The Toothless

It’s movie night with Dorb. We started inviting him over on Thursdays because it seemed like he might have been close to committing suicide.

I’m sitting on the couch with Heidi when the doorbell rings.

“It’s probably Dorb,” I say.

“I’ll get it,” Heidi says. She always gets the door. Says it’s good for her thighs.

She opens the door.

“Dorb!” I shout from the couch.

“Hey guys,” he says, giving us his toothless grin.

I stand, really feeling it. “It’s your week to pick. What do you got?”

He holds up a DVD or maybe a Blu-ray in a plastic bag. We normally just stream stuff.

“It’s a surprise,” he says.

“Let’s fire up the DVD player.” I can’t remember the last time we used it.

Heidi says, “I’ll go get the popcorn.”

Dorb sits in the middle of the couch, staring intensely at the blank screen.

I hold my hand out for him to give me the disc. He unsheaths it from the plastic bag and hands it to me. I inspect it. There are no graphics or writing on the disc.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Not sure it has a title.”

“Oh,” I say. “Experimental.”

He grins and nods his head, this time keeping his mouth closed around his gums.

Heidi comes out of the kitchen with a massive bowl of popcorn she places on the coffee table in front of Dorb.

I slide the disc in, expecting a menu screen to pop up. It doesn’t, so I quickly hit pause on the remote.

“We ready?” I say.

When Dorb and Heidi both affirm, I cut the lights and join them on the couch, sitting to Dorb’s left. We like to encourage guests to sit in the middle so they feel firmly within our bubble.

After squinting to find the button, I hit play on the remote.

On the screen, a fit middle-aged man in a tank top has a girl, maybe eleven or twelve, by the hand. They walk toward the camera. The man looks exceptionally sleazy. They pass the camera and we see they are in the young girl’s bedroom. The next few minutes make me incredibly uncomfortable. My stomach is in knots. I cough and stand up.

I look at Heidi and say, “You wanna help me with that thing in the kitchen?”

She looks surprised and I have to give her the look that tells her she really wants to help me with that thing in the kitchen.

“Want me to pause it?” Dorb says.

“Nah,” I say. “It’s okay. You can let us know if we miss anything.”

Heidi and I head into the kitchen. I’m sure Dorb realizes how abnormal this is. We typically do not talk during movies and one of us never just leaves the room without pausing it.

Once in the brightness of the kitchen, I give Heidi a look that says, “Can you believe this?”

“What?” she says, almost mad.

“Were you … enjoying that?”

“I don’t know. It’s only been going for a few minutes.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s child—”

She presses a finger to my lips. She doesn’t want me to say it because she’s afraid the FBI will come swarming down on the house.

“What are we supposed to do?” she says.

“Tell him to take his movie and go the fuck home.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“First of all, he works with us, so how awkward would that—”

I cut her off. “How awkward will it be if we go back to work and we’ve all collectively sat around watching … that.”

“Secondly, we’ll be accused of being toothist.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not toothist.”

“You know what? I think maybe you are. I think the only reason you started inviting him over was so you could tell people you have a toothless friend. Meanwhile, you can run around judging all the toothless people the same way you always have.”

“I started inviting him because he seemed lonely and I felt sorry for him.”

“Toothist.”

“I’m not watching the rest of that.”

“Why? You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t even know if it’s anything illegal. That could just be a … very young-looking actress.”

“Are you defending it?”

“Or what if it’s foreign? They have different ages of consent, you know.”

“Pretty sure it’s still illegal to watch it here.”

“If we make him leave, it’s going to devastate him.”

“Fine. Since you obviously want to watch it, just tell him I’ve got a stomach bug.”

She huffs. “You’ll have to pass him to get to the stairs. You can tell him yourself.”

Suddenly, I really do feel sick.

“And, you know, he didn’t lose his teeth naturally. He had them all pulled. A lot of people are doing it to, they say, ‘shed light on socio-economic differences’.”

Heidi looks at me with utter resignation. “I never realized what a toothist ass you are. Now I guess I know how you really see people.”

My stomach is churning. When I open the door and hear the sounds coming from the television, I don’t even have to pretend to look miserable.

Stumbling back into the living room, Heidi behind me, I say, “Sorry, Dorb, must have had something off for dinner. I gotta go lie down. You two enjoy the rest of the movie.”

I manage not to look at the screen and practically sprint up the stairs. Once I’ve reached the top of the stairs, Dorb says, “I can leave it here if you think he wants to watch it but … I don’t think he does. He liked that movie we watched last week so much, I was sure he’d like this one.”

“Lolita?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, you know, he’s kind of a snob about movies.”

I can practically see Dorb’s toothless face twisted into distatsteful agreement.

I feel guilty. Like I’ve created this monster. I shut the door so I don’t have to hear anything else. I’m not a jealous person anyway and know I have no fear of anything happening between Dorb and Heidi and, if I’m going to be honest, it’s because I can’t picture Heidi making out with someone who has no teeth no matter how toothist she claims not to be. I lose myself in thought, thinking maybe I’ll become openly toothist, building some arguments for it. I realize what a slippery slope it could be. I don’t want to be seen as a bigot. Plus, it doesn’t really matter to me what people want to do with their teeth. Most people’s just rot out anyway.

Heidi comes up about an hour later.

She seems wild. She yanks the bedclothes off me.

“Dorb go home?” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, almost breathless.

“Did he take that thing with him?”

“Yeah. But he wanted to leave it. Take off your underwear.” She’s pulling her shirt up over her head, unbuttoning her jeans and shucking them down her legs. I quickly strip off my underwear. She crawls into bed, lowering herself slowly onto my cock.

She unsnaps her bra and tosses it off. She’s grinding into me ferociously. “It was—”she breathes—“exactly what you thought.”