Touching Major’s Tooth – or – This Is the Heartbreak You Signed Up For By Jason DeYoung

“This isn’t even the most erotic thing I’ve done,” Tobi said, her pallid face barely sticking out from under the flamingo-colored duvet. Around us, in the hotel room, were the vestiges of room service and romance – a drooping seasonal bouquet, a half-empty bottle of flat Brut, a pair of kissed dice, an assortment of casino winnings, and a ridiculous string of worn and newly purchased panties we tied together our first night while high on gummies, giggling our torsos into pain, declaring them to be a ‘sexy swing’ if we needed to rappel off the twelfth-floor balcony. (The hotel fire alarm had gone off earlier in the day.) “Have I ever told you about being locked in a bathroom stall with this kid named Major?” 

I got out the little pink and orange pills we’d bought the day before from a true Nevadan ‘psychedelic entrepreneur’ whose skin looked cupped and smacked together from the same desert clay that birthed Vegas. A room in disarray can be cleaned up later. Tobi was about to tell a tale, and I was all ears. These days we were carpe diem-ing.

Tobi sat up, tucked the duvet under her arms, and started recounting in full honesty a fifth-grade trespass into the little boy’s room: “Major had a tooth barely hanging on by a thread of gum. But he was too scared to pull hard like he needed to. His mouth had started bleeding in class and he’d run to the bathroom to wash his mouth out and get paper-towels. I was just so in love with Major, so I asked to go to the bathroom, too. I’m sure the teacher thought I was going to the girl’s. Anyway, I’d never gone into the boys’ bathroom, but I was certain that’s what I was going to do. I didn’t even look around. No hesitation. I just flung the door open and called: Major!”  

Gulp. Just a microdose. And then I crawled into bed next to Tobi, settled atop the duvet, and gazed at her vaguely rural features outlined by the sunset in the window, and waited for the gently seething aural wallpaper that came from an expensive psilocybin high to descend. She was so beautiful to me. I wanted to see her fully lit by a well-purchased, albeit delicate, trip. We had so many things left to do. But after five years, we were nearing our mortal boundaries, so to speak.

“Major, I said, it’s Tobi. He was standing in front of a mirror, gazing into his mouth, massaging his tooth back and forth. He’d said that the tooth had gotten twisted, and he couldn’t get it back into its socket. The poor guy! But I tell you, it was thrilling for some reason. The urinals, the scarcity of stalls, the funky smells of what I now know to be—you know—boy. It was just all so novel, you know?” 

I didn’t. But I enjoyed listening to her all the same.

Tobi looked down at me and broke with her story: “Gimme one of them pills, will ya.” I slipped her one and she swallowed it dry. “Anyway, Major was standing there. I could see he’d been crying, and that touched my heart. Oh, you just don’t know how hard I was crushing on Major that year. Well, I walked over to him and told him to let me see. He garbled I wasn’t supposed to be in the boy’s bathroom. I remember looking around and telling him it was ok, that we were the only ones in there and our pants were on. His mouth was hanging open the whole time, a peach-colored slurry collecting around his teeth, nearly drooling out of his mouth. I told him to spit and he did. The next thing I knew, I was staring into Major’s mouth. The smell of his breath made my heart skip a beat.” 

I laughed. 

“Don’t laugh, it’s all true. It was all new feelings for me that day, you know. Like, I would say something vulgar, near-pornographic, these days, but I didn’t have that kind of vocab back then. But that’s what if felt like, something new. Brand new. A heat running through me. A buzz. And then— You know, there’s really nothing that feels so good as breathing near someone you want or love.” 

Yes.

“Anyway, I asked him if I could touch it, and he said no. ‘Let me touch it,’ I begged. And he popped his mouth open and I reached in and touched the first human tooth that wasn’t my own. I rocked it gently back and forth, tenderly. From around the corner, I could hear the squeak of the outer door begin to open. I pulled Major into the middle stall and told him to stand on the toilet. I closed the door and locked it. I stood with my back to Major so it would look like only one pair of feet in the stall. And they would be pointed the right way! Major took his balance by leaning on my shoulders and lawsy that was hot for some reason. Here I was in a stall with my crush and not only were we together but he was touching me, leaning on me.” Tobi mocked fanning herself. “Whoever the other boy was went about his business—and didn’t wash his hands! I looked over my shoulder at Major and we both sighed a collective ‘ew.’” 

(Why should Marcus Aurelius pop in to my mind right now? Concentrate every minute like a Roman, he writes. These were the intrusive thoughts I had while Tobi spoke. Carpe diem! But that’s not Aurelius. But the sentiment is similar. Fuck! Carpe diem is such a fucking cliché until— Well, until life gets weird, when you know it’s limited and then you try try try to live life to the fullest. But who is even to say this moment is at its fullest?! Please look into Tobi’s face, I commanded myself. Focus. Sync.) 

“Hey, welcome back to earth, mister! Anyway, I faced Major and tugged on his jaw so his mouth would open. ‘I can pull it, crybaby!’ That’s what I said. Head shaking isn’t it. Why are we so mean to the people we claim to adore?” 

“A question as old as time.” We have no time for cruelty anymore, beloved. 

“Anyway. Are you even listening? Hello?”

“Of course. Yes, yes.”

 “I reached in and wiggled the tooth again. It’s the strangest thing to say, I know it—and don’t take any offence—but I’ve never been more turned on than when I was touching Major’s tooth. Talk about hot!” 

I couldn’t help smiling at her honesty. Tobi raised her eyebrows, an expression I knew well, that meant share something apropos. And, so, I did: “Only an eejit would take offence, darling. Some of us spend a lot of lifeforce trying to recapture youthful erotic moments. Nothing sexier than a Pachinko machine for me,” I explained. “My uncle owned one with a hand-painted set of feminine legs that opened and closed, gobbling up the luckiest of the tiny, metal balls as they fell chaotically through the pegs.” I enjoyed Tobi’s giggle and I felt in sync with her finally. 

“Anyway, by now I had Major seated on the toilet. I asked again if I could pull it. I told him I wanted it. I wanted to pull his tooth so bad but I didn’t want to hurt him either. But I really wanted that tooth. But Major said no. 

“I told him I had a loose tooth, too. I pulled my lip to the side and pointed. In fact, I have two, I said. He said he had two loose teeth too. And he pointed to the other one that wasn’t as loose. I reached in and wiggled it for pleasure. He asked if he could wiggle mine, and I let him. I remember looking into his dreamy green eyes as he wiggled my tooth with a clinical finger. ‘Can I pull them both?’ I asked. He bit his mouth closed so fast I could hear the grind of teeth. He shook his head no. 

“Can you just see us there for a moment? I think about this all the time. You understand, don’t you? Two kids, wiggling each other’s teeth. Most of the other kids had lost all their teeth by fifth grade. Here we were, two late bloomers, on the edge of puberty, in a boy’s stall, massaging each other’s loose teeth. Ridiculous. If that isn’t something special, though. I’ve read a lot of spicy books, you know, but I’ve never read anything that comes close to the feeling I had that day. Everything else has just been lurid. Pleasurable. But lurid.” 

I did understand, or I wanted to. But more than anything I understood her need to tell her tales. I wanted to remember everything about Tobi. A clutch of tales would be all I had eventually.

“You see where this is going, I guess. I made Major a deal. We would pull our teeth. If I could pull his, he could pull mine. Jesus. I get the shivers remembering it. I went first. I reached in, feeling his hot breath on my fingers and clasped the tooth. His gums a glistening shade of raw bacon. I looked one more time into those dreamy green eyes—swoon! I pinched my lips together and then whispered a countdown, five four three, and then I jerked. And suddenly it was in my hand. A line of blood running down his chin. Of course, he didn’t like that I didn’t complete the countdown before yonking it out of his head, and so he ran. Crying for the teacher.”

“Crybaby.”

“Oh, sweet Major—he was such a crybaby. But I adored that boy so. I wish I knew what happened to him.” 

She paused, looking wistfully out the window to the living carnival that was the Vegas strip. Talk about lurid. The sun had fully set.

“But did you keep the tooth?”

Wink. Which, knowing Tobi, might have meant don’t be daft, dear, just appreciate the story. Or that the tooth was among other private treasures to be found—and understood much later.

Our hallucinogenic time was beginning. 

We got quiet. 

I remembered hard that this was the last night of our last hurrah, this Vegas trip. Not one medically trained person had said a kind word about Tobi’s future. Forthwith, chemo and hospitals and disorder. And we both knew how it all would end: someday soon, sadness, the kissing cousin of disorder, would reign. Days would follow, as there always are after loss, when symmetry and grace would hurt and become unacceptable, and regaining the past would seem like the only thing worth spending time on. The sad, sad shitinesses of loss. —But maybe not. It might end differently. Who knows. Endings are always unpredictable. Right? “Where could we buy a Ouija board in Vegas?” I suddenly asked, not sure how much time had passed. But Tobi was asleep. Soundlessly. Gently breathing. And for a moment I thought it wise to practice feeling her death.  —But, ugh, that was lame. This was supposed to be a happy trip. Of course, without her illness, we wouldn’t be here. I would have no reason to hang on to her every word and remember her stories. How her illness had saturated every part of life—and there were more parts than I could ever have imagined. But what was truly extraordinary was how could she think of anything else but her own passing?! —In that (now improbably) visual silence, what was to be done but let one cliché after another on living life to the fullest sighed through the mind. Cherished words perched on a white dream knoll where other ideals live only to be dusted off when horrible prophesies are spoken. Good words, though. Good times. “Quija board?” —By this point, I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or not, but I swear I saw someone in the air, looking down on us, wondering what all this might mean, her story, my thoughts. I whispered: It means nothing you spying busybody! It means everything! It means she is alive. It means we’re on the cusp of an unwanted change. An unwanted future. And that’s enough. Blessedly the intruding face slid back into the shaky ether from whence it came. —More time may have passed, I guess. The room did darken. I touched Tobi’s hair. This is the heartbreak you signed up for, mister, were her day-of-diagnosis words to me, said after we had we sat together in the coral-colored Camery, Googling life expectancy and Reddit reports on survivorship. I didn’t know how to respond to her dark humor and still don’t. —As I let myself fall asleep, I sent up a wish that she was dreaming of Major’s tooth. Perhaps one more sweet dream to be recounted before we catch our plane and start the end. 

Jason DeYoung is the author of Waiting for the Miracle (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2020). His fiction has appeared various journals, including Booth: A Journal, The Los Angeles Review, Numéro Cinq, New Orleans Review, and Best American Mystery Stories (Mariner Books, 2012). He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

12 December 2025