This may go without saying, but the action of someone jamming an entire handful of ass putty into your mouth is officially the most gag-inducing thing you can do to another human, and yes, I’m including whatever it is you’re thinking about right now. It smelled like burning flesh and tasted like intestines, and it was being used as a weapon of war that attacked as many of my senses at once as possible. So yes, I threw up. Well, actually, I gagged a lot at first, like that real deep gag you do sometimes that sounds like a sea lion calling for its mother. And then I threw up a lot. It didn’t matter how many times they screamed, “JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES AND RELAX YOUR THROAT, YOUR MASCARA IS RUNNING,” I puked all over that dentist and his dumb tray of butt clay and not at all into the bucket they were holding under my face to catch the barf. And you know what? They did that shit three times, until my gags yielded only dry heaves, because apparently throwing up all over the little clay version of your mouth makes it unusable and they have to do it until there isn’t any vomit in all the little teeth holes.

(Side note: I heard that dentist call one of his assistants a bitch one time, so I have zero regrets about vomiting all over that bastard. If I could, I’d go back and vomit on him again, because my stomach is bigger now and can hold even more vomit.)

And the worst part is, those fucking impressions screwed me over, ’cause they sent them to the lab or whatever weird sex palace they send children’s mouth molds to, and they came back and they were like, “Guess what? Not only are your teeth not straight, your mouth is too small, like some kind of idiot.” And they were telling the truth. My mouth was, in medical terms, narrower than a pigeon’s beak. Or at least that’s how the doctors described it. Apparently, my mouth was too narrow to fit all my teeth, because the two in the front started kinda growing into one another, like two awkward kids at a crowded party getting smashed together by a bunch of people dancing to “Mambo No. 5.” It’s a relatively common malady, which, if left untreated, guaranteed that I would grow up to be either a very successful prostitute, or one of those guys who auditions for television talent shows with the ability to whistle entire Mozart compositions through his nose. Coupled with a mild case of sleep apnea, it meant that my throat was basically the anatomical equivalent of a collapsed Chilean coal mine. (Thirty-three men had been briefly lost in it.)