Ten Minutes

There's this doctor I had a huge crush on, until 6:10 pm today. I've only talked to him twice; once when I had my ankle checked, and once more when my mother went to see him about a pain in her leg. I was given an opportunity to go sashaying into his clinic one last time, to bring a gift from my mom, who he didn't charge because she was a fellow doctor. Gladly, I accepted the errand, thinking I might bat my eyelashes at a man for once in my life and probably get something going. During the last few days of my scheduled errand to the good doctor's office, I rehearsed all the variations of the probable conversation, got my hair cut and cellophaned to wash out the gray, and paid extra attention to the pores of my face to prevent a breakout of zits. Most notably, I found the time to squeeze in a cleaning at the dentist, because I couldn't stand the idea of smiling at him again with a mouthful of coffee stains on my teeth. When I couldn't contact my old dentist at the Heart Center, and Mission Doc was only a day away, I bit the bullet and went to a hole-in-the-wall dentist clinic located thirty steps away from my office. I knew I was not in a good place when I saw that the lady dentist didn't have an assistant, and her equipment appeared to have been around since 1970. But I opened my mouth anyway, and let her rip. I really don't know whether it was my 18 months of accumulated tartar that was to blame, or if I unluckily wandered into the clutches of the most hamfisted dentist in the entire nation, but that cleaning was the bloodiest thirty minutes of my entire life. Every time I spit into the bowl, I saw red. And when the lady dentist handed me a mirror to check her handiwork, the blood clinging to the edges of my gums made me look like I had just bitten someone's neck for dinner. I paid her 300 bucks and went straight to the drugstore for a bottle of Bactidol, silently vowing never to betray the perfectly lighthanded Dr. Arquiza again, even if he charges twice as much and suffers from a defective telephone.

Today was the day I executed Mission Doc. I made sure that every inch of me was spanking clean (including my now-bloodless teeth), and I put on my skinniest jeans and a shirt reserved only for matters of great personal significance. I walked into a puff of Kenzo Flower. I called ahead and told the secretary that I would drop by at 5:30. On the way to the hospital, I lost several minutes each to a tie-up at East Avenue, a slow crawl at Crame, and to a barreling convoy of some asswipe politician coming through the Shaw-Edsa underpass. When I finally arrived at the clinic at 6:10 in the evening, the secretary was just closing up the office. She told me I missed the doctor by ten minutes, and she asked whether I hadn't run into him on his way out. I wish I did, dearie. I wish I did. And so ends another fantastic fumble by the Twisted Spinster. Perhaps I'll find all of this funny tomorrow, but right now all I feel like doing is going to bed without brushing my teeth. Good night, Metro Manila, and don't wake me up until noon.