Cause and defect

The buttheadguyeffect, conclusion

It was 7 a.m. The Manila guest house dormitory was silent, but for the soft breathing of slumbering travelers and the quiet rustling of two early risers packing their bags.

“What the fuck?! Where the fuck is my towel?!”

I opened my eyes to behold a morbidly obese blonde Canadian in her late twenties. Showing no consideration for the nine other people sleeping in the room, she loudly accosted a Chinese fellow packing his suitcase on his bunk.

“You! You took my fucking towel, didn’t you?”

“I… no….” he replied, struggling with his English.

“Oh fuck, don’t even try to fucking deny it. I know what you fucking people are like.”

Then the Chinese man’s wife, who was packing her bag on the bunk above me, spoke up.

“Excuse me… he… he did not take your towel.”

The blonde snorted derisively and shouted at her in fake Cantonese. I cringed.

Then the Chinese woman said something in Cantonese, and the blonde answered. In Cantonese.

So she was speaking real Cantonese, then. Thank fucking God. Not that this significantly improved the situation. Switching back to English, the blonde tore the Chinese couple apart.

“I’m fucking sick and tired of you fucking people and your fucking shit! I’ve lived in your fucking shithole of a country for seven years, and I know all about the selfishness that goes on and how badly people treat each other there! So fuck you!”

By this time the miniature United Nations that was the rest the people in the dorm had awakened, and were staring incredulously at each other.

The tirade finally ended when the Chinese couple, who were luckily almost ready to leave when the abuse began, quietly shouldered their luggage and exited the room, their faces red with embarrassment and the wife almost in tears.

The door clicked shut, leaving the room in uncomfortable, wakeful silence. Nobody spoke for several seconds, probably because no one wanted a confrontation with this deranged, intimidatingly humungous racist.

But as the scorpion said to the frog, I had to say something. I considered my words carefully.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer woman,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m a bit stressed out right now,” she tiredly replied, as if that excused everything. With that, she flumped down on her bunk and went back to sleep.

* * *

The moment Chris D pushed my ten-year-old face into my school desk, parallel universes diverged. In one universe, the one I live in, one of my front teeth broke. In the other, the tooth collided with the desktop at an infinitesimally different angle, and didn’t break. And so, young Glen Callender became two young Glen Callenders: Broken Tooth Glen and Perfect Teeth Glen.

In the 25 years I’ve lived as Broken Tooth Glen, I’ve learned a lot about the cause and effect of causing a defect in someone else’s smile. Indeed, Chris D’s carefully-considered act of violence had consequences far beyond what he envisioned—especially considering that, I’m sure, he never meant to break my tooth in the first place. In the manner of young bullies, Chris merely wanted to cause me a few moments of pain and humiliation.

But accidentally or not, he did break my tooth, at least in my universe, setting in motion a hideous series of events that no one will ever fully comprehend. One of those events is happening at this very moment, for here I am writing this, the final installment of a five-part series about the evils my insidious broken tooth has inflicted upon the world. I think it’s safe to say that if my tooth weren’t broken, I wouldn’t be doing this.

Is there a bright side to being Broken Tooth Glen? After much thought, I’ve concluded that possessing this broken tooth has almost universally sucked. The only positive aspect I can imagine—and this is a bit of a reach—is that my many unpleasant experiences with this tooth have made me more cynical, which has perhaps given my writing more teeth than it might have had otherwise.

And if that’s true, well, I’d gladly knock those teeth right back out again in exchange for a life undiscombobulated by this disgruntling dental deviation. In fact, if anyone out there has a Parallel Universe Divergence-Point Reassignment Matrix—and knows how to use it (it is very important that you know how to use it)—I’d be much obliged if you would pop back to 1984 and swap me into the universe of Perfect Teeth Glen.

But you know what they say—be careful what you wish for.

* * *

I was awakened by another loud female voice. A morbidly obese brunette had entered the room and was talking with the blonde, again as if they weren’t surrounded by sleeping people. She was the blonde’s workmate and traveling companion, and had slept in a different dorm because mine hadn’t had two beds available.

“You know what happened to me?” the blonde said. “This fuckin’ Chinese guy stole my towel.”

The brunette gasped. “But—I stole your towel!” she exclaimed.

“Really?” the blonde shouted. Again, the miniature UN traded disbelieving glances.

“Yeah, you were totally asleep so I just took it.”

“Oh my God!” said the blonde, stifling a giggle. “I just gave so much shit to this Chinese guy for taking it. I guess I, like, totally went off on him ’cause he’s Chinese.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” said the brunette supportively, as if this were totally understandable.

Wow. In their twisted moral world, heaping racist abuse on innocent Chinese was nothing more than an amusing faux pas. Remorse was not required, presumably because the Chinese couple she’d attacked were, after all, still Chinese.

Now I knew exactly who these people were. Bitter expat losers.

I knew their kind well when I taught English in South Korea. Intolerable, incompetent misfits in their home countries, they flee their mounting debts and thin job prospects to work in Asia—and end up stuck there, becoming more and more resentful toward the local culture. Why would this mouthy blonde have spent seven years in China if she hates it so much? Because she has no viable alternative.

Alas, this pair of rotund Canadian racists had taken a cheap holiday to the Philippines in the hopes of getting away from the Chinese for a few days, but unfortunately, they were constantly running into Chinese tourists, and this was pissing them off to no end.

Poor babies.

* * *

It’s easy to say my life would be much better if I were Perfect Teeth Glen. But there’s no way of knowing either way.

In fact, it’s possible that Perfect Teeth Glen never got this long in the tooth. Perhaps the universe offered him a few too many flattering compliments, a few too many lucrative opportunities, a few too many horny heiresses. The result? A Glen far cockier than Broken Tooth Glen could ever be, a Glen whose larger-than-life character and ubiquity as a top international toothpaste model brought him not only to the height of fame and wealth, but also to a tragic early death in a reckless, drug-and-arrogance-fuelled motorcycle crash.

And the tabloid headlines were Perfect Teeth Glen’s epitaph, repeating in heavy type his agonized final words:

“I am slain… by my own… folly… if only… if only something had… happened to me… in my youth… perhaps... in elementary school… a minor... but permanent injury… something that showed me… I am not immortal… something that taught me… a bit of… humilityarrrgh—”

And below that, in full color, the controversial paparazzi shots of 27-year-old Perfect Death-Grimace Glen—chest crushed, forehead lacerated, but his iconic teeth still intact and glistening white.

Yes, perhaps that unbroken tooth would have been the end of me. But I think I’ll go out on a limb and say... probably not.

* * *

A few minutes after the brunette left the dormitory, the Chinese woman returned and quietly approached the blonde, who was going back to sleep.

“Excuse me? I—I very, very sorry,” she said softly. She was still so upset by the blonde’s virulent anti-Chinese diatribe, she was willing to apologize for something her husband hadn’t done if it would set things right.

“Oh whatever, it’s alright, don’t worry about it,” the blonde replied in a curt, deliberately insincere tone of voice. She turned her head away and put her arm over her face, trying to ignore her visitor.

The Chinese woman attempted to continue the conversation, desperately seeking some kind of reconciliation. But after being rudely shushed and waved off a couple more times, she gave up and left for good, possibly more upset than when she came in.

Once again, significant looks were exchanged around the room. That malevolent bitch not only didn’t have the integrity to admit her mistake and apologize, she instead accepted undeserved apologies for something she knew hadn’t happened. In a deliberately rude way that only upset the Chinese woman more. Which was undoubtedly her intention.

Aren’t these people stupid, she was probably thinking, apologizing for something they didn’t even do. Fuck ’em.

I have never been so disgusted with the behavior of a fellow Canadian traveler. May she enjoy another seven happy years in the glorious People’s Republic of China.

* * *

They say that when a butterfly flaps its wings, it can cause a tornado on the other side of the world. I’m not sure about that, but I am sure that when a buttheadguy breaks a tooth, it can cause a motorcycle crash on the other side of the world. Not to mention an attempted mugging, a massacre of bedbugs, and a racist tongue-lashing of an innocent Chinese couple.

Yes, that deplorable incident in the guest house dormitory can also be laid at Chris D’s feet. For if my tooth hadn’t been broken, I wouldn’t have been in Manila, so I wouldn’t have slept in that dormitory, so there would have been two beds available in the dorm instead of one, so the two Canadian women would have slept in the same room, so the brunette would not have removed the blonde’s towel from the room, so the Chinese man would not have been accused of stealing it.

Merely by being there, I shifted the positions of the other travelers and created the circumstances that led to conflict. Just another strange and unpredictable consequence of my 25-year-old broken tooth being plunked into the vast bingo-ball tumbler that is the universe.

At this point, I think it’s clear that I must do everything I can to end the tyranny of my broken tooth over the future of life on this planet. Later this year, I will return to the Philippines and get a new crown mounted on the dental implant currently bonding with my skull. If all goes well, That Fucking Tooth won’t bother me—or anyone else—for decades. Hopefully it will never be heard from again.

But unfortunately for us all, the genie has been out of the bottle for 25 years. Even if I succeed in rebottling it, past events can never be undone. And instead of diminishing with time, the cascade of effects caused by my broken tooth appears to be multiplying and accelerating, like a tiny pellet of rolling snow becoming a snowball that becomes an avalanche, that crushes a tour bus containing the “Top 40 British Scientists Under 40,” thus delaying human colonization of space for generations and increasing by billions the death toll of the superflu pandemics of the mid-21st century. And so on.

This, dear reader, is the buttheadguy effect. The ultimate ramifications of Chris D’s ram-a-face actions will never be—can never be—known. All I know for sure is that there are many more unintended consequences to come. What horrors, I wonder, will the next sordid episode bring?

And I also wonder if the universe ever got around to busting any of Chris D’s teeth.