A champion.