I Needed $42K In Dental Work. I Thought I’d Take The Secret Of How I Paid For It To My Grave.

When I check in at the dentist, I’m a walking cliché — hoping for the best, but expecting a $1,000 bill. It’s always the latter.

“Deep grooves and weak teeth,” I’ve been told by dentists. “Genetic,” like being predisposed to heart disease. I do what I can. I own an electric toothbrush, Waterpik, avoid sugar, floss every single night, and yet.

I’d been on what I’ll call a “crown journey” the last few years at the advice of my former dentist ― a $20,000 process to replace 17 (yes, seventeen) of my teeth with crowns. My dental insurance caps the amount they’ll cover every year. Since I couldn’t afford the rest out of pocket all at once, it had been a four-year equation of maxing out my benefits, letting them renew, then maxing them out again. With only my incisors and cuspids still bare, I’m just hoping none of the crowns have failed.

There is a cluster of blue balloons strung into the shape of a smile on the main wall, which looks inviting, like a birthday party, except that framed facts accompanying it spoil the mood. Fact: People with gum disease are 25% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease. And, Fact: Without proper oral health, you are 4.5x more likely to develop a stroke.

In the lobby, I flip through a pamphlet detailing this office’s partnership with VISA for a dental-only credit card. We live in a debt-driven society, so I’ve been tempted by this type of credit card a few times. Why not just pay 24% interest on my $20,000 bill for years and years and years?

But after going through the student loan experience of actively accruing interest while I sat in classes, as I submitted homework, as I slept — I just couldn’t do that to myself again.

I was only able to crawl out of student loan debt by becoming a sugar baby, which is just a cute way of saying I would meet the same “John” in cheap hotel rooms once a week: an envelope of cash in exchange for sex. I’d been working at a strip club when I met John — a financial upgrade from bagging at Whole Foods.

Sick of being unable to afford groceries while working full-time, I decided to utilize every tool at my disposal to improve my life. The tool I had was being an attractive-enough 24-year-old.

My goals were not glamorous: Pay for my remaining university semesters in cash. Pay off my $32,000 in accrued student loans. And, aware I had a fuck ton of cavities, visit a dentist.

I know I don’t deserve the honor, but sometimes I compare my stripping story to Cardi B’s. She, too, was working at a grocery store, struggling to make ends meet before she started dancing. I learned this in an interview she did with Howard Stern, where he asks Cardi misogynistic questions.

“Was it a horrible existence?”

“Did it make you hate men?”

“A lot of people want me to lie and be like I hated it,” she said. “I’m not even gonna front. It saved me. It really saved me.” She goes on to say that she initially felt ashamed of the work. Sometimes she worried about what her parents might think when she gave lap dances. But then she’d count her tips.

The main problem I had with the strip club was that I wasn’t a good dancer, and therefore, I didn’t make a ton of money. But John came in like a miracle on a Wednesday night. I showered him with attention at a corner table, an electric tea light flickering between us.

“The stage lights make it look like the dancers are about to be abducted by aliens,” I said, and placed my manicured hand on his thigh. I made him laugh. He asked to see me again.

It was not an easy decision to meet him outside of the club for $500 plus a meal.

But six weeks later, I was glad I had, as he asked me what I wanted for Christmas while putting on his socks. I considered asking him to cover my next semester of college, but I had such a bad toothache, I blurted out, “A visit to the dentist.”

It’d be the first time I’d seen a dentist in six years, since I’d aged out of my parents’ plan at 18. I could’ve cried with relief when he agreed.

I almost feel bad remembering the moment I had to tell John the total of the bill after that first appointment. A number I’d had to text from my closet because I’d been too embarrassed to tell him any other way. The poor guy thought I’d be getting some X-rays and a cleaning. Maybe a filling or two.

Not that I’d need two crowns in addition to 12 fillings. Not that the bill would be grazing $7,000.

“Ouchie!!!” he texted back. “Your teeth must have been hurting you for a while!”

It had been precisely what I’d needed — some empathy and his agreement to cover the tab. I feel a pang of retroactive gratitude — that butterfly wing’s flap of the moment, your whole world changes. And then my name is called.

When I lay back in the dental chair — a comfortable, pleather seat — I let the hygienist admire the remnants of work that John paid for. She compliments my mouthful of crowns and carefully pokes around for the story behind them.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” my old dentist had said. “There is compote and silver amalgam from different visits, filling different cavities in the same tooth.” Apparently, the everyday wear of chewing with those fillings had started to crack my teeth. She nods. “That’s what I figured.”

There was a time I thought I’d let the secret of John go to the grave with me. I thought I would simply undress myself, lie next to him in starchy bedsheets enough times to pay off my student loan debt, have him pay that one exorbitant dental tab, and then live happily ever after with no one all the wiser.

But I couldn’t make sense of my life’s changed trajectory without him.

On the other end of the bachelor’s degree that I paid off through sugaring was a fully-funded graduate program. And at the tail end of that, a career track job doing work I love. God only knows if I would’ve ever finished school without sugaring. Or even if I had, what job would I’ve immediately jumped into out of need when the six-month grace period ended on my student loans?

My dentist can’t see what state my teeth are in under the crowns. She can only scan the X-ray films for any dark patches near the root. To disassociate during this, I imagine being interviewed by Howard Stern. Sure, he’d likely vulgarly ask the same question I’ve been asked 100 times since outing myself as a former sugar baby.

Was it empowering to pay for your school with your puss? Did you feel like you had the upper hand over John?

Empowering is the opposite side of the disempowered coin. The only binary responses people can imagine when it comes to sex work.

I would say what I always say. “I didn’t find the sex work empowering. It wasn’t a dream for me to pay for anything with my body. But money. Having money was empowering. Having money changed my life.”

Which usually makes people think, Oh, yeah. Obviously.

“I don’t see any new cavities,” my dentist says, poking my gums and making me bleed. “But I’m noticing gum recession and bone loss.” She nods over to a chart on the wall of terrible-looking teeth. “You have early-onset periodontal disease,” she added.

This is terrible news, which I try very hard not to cry at. And I fight the urge again as the finance guy goes over my benefits, and gingerly says $811, after insurance, for a special deep-cleaning and saliva test.

I should clarify — I’m not upset because I don’t have the money this time. I do. I’ve been saving for this visit. But enormous dental bills will always unhinge me. Over the last decade, starting with John’s astronomical gift, I’ve given $42,000 to the dentist — a number that finally surpasses what I spent on my university degree, which seems somewhat surreal.

I think about Cardi B again, specifically her lyric, “Got a bag and fixed my teeth. Hope you hoes know it ain’t cheap.” There must be nothing as unglamorous as dental work, and yet it’s so expensive that it still serves as a flex.

I manage to keep it together as I swipe my credit card (for the points), but trust me, my therapist will hear about this. We will talk about the trauma of growing up financially insecure. About entering adulthood, even worse off.

I will ugly-cry in a safe space, as I tell her that I compromised what I could of my body to get ahead in life, but there are just too many ways to break the bank. I will tell her that at the very core, the fear remains — one swift tumble and it’s a mudslide back into poverty.

She will help me ground in the moment. To reframe. Practice gratitude. Live not in the disastrous past or the potentially disastrous future, but the now. At least I don’t have any cavities. At least now I have my own money to pay the bill. At least, I’m outside of the hole I once lived in.

And then, feeling better, feeling grateful for every choice I had to make to get here, I’ll reference John.

At least, he gave me the ladder up — and I took it.

Michelle Gurule is the author of “Thank You, John,” forthcoming from Unnamed Press in September 2025.

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