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Issues
» 2005
Issue About
GR
Georgetown
Review
G&R Publishing |
Spring
2005
Feeling Inside Them Laura Selby ~~~~~~~~~~ It began during a wisdom tooth extraction while we were looming over an unconscious Mrs. Pearson. I had a latex-gloved finger against her impacted molar and was holding her jaw steady as Dr. Dorfman detached the connective tissue between the tooth and the bone. Before he took the tooth, he paused, exhaled and moved the scalpel gently down the length of my finger. “Do you like that?” he breathed through his facemask. I signed up for hands-off women’s survival classes because Gregg had moved out, leaving me alone with a four-thousand-dollar bill for a flat-screen T.V. I couldn’t bear to look at, and now the crush Dr. Dorfman had on me had turned into something scary. I worked as a dental hygienist for the Westside Dental Group and it wasn’t until things started going pretty bad for Dr. Dorfman, that he began following me out to my car after work. Dorfman was on his second marriage, his third DWI, and the word around the office was that he was fighting jail-time with a cheap attorney. Working with him had gotten progressively worse. I’d be preparing his tray setup and he’d appear just behind my shoulder breathing along the hairs on the nape of my neck as he told me how a patient’s panorex revealed severe plaque on the anterior teeth of the lower left quadrant. ~~ The Westside Dental Group offices operated out of a medical high-rise across from the Lakeview Mall. The hygienists weren’t allowed to park in the spots closest to the offices because they were reserved for patients and dentists, so we had designated employee parking in the back, beside the dumpster. When my shift ended at 5:30, I would take the elevator down, exit through the sliding doors, walk around the corner, and book-it down the alleyway. I’d get to my car and turn around and he would be there, ten feet or so away, hands in his pockets. I’d try to walk to my car with Tina, but sometimes her schedule ran over, and on those nights, my heart would pound because I was afraid of my boss, of what he might do if he ever got me alone. Worse than that, I hated who I’d become. I was thirty-six and had suddenly found myself alone again; I was this sad person who stared at a blank flat-screen television; I slept with pepper-spray on my nightstand, I had let my roots grow, become introverted, and wanted I Gregg to come home so badly, I couldn’t think about much else. Our apartment had two rooms and I would wander from room to room touching and smelling. He hadn’t cleared out all of his stuff and sometimes I would lay it around the apartment so it looked like he was still there. I put his socks on the floor, right where he used to take them off. I put his hiking boots by the door, and one of his razors on the sink underneath the mirror. I met Linda Carcaterra the first night of the hands-off women’s survival class after an hour of air-punches and leg thrusts. The instructor’s name was Gary Gitchell. His hair was gelled back and you could see large, firm pecs through his tight t-shirt. He said he had twenty years’ martial arts teaching and that he held several black belts. “This class will help you in so many ways,” he said as he paced the floor. “I’m going to teach you not only how to defend yourself, but about awareness, body language, self-confidence, assertiveness and self-esteem. I’ll educate you on the tricks of robbery and bag snatching, how to be aware when you’re home alone, evasion, confrontation and finally, threat assessment and risk limitation.” He paused dramatically. He stared at us, this class of fourteen, made up of mostly overweight middle-aged women. “This class will turn you into masters of defense.” We were told to get into pairs, one playing the victim, the other the assailant. Linda and I happened to be standing next to each other and I’d found myself staring at her because her skin was so pale, it looked bleached. She looked at me, shrugged her shoulders, and smiled, revealing a nasty overbite.
Gary called us up to demonstrate and Linda had decided I would be the attacker.
I was supposed to lay my hands on her in a threatening way and I didn’t
know how to do that when we found ourselves in front of the class, staring
back at twelve nervous women. But somewhere I found this coolness
as I approached Linda from behind. I even acted out the part, creeping
on my tiptoes like a mad rapist or dentist of some sort while the other
women watched and waited for their turns to attack. And Melinda Woodward,
a flabby woman in spandex, gasped as I grabbed Linda from behind and curved
my arm around her thin, pale neck. Linda yelled “NO, NO, NO” like
we’d been told, and attempted to turn her wiry body. She tried to
elbow me in the stomach, she went for a knee-thrust and when that didn’t
work, she squirmed—but I was Dr. Dorfman now, I had a hold and I wasn’t
going to give.
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