My Two Front Teeth
In photographs from my childhood I am often sporting wide, toothy smiles.
在我童年的照片中，我经常露出露齿的笑容。
Guileless grins.
毫不掩饰地咧嘴一笑。
It seems I was—despite the complications of divorce, alcoholism, and mental illness in my family—a happy kid.
尽管家里有离婚、酗酒和精神疾病等复杂问题，但我似乎是一个快乐的孩子。
But by my teens I began to develop a sort of tight-lipped, toothless grin.
但到了十几岁的时候，我开始露出一种守口如瓶、没有牙齿的笑容。
I could feel myself consciously pulling my upper lip tight against my teeth, my tongue poking at the back of my fake, discolored front tooth.
我能感觉到自己有意识地把上唇紧紧地贴在牙齿上，我的舌头戳着我那颗假的、变色的门牙的后面。
When I attended summer camp in the early 1980s, there was no long journey north from some hot city.
当我在20世纪80年代初参加夏令营时，从某个炎热的城市北上并没有长途旅行。
No slow drive down a narrow dirt road through a tunnel of tall pines.
不要缓慢地沿着狭窄的土路行驶，穿过高大的松树隧道。
No tearful goodbye as my parents dropped me off with a duffle bag of jeans and T-shirts, swim trunks and a towel, then drove away.
当我的父母带着一袋牛仔裤、T 恤、泳裤和毛巾送我下车，然后开车离开时，我没有流泪告别。
I was a local kid, a poor year-rounder in Maine.
我是缅因州当地的一个孩子，全年都很穷。
“Summer camp” meant my small town’s daily parks-and-rec program on the grounds of my elementary school, which was across the street from the dilapidated house my unstable mother rented with her alcoholic boyfriend.
“夏令营”指的是我所在小镇每天在我的小学进行的公园和休闲活动，小学就在我情绪不稳定的母亲和她酗酒的男友租住的破旧房子的街对面。
For me, there was only waking to an empty house, making myself breakfast, then crossing the road.
对我来说，一觉醒来，看到空荡荡的房子，给自己做早餐，然后过马路。
At camp, kids ranged freely around the school’s sandy playground and grass fields, occasionally participating in activities loosely organized by camp counselors who were, I understand now, basically kids themselves: most too young to vote, all too young to buy beer.
在营地里，孩子们在学校的沙质操场和草地上自由活动，偶尔参加由营地辅导员松散组织的活动，我现在明白了，他们基本上就是孩子们自己：大多数人还太小，不能投票，都太小，不能买啤酒。
They corralled us into the school’s small gymnasium when it rained.
下雨时，他们把我们关进学校的小体育馆。
The summer I turned 10, the camp counselors cajoled us into a game of street hockey on the gym’s squeaky floor.
我十岁那年夏天，营地辅导员哄骗我们在健身房吱吱作响的地板上玩街头曲棍球。
I was not athletically gifted.
我没有运动天赋。
I was chubby and uncoordinated, and I could not be counted on under pressure.
我胖乎乎的，不协调，在压力下我靠不住。
Team sports were not my strength.
团队运动不是我的强项。
So when I rushed behind an opponent in an excited tunnel-vision attempt to steal the orange rubber street hockey ball, I took a stick directly to the mouth.
因此，当我兴奋地冲到对手身后试图偷走橙色橡胶街头曲棍球时，我直接用棍子抵住了对手的嘴。
Immediately, I tasted sweet, metallic blood.
立刻，我尝到了甜甜的金属血的味道。
I dropped my stick, brought both hands to my face and groaned.
我扔下手杖，双手捂住脸，呻吟起来。
Mike, a handsome camp counselor whom all the boys thought cool and all the girls had a crush on, rushed over and put his hand on my shoulder.
迈克，一个英俊的营地辅导员，所有男孩都认为他很酷，所有女孩都迷恋他，他冲了过来，把手搭在我的肩膀上。
“You’re okay, buddy, you’re okay,” he reassured me.
“你没事，伙计，你没事，”他向我保证。
“Just walk it off.” He clapped his hands together twice, like a football coach giving his players a pep talk.
“走开吧。”他拍了两次手，就像一位足球教练给他的球员们打气一样。
“Walk if off.” He clapped again.
“如果不走就步行。”他再次鼓掌。
I leaned forward and spat bloody shards of shattered tooth into my palm.
我向前倾身，把血淋淋的碎牙碎片吐到手掌上。
“Okaaaaay,” said Mike, backing away.
“好吧，”迈克说着后退了一步。
“I’ll go call your mom.”
“我去给你妈妈打电话。”
I slumped on a bench and waited, wondering how much trouble I was in.
我瘫倒在长凳上等待着，心想我遇到了多少麻烦。
Dr. Joseph Iriana’s dimly lit waiting room had dark wood paneling, a gurgling water feature, and a large aquarium thick with tropical fish and a little treasure chest that hiccupped bubbles.
约瑟夫·伊里亚娜医生昏暗的候诊室里有深色木镶板、潺潺的水景、一个养满热带鱼的大水族箱和一个冒着气泡的小宝箱。
It looked less like a dentist’s office than the living room of a rakish 1980s television private eye.
它看起来不太像牙医的办公室，而更像是 20 世纪 80 年代潇洒的电视私家侦探的客厅。
When Dr. Iriana leaned over my brightly lit, pulled-wide mouth during routine cleanings, he clicked his teeth the way those gag teeth chatter when you wind them up and set them down.
当伊里亚娜医生在例行清洁时靠在我那张明亮的、张开的嘴上时，他的牙齿发出咔哒声，就像你把牙齿卷起来再放下时那些牙齿打颤的声音一样。
It was unnerving.
这令人不安。
I always thought he was demonstrating what he wanted me to do, so I would begin to close my mouth, only to feel the hook of his index finger tug my cheek back open.
我一直以为他是在展示他想让我做什么，所以我开始闭上嘴，却感觉他的食指钩子把我的脸颊拉了回来。
That day Dr. Iriana looked into my mouth and saw what remained of my left front tooth—little more than a white sliver poking beyond the pink gumline.
那天，伊里亚娜医生检查了我的口腔，看到了我左门牙的残骸——只不过是粉红色牙龈线外伸出的一条白色条子。
He didn’t click his teeth.
他没有咬牙切齿。
He made a distinct tsk, tsk, tsk sound with his tongue.
他用舌头发出明显的“啧、啧、啧”的声音。
I sat stiffly in the chair and held my breath.
我僵硬地坐在椅子上，屏住呼吸。
For what felt like hours, but was probably much less, Dr. Iriana piled layer upon layer of composite resin until he’d built up a flat, broad structure that was somewhat toothlike in appearance.
伊里亚娜博士花了好几个小时，但可能要短得多的时间，一层又一层地堆放复合树脂，直到建立起一个平坦、宽阔、外观有点像牙齿的结构。
A little white tombstone is what it looked like to me.
一块白色的小墓碑对我来说就是这个样子。
This cap was, he explained, temporary.
他解释说，这个上限是暂时的。
My teeth were still moving around, he said, unsettled; I thought of my teeth playing dodgeball at summer camp.
“我的牙齿还在动，”他说，语气不安。我想起我的牙齿在夏令营里玩躲避球。
Dr. Iriana said he would eventually fit the tooth with a permanent crown.
伊里亚娜医生表示，他最终将为这颗牙齿安装永久牙冠。
Composite resin.
复合树脂。
Cap.
帽。
Crown.
王冠。
At a point in my life when I’d never even had a cavity, I felt thrust into an adult vernacular.
在我生命中的某个时刻，当我什至从未有过蛀牙时，我感觉自己被推入了成人白话。
Naïve boy that I was, I believed my tooth trouble to be behind me.
我是个天真的孩子，我相信我的牙齿问题已经过去了。
There is a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery called kintsugi .
日本有一种修复破损陶器的方法，称为“金继”。
Cracks are filled with lacquer, then dusted with powdered gold or silver.
裂缝中填满漆，然后撒上金粉或银粉。
With kintsugi, that which is broken is honored not by attempting to hide the flaw but by drawing attention to the repair.
对于金继来说，损坏的东西不是通过试图隐藏缺陷而是通过引起人们对修复的关注来获得尊重的。
This is the opposite of how most Americans treat their teeth.
这与大多数美国人对待牙齿的方式相反。
With my new fake tooth in place, I wanted nothing but to fade back into preteen anonymity and range unnoticed by friends, family, and strangers.
戴上新假牙后，我只想回归青春期前的匿名状态，不被朋友、家人和陌生人注意到。
For a few years, my cap was fine.
几年来，我的帽子一直很好。
Then, in junior high, it quickly began to discolor.
然后，到了初中，它很快就开始变色。
My tooth seemed to age.
我的牙齿似乎变老了。
It faded like a paperback left in the sun, stained like wallpaper in the home of a smoker.
它就像一本放在阳光下的平装书一样褪色，就像吸烟者家里的壁纸一样被染色。
I hated my discolored tooth because I felt certain everyone else hated it.
我讨厌我变色的牙齿，因为我确信其他人都讨厌它。
At this excruciating moment of near ceaseless desire for the opposite sex, I felt ugly.
在这个对异性近乎无止尽的渴望的痛苦时刻，我感觉很丑陋。
I buried myself in Ray Bradbury books and skateboarding.
我埋头于雷·布拉德伯里的书籍和滑板中。
Unable to read the blackboard from my desk, I also got my first pair of dorky glasses.
由于无法在办公桌上阅读黑板，我还买了第一副傻乎乎的眼镜。
So began my miserable era of tight-lipped toothless grins.
我的悲惨时代就这样开始了，他闭嘴不笑，没有牙齿。
An appointment with the teeth clicker was scheduled.
安排了与牙齿响片的约会。
It was time to replace the temporary cap with a porcelain crown, an experience that became the foundation of my lifelong dental fear: Every time I sit in a dentist’s chair, I think of Dr. Iriana leaning over me with a tiny whirring grinder in his blue-gloved hand, his eyebrows rising as if to say, “The only way out is through,” then the dust of my discolored tooth rising like smoke from a tiny forest fire in my mouth.
是时候用瓷冠取代临时牙冠了，这种经历成为我一生对牙科恐惧的基础：每次我坐在牙医的椅子上，我都会想到伊里亚娜医生靠在我身上，戴着蓝色手套的手里拿着一台旋转的小型研磨机，他扬起眉毛，仿佛在说：“唯一的出路就是穿过去”，然后我变色的牙齿上的灰尘像我嘴里的小森林大火中的烟雾一样升起。
When the singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker was 21, she was in a bike accident that knocked out one of her incisors.
创作型歌手阿德琳妮·伦克 (Adrianne Lenker) 21 岁时，遭遇了一场自行车事故，导致她的一颗门牙脱落。
After years of cycling through cheap caps or just an empty gap, she now has a gold crown.
经过多年的廉价上限或空缺之后，她现在拥有了金冠。
Lenker briefly met Joan Baez backstage at the Newport Folk Festival in 2024.
伦克在 2024 年纽波特民谣音乐节后台短暂见到了琼·贝兹 (Joan Baez)。
Baez, who complimented Lenker on her hypnotic solo set, immediately noticed her glinting tooth.
贝兹称赞伦克的催眠独奏，立即注意到她闪闪发光的牙齿。
“Me, too,” Baez said, opening her mouth and pointing at her own gold canine.
“我也是，”贝兹张开嘴，指着自己的金犬说道。
“I got a little diamond in mine,” said Baez, who’d shattered her tooth years earlier on a popcorn kernel.
“我的体内有一颗小钻石，”贝兹说道，她几年前就被爆米花粒咬碎了牙齿。
By that point she could have afforded a high-quality porcelain tooth and returned her smile to its virgin state, but her new gold tooth served a different purpose: “After all that time with just a gap, it kind of felt strange to not see the scar,” she said in an interview.
到那时，她本可以买一颗高质量的烤瓷牙，让她的笑容恢复原始状态，但她的新金牙却有不同的用途：“这么长时间以来，只有一个缝隙，看不到疤痕感觉有点奇怪，”她在接受采访时说。
Lenker chose, in a way, to make her scar permanent.
在某种程度上，伦克选择让她的伤疤永久化。
She and Baez both chose kintsugi: They honored their broken bits by refusing to hide them.
她和贝兹都选择了金继：他们通过拒绝隐藏自己的破碎来尊重它们。
When I was 16, I discovered the short stories of Raymond Carver.
当我 16 岁的时候，我发现了雷蒙德·卡佛的短篇小说。
I was young, so I didn’t know one could write about the kinds of things Carver wrote about and elevate them to art.
我还年轻，所以我不知道人们可以写卡弗写的那种东西并将它们提升为艺术。
“Feathers”—included in the collection Where I’m Calling From, which I found left behind in the local coffee shop—is about two colleagues who get together for dinner with their wives.
《羽毛》收录在《Where I’m Calling From》系列中，我在当地的咖啡店里发现了这本书，讲述的是两个同事和妻子聚在一起吃晚饭的故事。
There’s Jack, the narrator, and his wife, Fran.
有叙述者杰克和他的妻子弗兰。
And his friend Bud and Bud’s wife, Olla, who invite Jack and Fran to their house in the country.
还有他的朋友巴德和巴德的妻子奥拉，他们邀请杰克和弗兰去他们在乡下的房子。
There are two things most readers remember about this story: Bud and Olla’s baby, Harold, who is described in detail by Jack as being the ugliest baby he has ever seen, and the couple’s petulant pet peacock, Joey.
关于这个故事，大多数读者都记得两件事：巴德和奥拉的孩子哈罗德，杰克详细描述他是他见过的最丑的孩子，以及这对夫妇脾气暴躁的宠物孔雀乔伊。
The bird is even featured on the original Vintage Contemporaries paperback edition of Cathedral .
这只鸟甚至出现在《大教堂》原版复古当代平装本中。
While the couples have a drink in the living room, Fran notices something sitting on top of the TV and nudges Jack: “Next to the vase, on the doily, sat an old plaster-of-Paris cast of the most crooked, jaggedy teeth in the world.
当夫妻俩在客厅喝一杯时，弗兰注意到电视顶部有什么东西，于是用胳膊肘碰了碰杰克：“在花瓶旁边的桌布上，放着一个旧的巴黎石膏模型，上面有世界上最弯曲、锯齿状的牙齿。
There were no lips to the awful-looking thing, and no jaw either, just these old plaster teeth packed into something that resembled thick yellow gums.”
这个看起来可怕的东西没有嘴唇，也没有下巴，只有这些古老的石膏牙齿塞进了类似厚厚的黄色牙龈的东西中。”
Bud explains that it’s a cast of Olla’s teeth before her braces: “I’ve got used to them.
巴德解释说，这是奥拉戴牙套之前的牙齿模型：“我已经习惯了。
But I guess they look funny up there.
但我猜他们在那里看起来很有趣。
For the life of me, I don’t know why she keeps them around.”
我一生都不知道她为什么要把它们留在身边。”
Olla taps her front teeth and says they came in crooked when she was a kid, but her family couldn’t afford to fix them.
奥拉轻敲着她的门牙，说她小时候门牙是歪的，但她的家人无力修复它们。
When she married Bud, he insisted on paying for her braces.
当她嫁给巴德时，他坚持支付她的牙套费用。
She shyly explains that the cast is a daily reminder: “I’ve got lots of things to be thankful for …
她害羞地解释说，演员阵容每天都在提醒我：“我有很多事情要感激……
That’s one of the things I’m thankful for.
这是我要感谢的事情之一。
I keep them around to remind me how much I owe Bud.”
我把它们放在身边是为了提醒我欠巴德多少钱。”
Bud takes the cast from atop the TV and holds it against Olla’s cheek while she smiles.
巴德从电视机顶上拿起石膏，把它贴在奥拉的脸颊上，奥拉微笑着。
She says the orthodontist wanted to keep the cast and submit it for publication in a magazine.
她说正牙医生想保留石膏并将其提交到杂志上发表。
“I said nothing doing.
“我说什么都没做。
I pointed out to him they were my teeth.”
我向他指出那是我的牙齿。”
“After I got the braces off, I kept putting my hand up to my mouth when I laughed,” Olla says.
“摘下牙套后，我笑的时候一直把手放在嘴边，”奥拉说。
One day, Bud told her she could stop doing that: “You don’t have to hide teeth as pretty as that.
有一天，巴德告诉她可以停止这样做了：“你不必隐藏那么漂亮的牙齿。
You have nice teeth now.”
你现在的牙齿很好。”
I found the whole scene between the couples breathtakingly tender and intimate, though I never could have described it that way at 16—I might have simply let out the breath I’d been holding and said softly, “Whoa …”
我发现这对情侣之间的整个场景令人惊叹的温柔和亲密，尽管我在 16 岁的时候永远无法这样描述——我可能只是简单地呼出一直屏住的呼吸，轻声说：“哇……”
Could people really be so vulnerable with one another, I wondered.
我想知道，人与人之间真的会如此脆弱吗？
Could I be so vulnerable?
难道我就这么脆弱吗？
There is no shortage of teeth-related idioms in the English language.
英语中不乏与牙齿有关的习语。
When you narrowly avoid something, you escape by the skin of your teeth .
当你险些避开某件事时，你就是咬牙切齿地逃脱了。
The phrase dates back to the Geneva Bible of 1560, where in the Old Testament pious Job was made to suffer mightily because of a bet between Satan and God.
这句话可以追溯到1560年的《日内瓦圣经》，在《旧约》中，虔诚的约伯因为撒旦和上帝的打赌而遭受了巨大的痛苦。
He lost all his property and wealth, his seven sons and three daughters.
他失去了所有的财产和财富，以及他的七个儿子和三个女儿。
He endured great physical agony; he repulsed his wife.
他忍受着巨大的身体痛苦。他拒绝了他的妻子。
Job’s hardships left him emaciated and covered in sores.
约伯的艰辛使他面容消瘦，浑身生疮。
Even his teeth fell out: “My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” Biblical scholars believe that Job had lost all his teeth and only the skin of his gums remained.
连他的牙齿都掉了：“我的骨头紧贴着我的皮肤和我的肉，我带着牙齿的皮肤逃脱了。”圣经学者认为约伯失去了所有的牙齿，只剩下牙龈皮。
One thing I loved about my high school sweetheart was how she laughed.
我喜欢我高中恋人的一件事就是她笑起来的样子。
She had a beautiful, honest smile.
她有着美丽、诚实的微笑。
But she tried to hide it.
但她试图隐藏它。
She hated her teeth because in elementary school a boy once asked her, incredulously, “Why are your teeth that color!?
她讨厌自己的牙齿，因为在小学时，一个男孩曾经难以置信地问她：“你的牙齿为什么是这个颜色！？
”
”
She’d grown up in a rural town in the early 1980s and had some harmless brown stains on her teeth, probably from fluorosis.
她在 20 世纪 80 年代初的一个乡村小镇长大，牙齿上有一些无害的棕色污渍，可能是氟中毒造成的。
If I could have been Bud to her Olla and paid to fix her teeth, I would have.
如果我能成为她的奥拉的好友并付钱给她矫正牙齿，我就会这么做。
Gap-toothed actresses have always held an unusual allure, from Brigitte Bardot and Lauren Hutton to Aimee Lou Wood and Dakota Johnson.
从碧姬·芭杜 (Brigitte Bardot) 和劳伦·赫顿 (Lauren Hutton) 到艾米·卢·伍德 (Aimee Lou Wood) 和达科塔·约翰逊 (Dakota Johnson)，缺牙女演员一直都具有不同寻常的吸引力。
None captured my imagination more than the troubled French actress Béatrice Dalle, star of the 1986 film 37°2 le matin, released in America as Betty Blue .
没有人比陷入困境的法国女演员 Béatrice Dalle 更能激发我的想象力，她是 1986 年电影《37°2 le matin》的主演，该片在美国上映，饰演 Betty Blue。
Her expressive gap-toothed grin was captivating.
她富有表现力的大牙缝笑容令人着迷。
Parisians even have a name for such a smile: les dents du bonheur, the teeth of happiness.
巴黎人甚至给这种微笑起了一个名字：les dents du bonheur，幸福的牙齿。
I was a senior in high school when my girlfriend and I discovered Betty Blue on VHS in the foreign film section of our local video rental shop.
当我读高中时，我和女朋友在当地录像带出租店的外国电影区发现了录像带上的 Betty Blue。
I recall only the broad strokes.
我只记得大概的轮廓。
A writer named Zorg is working as a handyman in a seaside resort on France’s Mediterranean coast when he meets passionate, impulsive, and occasionally violent Betty.
一位名叫佐格的作家在法国地中海沿岸的一个海滨度假胜地做勤杂工，这时他遇到了热情、冲动、有时甚至暴力的贝蒂。
She thinks he is a genius.
她认为他是个天才。
They make love regularly and with the wild abandonment with which high schoolers think all French people make love.
他们经常做爱，而且像高中生认为所有法国人做爱一样疯狂。
Betty’s unpredictability and eroticism were, to me, inexorably linked to her gap-toothed smile.
对我来说，贝蒂的不可预测性和性感与她牙齿缝隙大的微笑有着不可分割的联系。
In my 20s, while absent-mindedly eating an apple, I caught a seed just so.
20多岁的时候，我心不在焉地吃着苹果，无意间抓到了一粒种子。
Nearly half my crown snapped away like brittle glass, leaving me with a sharp, jagged splinter of a left front tooth.
我的牙冠几乎有一半像易碎的玻璃一样折断，留下了左门牙的锋利锯齿状碎片。
A friend joked that it made me look tough.
一个朋友开玩笑说这让我看起来很坚强。
I laughed, but I was horrified.
我笑了，但我感到害怕。
I could swear people’s eyes flicked to my tooth when I spoke.
我可以发誓，当我说话时，人们的目光都转向了我的牙齿。
Soon my hand went reflexively to my mouth every time I laughed.
很快，每次我笑的时候，我都会反射性地把手放到嘴边。
To look like a street brawler in the film Fight Club, Brad Pitt— People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1995 and 2000—had his dentist intentionally chip away bits of his front teeth.
为了让自己看起来像电影《搏击俱乐部》中的街头斗殴者，《人物》杂志 1995 年和 2000 年评选的最性感男人布拉德·皮特 (Brad Pitt) 让牙医故意削掉了他的几颗门牙。
“Brad’s willing to go to great lengths for a character,” his publicist told Entertainment Weekly .
“布拉德愿意为一个角色竭尽全力，”他的公关人员告诉《娱乐周刊》。
Pitt’s intentionally chipped teeth hollered Look at me!
皮特故意咬碎牙齿大喊“看看我！”
I, however, didn’t want anyone to see my ragged smile.
然而，我不想让任何人看到我破烂的笑容。
Most of us have the confidence of mere mortals.
我们大多数人都拥有凡人的信心。
We don’t want to be gold-webbed kintsugi cups.
我们不想成为金丝金继杯。
My chipped tooth began to turn brownish yellow, like an overripe banana.
我的牙齿开始变成棕黄色，就像熟透的香蕉一样。
Every time I opened my mouth, I was leading with one perfect pearly white and one misshapen mess.
每次我张开嘴，我都会以一种完美的珍珠白和一种畸形的混乱来引导。
No amount of brushing with whitening toothpaste made a difference.
用美白牙膏刷牙多少次都没有效果。
The tooth was impervious to whitening strips.
这颗牙齿不受美白条的影响。
I couldn’t afford to see a dentist, so my closed-mouth, Mona Lisa smile became second nature.
我没钱看牙医，所以闭上嘴，蒙娜丽莎式的微笑就成了我的第二天性。
I hated my tooth.
我讨厌我的牙齿。
It looked to me as though it was rotting.
在我看来，它好像正在腐烂。
I assumed everyone saw it as my defining physical feature.
我假设每个人都将其视为我的典型身体特征。
I hated this, too: I was susceptible to the taint of narcissism that tricks us into believing that how we look actually matters to most other people.
我也讨厌这一点：我很容易受到自恋的影响，这种自恋欺骗我们相信我们的外表对大多数其他人来说实际上很重要。
It rarely does.
很少有这样的情况。
And when it does matter, it’s not often for the right reasons.
当它确实重要时，通常并不是出于正确的理由。
It was jarring when, in my 30s, one of my father’s incisors was yanked.
当我三十多岁的时候，我父亲的一颗门牙被拔掉，这让我感到很震惊。
One moment he had the handsome smile I’d known my entire life, the next it was as though someone had thrown a brick through a window: Most of the panes still sparkled in the sun, but now there was a dark, unsettling void.
前一刻他还露出我一生都熟悉的英俊微笑，下一刻就好像有人从窗户里扔了一块砖头：大部分玻璃仍然在阳光下闪闪发光，但现在却是一片黑暗、令人不安的空虚。
In a long line of windows in a brick mill building, a single broken windowpane immediately catches our attention.
在砖厂大楼的一长排窗户中，一块破碎的窗玻璃立即引起了我们的注意。
The eye is often drawn not to what is there but to what it knows is missing.
人们的注意力常常不是被存在的东西所吸引，而是被它所知道的缺失的东西所吸引。
My father was still handsome—he was far too charming to be anything but handsome—but he’d been vandalized.
我父亲仍然很英俊——他太迷人了，除了英俊之外什么都不是——但他被破坏了。
The missing tooth changed him; not to himself, I think, since he seemed as comfortable as ever in his skin, but to me .
缺失的牙齿改变了他；我想，这不是对他自己来说，因为他看起来一如既往地舒服，而是对我来说。
Was it because of my own half tooth?
是因为我自己的半颗牙吗？
Because I felt unnerved by what I was missing?
因为我对自己错过的东西感到不安？
A Maine architect once explained to me the various kinds of cedar shingles he used for siding the rustic coastal cottages he designed.
一位缅因州建筑师曾经向我解释过他设计的质朴沿海小屋的壁板所使用的各种雪松木瓦。
Shingles that are treated in a chemical wash, I learned, do not warp or discolor.
据我所知，经过化学清洗处理的木瓦不会变形或变色。
“They’re so boring,” the bow-tied architect said with a dismissive groan.
“它们太无聊了，”这位打领结的建筑师轻蔑地抱怨道。
“They’re like a perfect, bright American smile.”
“它们就像完美、灿烂的美国微笑。”
He much preferred untreated shingles that took on a feathery silver hue as they aged.
他更喜欢未经处理的带状疱疹，随着年龄的增长，它们会呈现出羽毛般的银色色调。
They curved and chipped and weathered.
它们弯曲、碎裂、风化。
Across the seasons, they changed in the light.
随着季节的变化，它们在光线下发生了变化。
“They’re like a French woman’s beautifully crooked smile,” the architect said.
“它们就像法国女人美丽的微笑，”建筑师说。
“ Gorgeous!
“太漂亮了！
”
”
The wide-hipped Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales must be a precursor to the wildly erotic Betty Blue.
《坎特伯雷故事集》中臀部宽阔的巴斯妻子一定是狂野色情的贝蒂·布鲁的前身。
The Wife of Bath is the lusty storyteller of perhaps Chaucer’s best known tale.
《巴斯之妻》是乔叟最著名的故事中充满活力的讲故事者。
Her face is described as bold and handsome and red of hue.
她的脸被描述为大胆而英俊，颜色呈红色。
But her most distinctive feature is her gap-toothed smile, which, she says, symbolizes sensuality and lust:
但她最显着的特征是她那大牙缝的微笑，她说，这象征着性感和情欲：
But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth.
但我一直有一颗小牙。
Gat-tothed I was, and that bicam me weel …
我是个笨蛋，而我的处境却很糟糕……
As help me God, I was a lusty oon, And faire, and riche, and yong, and wel bigon
上帝保佑我，我是一个精力充沛的人，还有公平，富有，勇，还有比贡
If gap teeth symbolize lust, why does a missing tooth attract stares?
如果缝隙的牙齿象征着情欲，那么为什么缺失的牙齿会引人瞩目呢？
Why are some people so attracted to a crooked-shingle smile and others prefer stock-straight teeth bleached bone-white?
为什么有些人如此喜欢弯曲的木瓦状微笑，而另一些人则更喜欢漂白成骨白色的直牙？
Did Bud, who so obviously loves his wife, Olla, want to change her teeth to make her beautiful by society’s standards?
巴德显然很爱他的妻子奥拉，他是否想要改变她的牙齿，让她按照社会标准变得美丽？
Or did he want her teeth straightened simply because that is what she wanted?
或者他只是因为她想要矫正牙齿而想让她矫正牙齿？
What does the state of our teeth tell others about us?
我们的牙齿状况可以告诉其他人关于我们的哪些信息？
I left my chipped tooth untouched for a long time.
我已经很长一段时间没有动过我那颗缺损的牙齿了。
It continued to discolor.
它继续变色。
I suppose I accepted it.
我想我接受了。
Maybe it did make me look, as my friend suggested, tough.
也许正如我的朋友所说，这确实让我看起来很坚强。
At the very least, it gave me an air of wildness.
至少，它给了我一种狂野的气息。
Or maybe it was because I was without dental insurance and acceptance was the easiest path.
或者可能是因为我没有牙科保险，而接受是最简单的途径。
For long periods, I forgot about my tooth entirely.
很长一段时间，我完全忘记了我的牙齿。
Until, of course, I met someone new who would ask, assuming it was recent, “What happened to your tooth!?” With that I went tight-lipped.
当然，直到我遇到一个新人，假设是最近的事，他会问：“你的牙齿怎么了！？”对此我守口如瓶。
Then a surprising thing began to happen.
然后令人惊讶的事情开始发生。
As I got older, became a father, moved into a more demanding career, I found that I thought about my tooth less and less.
随着年龄的增长，成为一名父亲，从事要求更高的职业，我发现我越来越少地考虑我的牙齿。
At least, I think I did.
至少，我想我做到了。
I mean, I must have: There are photos of me with friends from this period, laughing without reserve, my half fake tooth on full display.
我是说，我一定有：有我和那个时期的朋友们在一起的照片，毫无保留地笑，我的半颗假牙全部露出来。
A strange thing was happening to my unchipped front tooth, too: It began to seem more perfect than it actually was simply because it shared the stage with a chipped partner.
我那颗没有缺损的门牙也发生了一件奇怪的事情：它开始看起来比实际情况更完美，仅仅是因为它与一个缺损的牙齿共享舞台。
When I look now at those photos, I am shocked by how I seem to have accepted my ugly tooth.
当我现在看到那些照片时，我很惊讶我似乎已经接受了我丑陋的牙齿。
Or was the power of happiness sometimes more powerful than my sense of embarrassment?
或者幸福的力量有时比我的尴尬感更强大？
My dear friend Wes, an 85-year-old poet, recently told me he found my chipped, discolored tooth endearing.
我亲爱的朋友韦斯，一位 85 岁的诗人，最近告诉我，他发现我破损、变色的牙齿很可爱。
When I met Wes, in my 30s, I’d been sporting my jagged-tooth smile for a decade.
当我 30 多岁时遇见韦斯时，十年来我一直保持着锯齿状的牙齿微笑。
Sometimes I completely forgot about it for long stretches.
有时我会很长一段时间完全忘记它。
Wes noticed the tooth immediately when we met.
当我们见面时，韦斯立即注意到了这颗牙齿。
He is attuned to such things, and teeth sometimes even appear in his poems.
他对这些事情很敏感，有时甚至在他的诗中出现牙齿。
He told me, “You’re so handsome and so capable, so your tooth …
他告诉我：“你这么帅，这么能干，所以你的牙齿……
the imperfection …
不完美……
it made you seem down-to-earth, more approachable.”
这让你看起来更脚踏实地，更平易近人。”
Meanwhile a woman I had briefly dated called my chipped tooth “sexy” shortly after we met.
与此同时，我们见面后不久，我曾短暂约会过的一位女士称我的缺牙牙“性感”。
It stunned me.
这让我很震惊。
We are incapable of seeing ourselves the way others see us.
我们无法以别人看待我们的方式看待自己。
Rather than giving me a boost of self-confidence, the comment made me self-conscious.
这个评论并没有给我带来自信，反而让我感到不自在。
I began to wonder, Well, what the hell is sexy!?
我开始想，好吧，性感到底是什么！？
If my chipped tooth was sexy, I obviously had no clue.
如果我的断牙很性感，我显然不知道。
Maybe it made me seem unpredictable, something this buttoned-up and particularly predictable girlfriend found exciting.
也许这让我显得难以捉摸，而这个沉默寡言、特别容易预测的女朋友却觉得很兴奋。
“I think it’s got something to do with the intimate things we do with our mouths,” Wes speculates.
“我认为这与我们用嘴做的亲密事情有关，”韦斯推测道。
We should all be so lucky to have a friend like Wes.
我们都应该很幸运有一个像韦斯这样的朋友。
My wife has a slightly twisted incisor.
我妻子的门牙稍微扭曲。
It looks as though it has excitedly stepped out of line with her other teeth.
看起来它似乎兴奋地与她的其他牙齿脱节了。
If a tooth could be said to have a personality, her incisor is rebellious.
如果说牙齿有个性，那么她的门牙就是叛逆的。
When she’s laughing or smiling widely, her upper lip catches on the tooth in an utterly appealing way.
当她大笑或大笑时，她的上唇以一种非常吸引人的方式咬住牙齿。
I call my wife’s tooth Wabi, as in wabi sabi, the Japanese philosophy of appreciating the beauty in imperfection.
我把我妻子的牙齿称为侘寂（Wabi sabi），即欣赏不完美之美的日本哲学。
I love her Wabi.
我爱她侘。
My wife has a nickname for my chipped, discolored tooth.
我的妻子给我那颗破损、变色的牙齿起了个绰号。
She calls it Snaggle.
她称之为“Snaggle”。
My wife is haunted by a very specific terror about her teeth.
我的妻子对她的牙齿有一种非常特殊的恐惧。
She says it is a common fear: She is scared that she will stumble while walking and fall, and her open mouth will hit the concrete curb just so, smashing all her teeth.
她说这是一种常见的恐惧：她害怕走路时绊倒并摔倒，张开的嘴会撞到混凝土路缘石上，撞碎所有的牙齿。
Again, she says that most people have this exact same fear.
她再次表示，大多数人都有同样的恐惧。
Though that seems suspect, I take her point.
虽然这看起来很可疑，但我同意她的观点。
Our teeth, so unprotected and on display, often make us feel vulnerable.
我们的牙齿毫无保护且暴露无遗，常常让我们感到脆弱。
“I know it’s irrational,” my wife says.
“我知道这是不合理的，”我的妻子说。
“But my heart races if I even think about it.”
“但只要我想到这一点，我就会心跳加速。”
I don’t have this fear.
我没有这个恐惧。
Though I suppose my version is falling while ice-skating: When I’m trying to get myself up, with my hands splayed in front of me, someone glides by and cleanly slices off my fingers, which skitter across the ice like frozen hot dogs.
虽然我想我的版本是在滑冰时摔倒的：当我试图站起来，双手张开在我面前时，有人滑过并干净地切掉了我的手指，手指像冷冻热狗一样在冰上滑行。
In his long poem “Fire,” my friend Wes included his boyhood distress about his mother’s teeth: “Where is my father?
我的朋友韦斯在他的长诗《火》中，表达了他童年时期对母亲牙齿的苦恼：“我的父亲在哪里？
/ Why had my mother come home without her teeth?”
/ 为什么我妈妈回家时没有牙齿？”
“My mother was elated when all her teeth were pulled at once,” Wes tells me on the phone.
“当我母亲所有的牙齿都被拔掉时，她很高兴，”韦斯在电话里告诉我。
The culture of the 1950s made his mother obsessed with new white appliances and new white teeth, everything bright, bright.
20世纪50年代的文化让他的母亲痴迷于新的白色器具和新的洁白牙齿，一切都明亮、明亮。
Later in the poem, Wes watches his mother, who took in sewing jobs to earn extra money: “And where, after her promise, were the brand-new teeth?
在诗的后面，韦斯看着他的母亲，她靠做缝纫工作来赚取额外的钱：“在她做出承诺之后，崭新的牙齿在哪里？
/ Her with pins in her mouth where the teeth were meant / to be …”
/她嘴里插着别针，牙齿本来就是……”
Teeth still mean something in America.
牙齿在美国仍然具有重要意义。
If they aren’t straight and white, they signal poverty, ignorance.
如果他们不是异性恋和白人，那就意味着贫穷和无知。
That shouldn’t be the case, but it is.
事实不应该如此，但事实却如此。
A version of my wife’s nightmare actually happened to my friend Candace.
我妻子的噩梦实际上发生在我的朋友坎迪斯身上。
“I was nine,” she intoned with the ominousness of a campfire horror story.
“我当时九岁，”她用篝火恐怖故事中的不祥语调说道。
“My family was moving to Panama on a military transport plane.
“我的家人乘坐军用运输机前往巴拿马。
The day before the flight we checked into a Holiday Inn near the airport.
起飞前一天，我们入住了机场附近的一家假日酒店。
I asked my parents if I could go swimming in the motel pool.
我问父母我是否可以去汽车旅馆的游泳池游泳。
They both lit cigarettes, poured themselves a room cocktail, and shooed me out the door.
他们都点燃了香烟，给自己倒了一杯房间鸡尾酒，然后把我赶出了门。
I ran to the pool and dived in before I noticed there were only a few inches of water.”
我跑到游泳池并跳了进去，然后才发现水只有几英寸深。”
Candace told me this story in the intimacy of our shared office when we worked together as editors of a life-style magazine.
当我们一起担任一本生活方式杂志的编辑时，坎迪斯在我们共用的办公室里给我讲了这个故事。
I asked her about it again recently.
最近我又问了她这件事。
“As luck would have it, I landed on the side of my face.
“幸运的是，我的脸着地了。
The pool rash was appalling, but temporary.
泳池皮疹令人震惊，但只是暂时的。
My six front teeth were chipped and cracked, but shockingly still attached.
我的六颗门牙都碎裂了，但令人震惊的是仍然连着。
Eventually the damage made the nerves and roots die, and the teeth turned first gray, then brownish.
最终，损伤导致神经和牙根死亡，牙齿首先变成灰色，然后变成棕色。
I was finally allowed to get them fixed in high school.”
我终于在高中时被允许修复它们。”
It could have been much worse.
情况可能会更糟。
She’d escaped by the skin of her teeth.
她侥幸逃脱了。
My friend Abbott went through an anguishing, multiyear ordeal having his front teeth capped.
我的朋友阿博特（Abbott）因戴上门牙而经历了多年痛苦的磨难。
He consulted with Candace, who had, after all, had her entire smile rebuilt.
他咨询了坎迪斯，毕竟坎迪斯已经恢复了笑容。
He sought a second opinion.
他寻求第二意见。
Then a third.
然后是第三个。
But not mine.
但不是我的。
He said my snaggletooth was “no big deal.”
他说我的粗牙“没什么大不了的”。
Abbott finally chose a dentist and embarked on the slow process.
雅培最终选择了一位牙医并开始了缓慢的过程。
When the capping process was complete, he slipped into a mild depression.
当封盖过程完成后，他陷入了轻度抑郁。
He hated his new smile.
他讨厌他的新笑容。
Those of us closest to him, friends since our early teens, thought he looked great.
我们这些与他最亲近的人，从十几岁起就是朋友，都认为他看起来很棒。
But he couldn’t hear us.
但他听不到我们的声音。
We’d spent our youth reading Henry Miller when a dash of Anaïs Nin’s wisdom could have done some good: “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
我们年轻时一直在阅读亨利·米勒（Henry Miller）的作品，当时阿娜伊丝·宁（Anaïs Nin）的一点智慧本可以带来一些好处：“我们看到的不是事物的本来面目，而是我们看到的事物本来的样子。”
Abbott wanted his teeth to disappear but felt he’d gotten a kintsugi smile.
阿博特希望他的牙齿消失，但他觉得自己得到了金继的微笑。
“I’m stuck with these fucking Chiclets,” he groaned.
“我被这些该死的巧克力棒困住了，”他抱怨道。
He had gone too far, spent too much money, to turn back.
他已经走得太远，花了太多钱，无法回头。
Sometimes you’ve already leapt only to realize there’s no water in the pool.
有时你跳下去才发现泳池里没有水了。
Another idiom: sets my teeth on edge, to communicate extreme discomfort.
另一个习语：咬牙切齿，表达极度的不适。
In the first complete translation of the Bible from Latin into English, credited to the theologian John Wycliffe and his followers, there’s this line, from about 1382: “And the teeth of sones wexen on egge.”
在神学家约翰·威克利夫 (John Wycliffe) 及其追随者的第一部完整的《圣经》从拉丁语译成英语的翻译中，有这样一句出自 1382 年左右的诗句：“And the trees of sones wexen on Egge”。
But the phrase’s place in the lexicon was solidified by Shakespeare’s Henry IV, when the king’s former ally Hotspur—before he dies at the hands of his nemesis, Prince Hal, in the battle of Shrewsbury—says it is bad verse that leaves a sour taste in his mouth: “And that would set my teeth nothing an edge, / Nothing so much as mincing poetry.
但这句话在莎士比亚笔下的亨利四世的词典中的地位得到了巩固，当时国王的前盟友急躁号在什鲁斯伯里之战中死在宿敌哈尔亲王手中之前，他说这是一首糟糕的诗，让他嘴里留下了酸味：“那不会让我的牙齿感到锋利，/没有什么比装腔作势的诗歌更重要了。
/ ’Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag.”
/这就像一匹拖着脚步的马的强迫步态。”
Frida Kahlo explored so much of her physical being in self-portrait after self-portrait.
弗里达·卡罗在一幅幅自画像中探索了她的身体存在。
In her paintings, she rejected traditional beauty.
在她的画作中，她拒绝传统美。
She didn’t shy from her unibrow or deny her mustache.
她并不回避她的一字眉或否认她的小胡子。
Yet she never painted herself smiling.
然而她从未把自己画成微笑的。
Kahlo was not an unhappy woman—she joked, she laughed, she had a wicked sense of humor—but it is difficult to find even a photograph of her smiling.
卡罗并不是一个不快乐的女人——她开玩笑，她大笑，她有一种邪恶的幽默感——但很难找到她微笑的照片。
According to art historian Parker Lesley, quoted in Hayden Herrera’s biography of Kahlo, “She had two gold incisors and when she was all gussied up she would take off the plain gold caps and put on gold caps with rose diamonds in front, so that her smile really sparkled.”
海登·埃雷拉 (Hayden Herrera) 在卡洛传记中引用了艺术史学家帕克·莱斯利 (Parker Lesley) 的话，“她有两颗金门牙，当她打扮得漂漂亮亮的时候，她会摘下纯金帽子，戴上前面镶有玫瑰钻石的金帽子，这样她的笑容就闪闪发光。”
Kahlo, who married pain and sexuality in her work, didn’t pluck her eyebrows, but she tended to her teeth.
卡罗在她的作品中将痛苦与性结合在一起，她没有拔眉毛，但她很注意牙齿。
My friend Abbott’s dark response to his new smile frightened me more than I realized at the time—the story of his teeth set my teeth on edge.
我的朋友阿博特对他的新笑容的阴暗反应比我当时意识到的更让我害怕——他牙齿的故事让我感到紧张。
My complacency deepened.
我的自满情绪加深了。
For fear of making things worse, I stayed the course of my self-prescribed dental plan: Do nothing .
由于担心事情变得更糟，我坚持执行自己制定的牙科计划：什么也不做。
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, stressed from high-pressure, deadline-driven work and a toxic coworker, I began grinding my teeth.
在 Covid-19 大流行最严重的时候，由于高压、紧迫的工作和有毒的同事的压力，我开始咬牙切齿。
I awoke one night with excruciating electric shocks of pain pulsing through my jaw.
一天晚上，我醒来时，下巴传来一阵难以忍受的电击般的疼痛。
The next day, a dentist told me I had cracked both of my lower back molars so badly that they needed to be pulled.
第二天，一位牙医告诉我，我的两颗下背部臼齿严重破裂，需要拔掉。
I dragged myself to an endodontist who carried himself with the uninterested air of a man who’d been ready to retire years ago.
我拖着疲惫的身躯去找一位牙髓病医生，他的神态漠不关心，就像几年前就准备退休的人一样。
He made halfhearted small talk while filling me with successive needles of lidocaine over the course of 45 minutes, then leaned into my mouth with a pair of shiny pliers.
在 45 分钟的时间里，他一边漫不经心地闲聊，一边给我连续注射利多卡因针，然后用一把闪亮的钳子探进我的嘴里。
My entire body clenched.
我的整个身体都绷紧了。
I tried to control my breathing, but my heart thudded.
我试图控制自己的呼吸，但我的心却在狂跳。
I still have my wisdom teeth, so things were tight back there.
我还有智齿，所以后面的情况很紧张。
The extractions were tricky.
提取过程很棘手。
The first molar popped out like that of a cartoon boxer hit with an uppercut; the second shattered.
第一颗臼齿像卡通拳击手用上勾拳击中的那样弹出；第二个破碎了。
The endodontist dug for shards like a child in a sandbox.
牙髓病医生像孩子在沙箱里挖碎片一样。
My jaw filled with pressure.
我的下巴充满了压力。
I winced when I heard the unholy scrape of metal tool against tooth; for a passing moment I yearned for the innocence of my childhood dentist hovering over me, his teeth going clickety clack, clickety clack .
当我听到金属工具与牙齿的邪恶摩擦声时，我不禁皱起了眉头。有那么一刻，我渴望童年时的牙医在我头顶上徘徊，他的牙齿发出咔哒声，咔哒声。
The months that followed became a blur: bone grafts on the empty sockets, stitches, healing, laser mapping, custom molds, post-hole drilling, post insertion, more healing, and at last, implants.
接下来的几个月变得模糊：空牙槽骨移植、缝合、愈合、激光测绘、定制模具、钻孔后、插入后、更多愈合，最后是种植体。
The whole process took roughly a year.
整个过程花了大约一年的时间。
Still my chipped, discolored front tooth remained.
但我那颗破碎、变色的门牙仍然存在。
After perhaps 15 years together, my wife told me I had begun to put my hand near my mouth more and more when I spoke in public.
在一起大约 15 年之后，我的妻子告诉我，当我在公共场合讲话时，我开始越来越多地将手放在嘴边。
She said I tried to hide my tooth by stroking my mustache or beard.
她说我试图通过抚摸我的小胡子或胡须来隐藏我的牙齿。
I had become Olla.
我变成了奥拉。
My wife was my Bud, encouraging me to take care of my tooth—not because it bothered her but because, as with Bud and Olla, she loved me so much, she hated the idea of my feeling insecure.
我的妻子就是我的巴德，鼓励我照顾好我的牙齿——不是因为这让她烦恼，而是因为，就像巴德和奥拉一样，她非常爱我，她讨厌我感到不安全的想法。
A final idiom, another from the 14th century: to lie through one’s teeth means that a person is able to smile while lying.
最后一个习语，另一个来自 14 世纪的成语：to lie through one's eyes 意味着一个人在说谎时能够微笑。
The origins of this expression can be traced to the legends of the romantic hero Sir Guy of Warwick from the early 1300s.
这个表达的起源可以追溯到 1300 年代初期浪漫英雄沃里克的盖伊爵士的传说。
When Guy confronted the traitorous knight Morgadour about his treachery, the wicked man had the audacity to reply, “Thi lerst amidward thi teth.”
当盖伊质问叛徒骑士莫加多尔的背叛行为时，邪恶的骑士竟然厚颜无耻地回答说：“你已经在这里面了。”
Thanks to my wife’s gentle support, I found I couldn’t lie to myself through my chipped tooth any longer.
感谢妻子温柔的支持，我发现我不能再用碎牙来欺骗自己了。
I pushed down the anxiety I felt about how my friend Abbott was unable see himself in his new smile.
我压下了因我的朋友阿博特无法从他的新笑容中看到自己而感到的焦虑。
After the ordeal of my two molar implants was well behind me and I felt healed—physically, mentally, and financially—I decided to have my front tooth repaired.
在我的两颗磨牙种植体的磨难已经过去之后，我感觉身体、精神和经济上都得到了治愈，我决定修复我的门牙。
I’d survived the implants.
我在植入物中幸存下来。
Why not keep going?
为什么不继续走下去呢？
The new dentist I’d begun seeing—not the excavating endodontist—was calm and kind.
我开始看的新牙医——而不是挖掘牙髓病的医生——冷静而友善。
She patiently explained the process.
她耐心地解释了整个过程。
She spoke softly.
她轻声说道。
As she built up the layers of tooth-colored composite resin, pausing occasionally to cure and bond it with a slender light wand, she asked whether I felt okay.
当她堆积起一层层牙齿色的复合树脂时，偶尔会停下来用细长的光棒进行固化和粘合，她问我是否感觉还好。
She was gentle.
她很温柔。
If I winced, she rested her hand softly on my shoulder.
如果我皱起眉头，她就会把手轻轻地搭在我的肩膀上。
The whole thing, from the time I sat in her chair to my slow, stunned walk out the door, took less than an hour.
整个过程，从我坐在她的椅子上到我缓慢而震惊地走出门，只花了不到一个小时。
I drove home opening and closing my mouth as it tried to make sense of its new fit.
我开车回家，张开嘴，闭上嘴，它试图理解它的新适应度。
When I called my wife from the car to tell her everything had gone smoothly, I noticed I suddenly had a slight lisp; my tongue, used to so many years of a void where a tooth should have been, didn’t know where to put itself, as though it was moving inside someone else’s mouth.
当我在车里给妻子打电话告诉她一切都很顺利时，我发现自己突然有点口齿不清；我的舌头多年来已经习惯了本应是牙齿的空虚状态，不知道该把自己放在哪里，就好像它在别人的嘴里移动一样。
My eyes darted between the road ahead and my reflection in the rearview mirror.
我的目光在前方的道路和后视镜中的倒影之间扫视。
My unchipped tooth no longer needed to carry my smile; its partner was back.
我那颗完好的牙齿不再需要承载我的微笑；它的伙伴回来了。
For the first time in decades, I smiled an unbroken smile.
几十年来，我第一次露出了不间断的微笑。
I was nearly 50 years old—not young, but not so long in the tooth that I couldn’t, despite sporadic resistance, find my way to embracing change.
我当时已经快 50 岁了——不年轻，但也没有太老，尽管有零星的阻力，但我无法找到拥抱改变的方法。
We rarely succeed in changing the things around us, but as Proust wrote, gradually our desires change.
我们很少能成功地改变周围的事物，但正如普鲁斯特所写，我们的欲望会逐渐改变。
When my friend Abbott told a woman he’d just begun dating how much he hated his Chiclet teeth, years after he’d had the procedure, her brow furrowed.
当我的朋友阿博特告诉一位女士，他刚刚开始约会时，他多么讨厌自己的巧克力牙齿，而在他接受手术多年后，她的眉头皱了起来。
She asked, “What are you talking about?” She hadn’t noticed what he could not help but notice every time he looked in the mirror.
她问道：“你在说什么？”她没有注意到他每次照镜子时都会忍不住注意到的东西。
That woman is now the mother of his daughter, and Abbott has accepted, if not embraced, his teeth.
那个女人现在是他女儿的母亲，阿博特已经接受了他的牙齿，即使不是拥抱。
When my friend Candace had her pool-shattered smile completely reconstructed, she was stunned by her high school sweetheart’s reaction.
当我的朋友坎迪斯完全恢复了她那被泳池震碎的笑容时，她对她高中恋人的反应感到震惊。
“While I was elated with the result,” she recalled, “my boyfriend was less so.
“虽然我对结果很满意，”她回忆道，“但我的男朋友却不那么高兴。
He thought my jacked teeth were endearing.
他觉得我的牙齿很可爱。
That’s what first love looks like.”
这就是初恋的样子。”
Dakota Johnson’s gap tooth disappeared naturally after her orthodontist suggested she remove a retainer she’d worn since her teens.
达科塔·约翰逊（Dakota Johnson）的牙齿矫正医生建议她摘掉她从十几岁起就戴的保持器，她的缝隙牙自然消失了。
The disappearance made international news.
这起失踪事件成为国际新闻。
Johnson told interviewers she was devastated and wanted her gap restored.
约翰逊告诉采访者，她感到非常震惊，希望能够弥补差距。
Instead, she got more work done.
相反，她完成了更多的工作。
Aimee Lou Wood still has her gap.
艾米·卢·伍德 (Aimee Lou Wood) 仍有差距。
“No Americans have my teeth,” she said.
“没有美国人有我的牙齿，”她说。
Brad Pitt had his intentionally chipped teeth repaired once he finished filming as a bare-knuckle boxer.
布拉德·皮特在完成裸指关节拳击手的拍摄后，就修复了故意破损的牙齿。
When playing the role of himself, Pitt must have felt something closer to perfection was more appropriate.
在扮演自己的角色时，皮特一定觉得更接近完美的角色更合适。
In our increasingly stratified society, sparkly white chompers have become a priority for both the actually wealthy and those striving to project a luxury life style.
在我们这个分层日益严重的社会中，闪亮的白色咀嚼物已成为真正富有的人和那些努力展现奢华生活方式的人的优先选择。
As many as 19 percent of Americans have whitened their teeth; North America accounts for nearly half of the global dental veneer market.
多达 19% 的美国人美白了牙齿；北美占全球牙贴面市场的近一半。
The consequences of bad habits or unfortunate accidents are brushed away by a few appointments in a dentist’s chair; what was rotten or broken is spackled over.
坏习惯或不幸事故的后果，只要在牙医的椅子上看几次就可以消除。腐烂或破损的东西都沾满了。
The cosmetic dentistry market, which generated $11.54 billion in 2022, is projected to reach $33.8 billion by 2030.
美容牙科市场在 2022 年创造了 115.4 亿美元的收入，预计到 2030 年将达到 338 亿美元。
After my chipped, discolored front tooth was finally fixed, nobody said anything.
当我那颗破碎、变色的门牙最终被修复后，没有人说什么。
For much of my life, I had been both consciously and subconsciously uneasy about my tooth, in all its states.
在我一生的大部分时间里，我一直有意识地和潜意识地对我的牙齿感到不安，无论它的状态如何。
Then, when the thing that I’d come to believe physically defined me was— poof!
然后，当我开始相信身体上定义我的东西是——噗！
—gone, no one seemed to care.
——走了，似乎没有人在乎。
I waited for people to notice, the way they do when you get a new pair of glasses or lose weight.
我等待人们注意到，就像你戴上一副新眼镜或减肥时他们会注意到的那样。
But, nothing.
但是，什么也没有。
I was surprised, then a little wounded, which is silly, I know, and embarrassing to admit.
我很惊讶，然后有点受伤，我知道这很愚蠢，而且很难承认。
More than three years have passed since my tooth was fixed.
距离我的牙齿矫正已经三年多了。
Until my tongue reminds me, I sometimes forget; it’s difficult to unlearn the habits of self-doubt.
有时我会忘记，除非我的舌头提醒我；改掉自我怀疑的习惯是很困难的。
No one is likely to say my ordinary new tooth makes me look tough or sexy.
没有人会说我普通的新牙让我看起来坚强或性感。
My smile as I knew it for decades has disappeared.
我几十年来所熟悉的笑容消失了。
It is anonymous now, unexceptional.
现在是匿名的，没什么例外。
I got what I wanted—didn’t I?
我得到了我想要的——不是吗？
When Thoreau wrote, “Things do not change; we change,” he certainly didn’t have in mind 21st-century dental culture.
当梭罗写道“事情没有改变；我们改变了”时，他当然没有想到 21 世纪的牙科文化。
But there it is.
但它就在那里。
It seems ridiculous, but I sometimes miss the snaggletooth that made my smile wild and singular, a weathered Maine shingle.
这似乎很荒谬，但我有时会怀念那让我的笑容狂野而奇异的凹凸不平的牙齿，一块饱经风霜的缅因州木瓦。
And I wonder: What are we trying to change—our teeth or ourselves?
我想知道：我们想要改变什么——我们的牙齿还是我们自己？