Chapter 18

"So, any plans for dinner?" asked Linda.

"Not really."

"In that case, would you like to come back to my place for dinner?"

"What, a take-away?"

"Not at all, I have a load of food in my fridge and freezer, I can cook us something."

"I didn't realise that pop stars ever did their own cooking."

"I wasn't always a pop star, so I needed to learn to live on a tight budget, which meant that cooking for myself was a must. I actually enjoy cooking too... I mean, I'm not a big cooking fanatic, but cooking can be quite relaxing, it's not something that you can hurry. So, want to risk it? You're welcome to tweet about it.... although probably best wait till the world knows about you, if you don't want a big backlash."

"Yeah, ok..."

"Now, Zac... just because I'm inviting you back to mine is NOT an invitation to examine my bedroom, if you know what I mean! You gonna be ok with that?"

"In that case, can we just have a nice snog in the kitchen?" said Zac with a big smile.


Linda and Zac had a very pleasant and relaxing evening together: Zac seemed to like Linda's cooking, then they watched a couple of programs on Notflux.

"You doing anything tomorrow? Fancy going out together for lunch?" suggested Linda.

"You gonna be ok doing that? Won't people recognise you?"

"I have a feeling it's going to be a LOT harder after our tour, but I haven't had too many issues so far. I think loads of people KNOW about me, but not so many are familiar with how I look. Yeah, they've maybe seen the 'on-stage', but less likely they've seen me when I'm normal."

"You? Normal? Is that possible?" joked Zac. "So, yeah, this tour... you looking forward to it? Or does it fill you with dread? Three months you said - that's a long time to be away from home!"

"At the moment I'm quite looking forward to it. Northern Girls arrive on Tuesday, and that's when the hard work starts. We did our album, and specifically took a short break, so hopefully we'll be suitably refreshed. We need to not only work out the details of what the tour's gonna be like, but we'll be playing some stuff with the Northern Girls, so that all needs to be written, which I think is going to be either great fun, or stupidly stressful. I'm kinda hoping that we'll all be suitably chilled about the whole thing... if we start having 'power struggles' now, it will be hell on tour!"

"So what's it like touring? You did a tour with the band last year..."

"It's a mix of fun and boredom, and luckily that was just a short tour. This one is a bit longer, but we have made sure to build in a few 'days off', not just for us, the crew will need some down-time too."

"Hey, you gonna be playing at that new place up in Manchester?"

"Oh, the Co-op Live Arena? Yeah, there's a rumour that we could end up being the opening act!"

"No way, your tour is still months away!"

"And the place is still not open: as I said....". Zac laughed as he realised that Linda was joking.

"Doesn't a tour start to send you a bit... well... 'crazy'?"

"A lot of it's about including some normality. Jenny can get quite stressed: last tour she was struggling towards the end, but then Ben came and joined her, and that gave her back her 'normality'. He'll be with us the whole of this tour... he's going to be working as part of our management team, helping Brian and Lisa."

"I'm guessing you must have quite a big team around you when you go on tour? I'm thinking that you must need people to do your hair and all that?"

"Hairdressers, makeup, people to help us put on our costumes... and that's before we think about the stage crew or our dancers."

"Can't you put your own clothes on then?"

"It's not so bad at the start of the show, but during the show we'll have costume changes, so we need someone to make sure we each have the correct dress, and then hang up the old ones afterward. Anyway, back to tomorrow lunch... fancy a Sunday Roast?"


[24/4915]

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My dream/nightmare orthodontic treatment would take place in my late teens when it would cause me the most amount of embarrassment and humiliation. Most of my piers would be getting their braces off and my dentist refers me for my first ortho appointment shortly after my sixteenth birthday.

My orthodontist is a gorgeous woman in her early twenties who’s only recently qualified and is taking on new patients in my area. She has a beautiful smile herself and always wears cute sundresses shows off a lot of leg whilst she works. I immediately develop a heavy crush on her lying in her chair having her poke around my exposed mouth.

She lies me down and has a good look at my teeth, watching me as she instructs me to bite together and move my jaw around. After spending a good twenty minutes looking me over she tells me that unfortunately my dentist referred me much later than would have been ideal, and starting treatment so late is going to be difficult and unpleasant for me at times. However she will do what she can to be mindful of my age when proscribing treatment and appliances but I should expect a treatment of at least three years. She then takes impressions and a series of photographs of my mouth with the cheek retractors in and tells me to book an appointment in another three weeks to have my appliances fitted.

Im horrified by the thought of having braces fitted at the age of sixteen. I don’t have a girlfriend and I would like one, but I think wearing braces into my late teens is going to kill off any chance of that.  However I secretly can’t deny how much I’m looking forward to be the pet project of my gorgeous newly qualified orthodontist for the next three years.

Three weeks go by and I’m back lying anxiously in her chair. The cheek retractors are in and she begins her work. She installs brackets on my upper and lower arches with a total of eight bands on my very back teeth. Then, as she brings forward two bulky looking pink plastic appliances and I realise she hasn’t actually told me anything about my treatment plan yet! I thought big plastic appliances like that were only for younger kids. She told me she’d be mindful of my age when proscribing treatment so I naturally assume these will be something i’ll have to wear to bed. She fits me with a large twin block appliance and instructs me to wear it 24/7. It feels huge in my mouth, my tongue feels like it has nowhere to go because of the mass of smooth acrylic covering my pallets and my lower jaw is awkwardly pushed forward and open.

She removes the cheek retractors and I immediately find myself struggling to even close my lips over the braces because of how my jaws are now held.

Prising my lips apart with her gloved fingers she inspects the braces and plastic appliances approvingly telling me they look great and that I should book another appointment to see her in a month so she can check up on me and start putting a bit of pressure on my arches.

I’m simultaneously horrified and ridiculously turned on at the thought of having to wear not only the metal braces but these enormous plastic appliances too. I can barely close my mouth let alone speak! The thought of my new embarrassing life dealing with these devices in my mouth, reporting to my orthodontist every month for more punishment is both my worst nightmare and my darkest dream come true. Part of me dreads the idea of her adding more and more additional appliances to my dental and social torture, but the other part yearns for it. I want her to fix me up with devices so embarrassing I barely leave the house except for more visits to her and her dreaded chair, relinquishing total control of my social life to her.

I get my wish.

She keeps me in my twinblocks for a full theee months before admitting they aren’t doing what they’re supposed to and that it must be because of my age. She sympathetically explains that more drastic steps need to be taken.

She takes new impressions and tells me to book another appointment in a week’s time.

I spend a week terrified and turned on at the prospect of what she described as “more drastic steps” and soon I’m back in the chair with her showing me my new ‘improved’ twinblocks and THEY, ARE, HUGE. They take up much more space inside my mouth. The blocks themselves are significantly larger forcing my jaws further apart and my lower jaw further forward. The plastic covering my pallets now extends much further back in my mouth and under my tongue and is noticeably thicker than before. It’s now extremely difficult to close my lips around my brackets and even when I am, I have to make a consistent effort to keep them there. My speech, which after six months is just starting to get less lispy and garbled is now worse than it was then the old appliances were first fitted.

Three months later I’m fitted with a facebow. I can barely hide my ‘excitement’ as she installs it for the first time, gently lifting my head as she wraps the many headgear straps around my face. She tells me how sorry she is that I have to put up with headgear at my age but that I’m doing really well and that I only have to wear it ten hours a day. She says normally she’d ask for more wear time from younger patients but she wants to start slow hoping she can extend the treatment time in exchange for not having to wear it for more time during the day.

Ten hours per day, turns into twelve hours three months in. I’m now nearly seventeen, wearing full braces, HUGE twinblock appliances and headgear twelve hours a day and I’m loving it. I’m fully in the grips of my pretty young orthodontist and her chair.

I psychologically hand myself over to her entirely when she presents me with my upper and lower lip bumpers shortly after I turn seventeen. She ties the lower one in permanently with wire and explains that the top one is to be worn anytime I’m not wearing my headgear which should now be for fourteen hours pre day. With both of the lip bumpers fitted it’s now basically impossible to close my lips and my braces are on show permanently. I can draw them closed over the bulky plastic pads but only for a moment.

I suffer ten months of my fourteen hour headgear routine, diligently swapping out the facebow and multiple straps for the lip bumper which I wear from 08:00 to 18:00

I’m nearly eighteen when she tells me she wants to start expanding my pallets and give my lower jaw more resistance to work against and that it’s time for new twinblocks and elastics. My treatment is about to take over my life.

She shows me my new devices. They’re much the same as my current devices but I can see that the blocks fit together differently. I can also see the slit down the middle and the chunky expansion devices set in the plastic making them even more bulky than the last ones. She fits them both and then fits two strong elastics on each side of my mouth from my lower canines to my upper molars. I immediately feel how these devious devices work. The elastics pull my lower jaw backward and the blocks slide over each other, forcing my jaws apart and my mouth wide open. I have to actively push against the elastics permanently or my mouth is propped all the way open.

She hands me a bag of elastics and tells me I need to change each of the four elastics every two hours I’m awake. She then shows me how to turn my expanders. Both upper and lower jaws every four hours I’m awake.

Lastly, she gets to work wiring the twinblock appliances in permanently, explaining that because of the pull of the elastics she doesn’t want them to start accidentally coming loose in my mouth. She instructs me that with so much hardware in my mouth at this point she’d like to see me every week just to keep an eye on my welfare and to take the twinblocks out to clean them for me.

At this point I’m all in, my life revolves completely around my braces. My entire existence adhering to an hourly schedule of my orthodontist’s wishes.

8:00, remove my headgear and replace with lip bumper. Swap elastics, turn expanders

10:00, swap elastics

12:00, swap elastics, turn expanders

14:00, swap elastics

16:00, swap elastics, turn expanders

18:00, swap elastics, swap lip bumper for headgear

20:00 swap elastics, turn expanders

22:00, swap elastics

And of course, my weekly two hour extended visits to my orthodontist’s chair for cleaning and inspection.

I endure this routine for a further eighteen months before my ordeal is finally over and my braces are removed.  However not without a set of extremely bulky hawley retainers and my orthodontist’s private number. After over three and a half years being her personal orthodontic pet project, maybe there’s room for more fun yet?…