I learned a new word today, bucolic. I had read the word before but the way she said it, used it, made me think the word was perfect, just like her. I feel I have to make up my mind immediately, is she perfect or is she terribly flawed - There is no inbetween. How foolish this kind of thinking is I think, and how incredibly unproductive.

Naturally, my thoughts wander to real estate. Speculating as I continue on my path to the orthodontist, I wonder how much they'd get for that, hum, I wonder how much that is worth. Living room I pass,-while I pass judgment.Could I, should I live there? I want that house, that house is nice. Nice, insipid word, rhymes with price. I hasten my pace hoping to bring a sanguine colour to my pale non-bucolic cheeks.

On the streetcar I try to see inside of as many apartment windows as possible. Just looking into the windows makes me feel like I am getting my money's worth out of the transit corporation. It's not getting to where I am going that is important it's staying where I am while I am moving, projecting my self laterally while we move linearly. Vertical integration I chuckle to myself. I've got to think better thoughts and quit comparing, I'm so critical.

I am still chastising myself as I sit in the dentist's chair at the clinic waiting for Dr. Diva to fit me for my very own custom-made bite plane. I actually can't wait to see it. I think people who wear subtle mouth gear, just a glint of silver or gold, are very attractive.

"Hi, Darren." This is what he has suggested I call him. He is after all six years younger than me. Now that is a milestone going to a dentist, well he is almost a dentist, who is younger."

"Hi, how's it going." His manner makes me feel like I'm relating to an acquaintance back in high school. He's a real keener. Quite unshakeably dull.

"How's the little one, bet he's keeping you busy" he chuckles, I roll my eyes. He has all the charm of a dentist.

"So here it is, finally. Now I sure hope this gets rid of your troubles."
I should explain that I suffer from lockjaw, XMJ as it's referred to in the biz. This is another illness that is metaphor. Because of T1VIJ I can't eat, talk properly, yawn (I'm dying for a good yawn) or perform oral sex. It all sounds a bit hysteric to me but I'd rather wear some cute mouth gear than go to see an analyst.
I anticipate liking the artificial contraption until I see this hunk of man-made moulded acrylic.

"Open up. Let's see how it fits." Dr. Diva forces the thing into my mouth, stretching and tearing the corners of my lips. In it goes, pop, snugly over my over-biten occlusion.

"Oh!" Diva moans in total satisfaction. "Those are beautiful ramps. Can you slide your teeth forward. Oh that's great, perfect."

I am aware that he is thinking that he is going to get top marks for these ramps that are stuck in my mouth. I try asking a practical question and then find out that talking with this thing in my mouth is like having a mouthful of marbles and that it is not at all, in the slightest, some cute mouth gear. This is the first time I have ever cried in a dentist's chair.

"Darren, is the problem structural or is it caused by emotional stress from living in an artificial environment where the value of life is subsumed by the daily struggle of trying to keep body and soul intact in a world that values achievement and things over happiness?"

"Your problem is definitely a structural problem." ,

"Well then you are saying that it's natural as opposed to cultural?"

"Absolutely, but it's aesthetical as well. When I'm finished with you you are going to have a prettier smile."

I bite down hard and feel momentary relief as the tension drifts * down from my jaw to my neck. Another of life's disappointments,
.
I'm at a party, my bite plane is in a jar of water at home so it doesn't dry out and flake when it's not in my still tight mouth. I'm watching this man walk away from me and I'm feeling very guilty for having just told him to shut up. I don't honestly know why I say things like that. I'm not proud of myself and I don't think uncontrollable bursts of ego are attractive. I'm privately whipping myself yet again. Maybe I'm jealous of the liquidity of his temporal mendibular joint which flaps open and shut, flowing without pain or effort obsessionally boring details of his work.

He looks at me while drawing a breath and says, "If we met for coffee would we have anything to talk about?"

The marketplace, simulacra, is television television, friends, the price of eggs..."Oh shut up, just shut your fucking mouth."

I notice that someone I have been attracted to, intensely and not so intensely for the past five years, is dancing with the girlfriend I have heard about but never seen. Now I think that there is a show being put on for my eyes only. I don't believe there can be a sexual energy like the one I am producing which doesn't get noticed by the object of the desire.

Finally, he's performing for me. I am after all standing in the shadows by the window (and there is moonlight casting a backlight on the surface of my chestnut coloured hair).

After a length of time, and he is about to leave with his partner, he comes over, as I knew he would.

"They have just published an erotic manuscript by Baudrillard."
And I say without a pause, "I'm not sure about the validity of using Baudelaire as a tool for..."

"Wrong century" he says.

Damn, damn, fuck why do I have to be so stupid. Why wasn't I listening. I'm going to have to wear that bite plane for the next five years at the rate I'm going. Still we arrange to meet and as soon as we do all desire for this person evaporates. Forever.

I smoke, that's public information. I can't find my cigarettes because I can't find my bag. I find it, always in the last place you look. I light the thing and sit down to wait. A moment later the cab honks the horn and I'm up and out the door, bags in tow. I am going to the airport. Jumping into the cab I immediately notice the no smoking sign. I drop the cigarette onto the ground as I slam the door. I imagine the cigarette burning on the sidewalk, it cuts in like an edit in a bad rock video. But in a minute I have more pressing things to think about like the driving ability of this person I've never met before. Just because he's licensed doesn't mean he won't kill me.

I suddenly seriously doubt that I am going to make it. He's tailgating within a five feet clearance of the car in front and we are travelling at 75 miles per hour. I'm really scared but I remain silent. I think that if. you think you are going to die then it can't possibly happen because death by accident can only come by complete surprise. But the driver is carrying on a conversation with me by looking me in the eye for whole sentences so it could take him by surprise and I'll be left a paraplegic. I'm too polite to say pay attention but not polite enough to refrain from eventually telling him to shut up. And sure enough we make it confirming my belief in how to avoid death by accident, just think it's going to happen all the time and it won't. I do a mental check for the bite plane.I'm flying American to Salt Lake City.

This could be the end or it could be the beginning. I finish the business that brought me to Salt Lake City and I find that I have time to spare. I'm sitting alone in my motel room. The t.v. is on and I have flipped through all the channels for the last hour. I feel connected to the collective constituency of Salt Lake. I let the t.v. stay on the most abrasive local station and start opening all the drawers in the dressers. The night table naturally has the Gideons' bible. I open it up and to my surprise I find an American $1O bill. A bonus. A nice little gift. "What can $1O in a bible mean? I start reading at the beginning, and in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth...It reads it like a novel.

I stay with it all the way to the begats and then I remembered the $1O sitting beside me like a gift. Enough of this I thought. Time to go out and experience some Salt Lake culture.

Over to the motel bar I went which happened to be a bar which offered as entertainment stripping and table dancing. I can't pretend I didn't feel anxious going into this bar alone. Let's face it you don't often see a non-working girl in a strip joint by herself. But the Gideons' had presented me with a moral challenge and I was going to test it out, AND THE PROFIT SAID "SPEND SOME OF SATAN'S MONEY".

I think the waitress is kidding me when she informs me that you can't purchase alcohol in bars you can only buy the mix. ^Veird. A bit like the activity I was just about to engage in. You can't buy sex you can only buy the image. O.k. I know from experience that images are pretty potent. How potent is mix,- alone. The concept of mix doesn't exist without alcohol. So where's the alcohol—out in the parking lot being sold from a truck of course, this is America. Am I mixing? I am after all sitting in a bar by myself. And what's my image, well my dress code says no play, at least to this crowd, short hair, no make-up, baggy jeans, loose turtle-neck sweater, sloped shoulders and clenched jaw. I've adopted an I'm here to look and not to get noticed style of dressing. Maybe that's where my tight jaw comes from, maybe I have to live a lijtle, let my hair down so to speak, loosen up. I grind (my teeth).

I go buy my vodka from the nice man in the truck. I buy two with $4 worth of Canadian quarters (my laundry is waiting at home) and I feel like I have an edge, I've pulled a fast one on him cause he didn't notice the quarters were Canadian. Back into the bar I go, a beacon orange juice acts as my territorial stake. I sit down and try to appear calm. No need to worry, no one is paying the slightest attention to me all eyes are glued to various naked bodies that are on wide open display. The spectacle overwhelms me and all traces of self-consciousness are wiped out.

I am paralysed by sensations I have never felt so strong in my life. Repulsion, mixed with a wet whine between my legs, disgust, disbelief and pounding in my chest. I look at the women and I look at their bodies and they are so beautiful in this soft smoky light. Not bucolic (like paintings) but soft and as perfect as velvet (like airbrushed photographs). This is the surface and I draw the map. I look at the customers (I can't see myself) they are at once all evil and all good. In so much need, their mouths are slightly open and relaxed like little babies and there is light shining from their eyes that looks like something akin to what you think the physical manifestation of love might look like. Sometimes the men's tongues flick out from between their teeth licking at the woman's naked flesh. I feel sick. I feel repulsed and excited. Excited because I am witnessing something that is in the process of defining the limits, how far is too far. Repulsed because it ceases to have any meaning outside of embarrassment once it goes too far. My objectivity makes my jaw ache. One woman is sitting on a table, her knees are bent straight up and her feet are on the table, she opens her legs and the man sitting one foot away closes his eyes and weeps. She smiles, reaches out and strokes his hair, then slowly closes her legs. I noticed just a glint of silver embedded in her cunt. The song is over. She removes her body from the table and makes her body walk away. Maybe it is just my own separation that I am describing.

The bite plane and flying. There are contradicting signals twisting my mouth into pain and silence. The image of a chestnut coloured horse bucking as they try to put the bit into the mouth, the bit attached to the reins. This image cuts in like an edit in a bad feminist video. Like the man said pleasure is complex, pain is simple. I would like to say the opposite but I can't, it hurts to talk, yawn, eat... I feel like wrapping my mind with the image of my body but I can't. Or wrapping the images of these beautiful bodies around me, of drowning in a sea of images, of offerings, of here, this cunt that you look at is for you and for me to rest on and look at just as long as the song can last, for however long it takes for a song to be over.
Who can resist the temptation of beauty and how far can it go before it becomes obscene, bankrupt and exploitative... It never reigns it pours.

I'm back in my hotel room, I eventually spent all of my $1O prophet. I remember that I'm going home the next day, absently I look for my keys to my home, I can't find them. I don't have keys, I am locked out and that has resonance even at this distance. I place my bite plane in my mouth, momentary relief. I know it's not natural.