Life As Performance Art 125

Today, after my last client, I will be having my first visit to the dentist in well over a decade. Now, before any of you, Gentle Reader, start to tut-tut, shake your heads, wag your fingers and nag and lecture at me about waiting so long, and maybe I'm afraid of the dentist and other assorted nonsense and lies, let me make a few things perfectly and painfully clear. First of all, I am poor. Working poor. Low income worker. Except for one year working in a homeless shelter, I have never been paid a living wage in my life. Not for not having worked hard enough, nor for not having tried hard enough. Life is not always fair, and because of circumstances beyond our control, not all of us are going to make it in life. Does this mean I'm lazy, or that I haven't done anything useful in my life? Well, here is an abbreviated version of my CV, and I will let you be the judge, Gentle Reader. Even with token assistance from my father and from the government, I was not able to make it through university. There was no family home to shelter me, I had to work and struggle to pay rent every month, eat, and, not having credentials or other connections I was not able to source decently paying work. I was not able to fit post-secondary education into the formula because I was too tired at the end of the day, as well as too broke. What kind of work have I done? After six years of crap labour and service industry jobs, I worked mostly in home care from age twenty-four till my early forties. I was caring for frail, chronically and terminally ill seniors and other people, providing palliative care, and four years of this in the Downtown Eastside Of Vancouver, aka Canada's Poorest Postal Code, while also working in street ministry to very vulnerable and marginalised youth, AIDS sufferers and survival sex workers of all gender identities and sexual orientations and other populations, often putting at risk my own health and safety in my service of God through serving the most vulnerable, despised and misunderstood people in our city. Following some very difficult years in my forties, I have resumed in support and care services, working with people living with mental illness, for just a little bit above minimum wage, because our employer doesn't particularly value us. So, I haven't worked hard enough? I have worked so bloody hard for so little, and now I face a retirement in poverty. No value in my work? Where is my reward? I have no dental insurance, there is no dental coverage in this great land of ours for people on low incomes, and dentists seem to universally agree that the teeth are not part of the human body, the government of Canada agrees with them, therefore dental care is not covered by our otherwise generous medical services. In other words, if you are poor and have a toothache, you had might as well consider yourself shit out of luck. By the way, I am going to be particularly unkind in this blogpost, and no one is going to leave this page unscathed, so Gentle Reader, beware. I work for our public health care provider, but they are too stingy and callous to include dental coverage to their contracted employers (so fire me! Truth hurts, eh?) To the Anglican Church, where I am a still-reluctant member, I have this to say. You people represent all that is selfish and hypocritical and obtuse in organized religion. Everyone in my church knows that I am on a low income. They also know that I am having toothaches. None of of them have come forward to offer me any sort of help or support in paying my dental bills and there happen to be a lot of very well-incomed people in my church. How's that for Christian love? And as for our government, they would rather pretend that people like me don't even exist. They have woven this glowing myth about Canada the generous, Canada the land of opportunity, Canada the great white multicultural whatever, but they are embarrassed by our existence, the working poor, because our very lives and hardships in keeping body and soul together in this great hypocrisy called Canada gives the lie to our glorious global reputation. Even Colombia, a developing country fresh from a half century of civil war, offers subsidized dental services for basic care. Here in Canada, all I can do is cope between visits that I can't afford to pay for, which means that I have to stagger the dental appointments and care because I simply cannot pay for all the work that needs to be done. I have suffered from crippling toothaches all my life. I have also had a lot of extractions of teeth that might have otherwise been saved had I the money to pay for extra and more expensive care. Yes, eating is difficult for me, since I have lost most of my molars. None of this is likely to change, and I don't expect help from any of you, because, frankly, I am not persuaded that anyone would care enough. To all of the parties I have named here, my employers, my church, and my government, shame on all of you, and a pox on you and on your houses!