The man with the electric head (4-6)

The man with the electric head hates going to the dentist.
Those new machines that they use pick up a distinct and unnerving aura that confuses the hygienists and the doctor. The machine is adjusted, another "x-ray" is taken, and then another, until finally they go back to the original and work off of that.
There is also the fact that he is phobic about the dentist's office. The sounds get to him first. The scrapes, like steel chalkboards. The whine of the drill, at a pitch that osciallates in such a way that he wonders if he has been unknowingly drugged. Then the smell, the slight burn as bad tooth is removed, a pit created for the silver filling yet to come. The shots of novocaine, the numbness, those are the things he can live with. He can stand the pain. The spots dancing in his eyes; closing his eyelids shut to eliminate the spots only to perceive a black-white shifting dance in his mind.
And the spitting. Little whitish chunks mixed amongst the blood and drool. Momentarily awful, but even that he can deal with because he knows that the end is near when it's time to spit.
He wonders if having an electric head makes the novocaine wear off faster.


The man with the electric head had a theory.
What if the government implanted something into me, he thought.
He was going through a conspiracy phase, and wasn't sure if he rented all the X-files DVDs because of it or as a reaction to his mood.
He was working a summer job in a retail warehouse at the time. One day, when most everyone had gone home, he held up one of those bar-code readers to his head and tried to scan himself. But there was nothing. Except that he broke the scanner; after that everything it scanned was a coffee table for $129.99.
He couldn't even balance a book on his head for more than a few seconds, so it seemed unlikely that he was a coffee table.


The man with the electric head had other talents that were unrelated to his electric headedness.
He had a knack for making nice flower arrangements out of those cheap little bunches of flowers from the grocery store. This was a useful talent, in theory, though each girlfriend who received those bouquets had a variety of reactions. There was suspicion (what is he apologizing for that I don't know about yet?), guarded enthusiasm (is he gay? bi?), sneezing (oops...allergies), defensiveness (you think you're getting some because you brought these, don't you?), and every so often actual appreciation (seriously? are you a male from this planet?).
It was one of those things he refused to become jaded about in the midst of all the other relationship games; actually, it was one of the only things.
He also gave pretty good footrubs, which were greeted with far fewer negative reactions.