Devoted, chronologically-minded readers will know that last week, I had a dental mishap. I tried hard not to care, I did, but by the fourth day I had to face facts: this level of snaggle-toothery was just too much to handle, even for me and my admittedly questionable sense of aesthetic acceptability. Something had to be done. I needed to find a dentist.

Because I currently have no official purpose here in London, I am not covered by the National Health Services thingie. I searched online for ‘private dentists’ nearby; I live pretty centrally, so I set up an appointment in the West End. I knew full well that it would be pricier than something farther out, but my saintly mother sent me some money to splurge a little for Christmas, and I decided what I really wanted from Santa this year was the absence of a long, tooth-themed trek involving maps and the Tube.

The night before the fated dentist’s appointment, people came over, things got out of hand, and a very special cake was baked. A cake that made us all very very happy, for about six to eight hours. Except for one of us, who passed out at hour four.

I woke up the next morning feeling pretty out of it. I assumed this was due to the cakey festivities. I thought to myself, Hey, You know what might clear this right up? Yes! Exactly! More Cake! That is exactly right. Gee Golly Whiz, I’m sure glad I’m so smart!

And like some sort of stoner Cosby child, I proceeded to have a slice of cake for breakfast.

Two hours later, running late and unable to navigate the buses, I climbed into a taxi. A TAXI. In LONDON. Cabs here are unthinkable under all but the most dire circumstances because of sheer cost, so this should give you an idea of the state I was in. Fifteen minutes of luxurious sitting went by, and then BAM! I found myself wandering, confused, up and down an incredibly… ‘posh’ street (no other word does it justice). I vaguely remembered a street number; I felt in my bones that I should find it. I found it. It didn’t look right. I walked around some more and smoked a cigarette, but failed to come up with a magical new plan. I ended up back at the same spot. It appeared to be a private residence, with no signage whatsoever. Just a single gold-plated doorbell.

I called up my one hardworking, employed friend (the only friend I knew would be awake and near a computer at the ungodly hour of one p.m.) and had her look up the phone number and double check the address. I was apparently in the right place. I called them to confirm.

“Hello,” they said.
“Do you not have any signage?” I demanded.
“Signage?” the polite, clipped, British lady-voice repeated quizzically.
“Signage.” I confirmed, undaunted, not even the tiniest bit embarrassed, confident in the knowledge that this is, indeed, a real word. (It is. I double checked when I got home.)
Silence.
“Some sort of sign to indicate your place of business?” I tried.
“Oh. No, I’m afraid we don’t.”
“Right. So. I’m having some trouble locating you. What do you advise that I do?”
“Well, it’s (this address). You can ring the bell when you get here.”
“The bell,” I said, thoughtfully.
“Yes, the bell,” she repeated.
“The GOLD bell?” I demanded.
“Yes. That would be the one,” she replied, infuriatingly logical and calm.
“Okay.” I said. I rang the bell.

The woman who came to the door I can only describe as a kind of older, more squat Mary Poppins, as reinterpreted by the good people at Yves Saint Laurent. I’m talking about the distinctly scary, no-nonsense, Mr. Banks-intimidating, penquin-taming Dame Poppins, not the rosy cheeks and singing shit. I have never seen a more put together receptionist/doorperson.

After a long, awkward interlude during which I gave an unnecessarily detailed, rambling explanation establishing my right to be there, she ushered me into the waiting room. It was quite possibly THE nicest waiting room on the planet. Wood panelling abounded. There were walls of books with matching leather covers, titles embossed in 24k gold (probably). There were leather, high-backed chairs, and a huge leather couch. Lots of leather, really. And a fire. And, of course, me. Me, stupidly high, in full-on hulking, fro-haired, snaggle-toothed glory, wearing the same jeans I’d been wearing all week and unzipping my ancient, smelly, oversized, visibly torn ‘SeanJohn’ winter jacket (my mother bought it for me; she has never heard of Puff Daddy and I love her, so I wear it with pride).

I felt woozy. I sat down.

The doorbell rang. I heard La Poppins get up and answer it. I heard polite, muted murmurings. An ivory-haired, impeccably dressed old man, probably around seventy-five, turned the corner and came into the waiting room. He was accompanied by a beautiful, dignified, slightly younger woman (in her fifties, I would say) in a gorgeous tweed outfit and pearls. They spoke to each other exclusively in Russian. She lovingly adjusted his tie. They studiously ignored me as I sat, incredibly stoned and starting to feel a bit queasy, watching them intently from the corner. I became convinced that he was a retired Russian oil-baron and she his classy long-term mistress. I decided he’d probably had dealings with the mafia in his time. Perhaps he had had people killed, back in the day. Perhaps he would have me killed, for ruining his mojo with my fro and my SeanJohn. Perhaps I should make a run for it.

But what if I wasn’t fast enough? I’m not particularly nimble. What if he caught me?

Luckily, a nurse came to collect me before I actually worked myself into enough of a frenzy to run away or accuse anyone of plotting to kill me. She was a remarkably cheerful, chatty young woman, pretty and fresh-faced and rosy — in fact, she and the receptionist together would have combined to cover all the nuances of Julie Andrews. She was a temp, she told me. Was it quite cold outside? We would have to go up four flights of stairs, but Oh, weren’t these old buildings beautiful? Wheezing and spaced out, I made a valiant attempt at small talk through all four flights. She led me into a room.

I don’t know if any of you have seen the 1988 Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche adaptation of Unbearable Lightness of Being, but the room I walked into was straight out of the Prague hospital where Day-Lewis (or Tomas, for those who have read the book but not seen the movie) worked. It was huge, airy, high-ceilinged, and absolutely bare. It felt like our voices should be echoing. Tucked in one corner was an old fashioned sink and a small, serious looking cabinet. And right smack in the middle of all that empty space, all alone: a single turquoise-upholstered dentist’s chair. Standing at the door, transfixed by the chair, I realized I was shaking the hand of a tall, hunky, aggressively blonde man in a white lab coat. His name was Hans. Hans Lock.

Hans is Danish, and when I told Hans my name, Hans got very very excited and said something to me in very fast Danish, because he thought I might be Danish, because apparently, Maya is a very common name in Denmark. Hans was sad when I was forced to admit no, not Danish, sorry, and I, too, was saddened by the whole affair. I bemoaned my non-Danish roots. Still, we rallied, and over the next half hour, Hans checked and cleaned my teeth, told me my fears of late-stage gingivitis were largely unfounded, and promised to fix my snaggle tooth when he got back from his holiday trip in January. Dazed, I thanked Hans and made my way out of the building.

At no point did anyone yell at me for not getting regular dental check-ups or taking better care of my teeth. At no point did Hans try to make me feel guilty for smoking or berate me for not brushing after lunch as well as breakfast and dinner. I’d just been to the dentist, and no one had tried to scare me with apocalyptic predictions of toothlessness by age thirty unless I changed my thoughtless ways. The only thing Hans had said that wasn’t outright congratulatory was a mild “you could floss more,” and even that had been presented as a kind of friendly offering, take it or leave it, in case I really wanted a little somethinsomethin to spice up my oral hygiene routine.

I was filled with joy. I decided I loved Hans, and I fucking loved Mary Poppins, too, in all her incarnations. The cake in my belly kicked into overdrive. I bid Reception Poppins adieu with a knowing, familiar nod of the head, and stepped out into the street with a light heart: Russian mafia and SeanJohn be damned, it was a beautiful day.

It wasn’t until half a block later that I realized I had no clue where, in fact, I was.

Or how to get home.

One of the many perks of coming from hardy peasant stock is that I don’t often get sick. (Other ‘perks’ include a set of seriously no-nonsense childbearing hips and the implicit knowledge that, should famine ever strike, I can count on my brute strength and fat stores to see me through to the other side, even as my willowy, aristocratic contemporaries fall like flies around me — a thought that gives me much comfort through the long, cold, lonely nights.)

The downside of not getting sick very often is that when I do, it takes a while for me to realize it’s happening; and when my sickliness becomes undeniable, I’m never quite sure what I’m supposed to do with myself.

I’ve spent the past week being grumpy and clammy, either in bed or running to and from the bathroom in various states of undress, hoping none of my flatmates is around to see me. It sucked. It sucked a lot.

But I’m better now. And you know what? If the mood struck me, I could go somewhere. I mean, I probably won’t, but I could. I could go somewhere, not knowing where the nearest bathroom is, and you know, it would be alright. I would be okay. Because I’m BETTER now.

Hot DAMN life is beautiful.

I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but every now and then, for no particular reason, I get an uncontrollable urge to try and channel me some Martha Stewart. So last week, on an otherwise bright and innocent morning, I cooked breakfast. I had someone over and I decided I was going to attempt some hardcore omelette action; I’d even gone out to M&S, the NICE grocery store, to buy the eggs and onions and mushrooms and bread and bacon.

OH, the bacon.

I love England. I do. But I will say this: British bacon is not real bacon. It is a glorified bastardization of ham. I know this claim will cause much controversy, but I stand by it. English Bacon is not crispy, nor does it come in strip form. IT’S NOT “PROPER” BACON.

The wonderful thing, on this brisk, sunny morning, was that I’d purchased true, greasy, crispy, strips of actual bacon. I came home, I collapsed in a chair and recovered from the foray into the outside world, I cooked, I achieved an omelette that did not fall apart. My guest was happy, I was happy, the bacon was curly: all was right with the world.

Mid-meal, I bit down into what was probably my sixth or seventh mouthful. And heard a crack.

My Beloved Bacon broke my goddamn tooth.

Uuuuuggggggggggggggghh.

The background story in brief: Two years ago I was visiting people in Boston. At one point during this vacation, I found myself in the fluorescent-lit bowels of a straaange, deserted New England storage facility… where I found some seriously strange shit. One item in particular actually made me laugh so hard and so spastically that I smacked my face into a conveniently located iron bar nearby. Not my best moment, really. I badly chipped three of my most prominent teeth (the pillars of my mouth community, you could say), and for the rest of the trip I had a lot of bits missing from my mouth (it wasn’t as bad as it sounds — I still managed to have an excellent time). I got them fixed when I got home to Seoul. At considerable expense, I might add. The same week I got them fixed, I went out for a drink. There, in that bar, as I stood minding my own business, drinking a beer, SOMEone, someone whose full name starts with Claire and ends with Kim, knocked my elbow — creating a very very tiny chip in one of the brand new veneers.

Last goddamn week, my Beloved Bacon absolutely decimated that same sliiiightly chipped veneer.

When I told this to the elbow-knocking Architect Of My Misfortune, hoping for an apology of sorts (or, at the very least, some sympathy), all she could muster up was:

“Sweet. So does that mean you look kind of like a crackwhore now?”

…And I had to admit to the shameless hussy that Yes, Now, When I open my mouth, I do look distinctly like a really really rough crackwhore.

Martha Stewart would be HORRIFIED.