When I miss him, I put his teeth in my mouth. During the day they soak, but at night we watch television programs together. I wonder how many answers are stuck inside his back molars. What I eat, he eats. Here is the thing about teeth that you don’t know: They hide all your secrets; they remember everything. That time you were pushed to the ground for being too fat; when you signed up for another credit card you knew you’d never pay back; when you stole her away from your best friend. My dad told me all these stories. Enough times that I had them memorized, but I loved each one, like a rerun of your favorite sitcom you keep going back to. When I am lonely, which is most days, I listen to each tooth1 tell me a story about you. It helps me to grieve you, reminds me that all I need to do is grind or chew and you come back to life.
Toward the end, you were cold all the time, even when it was so hot out, the walls were sweating. Your skin got thinner and when I’d rub your back or put my arm around you, I could feel your dents. We take our entire lives getting used to our bodies because they never remain consistent. You never did much to maintain it, so we all understood and were not surprised when it started to break down. You were a diabetic who ate ice cream between meals; chocolate wrappers in every pocket; exercise was a word you understood the meaning of but never quite got the hang of.
Remember that time we were driving. It was after the breakup that broke me. You drove almost five hours to stay with me.
“The longer you are alive, the longer that pain will stretch. But it is always interrupted by pleasure, by beauty, by something else that reminds you why you continue living,” you said.
At night, we watched episodes of Columbo while you tried to feed me all my favorite foods you cooked during my childhood: stuffed cabbage, grilled cheese sandwiches, lentil soup, London broil, chicken with dumplings. I had forgotten how to eat, so I’d watch you take bites with the teeth I’ve now climbed into my mouth, wishing I could remember how to feel pleasure.
“Everything reminds me of her,” I said to you.
“Let me tell you a story. After I lost your mother2 I shut down. Didn’t want to feel even a glimmer of love for anyone else. Didn’t want to feel. I was ready to just go about it alone. Cover myself in novocaine. Can you imagine? I had you and your brother.3 I needed no one else. But there is a danger in thinking you can even try to shut parts of yourself off. You’re feeling it now. You think you’ll never love again. Don’t want to. I get it. I was just buying groceries. I was just trying to eat. I was just trying to get through that day. Then Clodagh. See, we don’t plan on removing the barbed wire, letting new people in. I was firm in being done. You know that, you saw it. But sometimes you meet someone and you swear they have just always been in your life. You remember.”
“Yes, I remember that when you started—”
“Sometimes we have to pay people to listen to us,” he said.
CLODAGH: You know—like clockwork—how to grieve, how to hurt, how to feel pain.
DAD: After my wife… It felt like a non-elective surgery. Something was removed in me. She left me with two kids that needed her. I needed—
CLODAGH: We all need.
DAD: There are things I can talk about here? Things that remain…between us…things that I can give to you? I just…I don’t want them anymore. I don’t want to hold onto them.
CLODAGH: As your therapist, I am mostly a locked box. But as we talked about in our first session, there are the exceptions.
DAD: Yes. Thoughts of suicide. Homicidal thoughts. Crimes. Got it. There is something I need to talk about that happened. Nothing really happens anymore. All of life—my life—is past tense.
CLODAGH: You wear your sad like a $500 coat purchased at the Goodwill for $50. Really proud. Like you are stealing it.
DAD: (Silence)
When my dad died4 I absorbed his collections: antique clocks, costume jewelry, comic books and atlases and toys from the childhood he never got to have. Enough paperwork to fill every shelf in the library. I went through everything. I needed to touch what he touched. Everything felt like a breadcrumb, a clue to knowing him even more.
My partner, Sam, hated this. Sam was a minimalist; I knew this when we got together. Going over to Sam’s house for the first time revealed everything I needed to know about them: white walls, no photos of family or friends, two plates, two cups, two forks, two knives, you get the point. One extra towel and only one set of sheets. When Sam walked into my tiny studio apartment for the first time, they gasped.
“Where is your floor?” Sam cried.
We had many fights over the years of how much I kept bringing in. Year three of us together, they created a firm rule that anything I brought in, I needed to let go of something else. “One in, one out.”
When Sam and I first met, my relationship with Delilah5 had just ended. You probably already know this, but with every relationship, there is a ticking clock, a countdown. If you listen closely, you may hear it. Some die before the time runs out. It gets louder toward the end. Pay attention.
Sam and I met at work. Cliché, I know. They came in as a guest speaker during my colleague’s Disability Literature class. I went to be supportive. It’s not that I was uninterested. It’s more accurate to say that I can be so selfish with my time that I rarely participate in anything that isn’t mandatory.
At first, all I could see was Sam’s hair. Crushed walnuts interrupted by gray streaks. So thick, a convict could escape from prison and hide out in their strands. I couldn’t stop staring.
“We are so much more than our bodies unless you are disabled. And then, all they see is your missing limb, your deform, your ‘abnormality.’ You are no longer sexual or boring or sassy or an intellectual. You are seen only as what you are missing.”
I was captivated.
“ADA outlaws any discrimination when it comes to disability in jobs, governmental positions, transport, I can go on. But we all know we live in a country with enormous loopholes and fine print.”
I can’t exactly remember the transcript of their voice. I lost track of what they were saying early on. I eventually confessed to this on our third date. But when you want to kiss someone so desperately that your lips start seizuring, that your tongue starts to plan a coup on how to escape your mouth and enter another’s, it doesn’t matter how enthralling one’s lecture is. The body takes over.
Our first date was clumsy. I kept mispronouncing Sam. I hadn’t dated a nonbinary person6 before and had been so used to she and hers, coupled with Sam looking more binary than non, which quaked our conversation.
“So hair gets to decide who and what someone is?” they said between bites of chicken piccata.
“It’s just that… You don’t look like… When I think about non—”
“I’m going to stop you because I want to have a second date with you, and I worry that whatever you are about to say will change my mind.”
Since that night, we have had endless discussions on gender. Sam has talked a lot about how we—as a society and even within our queer community—have binary expectations and presentations within nonbinary identities. Sam navigates it well; they say they are so used to being mislabeled in their gender and underestimated because of their disability, that they have become a scholar in their own sense of self. When they said that to me, I knew I was in love.
I didn’t learn until our fourth date that Sam was missing their left leg. Car accident when they were sixteen. I didn’t want to pry then, though I have since gotten much of the details: friend’s dad had been drinking; Sam’s friend and Dad died; Sam lost their leg and lots of blood. They were hospitalized for three months, physical therapy, “learning how to be disabled”.
***
I miss Alex Trebek.7 This is what I was thinking when I was sitting on the couch wearing my dad’s teeth. Sam was out with a friend, so I had the place to myself. I only wore his teeth when I was alone. It was this evening that I remembered something. But it wasn’t my memory. It was his. Dad’s. I don’t know how I knew this, yet I knew right away. It’s like I was reliving it, watching it. Feeling it. It was terrifying.
CLODAGH: Are you ready to talk about it?
DAD: I feel like enough time has passed—decades—that yes, I am. Don’t expect me to tell it in order. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. We had homemade gefilte fish for supper that night. My mother always made it on Shabbos. Roast chicken, too. She went all out. When I went to bed that night, I saw blood beneath my fingernails. She probably thought it was dirt. I did too, until I looked close enough.
CLODAGH: You’re shaking.
DAD: Indeed. But I need to tell this. If we killed everyone who made us angry, I am not so sure there would be anyone left. We all say the wrong thing sometimes. We all get mean. But he. (Takes a long pause.) Douglas was relentless. I wasn’t the only fat kid in my class, in my school. There were others, but a fat Jewish kid with one parent seemed to be on his list. He just could not allow me to exist without bullying the hell out of me. I remember when my kid was bullied by some girls in her school. All the rage came back for me. I wanted to defend her. I wanted to tell her to do what I did. When you grow up with a single mother, she must be so many things all at once that it is easy to hide out. When I killed Douglas, I felt no remorse. In fact, I really felt like I saved myself, saved others. He was evil. He was
I gasped. I could see myself on the couch in Clodagh’s office, even though I had never been there. Never even met her. I could smell my dad, the reek of this confession that had hid so far inside him, it smelled like organs, like rot, like death. Murder. My father killed someone? A boy? When he was just a kid?
I took out the teeth, could feel my gums exhale.
Four months in, Sam and I moved in together. Accelerated because their lease was up, and it just made sense. Yes, it was also about saving money, nothing wrong with being practical. But we were in love, we are.
OK. Now. This may be when you stop liking me. I never tried to convince you I was stable, keep that in mind.
I met Brinn at a conference. So fucking cliché. She was local—we were in Minneapolis—and we happened to be seated next to each other at a panel on “The Intersection of Identity Politics and Rhetoric.” Or something like that. These conferences are all about the swag and afterparties. The slight overdrinking, small talk, networking (if you are into that sort of thing). I had my free tote bag beside me full of pens, pencils, notepads, some books, and stickers that I wound up tossing in the hotel garbage can before flying home. There is something so intoxicating about free things, there is a high in just taking without paying. But then, you start to repack your suitcase and realize you are a glutton with little to no room in your carry on, so decisions must be made.
It began with some eye rolls, the silent communication of can I leave, would anyone notice, when is it appropriate to start drinking, is 11am too early?
Brinn taught mostly first-year courses but also some film classes. Gray eyes, almost pixelated in color. Her neck was long and milky. I couldn’t hear the panelists, too focused on sliding my tongue up and down the length of it. Feeling the gasp and weight of her swallow.
After the panel, we went to the hotel bar. I know, cliché once more. But if you’ve ever been to a conference, it is so cerebral with unflattering lights and so much small talk saturated in name tags and where are you froms that alcohol is the only way out of the monotony of it all. Alcoholics beware.
“How would you describe your ideal day?” Brinn asked, our knees touching, as we leaned into each other, while sitting at the bar. I usually hate questions like this. Ice breakers. But from her lips, painted with some sort of invisible gloss, I suddenly didn’t mind.
“I guess it depends on the time of year. Is it a Saturday? Is it a workday, but I called out? What is the weather? Did I just get paid, how much money is in my bank account?” I like to be difficult. I guess that is one of my turn-ons.
“You decide.”
“OK,” I could feel the old-fashioned turn my tongue into a paved road, all smooth, sliding past my teeth, wanting to keep sliding, wanting to tiptoe into her mouth. No. Wanting to plunge.
“On the couch. 2006. August. I’ve got a plate of chicken and dumplings balanced on my lap. Watching old episodes of Mission Impossible. My feet are sweating because there’s no air conditioning, but the food is so good, I forget how unbearable the heat is.”
I realize I am speaking about my dad. I remember that visit, even though it could have been five years earlier or ten years later.
“How specific,” she said.
“You?” I loved that she asked no additional questions to clarify who I was with, or why that TV show, or what kind of home, in which city that couch lived.
“Oh, a bathtub. Lavender. No other sounds but the movement of the water with my shifting body.”
I knew it wouldn’t last beyond that night. An answer like that reveals everything you need to know about a person. But I will tell you that the sex is something I still think about. I saw her two years later and she didn’t even recognize me. Sometimes, you just need to know someone for a night, a few hours. But it’s the ones you want to remain with beyond the knee grazing and dream flirting that have the most significance.
How to tell your spouse that you recently learned—without telling them how (I was wearing my dad’s teeth one night, no big deal, and found myself inside one of his memories)—that he was a murderer. A child murderer. And not very remorseful, either. Should it change how I remember him? How I feel about him? Will Sam think differently of me? Is murder contagious? Intellectually, I know it is not. I could never. But I couldn’t stop revisiting memories with my dad, wondering if any clues escaped, moments where he let some of the guilt out.
This man, my father, was gentle. Became two parents when my mom committed suicide. When my brother overdosed, we got even closer. He filled in the gaps of all the pain that had cracked us open. He was strong, and yet he also let me see him cry. I would never have imagined he had been hiding this massive secret.
Worse, what if there were others? What if this anger in him, this need for justice, led to other murders?
We got married after it became legal. After the Supreme Court shredded the bans, making it legal in all fifty states. I never allowed myself to even consider it and when it passed, there wasn’t a romantic proposal for me to retell on these pages. Sam and I just looked at each other and knew.
Our wedding was small, though bigger than I would have liked. There was food, but I ate none of it. Apparently, that sort of thing happens at most weddings. You agonize over the details and remember very little of it. But at the end of that long day, it was just us and looking at Sam in bed beside me, I felt home.
“I can’t breathe through all this stuff,” Sam said. “I love you, but this life is giving me asthma.”
My dad once said to me, “You think it is hard to live with another, but the most difficult thing in life is living with yourself. All that you are, all that you’ve done.”
I think about this now, knowing what I know. Or, knowing what I think I know.
“Sam, I can’t let go of this yet.”
“And I can’t live like this. My whole life has been a compromise. You’ve got to understand that in here, in this home, our home, I will not just let this go. This isn’t a way to live.”
“So, you are asking me to what… toss my dad’s possessions? I’m the only one left. There is no one else to—”
Sometimes we must leave to know what we need to come back to. To remember what remains, what waits for us. After my mother and brother, I couldn’t bear being left behind, so I became the one that left.
Sam walked out before I could. They were always one step ahead of me like that. None of this is special or unheard of: I left my phone on the couch and went to the bathroom. Got a text from a woman I had slept with once, asking for a repeat. Sam scrolled up. There were pictures. Suggestive messages. Why am I trying to be elusive? She sent me multiple photos of her breasts, her hand spreading her thighs apart, texts asking me to suck on various parts of her. Sam caught me. Adding to the list of my hoarding and inability to let go of my father’s things, not making space for Sam.
I can fast forward as much as you have time for, but unfortunately, none of it brings Sam back. I told you I was unlikeable.
Sam’s absence meant I put my dad’s teeth in every night. One morning, on my drive to campus, I completely forgot they were still there. A fog had grown over me like an invisible moss. I was sloppy in class, behind on my grading, unmotivated to try. I hid just like him, like my dad. I had become him. I hadn’t broken any laws, except polygamy, I guess. But the more I started to discover who my dad really was8, I began to obsess over who I had become based on the lies I told myself of who I thought I was.
I can solve every puzzle on Wheel of Fortune when I wear my dad’s teeth. They stretch out my mouth, but I enjoy the discomfort. My tongue sort of hovers and my gums feel caged. Even after all these years, I can taste what my dad must have tasted. Our breath is unique just like our fingerprints.9
My dad’s brain was like a library, encompassing volumes of information spanning various sections, departments, years, subjects. With his teeth in my mouth, I was suddenly brought back into him.
DAD: There becomes no end to some things. Habits.
CLODAGH: You’ve used this word before.
DAD: Coping mechanisms? How to solve a problem in one easy step? Like I still feel my fingers twitch every time I do math because of all the years I used them to count. Or…
CLODAGH: Keep going.
DAD: Or…needing to remove a person. Knowing there is no such thing as justice. Films have the hero arriving at the exact right moment, or the police. But really, no one is coming. I became justice.
CLODAGH: I’m going to push you on this because I think you know you’re ready.
DAD: If we all knew how easy it was to poison another, I wonder if there would be less divorces, less gun violence, less stabbings, less bar room fights. Poison is so quiet, leaves a trace in the body but only if they
The teeth fall out.
My body is mute. I am breathing, but I cannot hear anything. I know my lungs are still working. Who was this man who loved me? Who took care of me? Did he want me to find this out? Did he imagine my love so big I would be unaffected by his secrets?
Sam did come back.10 It was a quiet return. They were home a week before we spoke a word to each other. I was patient, waiting for Sam to give me a signal. Something in me had changed since they had gone.11
We were sitting on the couch, watching Jeopardy. Sam had a habit of whispering the answers. They were right about half the time.
“Don’t you want to put in your dad’s teeth?”
My body froze. Sam was looking directly at the TV, their eyes completely unaware that I was shaking.
“You…you…”
“I knew about the women before that text. I knew about what you do with his—”
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Maybe I wanted you to tell me. Maybe I was hoping you’d want me to understand why.”
“I don’t know why.”
“And that is why I left.”
“But you came back.”
“Does that matter to you?”
My whole life, a series of tragedies. With Sam, every time I was with another, I was just leaving. Leaving who I was becoming. Leaving who I couldn’t face being. There are some things that should remain inside us. Not every story needs to be paginated. Maybe none of what the teeth told me really happened. Or, maybe that was more of who my dad was than the man I knew. The man I loved.
I threw his teeth away.12 Finally, I was ready. I didn’t want to know more than what I already knew about my father. What he was willing and able to tell me.
Letting go had nothing to do with Sam. I needed to be ready. Like maybe my dad was ready to meet someone who gave him permission to let go, too. Maybe we are all just hoarding ourselves, hoping one day we will be ready enough to leave more behind.
- Did you know teeth are like fingerprints? No two people have the same set. Start studying the inside of your lover’s mouth or really stare when someone yawns. Notice the grooves, the length, crooked, wider. Some teeth are much smaller than others. This is how we can identify the remains of death from teeth. All teeth tell a story. You were a smoker. You were malnourished. You were an addict. You completely forgot they existed.
↩︎ - She died when I was fourteen, I don’t want to talk about that. OK, fine. It’s not always cancer or car accidents that take our people away from us. Sometimes it is more like a poison ivy outbreak inside a body that spreads, itching its way into the brain and heart and beneath fingertips. And the pain is invisible. No doctor will treat it, or they try but the side effects are worse than the cause. We knew all about the itch. Sometimes it caused her to leave, just disappear for days. Back then, there were no cell phones to track each other. She became a ghost. And then. She came back. When I was fourteen, she just couldn’t bear it anymore. Sometimes death can come from a single swallow.
↩︎ - He’s not part of this story either. You are so nosy. Fine. What do you want to know? Blame his death—it’s been thirteen years now—on the government. Because they are the ones funneling more money into pharmaceutical company pockets. Oh, you weren’t expecting this to get political? It’s not. But start asking yourself where these drugs are coming from.
↩︎ - So far, he is the only one in our family from natural causes. Though even as I write that, what does “natural” really mean? Everything is a cause from something else.
↩︎ - We were together on and off for almost a year. On. Then off. Moved out before thoroughly moving in. It’s like she was wearing a girdle around her mood. She was so affable in the beginning. But we all wear our best selves in the beginning. She just kept hers on a bit longer before disrobing. ↩︎
- You should know that while ‘queer’ may be the closest word to describe my sexual orientation, the reality is that I haven’t quite found the exact letter formation to declare my love of sex with all types of humans, really. Minus straight cis men, I guess. And I have been so focused on my sexuality that I never took the time to even consider that I could consider my gender. I know I’m a
girlwoman. I like being desired. I like having control. I love saying no almost as much as I love saying yes. But I also enjoy thinking about what else may be hiding inside me.
↩︎ - Hosted Jeopardy for 37 seasons. Enviable moustache. At one time, the object of my masturbatory adventures until he was replaced by Diane Sawyer.
↩︎ - Is that what you believe? We are defined by our mistakes? By our criminality? In that case, we are all immoral freaks. I hope you are interrogating your own actions, what you’ve done that no one yet knows. Yes, you did that, but it’s not all you are.
↩︎ - I want this to be truer than it actually is.
↩︎ - I know what I said earlier. But aren’t stories supposed to be suspenseful, unpredictable?
↩︎ - Seventeen days.
↩︎ - Were you hoping I’d hold onto them? What does that say about you?
↩︎
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