Day 60: I Was Held Hostage by Jesus in the Dentist's Chair

I had my wisdom teeth removed yesterday. It was a new dentist, one I found online and decided upon based on the look of their website, the fact that it is a female dentist, and how nice they were on the phone. They may not be the best reasons for picking a doc, but they're not the worst.

I went in for the initial visit and all was well, but yesterday morning I was nervous. I have a decent pain tolerance and I'm not scared of needles, but I have never had a major medical procedure of any type so there was some anxiety. To make matters worse, there was a TV in the exam room and they had Regis and Kelly on. Kelly is gorgeous and I'd probably like her in real life, but the show makes me want to punch someone. So my heart rate is up, my blood pressure is low and the local anesthetic hurt like a bitch. Why do they have to inject you in so many places and so many times? I felt like a pin cushion. Anyway, many needle jabs later, Kelly Ripa still screeching above me, and a hot flash precipitated by nerves finally subsiding, the Jesus freak enters the room.

She seems normal at first. She's a nurse in training and will be assisting for the procedure. Fine. Then it happens, she begins to tell me her life story. Ostensibly, this is to calm me down and distract me -- either from Kelly Ripa or the impending ripping out of teeth, I'm not sure. She tells me at 21 she had two children and went to a party with her sister. They were already drunk when they got there, before she decided to do ecstasy for the first time. Me being me, I half stop listening and am sort of hazy on the details of the story because now I am fixated on the idea of a 21 year-old woman already having two children finding it prudent to get drunk, go to a party and do X. Please do not let this genius have the scalpel.

Her story goes on to describe what she terms a near death experience (NDE) and a visit to hell which she knows was absolutely real as was her proceeding ascent to heaven. She tells me that in discussions with other NDE survivors they all remember the same things about heaven, so it had to be real. Her sister then drove her home from the party and dropped her off at her house. She was never treated at a hospital or medically deemed "dead." She tells me it's how she knew she had to get with God and accept Jesus into her heart. She knew she was going to hell unless she accepted Jesus. I told her it sounded like a bad drug trip to me.

Apparently, reality should never be thrust upon a born-again in the midst of testifying or testimony or whatever the hell the zealots call it when they foist their beliefs on the unwilling. She was not amused and told me I needed to go home and pray to Jesus to come into my heart and to forgive me. This is the point when I wanted to laugh, but was unable due to being numb from chin to jaw and drooling slightly. I also briefly considered telling her to go fuck herself, but remembered she was involved in my procedure somehow and my self-preservation instinct prevented it. I finally settled on saying that I am not a believer, but if her beliefs gave her comfort then that is all that mattered. That should be enough right?

We should be able to respect one another's beliefs without being held hostage in a dental chair while some crackpot confuses an alcohol-fueled drug trip with divine intervention and shares the story a la Moses on the mountain. Also, when did it become appropriate in a public business to profess your personal religious beliefs to clients? I don't even want to know about your stupid kids, let alone your religious crap. Where is the mutual respect? I simply tell a person I'm a non-believer and I get advised to pray, to accept Jesus, to search my heart . . . and whatever else you people have said or written to me over the last year. I was as nice to that Jesus whack job as I could be despite her making absolutely no attempt to accommodate my beliefs or preference that she abstain from any further God talk.

Let me make this perfectly clear and hope that the message comes across accurately: I DO NOT BELIEVE IN A GOD. Not your God, the Muslim God, Buddha, Jesus, Angels or any other God-like entity. I believe in your right to believe in a God and I expect you to believe in and support my right to not believe. If you want to pray for me fine, knock yourself out, but I do not want to know about it. I do request however, that if you do pray for me also pray that I win the lottery, you know, just in case. I am going to continue fighting for your right to believe and to express your beliefs because my number one belief is freedom of speech. In return, I'd like for you to accept my reality. I do not believe in God, nor do I want to.

Atheists are the most mistrusted and biased against group in our society. I am a bigger minority than blacks, latinos, asians and gays. And to make matters worse, at least most of you refrain from using racial or homophobic slurs to their faces. I don't get that same respect. I have to sit immobile with a numb mouth, surgical instruments perilously close by while a "professional" offends me with her obnoxiously close-minded belief system. Thankfully, the dentist entered the room just as I was considering making my escape or bashing drug tripper's head into Kelly Ripa's screen image. I'm not asking for anyone else to believe like me, just get out of my face with your personal shit. I don't deem it necessary to tell you why I "know" God is a farce or how I once mistakenly masturbated with a tobasco bottle (yes, it burned). Even I have limits to what peppy little life stories and details I divulge. Please learn boundaries. You don't have to read my blog (that's a boundary), but when you're hovering over me prior to a surgical procedure I'm pretty much stuck listening to whatever intimate details you want to tell and believe me, it's too much.