Dental small talk: a transcript

Setting: the chair Subject: you Posture: hands folded on the chest like a Victorian corpse, which nobody instructed you to do and which you do every time

#The structural problem

He asks questions. You cannot speak.

That's the whole situation and every other feature of it follows from that one fact. There are four fingers and a suction tube in your mouth. Your jaw is being held open by a device whose name you have never learned. You are being asked about your summer.

#Transcript

00:41 — "Any big plans for the summer?"

00:42 — [subject cannot respond]

00:43 — [subject produces a sound]

00:44 — "Nice, nice."

We want to draw attention to 00:43 and 00:44.

He heard something. He responded to it. It was not a word. It has never been a word. In the entire recorded history of this exchange nobody has ever produced a word, and he has never once failed to respond appropriately.

04:12 — "Where'd you go? Anywhere nice?"

04:14 — [subject attempts a two-syllable answer]

04:14 — [suction]

04:15 — [answer lost]

04:16 — "Oh, lovely."

He said lovely. He does not know where you went. You do not know where you went — the suction took it before you found out.

07:30 — "You been flossing?"

Both parties know the answer. He can see the answer. He is, at this moment, physically inside the answer.

The question is asked anyway. This is not information-gathering. Nobody has ever learned anything at 07:30. It's liturgy.

#The parallel channel

The hygienist says nothing.

She has said nothing for the entire procedure and she knows everything. She knows about the flossing. She has known since 02:10. She will not raise it, then or ever, and this restraint is the single most professional conduct in the room.

#Analysis

We ran this against standard negotiation frameworks and it fails the first requirement immediately. A negotiation requires both parties to be able to speak. Here, one party can speak and the other party has a drill in their mouth. The literature calls this "asymmetric" and then, in our reading, stops being useful.

So we went in expecting to find a hostage situation. We want to report that we did not find one, and that we were wrong about the shape of it from the start.

#The turn

He does not need you to answer.

Read the transcript again. He is not waiting for information. He responds to sounds. He says "nice" to a noise, "lovely" to nothing, and he does it on time, every time, with total commitment. That is not a man failing to have a conversation.

That is a man producing a sound — so the room isn't silent. So you are not lying in a chair in the middle of the afternoon with your mouth held open, listening to your own skull from the inside.

Because that is what's on the other channel. That is what you get if he stops. The small talk isn't small talk. It's the only anaesthetic he can administer without a form.

#Closing

11:02 — "Alright, rinse."

You have your mouth back. You have it back for the first time in eleven minutes and you have full access to the entire language, every word of it, and what you say is:

"Thanks."

And he says:

"No problem."

And that's correct. That's the right exchange. Both of you have now said the only true thing available, which is that something was done and it was kind, and neither of you is going to make it weird by being specific.

Then you go out to the desk and pay a startling amount of money, which is the actual violence, and which nobody mentions at all.

Related: a field guide to the 6AM gym man — another man who is kinder than the observer expected and gets written up anyway.

If you'd rather be somewhere that is honest about wanting to hurt you, the wheel is right there and it has never once asked about your summer.