KARMA IN SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI

I have never had a motherfucking cavity. Never had my anal-retentive dentist lectured me on the proper methods of flossing. I\'ve taken good care of my teeth for 32 damn years. So I was extra pissed off when my front four teeth-top and bottom-got knocked out.
I was extra, extra pissed when a 500 pound creature, whose gender I can only guess, asked me about it in the waiting room of the dentist\'s office.
It looked at my plastic bag full of milk and bloody teeth. \"So, how\'d you lose them teeth, buddy?\"
\"I ate bad fish.\"
\"Like, frozen or something?\"
\"No. Riddled with bowel-rattling bacteria.\"
\"So you smashed your mouth on the crapper when you puked up bad fish?\"
\"It\'s a much longer story than that.\" Why won\'t this fucking pile of protoplasm shut up? I\'m drooling precious blood by the cupful onto one of my really nice Egyptian cotton towels. I\'m not up for talking to this bag of fat.
\"I gots time. My kid fell off his bike and needs three teeth put back in. He\'ll be a while, I reckon.\"
All I could think was that if my teeth died right here, in this bag of milk, in this horrible pastel waiting room full of magazines only welfare recipients read, like Teenage Momma, if my teeth died HERE, NOW, just because this monster\'s spawn monopolized my dentist all afternoon, I would be compelled to break something expensive that didn\'t belong to me.
\"I\'ll tell you my story. But only if you hold my bag of teeth.\" Nobody in their right mind would touch that shit. There was wiggly gum flesh floating in the milk, for Christ\'s sake.
\"Give it here.\"
Shit.
\"Okay, here\'s the deal. My sister is getting married right now. I mean right fucking now, in this backwater town you most likely call ‘home’. I am, you should know, very far from home right now. So last night we had the rehearsal dinner at this sushi restaurant that I, personally, thought smelled like pussy.\"
\"Well, a lotta raw fish do smell a whole lot like pussy, sir.\"
\"Yeah,\" I spat another blood clot onto my towel and kept talking, \"So I ate some really mushy sushi, and I know sushi isn\'t supposed to be the consistency of mashed potatoes, but it was my sister\'s rehearsal dinner, so I was polite and didn\'t mention that the cuisine was less than acceptable to my cultured palate.\"
\"Go on, mister, tell me how you lost these teeth.\" The creature shook my bag of teeth, and churned up the blood that had settled on the bottom. The clot-shit turned the milk pink. I suppressed my gag reflex.
\"So on the way back to my horrible hotel, where I\'m sure all the bastards from five counties have been conceived, I get this sharp pain below my stomach.
\"The shits, wasn\'t it? Sounds like the shits.\"
\"Very right. The pain of the shits.\" I laughed, and blood flew out my nose. \"So I yank my clunky American rental car into the first establishment I think will have a toilet for me to use. I sprinted into the Piggly Wiggly, and rushed to the john.\"
\"Mister, you don\'t want to go in there. Not in that crapper!\"
\"Oh, this I know now. I will never, ever return to that Piggly Wiggly. So I take it you know about what goes on in that men\'s toilet.\"
\"Oh, yes. The devil\'s act.\"
\"Well, if that\'s what you call it. In New York, we just call it ‘sex’, sometimes giving the act the suffix of \'gay\'. But the pain in my bowels, and the burning sensation that I felt near the exit of my colon, was excruciating. So I dashed past the old man getting the blowjob from the young man, and the fat man fucking the thin man up the ass, and as soon as I was in the first stall, I shat like I never have before.\"
\"You poor man.\"
\"It gets worse.\"
\"Did you get AIDS from the seat?\"
Fucking fat pile of redneck fucking pig. \"No, fool. You can\'t get AIDS from a toilet seat.\"
\"Well, at least you don\'t have AIDS. Do ya?\" The glob of protoplasm looked at my bag of blood and teeth, as if the bag now contained nuclear fag-waste.
Time for fun with the creature, I thought. \"Oh, yeah! I got five different kinds!\"
The monster dropped my teeth and shrieked, \"Fag! Fag! Fag in the waiting room!\"
I picked up my bag of teeth and let some blood run down my chin. I leaned toward the insulting beast and hissed, \"Kiss me, lover!\"
The monster waddled much faster than I would have expected it to, out of the building and into its massive sedan. It lit a cigarette, and, most likely, praised Jesus for saving it from the bloody fag.
\"Thank God. At least I have the lobby to myself, now.\"
The giggle of a middle-aged woman was coming from behind the sign-in counter. \"So, mister, tell me the rest of your story. Not everybody down here is a bigot.\"
The receptionist behind had quite a nice smile. Well, of course-- she works at a dentist\'s office. She was cute, too. I wiped my chin and went on.
\"Thanks for not being a bigot. Anyway, yeah-- I\'m shitting myself silly, and at least a metric ton on waste flew out of my ass. At least. And I start feeling really bad, because I just perfumed the love nest of half-a-dozen poor with the foulest stink imaginable. So I try to clean myself up as well as possible with toilet paper that\'s about as soft as steel wool, and I try to leave quickly and quietly.\"
\"Those men didn\'t leave? I don\'t think I could fuck with that scent in the air.\"
\"The smart ones left. But sometimes, nothing can stop you from getting your groove on. So there was one couple still grinding away when I emerged from the soiled stall. And even though I was trying not to look at them-- I\'m not a peeper-- they were right by the exit, and I knew why nothing was stopping the guy on top from fucking the guy on the bottom.\"
\"Don\'t end the story there!\"
\"I only paused for dramatic effect, and to wipe some blood off my face. Anyway, the guy on top was the guy my sister is, at this very moment, pledging her life to. Yes, I busted the groom fucking some guy the night before he married my sister.\"
\"Dear God.\"
\"God had nothing to do with it. Bad fish brought me there, to witness the act. And while the smell couldn\'t stop my sister\'s fiancee, the look on my face totally ruined the mood. He lunged at me, dick flopping all over, and tackled me to the floor. I think I got knocked out at that point, because I next remembered being in the trunk of a car. The fiancee wrapped my woozy self in a blanket, and rolled me down a hill sometime this morning. My mouth hit a rock or something else very hard. I wandered back up the hill, saw the Piggly Wiggly, jumped in my car, and drove here.
\"But where\'d you get the milk for your teeth?\"
\"At the Piggly Wiggly.\"
\"And why aren\'t you trying to stop your sister from marrying the, well, from marrying that fag?\"
\"She owes me over $20,000. Fuck her.\"
The receptionist sighed, \"The dentist will see you now.\"
I left my bloody towel in the waiting room, a present for the next poor bastard who needed dental work.