Notes from the Upper West Side. A novel by Dan Wrench. Chapter 64. Ball Teeth.
Right after Fat-Fern volunteered to be Admiral Ball Z's coach for the next three weeks, I went out and joined a gym. It flashed across my brain to care about how Junior was going to react when she saw the added expense on the MasterCard bill, but I ignored the thought. Pushed it down into the purgatory of ignored objections, objections I deal with later. Right now, right now my gut told me I had to join a gym yesterday.
Sometimes when I have a decision to make or some other chore that feels urgent but also seems like something I might put off if I think about it too much, I tell myself the alternative is... Okay. This is a little rough for me to admit, but I imagine the alternative is growing ball teeth. Swear to the hypothetical god I think I might believe in sometimes this really works and you boys reading this feel free to try it yourselves.
Imagine you wake up in the morning and you feel like somebody punched you in the balls and the feeling doesn't go away all day or even the next day. So you see your doctor and he takes some x-rays, then he calls you into his office and shows you the x-ray if you're scrotum and there it is. A little tooth, maybe two. And they're getting bigger.
The doctor says in an extra low voice that means this is serious business. Then he says, I'll text you the name of a good ball of dauntess this afternoon. Make the earliest appointment you can. Ever since I was a kid and I had something I dreaded doing or I was about to overthink something, all I had to do was remember the ball teeth and bone.
Whatever it was I had to do, it got done. I didn't have to worry about the ball of dauntess then texting until a few years ago. Hey, you get older, you adapt, it's called maturity. Like I said, it started when I was a kid.
I was just entering puberty and I had to go to my first dance. You know the dance I mean, the one that the gym, the one put together by parents and teachers. I was 13 years old and standing there and pressed bell bottom jeans and shirt with zenie stripes that looked like they needed the word pow! Written somewhere.
And I was scared shitless of walking up to some girl and asking her to join me while we jerked our bodies around in public. The night before the dance I saw this horror movie on TV and right after that I had this dream I guess he would call a nightmare. And somewhere out of this jumble of movie dream I ended up with a vision of ball teeth. Anyway, I was in the gym of my junior high and like I said scared shitless of asking a girl to dance when I got this idea that my fear of talking to chicks was giving the cells and mice grow to them to go ahead to turn into teeth.
But the only way to stop them was to walk over to some chick and ask her to dance. And it worked! I didn't care if I got shot down just as long as I didn't start growing ball teeth. There was this girl at the dance who I remembered from some place like English class or maybe the cafeteria and she brought this parasol with her.
No kidding, a bright yellow parasol. We danced. She seemed really grateful and left the parasol in the corner. Now she sells ceramic dildos on Etsy.
So a million years after the dance in the gym on the day I met up with Fern, right after I met up with her I went over to the Equa Balance building on 52nd Street to join the gym. Just when I could hear my brain making a roar of excuses for not going in I paused on the sidewalk for a second and leaned against the warm bricks and closed my eyes and pictured these little incisors growing with brainless and biteiness in the tissue of my nuts. The next thing I knew I was inside the gym giving my credit card to some girl and an Equa Balance t-shirt. I just know that one day probably on my deathbed when I'm wondering why Sam and Harry and Junior are too busy picnicking and binging Netflix to keep their daddy company.
I'd have one huge regret in life and that one huge regret would be that I didn't think more often for the ball teeth. See, I've chigged out plenty of times in my life. But it isn't because the ball teeth don't do the job when I think of them. It's because I don't think of them enough.
They just don't go across my brain. So like I said, I imagine myself lying on my deathbed some awful day and as my eyes close I'm telling myself one thing and that one thing is not. I should have hugged Junior more or I should have taken the boys on trips to Disney places or I should have visited San Francisco before people started shitting in the streets. Nope, I'll be lying there chewing my lip and mumbling.
I should have thought of a ball teeth. So I didn't care what Junior was going to say about my pricey gym membership. I was acting on a categorical imperative. A moral absolute, a directive, a fiat.
This is your first time in a gym. Grind the guy showing me the ropes when I got into the gym proper. As a matter of fact, I said, it is. Heck that, you laugh.
I mean don't sweat it, Bobby Jack. Everybody has a first day. But you're going to want to come back with some jump-togs. You can buy some great gear here, but my Rico, get your own sneaks.
We carry a limited line. Thanks, man. I can't do anything today anyway. My shift starts in a few.
I get cackled. Spent the last half hour getting a blowjob. I thought that little confidence about the blowjob might inspire some camaraderie between us two men. But instead of giving me a little chuckle or an all-out laugh or a look that said I was pretty fucking cool, he gave me this revolted look like he was in a religion where blowjob was the guy whose name you could never ever say unless he wanted to burn in the furnaces of hell forever.
Okay. He said, well, next time you're here ask for me and I'll get you started. Sounds good. I said, should I ask for the guy with the red hair and glasses?
Terry. He said, he didn't crack a smile. I gave up on the whole camaraderie thing right then. Fuck this guy.
I thought. Notes from the upper west side is a work of fiction. The people depicted in this work do not exist. Notes from the upper west side.
Copyright 2013 to 2018. By Dan Wrench.