Roe is Me

You have roe in your teeth, he tells me.

I hate roe in my teeth. More than just because the neon orange balls look ridiculous as you sit there grinning and chatting oblivious to your marred mouth. But because they come replete with grappling hooks used to anchor into a crevice, only to surprise you later in the day, a hidden land mine waiting to explode. The sneaky suckers lie in wait until your mind has long drifted from the spicy tuna roll you had for lunch; you’re thinking about laundry or sex or if you’d rather be able to fly or see through people’s clothes. Or read minds, which would either help or exacerbate my social anxiety. At this point the foe roe would slide out of its hiding spot, where it schemed up tactical approaches all day, inching down to my lower tooth in wait. Which is exactly the moment the trap would spring, me biting through its squishy barrier, bursting it like a pregnant woman’s water. A sea urchin going into labor next to my left incisor. A disgusting, albeit intriguing, thought.

So I was happy to have the roe pointed out to me, saving me from the horror of an unexpected egg explosion. There are times when a revisit to your past meal is a delightful surprise, say burping up the $30 Filet Mignon you devoured and washed down with a sumptuous bottle of Pinot for dinner. That’s practically doubling your money’s worth and an impecunious imbiber such as myself rubs her hands together with glee here. The exception: sushi. Simply stated, sushi reruns are never good. Raw fish is only good once around and in fact, the vaguely fishy tinge developing in my mouth’s memory as I think it over makes me squeamish, certainly guaranteeing I’ll never develop a taste for lesbianism.
Some, or maybe most, wouldn’t say a damn thing about the lodged particle butted against my gum line. Facial anomalies are the 500-pound gorilla in the room no one talks about, but everyone is taking a picture of when you’re not looking. They all know it’s there--they’re looking right at it from the corner of their eye, thinking about it, giving looks to anyone else within visual range to confirm they got a load of it too. The other day, ignorant to the large, dark glob of gooey chocolate below my lower lip, I had an animated five-minute conversation with a receptionist. Looking like a small tarantula poised to devour my entire face, she said nothing of it; I’d bet my last dollar as I walked out the door she picked up the phone to squeal a regaling of the story to a coworker. I consider it karmic retribution, taking into account the many times I’ve never said a word at another’s expense. My friend’s half-blind grandmother consistently drew her eyebrows on with cobalt blue eyeliner, creating startling if not strangely peaceful arches across her face. We never said a thing while we stared over teacup rims at the celestial-looking bursts of blue or during grocery shopping expeditions where she would raise them while mentally weighing the prices of canned soup, only to laugh about it later over some beers where both of us failed to tell the other they had foam on their upper lip. It’s a bitch, karma.

My mother’s friend, who’s body has aged but who’s mind still holds firm to her 80’s rock n’ roll youth and subsequent sense of style, draws a thick dark scarlet line around her lips, forgetting or perhaps refusing to fill it in with lipstick. While she’s not half blind she may be half a sandwich short of a picnic as she considers it, how do you say, attractive; in reality it makes it look like she’s been giving head all day and forgot to reapply. And we all laugh uproariously behind her back over this fact, coming up with new nicknames like Clown Mouth, Ronald McDon’t Mouth and The Joker. None of which are really that funny when you see them on paper, but that doesn’t stop our gut busting sessions. And she has no reason to rethink her application technique because its merit is confirmed in the simple fact she still gets dates. What she doesn’t realize is it’s because she’s advertising her oral proficiency. She may, however, be on to something. The only thing my oral proficiency ever got me was a mother’s swat across the bottom and a spot on the debate team. And I don’t recall the debate team ever pulling me any ass.