Nitrous Oxide
Joy in the Dental Chair
This is not a recommendation, though at times it will probably seem like one. People’s reactions to drugs, in a medical facility or not, are incredibly personal and diverse. Although nitrous oxide is the most potent, exquisite and spiritual drug I have ever experienced, virtually none of my friends like it at all. When they’ve tried it at my urging, always administered by a dentist, it made one gag and another anxious and another faint. I’m glad they tried it, on the off chance that it would do to them what it does to me, which is to give me pleasure beyond measure. But I haven’t made any coverts.
Later in life, most of us have some chronically weak body part or other, and with me it’s my teeth (although they don’t look as bad as they are). Last time, the oral surgeon told me that in twenty-five years of practice, he’d never observed the likes of what he’d just seen in my mouth: something about an “abutment.” Although I am generally happy to be unique—this was not one of those times.
My mouth is a continuing work in progress, and, alas, I know my oral surgeon well. Between numerous extractions and bone grafts and implants (I go to somebody else for the root canals), we’ve become good friends, especially as he’s generous with the nitrous oxide. It’s always pleasant talking to him as we wait for the gas and the Novocain to take effect. Nitrous oxide helps compensate for the pain I will feel later on, when I’ve come down and the anesthetic wears off.
So the dentist and I are chatting away about our families and vacations, and soon I don’t want to talk any more. At this point, I usually start to chuckle at my general well-being and at the incongruity of feeling such bliss in this sterile setting—about to get work done on my teeth! Not for nothing is nitrous oxide known as “laughing gas,” and hilarity rises in me like a bubble.
Soon, I can control it, and I open my mouth obediently when I’m told to do so. I prefer not to consider what’s going on in my mouth, but, strangely, when the dentist applies the slow drill, it’s a deep and satisfying pleasure. I’m guessing that if I took nitrous oxide at a party, I would miss the low vibration and firm pressure of that drill—although no one offers poppers, or even joints, at the parties I attend.
Sometimes in the chair I try to guide my trip, deciding to concentrate on a single person or subject, but usually I just let my mind wander in paradise.
My short story “Nitrous Oxide” appeared in The Westchester Review in 2009—my attempt to convey the divine gas experience in fiction. I no longer remember why the protagonist is a man nor why I refer to him by his last name only. That’s just how the story came out. The dentist in the story (and especially his outfit) is not modeled on my present oral surgeon but on an earlier dentist. The story is 2200 words: nine manuscript pages, maybe ten reading minutes.
Whenever you read it, I hope you think it’s a gas.
Nitrous Oxide
by
Catherine Hiller
The first thing Gerbson noticed about Dr. Datta was his pants. They were long, crisply-creased white nylon suit-pants, and they matched a well-fitting white nylon jacket. Dr. Datta also wore white shoes. Gerbson had never seen a dentist in full uniform before: it made him seem inauthentic, like an actor playing a dentist; it hinted of a hygiene too severe.
Gerbson hadn’t been to a dentist in years, but he wasn’t worried about this visit. Nancy had told him that Dr. Datta was great. He was skilled, he was gentle, and, if you wanted, he gave you nitrous oxide. Nancy said it was a very nice high.
Dr. Datta, all in white, beckoned Gerbson into his office. “Sit down, please.” He might well have told Gerbson to lie down, so horizontal was the piece of furniture he indicated. Gerbson had never seen a dentist’s chair like it. Instead of a thick, padded seat beneath a forest of folded hooks and claws, Dr. Datta had a simple beige couch with a headrest. As Gerbson extended himself on the couch, he saw no sign of drill or other dental apparatus. The dentist pushed a button, and the couch rose several feet until Gerbson’s mouth was on a level with Dr. Datta’s shoulders. Then the dentist turned on a very bright round lamp. He said, “Open, please.”
Dr. Datta tapped faintly here and there along Gerbson’s teeth and made notations on the card. “Perhaps we’ll start out with this molar here.” In the same polite, neutral voice, he said, “Do you want gas?”
“Sure,” said Gerbson, wishing that the dentist hadn’t called it simply, ominously, “gas.” Still, Gerbson was looking forward to the experience. Nancy really liked it. Dr. Datta placed a white rubber mask over Gerbson’s nose. Gerbson patted the mask more securely near his left nostril. Nancy had told him that once she hadn’t had a snug fit, and she’d breathed in too much air to get really high.
Dr. Datta left the room, and Gerbson inhaled deeply. It certainly seemed like he was getting enough gas. It occurred to him that nitrous oxide really had the “sweet, sickly” smell invariably attributed to marijuana decades earlier. He found himself smiling fondly, fixedly.
“Feeling pretty happy?” asked Dr. Datta, returning to the room.
Gerbson chuckled. “A private joke,” he explained.
“Uh-huh,” said the dentist. Suddenly, he grabbed Gerbson’s upper lip and began pulling it back and forth. It was like being shaken while dreaming. Gerbson was so surprised and amused he didn’t notice that the dentist was also giving him a shot of Novocain. Then, as he felt the numbing liquid plumping out his gum, and as he saw the needle retreat, Gerbson had to smile some more. Dr. Datta was so shrewd, so deft. Gerbson heard the dentist say, “Pretty funny, i’n it?”
I’n it? Had he heard right? Surely Dr. Datta had said, “Isn’t it?” Why would he use baby-talk? He wouldn’t run the risk of insulting his patients by addressing them as children prematurely, and he couldn’t know the exact moment the gas would make them regress. But maybe he does know, thought Gerbson. At that moment, the dentist who was only a few years older than his patient, seemed not only wise, but clairvoyant. In his white clothes, he seemed a mystical guide.
Anyway, it felt, for the moment, vastly reassuring to let him take over, to be helpless as a baby again and let everything go. “Open big,” said Dr. Datta, like a father feeding a child. Gerbson opened his jaws. He was a cave, he was a chasm. Although he had never taken LSD, Gerbson, as a student, had read vivid accounts of its marvels. Now as his mouth turned into a canyon so Dr. Datta could wander at leisure, Gerbson wondered why no one had told him the truth about nitrous oxide. It’s not a high, he thought: it’s a trip.
For some time now, Gerbson had been feeling uneasy, even though his marriage was good, his children were bright, and his job was rewarding. He edited children’s books for a large publishing company and was in charge of the Appletree series, which had won several awards in the past year. He and Nancy were renovating a Victorian house in New Rochelle, NY. Every week, he played tennis with his best friend, Ned. The surface of his life was so good he felt ashamed to be wondering: is this it? One day after another slipping silently away? Gerbson yearned for a transcendent experience to make him see more clearly, feel more whole. Now, eyes closed, mouth open, mind streaming, Gerbson thought: this is it.
It was odd, though, to feel so profound without being able to talk. He was encased in cotton. He was a blimp in an onion. He was floating through layers and layers to ultimate truths. Although he barely knew Dr. Datta, he had important things to tell him. His heart was full, and he wanted to share, but his mouth was also full, and he could only sigh. He slowly turned his palms, which had been gripping the arm-rests, until they were facing the ceiling. With this gesture, Gerbson, ecstatic, surrendered.
You come down from gas fast. After Dr. Datta took off the mask, it took Gerbson only a minute to return. His hair was wet; his clothes were sticking to him. “What happened?” he asked. “Before?”
“I got two cavities and did a little scaling. You need a lot of work.”
Gerbson nodded enthusiastically.
* * *
For his second visit, Gerbson came prepared. He wore a thin T-shirt because last time the gas had made him hot, and he carried a pocket notebook. Last time, he had brought nothing back: all the nitrous truths had vanished when the drug wore off. This time, he intended to record them here in the waiting room after coming down. Today he was going to be very serious about the gas: he wasn’t just going to cruise hedonistically on it – he was going to fly a course to the calm spaces, the answers.
“You seem very cheerful,” remarked Dr. Datta as Gerbson settled into the dentist’s chair. Dr. Datta pulled the scaler from behind Gerbson’s head. Gerbson turned and saw that all the electrically powered instruments were recessed into the wall in back of the head-rest, out of the patient’s line of vision. The whirring brush was approaching Gerbson’s mouth.
“Wait a minute!” Gerbson cried. “What about the gas?”
“Oh, we ran out this morning. The truck’s late with the delivery.”
Gerbson couldn’t believe that Dr. Datta would relay this momentous news so casually. “Stop everything!” said Gerbson. “I’ll come back some other time.”
“You’re kidding,” said Dr. Datta.
Gerbson said, “No I’m not.”
* * *
It was pouring the next time Gerbson went to the dentist; his raincoat was wet through and through.
“People have been calling to cancel all morning,” said Dr. Datta.
“Really?” Gerbson would have made his appointment if he’d had to walk fifty blocks through the storm.
“I can give you an hour today.”
“Great,” said Gerbson. He patted his pocket to check that his notebook was there.
Dr. Datta said, “Here you go” and put the little white rubber mask on Gerbson’s nose. This time, it took only three or four breaths before Gerbson felt the inner swirling, the cosmic stream. A laugh escaped him.
“High already?” asked Dr. Datta.
“No, I barely feel it,” said Gerbson, afraid Dr. Data would turn down the dial.
“I bet,” said Dr. Datta, once more mocking and parental. “I bet you just feel nice and comfy.” He approached Gerbson with the needle.
Gerbson asked, “But Dr. Datta, why are you giving me Novocain, too?”
“To kill the pain. Gas just makes you happy.”
“‘Just’?” Gerbson was indignant. “How can you say ‘just’? Anyway, it does far more than that.”
“Open big,” said Dr. Datta. “Little pinch.”
“Why do dentists always say ‘little pinch’?” Gerbson wondered aloud. And then he had it. “Because they can’t say ‘little prick’!”
Doctor Datta laughed. “That’s a good one,” he said. “Open big.”
The injection took a minute or two, and Gerbson had time to formulate his thoughts. When it was over, Gerbson said, carefully, “Nitrous oxide helps you see the truth by demonstrating how subjective everything really is anyway.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Dr. Datta acted as if Gerbson was talking utter nonsense. Since his companion seemed indifferent to metaphysics, Gerbson turned his head to the window. The rain was coming down diagonally in lines, but he couldn’t hear it above the noise of the air conditioner. After a while, Dr. Datta asked, “How are you feeling?”
This was a question Gerbson felt he could answer, at length, many ways. “How do you mean?” he said cautiously. “Could you narrow the question?”
“Is your mouth numb yet?”
Gerbson rubbed his gum. “Sort of. What does it say in the books? How long is Novocain supposed to take?”
“They say ask the patient.”
Gerbson cracked up. He realized he was very stoned and wondered if he was at peak. Don’t think of peak, he told himself: too much focus will prevent it.
“Open, please.”
Gerbson opened his mouth, closed his eyes, and started his journey inward. He felt very sensuous. He wondered if Nancy did, too, under gas, and whether Dr. Datta ever took advantage of female patients. If they felt like this, how could they resist?
There was a ringing in his ears now, a whirling siren sound which seemed to be getting higher and higher in pitch. Gerbson felt very light and extended, yet the air was pressing heavily upon him. The ringing got higher still, and now it felt like he’d been sprayed onto the ceiling. It was pleasure beyond orgasm. He saw that he was now at peak and might remain there for some time. The ringing in his ears rose another tone, clamoring, expectant, and merged with the shriller, louder ringing of Dr. Datta’s telephone.
Gerbson listened intently; important messages could come any time. “Well, chew on the other side of your mouth . . . No, I can’t do it tomorrow . . . it has to be today.”
It has to be today. The words made ripples in Gerbson’s mind, but he sensed that soon a more spacious and usable truth would be granted him, so he pressed inward, searching. Suddenly, however, he paused to wonder if his quest had been perverted: perhaps now he didn’t want illumination as much as he wanted . . . proof. Proof? Proof of what? That bliss could be productive? That with this drug he could find truth? How could such things ever be proven? And what was the ultimate measure? The explanation? The revelation from within that would charge his life with meaning. He thought: everything is . . . everything is – what?
Gerbson felt like he was on the crest of a momentous wave, and his ears were ringing again as he listened within himself for the answer. A series of images appeared on his inner eyelids: Nancy at the piano with her hair in braids; the cluttered roll-top desk in his study; his children running in the yard; Ned, during tennis, wiping the sweat from his face with a towel. Everything. Everything is . . . ?
And then, overwhelmingly, the message came to Gerbson. He laughed aloud. Yes, of course! It was just what he needed. And it was so simple he would always remember it: this time, for sure, he would bring something back. Gerbson felt limp with joy and relief. For the rest of the hour, like a child with a balloon tied to his finger, he took with him the truth, the proof, that nitrous oxide had revealed. And although sometimes, as he crawled through subterranean passage-ways, it was a nuisance to have this balloon to worry about, Gerbson protected it carefully, knowing how valuable it was.
* * *
Afterwards, Gerbson sank into a chair in the waiting room and pulled out his notebook. He jotted down a fragment, and another. Then he drew three asterisks across the page and recorded the revelation in all its spare elegance and beauty.
That night, when the kids were in bed, Gerbson showed Nancy his notebook. She read:
Ask the patient
It has to be today
***
Everything is every thing.
She asked dryly, “Is this your new wisdom?”
“Just the last line.”
“Everything is everything?”
“Everything is every thing. Two words. Don’t you see?” He looked at her intently. But how could he communicate that swirl of images, that jolt of insight? He said, ploddingly, “Meaning lies everywhere, in all things together. There isn’t one answer. ‘Everything is every thing’ means nothing is everything.”
Nancy yawned and said, “Let’s go to bed, dear.”
But Gerbson had walked to the window and was staring out. The moon was round and low and bright. It shone full on his face, like Dr. Datta’s spotlight. Gerbson tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and inhaled.
Nancy said, “What are you doing?”
But Gerbson, breathing deeply, didn’t answer.
The End
Yes, it does apply to other hallucinogens! And yes, try again.
Loved this story but couldn’t tolerate the “gas”! However your descriptions of trying to recreate or explain the bliss and truths that occur when high feel relatable for most drug highs. Maybe I should give the “gas” another try!