“So how did you hear about us?” The dentist inquired in his high-pitched, sing-song voice. He was dressed in beat up sneakers, a collared shirt with a very thin tie, covered by a sweater. He looked young, perhaps early 40s. The Dentist’s office was incredibly modern, all white, with futuristic furniture. It could have come straight from George Lucas’ THX-1138. 

“Yelp.” I said, which I shouldn’t have. Or rather, I shouldn’t have had to say yelp, because I shouldn’t have found a dentist on yelp in the first place. 

“Okay, well, I’d like to start by going over your medical history. It says here you take flonase, do you take that everyday?”

“Well, no. I’m really bad about it, and it’s also not actually flonase, but it’s like flonase. It’s something that begins with an ‘a,’ or a ‘z,’ or a ‘c,’ or something.

“Okay well I’m just gonna give you a little speech here. I’m sort of an all natural medicine kind of guy.”

“Oh?” I don’t want my doctor to be an all natural medicine kind of guy. I want my doctor to be a science medicine kind of guy, I thought. 

“Yes, and I just think if you cut back on things like rice and bread and pasta and cereal and any other flour based products you’d probably have less allergies.”

Can I just get up and say this is not the dentist for me? Obviously that would be very awkward, but at least it would make a great story. The problem is I haven’t been to a dentist in over 2 years and well- I am here right now…

“So that’s just my opinion, and a lot of people try it and I can’t tell you how much of a difference it  can make. In fact my wife used to not even be able to pet dogs without getting welts and now she can play with them all she wants.” 

“But how do you survive not eating pasta?” I joked.

“Hah.” He laughed and put his hand on my knee. “I do eat pasta,” he protested emphatically, “It’s just if I do eat pasta I might not eat cereal the next day. So like today I had a fruit smoothy for breakfast and lunch is a salaaad,” he began drawing out his vowels in line with his sing-song approach to language, “with aalllmonds and pommmegranate seeds and arruuuugala and maybe for dinner I’ll have some chicken or fish. But then tomorrow I’ll eat a croissaaaant or maybe a scone.” 

I held myself back from saying “some nights I order in enough thai food to feed a family of four and eat it all. I eat a economy size portion of easy-mac as a late night snack. I drink 10,000 beers and then come home and order two turkey burgers each with their own side of fries. I’ll eat a 3 egg omelette for breakfast before I leave the house to meet someone for breakfast. Once I passed out eating an entire pizza pie because I forgot to stop for air. In high school they had to ban me from the annual pie eating contest after my sophomore year because it wasn’t fair to the other students. You’re not asking me to make an adjustment to my diet you’re asking me to alter the very axle that the World of my diet spins on.” But instead I sat there, silently, dumbfounded. When you go to the dentist you always expect a lecture, a lecture about not flossing enough, maybe even a lecture about eating too many sweets, but in one’s wildest dreams would they expect a lecture about eating bread. 

Paralyzed by confusion and sadness I stayed in the chair. He droned on talking, but I was unaware of what he was saying. When I came to he had just asked “So, where are you from?”

“Los Angeles, originally.” I said.

“Oh, I’m from California too,” he said, “but the northern part. San Jose.” But he didn’t pronounce it San Jose, he pronounced it ‘San Jozy.’ Like Like Jozy Altidor, or Indiana Jozy, Or Jozy and the Giant fucking Peach. No one, not a single person, in all of history, who has ever been anywhere closer to the great state of California than the map on a wall of a east-coast classroom has ever called it ‘San Jozy.’ 

“I like the weather out there much more,” He continued. “And I didn’t think I would like it here when I came to school, but then I met my wife and-“

This freak is married? What is happening to me? Am I in the twilight zone of dentistry?  Why has yelp forsaken me? We’re all those reviews just his friends, family, and staff?

I wish I had had the gall to get up and leave the moment he said “Natural medicine,” but I didn’t I stayed and my life would now forever be altered by this wierdo.

2 and half hours later I had finished my exam. He made me a custom tray to use to bleach my teeth while I slept. I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough. I was now going to be late for a movie. Usually when you go to the dentist at 3:00 you assume you can make it to a 5:30 showing 1 subway stop away, maybe this is why I am always late these days. 

After the movie I went out with a friend, whose birthday it was, and got egregiously drunk. I didn’t discuss my dentist experience because I was too creeped out by the whole situation. The next day I was laying in bed, hungover and I got a call from an un-identified New York area number.

“achheem-” I cleared my throat, “Hello?” I said.

“Hi is this Alexander?” the voice was immidiately familiar.

“Yes.”

“Hi Alex, this is Doctor Young from yesterday and I was just calling to see if you got a chance to use the bleaching tray yet.”

“Um, no, I haven’t.”

“Oh okay, well I was just calling to see if it went well and all.”

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t use it last night.”

“Oh okay, well that’s all.”

“Um, alright.” I hung up the phone.

It takes all the self control I have — which is not much — to not post this exact piece on yelp, however this guy has my phone number, this guy has my address, and this guy is one fucking creep of a guy. He disturbs me to my very core, but that isn’t even the bottom line. The bottom line is, just like I was too lazy to get out of that chair when he said he was ‘Natural Medicine kind of guy,’ I’m too lazy to bother finding another dentist.

Things I like to do while sleeping:

1. Rest.

wilwheaton:

Republican presidential candidate MITT ROMNEY, when asked if he stood by comments he made on Sean Hannity’s radio show saying that President Obama wanted to make the U.S. a “less Christian nation.”

As a younger person living in New York I’ve often said “I’d kill someone for an apartment with an outdoor space.” The phrase has become a sort of really pathetic social device I’ll use to break uncomfortable silences I am often confronted with when I find myself alone, with a stranger, at a party. 

“Any person?” They’ll usually ask.

“Well preferably a bad person. Definitely someone I don’t know, but yes, essentially any person.”

“For any kind of outdoor space?”

“For a private roof-deck I’d kill several people.”

“Like ten?”

“Yeah, like ten. Probably not more than ten.” 

I’ve been saying this for so long I don’t know if I even believe it anymore, but when I first said it, I really meant it. I really did think I would end another person’s life simply so I could have a private place to sit and read, or drink a beer, or just sit and bask in the sun if the moment struck me. Well today, I met the guy I’d kill. 

I was headed up town to have brunch with my mother — it is mother’s day — and I found out that once again the only time I need the subway is the time they need to make it better by temporarily making it worse. Subway construction is like social security but instead of paying now for our old people we’re sacrificing our current convenience to give unborn New Yorkers a more efficient tube even though they will never understand our sacrifice because they won’t have been born until after they finish making our lives hell. 

I got on the 6 (local train) uptown; got off at 14th to transfer to the express, but there is no express today; so I waited for the next 6 (local) uptown. I got on the next 6 (local) uptown and took it to Grand Central. There the conductor announced that across the platform was a 5 (express) running uptown. I got off the 6 (local) uptown and got on the 5 (express) Uptown. The 6 (local) uptown left, the 5 (express) remained. The next 6 (local) uptown arrived, it left, the 5 (express) continued to remain. The conductor on the 5 (express) announced that the 5 (express) would not depart for another 17 minutes. The next 6 (local) uptown arrived, I got on the 6 (local) uptown,  and it left. Seven and half years later I met my mother for brunch. 

I met the man I’d like to murder when I got that last 6 (local) uptown that finally took me to my destination. I was waiting for everyone to get off that train — as they were all being bamboozled into thinking that the 5 (express) uptown was actually leaving in any reasonable amount of time — and when the last person got off I started onto the train. The moment I took my first step through the door the conductor came on the speaker and announced “Stand Clear of the closing doors please.” And the door closed and clipped my shoulder knocking me off balance. I was a little fatigued at this point, from all the transferring, so I wasn’t paying incredibly close attention so the whole incident caught me a little off guard. As I regained my composure and looked up, the man I’d like to murder was standing across from me, laughing.

This man, who I’d like to call Pietrus because that name fits his smug demeanor, made no bones about laughing at me. He came right out and laughed, aloud. Strangely, though, he didn’t smile at me or acknowledge that I wasn’t on TV which was sort of to say “I’m not really laughing in partnership with you, acknowledging and understanding your absolute misery” but instead to say “What a buffoon, get’s clipped by a door! Man, I just wish it had hit him in the balls!” 

Pietrus had a long face, and wore oversized round headphones. The earpieces were a little wider than the circumference of his head which made his silhouette similar to the shape of a mushroom. He was laughing so hard  you could see the blood begin to throb through those two blue veins that make a V shape on a person’s forehead. His entire noggin bobbed up and down as he chortled at my miserable expense. In the fluorescent light of the subway you could see little bits of white spittle spray from his mouth as his laughing got more fervent. 

I tried to ignore the whole incident while I had brunch with my mother. I had Huevos Rancheros and she had a Waffle. It was satisfying enough. After lunch we went to central park and watched some miserable wretches wading through a fountain collecting the coins that represented other miserable wretch’s unanswered wishes. By the time we left the park I had completely forgotten about Pietrus. 

My mother and I parted ways, I headed back to the subway and she back to where she was staying. I walked south on Park Avenue to the 68th street stop on the Lexington line. As I crossed 71st street I came upon a group of people. It was two women and a man holding a baby. The two women were about a generation apart in age and the man was the age of the younger woman, maybe 28. As I approached I was mainly staring at the baby because babies don’t expect you to acknowledge them if you make eye contact, but at the last minute I recognized the man holding the baby; it was Pietrus. 

I sighed deeply.  Pietrus and I caught eyes. We both recognized each other from the incident earlier in the day. At the moment I passed by the group, the moment where you can hear that really brief snippet of conversation, Pietrus began to tell the others “Oh! You wanna hear something funny? Earlier I saw that guy-” and then I was out of earshot, but I know exactly what he said.

I’m not sure what element upsets me most: that me getting clipped was really a funny enough story to retell later in the day, that he seemed to either believe I could not hear or see him and that he could say or do whatever he pleased as if I couldn’t find out, or that there were two other people willing to spend a single moment’s time with him and that he was having some influence on this impressionable baby. Suffice it to say I was angry, but then it occurred to me: Pietrus is the guy I would kill for an outdoor space.

Unfortunately for me, or maybe fortunately for Pietrus, life just doesn’t work that way. Committing a heinous, violent crime doesn’t result in your apartment magically getting fantastic addition. If life did work that way, Pietrus would probably already be dead. Sadly though, life seems to work the very opposite way in that sparing the world from Pietrus would more likely result in me giving up my apartment and any possibility of a shared roof-deck for a shared jail cell. Alas Pietrus lives, but now, at least, if the rules of life ever do change in my favor I know who I’d kill for an outdoor space. 

I never felt like I belonged in SoHo. In fact, I’ve always actually just assumed that I wasn’t allowed in any area of Manhattan where streets aren’t numbered. Sometimes I’ve strolled along Houston — the north side, of course — considering that I couldn’t be that different from the people south of the border, but I’d never dare try and emigrate.

 I assume there are these two guys standing at the Gates of SoHo, both are tall, wearing white undershirts and greenish, tattered-chic vests. Their pants are ‘stressed’ jeans and they purchased them for about $600, and they both wear pointy black leather shoes with silver sequens on them — I think this is what one might call metro-sexual. One of these guys is black with a very tight and cropped hair cut, the other is white with dirty blonde hair that is very carefully arranged to make him look like he just woke up. They both wear the kind of sunglasses that cost more than all of my worldly possessions, but probably don’t block sun out at all. In fact, these sunglasses may not even have any glass components, they may just be a complicated interworking of plastic and metal shields that block the better percentage of their total vision. You approach these guys and they ask “What’s you business in SoHo?” in perfect unison. 

“I was- um, I thought I would check out the Banana Republic?”

“HA. HA. HA. HA.” They both shout in a stifled manner, since guys like these don’t actually know how to laugh, “There is one of those in Mid-town. You can use that one.” 

“Oh, well, there is also the Apple Store. I wanted to see if I could go to the genius bar, my Iphone 3G is-“

“5th avenue. That is the Apple Store for the commoners!” 

What it all boils down to, maybe, is that I’m just not tall enough to go to SoHo. I think I dress well enough. I shop at the correct stores, albeit not often enough to keep my clothes looking fresh, but my jeans are Lucky Brand. I do have one pair of shoes made from imported leather. my sunglasses are something you would wear in the future if you were traveling there from 1980. It’s just that I don’t belong there. 

I also don’t belong in Williamsburg. I can get a day pass, or a nights & weekends, but I can’t live there. It’s kind of the very opposite problem, actually. My pants aren’t tight enough, My Chuck Taylors aren’t worn enough, and my facial hair isn’t ironic enough. In fact, my facial hair isn’t ironic at all, it’s just a beard. A non-ironic beard. A real beard. Luckily though, the United People of Williamsburg don’t understand the concept of non-irony, or reality, so the beard itself is that inevitably grants me the day/weekend pass.

When The L train stops at 1st avenue a Williamsburg Commissionaire gets on every car. This individual can come in either the form of a man or a woman. If it’s a man he usually wears a lengthy beard, at least 4 inches; a tattoo on his wrist, probably a quote from a Stanley Kubrick movie, or a impressionist rendering of the muppet Animal; his boat neck t-shirt exposes far too much of his back hair and his oboe case takes up entirely too much room on the car. Of course his oboe case doesn’t contain an oboe, it is empty, but it will contain anyone who doesn’t get a day pass to Williamsburg. 

If it’s a woman she’s probably reading Jonathan Franzen, and she wears giant glasses she probably doesn’t need. It would make sense that she has a cord or string around her neck that connects to the glasses because she is soon to get into a scuffle with someone who has dared to venture off the island of Manhattan without proper approval or papers. She wears a dress with a very high belt that helps define her shapelessness, which is very important because she keeps her glock hidden under that dress to help her enforce legal East Village to Williamsburg immigration. She too, like her male counterpart, has a tattoo but her tattoo is of a flamingo and it’s on her ankle, it is in memory of her great Aunt Flammy or so she once told someone when she was drunk at a party. 

I know these two well because every time I take the train over the river they look me in the eye, size up my well groomed beard, and give me a nod as if to say “you can come in for the evening, but if you stay that beard’s gonna have to grow.” Then just before they move on to size up the next person they look back at me and shoot one more thought in my direction, “Look, just don’t root for sports or be pragmatic about politics while you’re here, okay? We don’t want what happened to the East Village to happen to us.” 

And maybe they’re right. The East Village used to have bridge trolls just like SoHo and Williamsburg do now and, in fact, they’re still here they just don’t guard anything. You’ve seen them. They have a lot of tattoos on their faces and track marks up and down their arms. They wear jeans that are really baggy and smelly, and they left their parents upper-east side brownstones to hang out and do smack in Tompkins Square Park years ago. Of course while they were getting high, drooling, and watching the clouds collide a bunch of families, republicans, and fraternity brothers moved in. Then before you knew it all the artists couldn’t afford the cost of living anymore and sports bar replaced the herbal healer and a pudding store replaced the head shop, and the Life Cafe turned into a Starbucks. 

So at the same time I curse these snooty neighborhoods for not allowing me permanent residency I also mourn the loss of character in the neighborhood I love and live in, while I bask in the shell of what is left. But it remains The East Village’s uniqueness and heart was scorched in the fallout after one fatal mistake; they let me in. 

Back in the early oghts I self-published a series of non-fiction books. If you’re interested in copies please e-mail me as most of my living space is cluttered with stacks of the following titles:

1. Why people share personal information and appropriate responses to someone telling you they once ate their own placenta. 
2. Pizza Boxes: What a pain in the ass.
3. The History of Cottage Cheese
4. Socks Socks Socks Socks!
5. ‘Why is the sky red?’ and other questions a color blind person might ask. 

I recently came across the following craigslist ad: 

Chey B, also known as “AskCheyB” is a highly sought after Life & Relationship Coach located in Brooklyn, NY! Chey B. can turn a fun night out with the girls into a”exciting” evening taking you on a journey deep inside the mind of men! 

Chey B. is a Life & Relationship Coach, Motivational Speaker, Radio Personality, has made several TV and radio appearances, and is one of the TOP black male Relationship Bloggers in New York with close to 10,000 subscribers! Grab your girls, order some food/drinks, and invite Life & Relationship Coach “AskCheyB” along for the ride!

To arrange a barter, email AskCheyB@gmail.com

Connect with AskCheyB on all 5 social networks below and receive one hour free with your booking!

so I sent the following response:

Dear Sir,

On a recent trip to my homeland (Los Angeles) my brother and I, in anticipation of attending the world’s largest annual Star Trek Convention, decided to search through our old things to find our Star Trek Toys. As mentioned in an earlier post, I once had the opportunity to show Michael Dorn my favorite toy, my Galoob Worf action figure, when I was but a mere child. This Galoob line were the first Star Trek toys I remember us having. Later of course we had Star Trek The Motion Picture action figures and of course oodles of the Playmates figures that spanned every series, but didn’t start getting released until a few years into The Next Generation. 

Galoob had a strange set they released, which included a shuttle craft (which we had), a Ferengi ship of sorts (which we also had), and a couple alien species who made only one appearance in the episode “Lonely Among Us,” and then were used as set dressing later on. When I watched this episode recently I was reminded how we used to joke that the action figure of The Antican was in fact an old version of the Mon Calamari — Admiral Ackbar’s species from Star Wars. 

As we searched through our toys we found many versions of the same figure. You see, toys had to be replaced as they became worn, used, and broken. Sometimes we would intentionally break our toys, but not often, usually they just got tired. The picture above are toys from Star Trek: The Motion Pictures. These action figures are obviously from a later time when we knew better how to take care of them.  In fact as we first started to really get interested in filmmaking we would make our own movies or episodes, if you will, using some of the playmates toys. As they got over used we would get a second toy for close-ups and glamour shots, while the more worn and older toy would serve in demanding battle sequences. But I digress. 

When we did our search for toys we found many generations but we seemed to be lacking a few important ones. We couldn’t seem to find the original set of the Galoob The Next Generation figures. The set with the flimsy worf and a data with spots all over his face. We also couldn’t find even a single Riker toy. Eventually we came across a box in the garage that contained many secrets. We found most of the Galoob figures, a great deal of Picards, and all of the Trois (which were in a special bag that held all of our sister’s toys) but there still seemed to be no Rikers. Not to mislead you, we did find some Rikers, but these were of a much later incarnation. We couldn’t find any of the early Rikers. There were no Rikers from the Galoob series, and certainly none of the early Playmates Rikers with the tears in his uniform. We couldn’t even find the later Rikers that still had tears in the uniform, but the tears had been painted over. I can only imagine  Playmates had decided that the tears were stupid, which they were — especially for creative kids who sometimes needed Riker to appear in a film not as if he had just gotten out of a fight with a pregnant Sehlat. There simply were none of the early Rikers. It baffles me to this moment. As I write this post I simply cannot seem to figure it out, where have all the Rikers gone?

The Galoob figures Star Trek: The Next Generation Figures. (pictured clockwise from the bottom: Tasha Yar sitting, Data assembled from pieces assumed to be his own, Ferengi, Captain Jean Luc Picard, Presumably Riker’s headless body, The Antican, Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge, The infamous Lt. Worf.)