Australasian Dentist Issue 93

AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST 135 REALITY BITES Jade Richardson M r Ivan Musiq stands over 6 foot 4 inches. All of his bones are long and lean. From the delicate sculptured knuckles of his toe bones, to the confronting skeletal frankness of his massive jaw, Mr Musiq appears to have been sculpted rather than born. At almost 70, he still owns the room and the beach as well. A lifetime career in organized crime, mostly high, and occasionally inMaximumSecurity will earn a man certain powers over visibility that is astonishing to observe. In the time I knew him, Mr Musiq could choose whether to appear in any space as tall and eternal as a Roman column, or to disappear into the scatter cushions as swift and silently as a crumb of sponge cake. He always wore neutral colors. To aid with his visibility antics and to provide a sort of blank canvas across his chiseled form. He knew how to control the blue of his eyes. He was like a sort of ancient rockpool dwelling creature, impeccably aware of his surrounds, able to camouflage himself completely in order to achieve peace or mischief, and well aware also, of when predator or prey was scenting the waters. He knew, he told me, always – at every given second of every day and night – who was in the room, and who was most dangerous. That particular power he preferred to command for himself. In the five weeks I was neighbours with Mr Ivan Musiq in a remote rat-nibbled resort on the wrong side of a rapidly developing island in the Sea of Siam, where he was resting his nervous system from his lifestyle as a finely tuned outlaw, and I was reading Theroux, there was only one time I ever saw even a chink in the exquisite façade of his immense self esteem. In this case, it was more of a crack than a chink, to be specific. And the only remedy was going to be a two-hour mercy dash across a blustery mountain, past the elephant sanctuary where a one-legged man kept a mean-eyed monkey and a stash of magic mushrooms in his pocket. Then onward past the terrible flash of fangy streetdogs near the stinky river, through the heavenly shade of the lush Thai forest, across a rickety bridge of braided vines and The Horse’s Mouth By Jade Richardson scavenged driftwood, and then amercy ride along the seafront past massage parlours, cushion shops, fruit stalls, snooker halls and the shaggy coconut palms that shelter sad cows and piles of seepy mangos for a session with the only dentist on the island. The mission caused a dreadful pall to fall across the otherwise marble beauty of Mr Musiq the morning he was brought down by toothache. He did not disappear into the scatter cushions. He did not tower across the bay as he stood peering at the dawn from beyond his tattered hammock. He stooped. His massive frame looked as bent and terminal as a fractured umbrella. His eyes no longer dashed and darted with the vivacious power of blue ringed octopus. He did not flex his ropey 70-year-old biceps to send a dazzly flash of heavy machete up above him into the banana tree, nor haul down a rack of those sweet fruit, big as toddler, to share over breakfast, as he had done most every day. He more resembled an abandoned cigarette butt. The problem was not the pain, he told me. It was the excruciating terror he felt at being completely at the mercy of another human being. A human being, he said, who was, effectively, armed. And who would not only see through all his carefully constructed bluffs and postures, but have absolutely no interest in them at all. He was condemned to be the willing and purposefully defenseless victim of a more dangerous individual than himself, in other words. This was the definition of humiliation for my friend, this proud and fragile Mr Musiq. It was a dread experience closer to terror, he said, than when he had stood with the little red lights cast by the New Zealand SWAT team’s automatic weapons dancing across his chest when he’s been busted back in the 1990s. A man with a gun, he said, was less of a problem to him than a dentist. He said there was an almost zero chance than a gunman would or even really wanted to shoot, but with a dentist, he forlornly told me, it is almost certain that weapons will be deployed. I was invited to inspect the mighty cavern of the giant Mr Musiq’s maw, to see what the problem was. It was like looking into the neat, newmouth of a gigantic infant – things seemed so polished and orderly in there. It was like looking down the throat of a massive wild creature, an accomplished top order predator that wanted to lie in your lap and have a splinter removed. “It looks bad,” I told him. “There’s a visible crack. The gum is very angry. Nobody around here feels safe while you’ve got a sore head.” He regarded me with such a look of fear and sorrow that it almost broke my heart. I watched him head off, blue eyes weak and fading as he turned the key on his Kawasaki. Spine slumped as he headed into the breast of the mountainous heart of the island he would need to cross to place himself in the only dental chair between us and Bangkok, which was three days’ from here and absolutely not an option for other reasons too. He did not wave as he set off. He did not skid his wheel in the dust to show off his mastery of the Kawasaki stallion. Life was quiet inmy bungalowwhile the surgery took place. I pictured Mr Musiq’s terrifying frame cast a massive shadow as he entered the door of the Happy Smile dental surgery where the tiny Thai ladies would have received him with grace and concealed fright. I pictured his long, sculpted ankles dangling off the edge of the pink chair. His naked feet, spangled with sand, his dry mouth and shallow breath. I pictured the avalanche of stress chemicals surging through his body all the way across the island, the unexpressed fear, the pounding of the arteries in his neck, and the failure of his camouflage to disappear