I’m The Retainer You’ve Neglected To Wear Since High School, And I Still Crave Your Touch
A plea.
Was it all a dream? The silicone case. Your teeth, freshly aligned after three years of braces plus six months of social-suicide-inducing headgear. My freshly-molded acrylic base plate. The tender roof of your vestal mouth. My stainless steel clasps. I fit you like a glove.
The day we met, you brought me home from the orthodontist’s office, placed me delicately on your bedroom nightstand. You wore me every night. If you didn’t, your orthodontist said, you might have to get braces again. Little did you know that was an empty threat — your parents would never pay for that. But secretly, perhaps subconsciously, you missed those braces. Missed how the metal pushed up against your teeth, correcting, firmly, yet ever-so-gently. So you sought comfort in my custom-fitted construction, solace in my labial archwire. And I needed you, like a bit yearning for a horse’s mouth. Or a ball gag in search of a BDSM devotee.
The summer before you went to college, you began to neglect me. I languished on the bedside table for weeks. One night, you came home piss drunk, knocked me off the nightstand, sans case, onto the shag carpet below. I’ll never forget how you looked at me the next morning. Like a hapless fish out of water. A fish covered in carpet fibers and cat hair. You rinsed me off in the bathroom sink, returned me to my case. But I knew it was the beginning of the end.
It stung when you didn’t even bother bringing me to college. I get it — wearing a retainer doesn’t make you “cool” per se, but you know what’s really cool? Not ending up with crooked teeth and a severe overbite by the time you’re thirty because you’ve virtually erased thousands of dollars of teenage dental work. You never seemed to care about that, though.
One time, you came home from school over spring break. You saw me lying on your bedside table, put me in. God, I needed that. Your teeth had shifted by then, and it took considerable effort to push me into place. The next morning, you woke up with dental pain, had a hard time eating breakfast. You resolved not to wear me again, put me in the bottom drawer of your desk so you wouldn’t have to look at me and feel guilty about it. You knew that you ought to have scheduled an appointment with your dentist or an orthodontist instead, but you were failing Multivariable Calculus that semester, so I was really the least of your concerns. I sat in that drawer for the next half decade.
Last year, when your stepdad decided to convert your childhood bedroom into a man cave, I was displaced again. Since then, I’ve been lying in a drawstring backpack, caseless, at the bottom of a cardboard box labeled “Office Supplies’’ in the basement. Due to your stepdad’s supreme lack of organizational skills, it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, which is probably for the best. I can’t bear to think of what you might say if you saw me like this — defiled, dejected, coated in lint. Still, I miss you endlessly. I miss your incisors, your cuspids. The velvety insides of your oral cavity. I miss the way you used to run your tongue along the top row of your teeth, as if to check if I was still there. I always was.
The truth is, I’d give anything to find you. To feel you again. To be your one and only. So when you visit home next Christmas and you’re sick of watching Formula One reruns with your stepdad, head downstairs, venture into the musty basement. Find the box labeled “Office Supplies” and dig through it. Take me in your hand. Put me in your mouth again, just once. For old time’s sake.
XOXO,
Your retainer
