Benny Jay: Doctor, There’s A Buick In My Cheek!

In the last few days, this strange organism invades my mouth and takes up residence inside my left cheek.

I’m not making this up. Feels like there’s a pea in there, or maybe a BB pellet. My mouth gets all puffy, like I have the mumps.

It’s not that big of a deal. Fact is — I had the same things almost a year ago. The doctor told me there was a calcium deposit blocking my salivary gland.

“Like a kidney stone?” I asked.

He smiled all benevolent, like he’s dealing with and idiot, and said: “Yes, like a kidney stone….”

A few weeks later, I returned to his office and he sat me in an operating chair and shot me with pain killer and took out a needle and poked around my cheek. After a few minutes he announced — all gone. Probably charged the insurance company a fortune.

Only it’s not gone. He just broke it up into little pieces and then moved them around.  Freaking hack — probably got his medical degree at one of those mail-order schools in Gary, Indiana that Milo’s always writing about.

Anyway, over time those little pieces come back together with a vengeance. And my face is fatter than ever.  Little kids stare at me when I walk down the street.  As we pass, I hear their mothers whisper: “Don’t point at the strange man….”

It’s getting painful. If I poke it, it hurts even more. So I shouldn’t poke. But you try not poking when you got some weird thing living in your cheek.

At night, it’s the worst. Like all the fluid in my cheek is washing up against the blockage. It’s like an ocean in there….

At three in the morning, I wake. Hear my wife sleeping. The wind’s howling outside. Forget this, man — this sucks.

I walk to the bathroom and turn on the light. I look like Dizzie Gillespie.

I open my mouth and start poking at it with a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide.  The salivary gland is so fat it’s almost touching my teeth. It feels like there’s a little rock inside, clanking against my teeth.

This is exciting. I go through three or four Q-tips, poking and prodding. Some bloody gunk seeps out.  Wow, cool! I haven’t had this much fun at three in the morning in years. It hurts a little, but not enough to make me stop. I poke and prod some more. And, then, all of a sudden — a hard pellet falls out!

That’s right. A calcium pellet falls out of my cheek and onto my tongue. I take it in my hand and look at it. It’s like the size of an orange seed and the  color of a Cheerios oat.

I feel like Louis Pasteur. All scientific and shit. I need a petri dish. Of course, I don’t have a petri dish. Haven’t actually seen a petri dish since I was in high school. For all I know they don’t make them anymore. Probably have kids all over the country reading this and thinking: What the hell is a petri dish?

I go downstairs and get a glass out of the kitchen cabinet. I drop the pellet in the glass and look at it. I can’t believe this little sucker came out of my cheek!

Suddenly, I get this notion — gotta share this moment with my wife. She’ll want to know — right? I mean, it’s moments like this that marriage is all about.

So I go back into the bedroom with the glass in my hand and I stand over her as she lies there sleeping and I reach out to nudge her awake.

Then I stop. It’s 3:30. She might not like getting nudged away at 3:30 in the morning. I know I wouldn’t. Not even if a Buick fell out of her cheek.

So I go back to the bathroom and spend another five minutes poking and prodding my cheek with Q-tips soaked in hydrogen peroxide. Maybe hoping something else falls out. For all I know that’s where the missing TV remote control went.

Nope, nothing new emerges. I look at my face. Still a little puffy, but not as bad.

I go back to bed, lie on my back and think about what I’ve accomplished. Maybe it will loosen me up, like that little pellet was holding back all of these great ideas that will now flow forth, and I’ll write a great book that the whole world will read and I’ll get rich. Okay, not Bill Gates rich. Not even Oprah rich. More like semi-rock star rich. Like I had a few hits in the `60s and I kept the rights and invested the royalties and now I’m sitting on a few million and every now and then I hear them play one of my old songs on the radio as I drive to my summer house on the lake. You know, that kind of rich.

And the next thing you know, I fall asleep….