Chapter 43: In Which I Confess I May Have X-men Mutant Powers

Yes, folks, you heard it here first. I may be an X-man mutant with superhuman powers. I recently made this shocking discovery recently and I feel perhaps like Superman must have felt as a boy growing up in rural America. I am, quite frankly, astonished. I still don’t know quite how to apply my special power to save the world, but I’m convinced I’ll find a way, because it really is quite, quite, quite extraordinary. In short, I have discovered that I Can Fall Asleep In The Dentist’s Chair While He Is Drilling My Teeth.

And, let me stress that this is with NO gas, NO happy pill, NO nothing other than a small local anesthetic. It’s not a fluke, since I did it not once, not twice, but three times in my last two hour session with the Dr Steven Travis, prosthodontist, Sweeny Todd impersonator, and financial extortionist non pareil (means, for those of you who care, without equal.) Yes, I fell asleep three times sound of that methamphetamine-
crazed-mosquito drill and the smell of burning enamel while the dental assistant tried to forcibly extract my tonsils with her vacuum suction tube. Opinions on why I am able to fall asleep so soundly in the dentist’s chair but require a horse tranquilizer to sleep in the comfort of my own bed are very welcome. Leave a comment if you have an insight that can help me.

Of course, the other good thing about the dentist, aside from discovering that I am an X-man, is that I now have a lovely gold tooth, a molar to be precise. It’s muy cool, as they say in Spain. If you care to stick your face really deep into my mouth, you will see that my gold tooth is almost luminescent with a certain zippy rapper-style street cred. And of course it may come in very useful if ever I find myself in a POW camp, having to negotiate for food, or a clean set of underwear from the camp commandant.

Some of you may have noticed the quick reference to Spain, dropped into the paragraph above. It’s not random; that’s where I am right now, with my flatmate Phil, on our way to Gay Pride in Madrid. Right now I’m on the high speed train from Sevilla to Madrid. Sevilla was wonderful; crooked little streets that you just can’t help but get lost on, a wonderful flamenco performance – I love flamenco; so much feeling and passion right in your face – as many different types of pork sausages and salami as you could ever desire, heavenly manchego cheese, the world’s third largest cathedral, (behind the Vatican and St Paul’s) and the largest Gothic building in the world. Speaking of Gothic, why is it that the crueler the society the more ornate and OTT the ornamentation? Anyone got an idea?

Prior to sere dry sleepy Spain, Phil and I spent a lovely two days in lush green bustling Hong Kong visiting my friends Francis and Jackie. They have two lovely children, and a most gorgeous penthouse apartment on the 52nd floor looking over the harbour, with it’s myriad scattered green islands and array of boats. The weather was flawless blue and I have to say it again, for the record: Hong Kong is a most beautiful, exciting, thrilling city. People who don’t like it, don’t know it.

Anyway, on my last blog, Francis commented that I’d have to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement before they’d let me join them in Hong Kong, but I didn’t, ha ha ha ha, and in a shocking error of judgment (or perhaps it was just a fit of laxity) they let me and Phil come to stay with them anyway, so now I feel entirely free to make a full and uncensored report. Before I say anything, though, let me say first that I love these people, whom I’ve known since university, when they had matching raised hairstyles that stood up so high off their skulls that my boyfriend and I used to have them around just to ensure we didn’t develop dust problems on our ceilings. Those were the Images-In-Vogue days. I died my hair black back then, once. I looked exactly like Bella Lugosi, in the Night of the Undead or something like that.

Francis races cars. And Jackie likes to argue. In fact, she’s quite extraordinary, truly – the only person in the world who can maneuver me into an argument where, out of some weird reflexive desire to be fair and considered, I end up arguing in favour of a position that I really don’t believe in. At the China Club, a lovely old colonial style restaurant where we all went for a good bye dinner, which included most fabulous Peking Duck, I found myself supporting the US in the whole Iraq issue. This is extraordinary because only a few weeks earlier I was on the other side of the exact same argument with my Sydney friend Chris from Texas, who is lovely and smart but truly a right wing nutter on the war issue. (He also loves George Bush. The only thing I can think of to excuse him on this account is that he is originally from Texas, and maybe there is something in the water or the air there that has rotted his political mind.)

Anyway, back to the China Club… What happened with Jackie disturbed me so much – the realization that I am, truly, Entirely Inconsistent In Most Aspects of my Life and that I May Be Nothing More Than a Collection of Vacuous Opinions Trotted Out as the Situation Demands – that I had to drink a lot more, and consequently I dropped my wallet under the table. I was so pissed when we left the club (in the English, not American, sense) that even though the waiter rushed after us (down 32 floors in an elevator and across 3 city blocks), I remained clueless as to why he followed us, and accosted us in the street. His poor English and my general witlessness prevented a concurrence of understanding, and so we waved him away, and it wasn’t until I went to board the train for the airport that I realized I didn’t have my wallet and Francis and I worked up a nice lather of sweat running back through the sweltering Hong Kong heat and humidity to retrieve it.

Of course, even though Jackie is exceedingly argumentative, I can’t really blame her for this incident, though I couldn’t really tell you even if I did. You see, they have an awful leverage over me in the form of a picture of me on one of their shelves, taken at their wedding party, about five gazillion years ago. When I saw this horrid reminder of how utterly gormless I was once upon a time, I felt a violent bolt of horror mixed with nausea shoot me through my very core. No picture such as this exists anywhere else, except perhaps in my mother’s archives and I have reasonable hopes of eliminating those at least. Francis and Jackie’s, however, is there, on their shelves, for public viewing, and let me tell you: it ain’t pretty. As Phil said when he saw it, “God! Oh My God! Whooeee! What a geek you were!”

With that I leave you. Except to say that I've also updated my How I Gave Birth To a Novel Blog, in which I posted three short stories, a thriller, a comedy and a fantasy that I wrote recently. You can access them by the link at the side.

Big kiss to you all.