Meanwhile, I was one big fucking itch and was in no mood for a hygiene lesson. Two days and nights of scabies was something for Hitler not this lower case, sorry assed, bronx, jew. Apparently, I had contracted scabies on one of those not so clean London trains from Aberdeen, Scotland. An all day ride on a rattler and shaker.
Reminds me of when the doctor told the Princess and me that our first kid was a boy. Since I had knocked up the Princess on a train ride from St. Petersburg, Florida to Baltimore and Johns Hopkins, I had become convinced that the Princess was going to have a girl. I was sure that having sex on a rattler and shaker had shaken the balls off of the baby. Another bad bet.
When I got back to London from Aberdeen the itching seemed to subside so the following day I went to Luxembourg where the fucking itch returned in force. I took Epsom salt baths which turned out to be a really stupid idea. Warm water and scabies love one another. But, then, I didn't know that I had scabies. In those days Google wasn't even somebody's wet dream so I was going on intuition which, in that instance, was as worthless as teats on a boar pig.
By the time I returned to London the following day I was one big fucking itch. I promptly went to Boots (It was night, after doctor's office hours.) rolled my sleeves up and showed the pharmacist my arms which were covered with very small black spots. He took one look and said, “You have scabies.” At first I thought that he had said 'rabies' and I went nuts. “Rabies at Claridge’s?”, I screamed. “I haven't been near a fucking dog much less been bitten by one.” English style, the pharmacist put up with this ugly American and slowly spelled scabies with a ‘s’ not rabies with an ‘r’.
He gave me something for the scabies, cautioned me to send all of my clothing out to the cleaners and the laundry and to be sure that never wore the same suit two days in a row and change my shirt, underwear several times a day and send the lot out to the laundry and cleaners before wearing them again.
A few weeks later, while still domiciled in London, my teeth started bothering me. I felt like the one horse shay and I was coming apart at the seams, one problem at a time. I soon discovered that you only know whether your dentist is worth a fiddler's fuck several years after he’s collected his fee.
In an effort to look like a movie star and attract younger women I had my teeth capped in Palo Alto. A few years later I was in a hospital in Amsterdam in real tooth discomfort. From there to the Queen's dentists office on Harley Street in London and from there to a dentist's office in Palo Alto with many destinations in between, where, at 60 years of age, I lost all my teeth.
Falsies indeed, thank you Dr.Yamada, but then I should have known that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's year and I really look, in the mirror, like a sow's ear, every toothless morning.
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