Muzak spills softly from the ceiling panels as I suck and swallow the remains of last night’s dinner before he comes in.

I’m leaning back in his big chair, staring up at the tiles when his head emerges slowly into view, looking down on me, filling my eyeballs with the underside of his face.

“Hey!” he says, “How’s is going?”

Another dangler. This one pretty big in relation to the circumference of his nasal opening. After the initial shock, I breathe easy because I can see this one is tangled up nice and snug in a cocoon of black nose hairs and dried up like a hollowed-out fly in a spider web. I fix on his baby blues, pretending I don’t notice, like I haven’t just laid eyes on the jagged jewel inhabiting a major portion of the once vacant space at the dark entrance of his right nostril.

Desperate for a taste of consolation, I remind myself that it’s not as bad as last time. The last dangler was not secured by a safety net of nose hairs, barely hanging on for dear life, ready to let go and surrender to the laws of gravity because it was weak and not meant to survive such tenuous circumstances. And while it wasn’t as chunky as the current craggly nugget of oxidized mucus fixed inside that nest of black fuzz, it was wild and wet and could’ve taken that final fall from the warm nostril into the cold final frontier we all lose sleep over on cold, sweaty nights. All it would have taken was a heavy exhale, a “Humph, I can’t see any cracks in that molar that would be causing you pain, humph,” and that moist little stinker would have been jettisoned and taken a nosedive into the abyss and down onto my cheek, my eye, my lip. It could have been bad. All because I hadn’t spoken up.

This time, I’d either have had to ignore it again – risk another man’s moist booger landing on me and having it sit there for the remainder of a dental exam, not wanting to flinch or remove it – or I’d have had to acknowledge it but strategically laugh it off: “Oh, well whataya know, this dangler of yours just dropped anchor on my cheek, didn’t see that coming, no worries, carry on. I mean, the cost of doing business, right? The price we pay for the benefits of your craft, right? I mean Michael Jackson was a pedophile, but we enjoyed his art, his unique, god-given talents, so we looked the other way. We suffered for his art. Right? It’s fine. Let’s just stay the course. Full steam ahead! Steady as she goes! No need to rock the boat. What’s a little booger among friends?” Or I’d have had to warn him beforehand. I’d have to. Obligations. I have only obligations. I’m not allowed to be angry. What is the etiquette when your dentist leans over you, his face above yours like a bully pinning down his victim – nowhere to go, nowhere to look but up – as the bully plays that deliciously dangerous game of “hang the loogie?” What are the rules in that situation?

“I’m good,” I say. “How are you? How’s the family?”