The Tooth (Round 11)

Let's workshop this poem about how a son would prank his inebriated father, tormenting the man on physical and mental and emotional levels as a way to feel in control (in an out-of-control milieu).

scent of the day: Oud Rex, by Ensar Oud

First wear

this opens so much like cola/ I can only imagine how well EO 4 nails the cola aroma since cola is the actual intention of that fragrance. / rum-and-coke mix style of oud, with leathery tobacco atmosphere / rum cola spritzed with rose water / amouage boundless tobacco cola, albeit replacing the juicy-gourmand citrus zing (blood orange, elemi, ginger) with a bracing-bitter green citrus (yuzu, grapefruitm frankincense) and coming off in the more molassasy way of Lonestar Memories / leather coozie around the rum-and-coke drink spritzed with rose-water aromatics and very subtle tuberose-clove camphor / saffron leather gets creamier and more tobacco-like as the cola fades / like a richer—oudier, more elaborate, and perhaps even tarrier—Lonestar Memories with a vegetal dose of Maruyama in mid life before drying down to a castoreum leather with a tobacco-hay muskiness similar but bested by Prin’s Varuek and definitely by Prin’s Loup / In terms of western feeling, it is not as western as Lonestar (which is quintessential Route 66 Americana) nor as eastern as the Prins (often, because of florals and medicinal touches especially, having an Asian feel)—it is, rather, decidedly European, which I believe is Ensar’s intent. / This seems as if it were built precisely for the YouTuber Ramsey / Ramsey has never tried this (I do not believe), but I know he would enjoy its musky classical leathery-tobacco feel.

*Worked all over this today. I feel that this is now a complete draft. Often comic but with violent undercurrents, I like how the speaker is both amused and damaged. That creates a morally complicated voice that is actually true to my experience. For as I said in earlier drafts, this is pretty much a true story. And as I read it it has my dying in laughter every time.—Rest in peace, Dad!

The Tooth

1

The snap-sizz of a match, the rasp-click of a lighter—amens
like these were peanut shells next to the crack-fizz of a can.
Five-six and balding since twenty, my dad would torch up
a Newport 100 from the embered stump of the last—blazing
through them like my thumb along the black beads he held 
in his casket. “Daddy’s got what they call an ‘oral fixation,’”
so he would grin at my coughs: a confession made contract.
But the beer, that bothered me most. “Daddy’s got a thirst.”

My nagging tears futile, his swear-on-me promises to quit
the guzzle broken too many times—a self-distracting thirst
to fuck with my father, a fierce thirst all my own, flowered  
widest under moonlight (just like that older thirst for Pepsi
to wash down the Doritos, the Slim Jims, the Ring Dings)
in my transfixion before junk cable. Eyeing him for years
at our kitchen-living-bedroom table, every waking hour
smashed by his go-to Busch Light, could you blame me?

Frisbeeing bologna, liverwurst, on his head as he snored
adenoidal arpeggios in infantile oblivion on the hardwood
(fist-pump bullseyes landing in minuscule splats); stacking
board games, NYNEX phone books, on his chest, his face,
(beer cans, lit candles, cologne undulant in Jenga precarity);
pinching his nose, his mouth, to silence the apneic rattles,
the flappy snorts and gasps that eclipsed (as if on purpose)  
my pissed shouts: “Dad! Yo Dad! Go to the damn couch!”

I was hooked on such sweet-caffeinated sips of prankery
before tolerance set in. And I snared others into the web.
My friend and I once sharpied a clown face on him—black
angles sharp, menacing like Gacy, around mouth and eyes,
which in the noon sun (nickels still stuck to his bare gut
after a long piss) I said he had drawn himself to amuse us
but later (this to explain burns turned sores) had us scrub
with the green part of the sponge (the only part there was). 

2

Films on Lifetime, binkies after Ricki Lake at five—my dad
liked their drama while he calibrated himself for the floor.
All their “Mommy loved me too little, Daddy too much”
only honing the mental slant of my mischief, in ambush
I would wait for that soft spot just before gravity won out.
And when it arose my intonation would twist histrionic,
shaking like after-school-special lines: “Reefer?! Who, Son—
who taught you this?” “You, alright!? I learned it from you!”

Anthropologist of dysfunction, weaponizer of emotion—
I would take on a posture of too-sad-to-snack dejection
and, at an ad break, go something like: “Hey Dad, can I—?
Never mind. It’s fine.” Eyes up at the nicotined stalactites
as if fighting back tears, this would suffice to draw him in.
“S’matter, Boy? Tell Daddy.” “I’m havin,” voice cracking,
“well, problems—problems back home, at Mommy’s.—
I, I don’t know. It’s fine, Dad. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Huh?” He would have me mute the TV, brows furrowed
(matching my drama); mouth slack, beady eyes befuddled, 
concentration quivery versus inebriation’s tug: “The fuck—
you talkin, Boy? Fuckin headcase!” Hands over my face, both
to hide chuckles and to hint how deep this goes, the scene
would unfold like a liturgy: “Well, he—.” “He!? He who!?”
“Can we just watch the movie?” “Tell Daddy the fuck now!”
“After—I don’t know. After, he says—never to tell or—.” 

“After!? After the fuck what!? This fuckin for real, Boy?
Don’t tell me no lies.” “I’m not allowed to tell.—Okay!? 
He says if I tell anyone, it’ll break—break, our little secret.”
“Our little fuckin secret!? The fuck!?—You bullshittin me!?” 
“Dad, he says it’s—it’s just for us. I can’t even tell Mommy.”
“Mahfucka. Say what the fuck’s going on, Son.—Mikey!” 
“I’m tellin lies. Forget it!” I would yell, wiping Lifetime tears
(aikidoing chuckles into sniffles). “Just drop it, Dad. Please.”

I would clam up at this point. He would go from sobbing
to smashing his beer-can barricade (“Touch my son! Watch!
I’ll kill that motherfucker!”), back to sobbing, then too soon
to dream-mutters raging through the stink of the Newport
cooking his insensate pointer (forever hooked rigid by steel
after a tendon tear). “It’s just—well,” I would say, prodding
his gut to pull him back from snore land, “it doesn’t feel
good. Dad, I don’t want to play any more ‘love games.’” 

3

One Friday night, my father sat groaning about his tooth.
“Gonna yank this bitch!” His repetitions finally breaking
my concentration on my own consumptions, I funneled
my frustration into instigating tones of PSA hyperbole.
“Stop jokin, Dad. You can’t do that.” “Wanna fuckin bet?”
“How can you do that without a dentist? It’s too painful.”
“Shiiit!” He cocked a grin of someone who lost the battle
with every bottle he met. “Daddy don’t need no dentist.”

“Pull your own tooth, without medicine?” “Pop’s medicine”:
he held his beer high. “Got ya fuckin medicine right here.”
I shook my head, giggling, as if I thought he was just joking.
But he rapped his twist on Domino’s “Sweet Potato Pie,”
his response to people (me, mainly) making him feel bad
for drinking: “♪ I’m all fucked up and I don’t know why!
Feeling kinda freaky, that’s no lie. ♪” “No way,” I cut in. 
“Daddy don’t lie to his son, Boy. Shiit, you know that!”

A junky at ten, toying with prey like cats came naturally
given the weakening highs. So rather than jump right to
“Prove it,” I fell into the silence of someone holding back
skepticism. But at the cusp of uvular flapping, my voice
surged to outdoor decibel. “I know it all!” I said. His face 
squinched into wobbly perplexity. “Mom told me, okay?”
I said as his head buckled into sleep. “Mom talkin what?”
“It doesn’t matter.” “You make no goddamn sense, Boy.”

“It doesn’t change things. It really doesn’t.” “You idiot.” 
“I know, okay!? You’re not my dad!” His cheeks and brows
squeezed his eyes shut—his top teeth bared in agitation. 
“Huh? Tired of these mind games.” But having soaked up
tales he would never have remembered he had told me—
banging wives of impotent men for cash or, crucial here,
fresh from the Marines and rescuing my would-be mother
from Chris, her biker boyfriend at the time—I had angles.

“She told me everything. She took me to see my real dad.
He’s okay, I guess. It’s more fun with you, th—.” “Who!?
Who the fuck we talkin bout? You got some fuckin issues!”
“He said I don’t have to call him ‘Dad’ yet if I don’t want. 
I can—I can just call him ‘Chris’ for now, or ‘Mr. Condon.’
He even took me on his motorcycle!” “Watch what you say—
cuz I’ll kill the bitch.” “Dad, I’m telling you I don’t care.
I still love you.” “Shiit. Look at you, Boy. You Istvan clan!”

“I just don’t want you hurtin yourself if you’re not my dad,”
I said (wincing at my ham-fisted pivot). His face contorted. 
“Fuck you talkin!?” I pressed on, banking on his fog to blur 
the stitches. “If you’re not my dad, you don’t have to prove 
anything by pullin your tooth,” I said as if (for all he knew)
we had been talking about this. “I am your dad!—If I love ya.”
He raised his hook, a gesture forever fused to that phrase.
“Ain’t got shit to prove! Bitch’ll get yanked reeeal quick!”

“You sure you’re my dad—enough to pull your own tooth!?”
“You don’t know shit. Get them fuckers.” His chin flicked
to the linesmans on the TV. Blue handles Dorito-greased
(I was the channel-turner, after all), he held the pliers high
as if to toast the pain that proved him. “If I’m your father.” 
Then came the wrenching. Then came the molar, berserk
roots barnacled. Chin and belly pulsing red, “If I love ya!” 
he said—and spat down into the heat grate. “If I love ya!” 

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