Dear Sir,
I am finding it difficult to reconcile your good reputation with your disastrous dental hygiene.
You had come highly recommended by the boys at the Jockey Club, not only for your aptitude with a whiskey glass but, furthermore, due to your exquisite knowledge of rare centipedes of the Antipodes. After all – who hasn’t heard of the famously voluminous tome, “Centipedophilia: My Life of Anthropodic Ecstasy“, in which the two great branches of science, myriapodology and human psychology, are finally brought together?
That the old boys called you a mealy-toothed bagpiper didn’t seem to pluck any strings on the ol’ brain banjo, and, as I was to set sail for the New World to be reunited with Mariana, my pectorally sublime bride-to-be, (who’s father is also an avid biologist) I wanted to be academically charged so to say, so that I might impress the old chalk with my keen knowledge of the local crawlies and what not – hence, the hasty appointment.
However, now that I have met you in person, I finally understand how you came to earn your title. And I have come to the conclusion that it is somewhat lacking in force.
It would be no exaggeration to state that, during your first act of salutation, a steam erupted from your maw so vile, so resolutely hideous, that I quite nearly mistook it for the (comparatively redolant) odour of a fresh cow pat on a summer day. When I noticed that the flower display below the open window began drooping ever so slightly – nevertheless unquestionably – in the opposite direction of your presence, I realised my peril immediately. Ho! I shouted in my mind, which was churning in an attempt to galvanize my demeanour. Stay afloat old barge, I repeated to myself. Just ice the poor stalk a gin and tonic: that’ll settle the swamp.
But I could not bring myself to charter even fractionally the realm beyond my desk.
And then, despite my implorations not to, you smiled. A simple grin or nod of the head would have sufficed to communicate your humour. But no, you had to acquaint me with the full spectacle: that rack of pulverized piano keys covered in avocado and dried oats you call teeth, and your tongue, which was writhing in slime like some prehistoric gastropod.
Never had death by asphyxiation seemed so attractive.
Yet your outward appearance belied your affliction. In fact I judge that no finer juxtaposition has ever been invented by scholarly wit: your coat and boots displayed an uncorrupted elegance found only in the upper echelons of the Jockey Club; your face was clean shaven and your hair neatly combed behind your trimmed ears; indeed, if you’d not said anything at all, but merely hummed your way into my chambers, (which I would admittedly have considered queer) I would have never had the opportunity to draw such conclusions. Yet the contrast between your appearance and the horrors that escaped the evils of your facial cavity was as grating as a gravel compote.
May I inquire when you last stood over the bathroom sink to rinse your mouth? Or the last opportunity you took to eat an apple, or a chew on a length of rope, or participate in any activity that would mitigate such a singularly putrid emission? You evidently possess no product nor habit that might be described as “dentally beneficial” in nature nor, for that matter, does it appear that you’ve ever reclined in a dentist’s chair. Although I find it difficult to conceive any health professional coming withing 10 metres of that festering facial estuary.
So it is with much relief that I say to you that your services, vis-à-vis the centipedes, will no longer be required. I’ve chosen to “wing it”, as they say.
Nevertheless, to help you on the road to oral redemption, enclosed with this letter you will find an article on the benefits of fluoride and a band of steel wool.
Yours,
Sir Corpulent Ticklebank
Illustrated Shorts 