Darwin Alone in the Universe
Page 11
We’ll inhabit each other’s erotic dreams, kissing in doorways like hungry strangers, lips wet and full. Then we’ll run away together, to this house, this very house, where we’ll live nattily ever after.
We’ll call it love.
AUTHOR PHOTO
MY HUSBAND HAS A NEW DIGITAL CAMERA. He’s had it two days and during that time he’s taken pictures of the dog, the two cats, the cover of the instruction manual, both his hands, and the inside of my mouth.
My dentist also took a picture of the inside of my mouth. I was having a crown made for a front tooth and he wanted to take a picture of my teeth with his new digital camera. To match the crown to the colour of my teeth, he said. He told me to get out of the dentist’s chair and he and his assistant Marilyn positioned me beside the window.
“Pull your gums back,” he instructed, and for a brief moment I felt I was being asked to do something lewd. But he’s my dentist, after all, and for years has had an intimate relationship with my mouth; we’ve been through a lot together, including, crowns, abscesses, and difficult fillings. So I complied with his request and stood at the window where the light was best for the shot.
My dentist took a few moments to check things on the camera and to consult the instruction manual before taking several pictures. Meanwhile Marilyn stood capably behind me with her feet apart and used her hands to hold my head still. “Try to relax,” she said soothingly. “You can close your eyes if you want to.”
“This might make a good author photo,” I said when my dentist had taken the pictures, and started to laugh, but stopped laughing when I looked at his face which was bewildered, as though I’d just said something hurtful by making fun of his picture-taking.
Still, my dentist, like my husband, seemed excited by the pictures he’d taken although I think his excitement had more to do with the features of his new camera rather than with the photographic features of my mouth. I have a mouth full of crowns and amalgam fillings and very little original tooth material although I do have all my roots and gums, a fact I’m quite proud of.
Within seconds of taking the pictures my dentist showed me one of the shots from the little screen attached to the side of the camera.
The teeth and gums in the picture looked terrible, though, like a coloured illustration from a medical journal, the kind I’d sneak a look at when I was twelve years old to view men in Jockey shorts with caved chests and girls with hideous looking acne. The book was kept on a basement shelf beside my mother’s jams and preserves and I’d take my friends down there for a look. There were a lot of pictures of boils, if I remember correctly.
The picture my husband took of my mouth was no better than the one taken by my dentist. I was reading in bed the night he took the picture. “Pay no attention to me,” he said, a man on his knees, creeping towards me. First he took a picture of my cheek which, when he showed it to me, looked like the Sahara desert. Then he said, “Open your mouth.” By then I knew it wasn’t romance he had in mind. “I want to check the auto focus,” he said, fiddling with the controls. Which he did, having his way with me by repeatedly taking my picture. The resultant pictures showed inflamed looking gums, roots that seemed transparent, yellowed teeth, a lot of silver fillings, and a tongue lying inert. It was like looking at yourself in rigor mortis.
But I am serious about using a picture of my mouth as an author photo. When you pull your gums back it’s like being twelve years old all over again and making faces to disgust your friends. I don’t know what this says about the author-reader relationship but it could augur a fun time between them. The other thing is the interesting way you spit and dribble when you expose your teeth in this manner, a characteristic that, I’m just beginning to realize, is particular to authors.
The mouth picture could be placed discretely on the last page of the book, above a few words about the author’s accomplishments, family members, and place of residence. Such a picture would be a true indicator of the author’s insides, or at least the gateway to the author’s insides, something, as readers, we’re always trying to discover.
Copyright © 2003 M.A.C. Farrant
Talonbooks
P.O. Box 2076, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6B 3S3
www.talonbooks.com
First Printing: April 2003
Cover design by Adam Swica.
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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN-13: 978-0-88922-799-6
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts; the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program; and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council for our publishing activities.