Revelation

When I worked at Peet’s, I would often take a person’s order, and while I was making the drink I’d ask that same person, “Can I get something started for you?”

I have a real problem remembering faces.

Jack is very gracious to me when we watch movies, and I have to pause every five minutes to ask, “Wait… I’m so confused. Is that the new lover or the old lover?”

And Jack will be like, “THE OLD LOVER IS WHITE. THE NEW LOVER IS BLACK. HOW CAN YOU NOT KEEP THEM STRAIGHT?”

And I’m like, “They’re not straight?!? But what about the woman? Or was it two women? I’m so confused!”

Beyond just not remembering faces, I’m not a visual person. I don’t have a mind’s eye, and my real eyes barely work (contact prescription: -7.5). Recently a friend tried to teach me how to wear makeup, and she was talking about rose shades and berry shades and bluish browns and greenish purples and I was like PLEASE just give me a tube of lipstick that doesn’t make me look like I forgot to sleep last night.

I’m intimidated by all things painted, drawn, sketched, sculpted, or visually representative of something else. This is one of the reasons I’ve never read the last book of the Bible. Revelation is just too visual for me. (The other reason is the people who love Revelation. Or more precisely, people who love thinking that Revelation is about them. You know what I’m talking about.)

So when I saw “Apocalyptic Literature” on the syllabus for my New Testament class, I was intrigued. I was pretty sure no one at Mars Hill would claim that the European Union was a sign of the End Times.

At the beginning of the 3-hour class, the TA, Rob, talked about features of apocalyptic literature. Then, for the second half of class, he turned off the lights and read the book of Revelation, out loud, from beginning to end, with no interpretation or commentary.

Image after image bombarded us. Four-headed creatures and fire and swords. Sounds of thunder and weeping and rushing waters. An earthquake. Shining white linen with golden sashes. Pus-filled sores. A woman in labor and a dragon waiting open-mouthed at the end of her vagina to devour her child.

And it was too much. My poor imagination has not been worked so hard in years. It tried to keep up, but like a rusty old bike chain it snapped and got tangled in itself. And whenever it became too much, whenever I was tempted to go get a drink of water or check my email or stand up and beg Rob for mercy–whenever I thought I would burst into tears if my senses were strained any further, one of Revelation’s horrific creatures would cry,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!”

As if they, too, were full to the brim and begging for mercy.

Why teeth are the new boobs.

These are, in my opinion, life’s most difficult tasks:

- Making “Barista” sound like a dignified career

- Proving that you’re mature enough to get married, and yes, Mom and Dad and Slew of Older Siblings, I know that marriage will not “make me happy” or solve all my problems.

- Realizing that marriage does not make you happy or solve all your problems.

- finding a dentist like the one from your childhood.

The dentist I went to from ages 4 to 18 was so nice.  He always told me I was a “good helper!” when I opened wide.  He used novocaine to “put the cavity bugs to sleep.” He had 8 different rolls of stickers to choose from at the end of my visit.

Now, I hate all dentists.  They floss rubber dams into my teeth and they laugh when I say novocaine makes my heart race.  And at the beginning of every visit, no matter how many times I’ve seen them before, they ask, “do you want your front teeth fixed?”

I chipped my first adult tooth pretty much the moment it came in.  And in the good old decades of the 80’s and 90’s society wasn’t so obsessed with WHITE! STRAIGHT! TEETH!  But now every dentist asks me if I want my front tooth fixed almost before he says hello.

And I always say no, because I want to limit the number of ways in which I am Not Good Enough.  I think teeth have become the new boobs.  There’s a “right” size, shape, and color that everyone wants but very few people have.  And I like my chipped front tooth.  It’s the mark of my childhood playfulness.

So I saw my fourth Seattle dentist, and my least favorite of them all, today.  He is a good-old-boy “Doctor Knows Best” kind of dentist.  I had to constantly interrupt him to ask what he was doing or talking about, like, which tooth is “Number 5″ is and what’s wrong with it?  Or, why am I being scheduled for another appointment?

But my insurance is ending this month and I didn’t have time to find a new dentist, and I had three cavities to fill, and he was going to fit me with a new night-guard to stop me from grinding my teeth at night.

So I went to my hopefully last appointment with this dentist.  He numbs me up (ignoring my whimpers) and before I know it, he’s scraping my chipped front tooth!  So I interrupt him, AGAIN, and ask if that’s the one with the cavity.

“No,” he replies,”but I need your front teeth to be even for the nightguard to stay in place.  I’m going to fill the one with the chip in it.”

“Oh!” I said, “I didn’t know that.  I’m not sure if I want that.”

“Why wouldn’t you want it?” he asked, perplexed.  Then, with a mocking sneer, “It’s not like I’m taking away your personality.”

I sat for half a minute and weighed the options while he looked at me skeptically: Night-guard, or familiar front teeth?  But the real internal debate was much more familiar:  Honesty, or Acquiescence?  I so rarely err on the side of speaking up for myself, especially not when a middle-aged “professional” man is looming over me.

In my haze, I decided that the night-guard was important, and I let him “fix” my teeth.  But I was sad that I wasn’t courageous and outspoken.  I’m always sad about that.

My front teeth now look like they’re from a magazine.  They are so STRAIGHT! and EVEN!, and as ridiculous as it sounds, I feel like I’ve lost something.  It helps that Jack can’t tell the difference, and probably no one can.  But I feel like I’m walking around with over-sized celebrity teeth, the kind that people make fun of for being *too* white and straight.  Like the dazzlingly perfect scar of my compromise.