Close encounter of the dental kind

This is not the brightest of all mornings since I know that this afternoon at 3:30 I'll be sitting in the dentist's chair having all sorts of unspeakable things done within my oral cavity. It's not a comforting thought.

This is not to suggest I don't admire, respect, and possibly even love my dentist. I've been going to him for more than 20 years and he's the best in the business, virtually painless and extremely considerate of my comfort at all times. If he weren't so rich, I'd write him into my will. And, his assistant is a charming and exquisitely lovely person of the sort one has untoward fantasy dreams about. Just too bad she's married to a friend of mine. I mean, you can't express to a friend, no matter how close he might be, that "Your wife is so hot, I'd really like to run off with her. OK?" Added to which, she has seen me at my most vulnerable, not to mention esthetically unappetizing.

No, as I say, my dentist is very, very good. He was the guy who got me fully past the dental angst I brought with me from childhood, when my mother insisted that I keep going to this sadistic butcher hack, who instilled in my a lifelong dread of drills, novacaine and anything else associated with that cloying and nauseating clove smell that used to dominate dental chambers. I wondered later if my mother insisted I go go him because she was having an affair with him. I mean, I learned as I got older that the guy was a notorious lecher, and when I was about 14 I actually saw him cop a feel up the skirt of his pretty redheaded assistant.

But, I digress to a degree. I find it interesting that in our professional encounters we grant liberties to certain people that would otherwise be in hideous violation of personal space rules, and we accept it because we need such services on occasion. I sit and chat with my wife's doctor, and I think, You see my wife naked. You see my wife in intimate poses that are normally reserved for, well, intimate partners. You do that, yet it doesn't bother me, because you're her doctor. My hairdresser, Cindy, cuts my hair, massages my scalp and sometimes presses her breasts against my upper torso as she is carrying out her tonsorial ministrations, and that's OK. She's the very pretty lady who cuts my hair and does a fine job of it, so she is allowed the closeness. I go to my doctor for my semi-annual "guy" exam. I mean, this is an almost unspeakable indignity and violation, and I also know my doctor socially. But, again, it's OK. It's his job.

So, what I was leading up to is the matter of those incidents in which doctors, shrinks, chiropractors and other individuals whose calling leads them into intimate contact with either the bodies or the psyches of their clients, taking advantage of the role and crossing boundaries that sometimes lead to intimacies or violations.

It's all about trust and, in such cases, where there is prosecution, I say throw the book at the bastards. I may have sweet and kindly thoughts about my hairdresser or dental assistant, but I know both women are thoroughly professional about their duties and also thoroughly respect my privacy and integrity. Cases where some creep, therefore, takes advantage, should never go unreported.

Meanwhile, I still have to go to the dentist at 3:30. Sigh.