Sucks

A twenty-something-year-old yellow gal was lying on her dentist's chair. Her mouth was agape. A dental technician was examining the inside of her mouth. They made pleasant conversation with whatever words she could sputter between his probing latex fingers. It was her second trip to the dentist this month due to a suspicious molar which the X-rays revealed just happened to be oddly shaped beneath the gum line. They joked about the city's horrible football team, the nippy weather, the half-crazed patients that he encountered, and the like.

As she lay there, nodding and gurgling responses to his questions, the dental technician paused for a second and asked, "Can I ask you a question?"

You just did, she resisted saying. "Uh huh," she gurgled.

"Do you want to get together some time?" he asked, peering over her. The metal device he held in his hand paused on her upper incisor.

"Uhh," she gurgled, feeling the cool metal rest close to the gum line. Now would not be the time to piss him off, she thought. "Uh kay" she said.

"Cool," he said. He continued probing.

Shit, she thought. She hadn't time to think of an excuse. As he carefully rinsed out her mouth and gave her a complimentary bundle of dental floss, toothpaste and an electric toothbrush, she cursed herself for saying "Uh kay." But then she thought about it. What the heck could she have said? If she rejected him, who knows what could have ensued? Would he have "accidentally" scrapped off her upper face? Hath Hell fury like a dental technician scorned? And isn't it a breach of some kind of dental technician-patient relationship to ask a patient on a date, especially if some metal device that bears an uncanny resemblance to a meat hook is poised over the patient's exposed, vulnerable gums? What could a gal do? What should have the gal done?

She mused over this predicament. He had her phone number. They were in the office records. Crap, she thought, CRAP. As he handed her the dental goods, he smiled at her and said "I'll call you."

"Ha ha," she fake-laughed, "Okay, bye."

Why is the fear of being a bitch always forcing her to be unnecessarily nice to guys? Then again, she was in a vulnerable position.

"I was under duress!" she exclaimed to her girlfriend.

"I can't believe you said yes when you didn't want to," her friend replied.

"He had a deadly weapon hovering over my face. What was I to do?"

"Point taken," her friend said. The friend sipped her tea, paused over it for a moment and said, "Sucks."

"Yeah," the gal said. "Sucks."