15 years ago I got veneers — now my teeth fall out all the time

A few times a year, one of my veneers falls off. It’s happened so often at this point that it’s become a running joke among my friends: How will Edgar’s false teeth fall out next? Will it be from eating corn? Do I bite my nails? Recently, the bad culprit was a stale pan at a friend’s birthday party in New York. The party had a country and western theme, and my tooth that fell out was exactly what, in a movie, an actor playing the role of a “Hillbilly” or “Bumpkin” would have been blackened by the production to show that the character he had to be considered poor and dumb. I tried to laugh it off, though inside I cringed: These were the stereotypes I was trying to live up to when I first got my veneers back in 2009, when I was still in high school.

Back then, the only people getting veneers were celebrities like Tom Cruise and Hillary Duff, who could afford the five-figure price tag for a quality set. My family, like most Americans, didn’t have that kind of money to spare. In Orlando, my mom worked as a barista at Starbucks, making just over $20,000 a year. We both had the same teeth: jagged and inward-growing, with dark cavernous spaces between them. I brushed mine obsessively as if to wash off the word STINK that I felt was written on my forehead. Unlike me, however, my mom had a cheap pair of flip-flops: those perfect, creepy fake teeth that toddlers wear to beauty pageants. When she put them on every morning, her face lit up and she was free to go out into the world with her head held high.

I had been begging my mom for braces for years, but there was no way she could afford the initial fitting fee, plus going back to the dentist every couple of months to get them tightened. It was a miracle if we went once a year at all. Veneers, on the other hand, were a one-stop solution, albeit at three times the price. In the end, he paid for them with credit cards, and even then, he didn’t have enough credit for a full set and could only buy me enough to cover my top row of teeth, which the orthodontist assured were “the only ones that the world sees anyway’. It was $8,000—almost half her annual salary. A few months later, he would file for bankruptcy.

As short-sighted as my veneers may seem to some, to my mom they must have been an investment in my future. Before I got my teeth fixed, I was an ambitious kid with a near-perfect average. I dreamed of lifting my family out of poverty and giving my mom the life she deserved. Then one day, I got kicked out of high school on drug charges after a student lied to the campus police about being a dealer. When I started at my new school, the future and all my lofty goals were starting to feel childish and naive. There was something that seemed preordained about the expulsion, as if it was the first step in what would be a life of failure. Deep down, I worried that if I didn’t have straight, white teeth, I’d never be successful, the same way I worried that being gay and non-white would inevitably hold me back.

Veneers helped restore my faith in the future. Looking at my new $8,000 smile in a hand mirror at the orthodontist’s office, a flicker of hope stirred within me for the first time in forever. If that could happen, then maybe I was wrong to be destined for failure. maybe there it was good things ahead. When the orthodontist informed me that I would have to replace my veneers in 15 to 20 years, I shrugged it off, figuring that as an adult I would have no problem with the money. After all, I had a smile like Hilary Duff. Who wouldn’t hire me?

Now the 15 years are up, and I don’t have anywhere near the $10,000 I need to replace them—and that’s if I’m lucky, since a decent porcelain pair can run up to five times that. It turns out that getting my teeth fixed wasn’t the get-rich secret I was hoping for.

Don’t get me wrong, my veneers have come with some sweet benefits. While my old gap-toothed smile suggested I was poor, my shiny new teeth suggest wealth, a healthy lifestyle, a lifetime of regular trips to the dentist. No matter how I wear glasses, they make me even smarter. “You can tell a lot from someone’s hygiene,” a man once told me on a first date. “Bad teeth are a failure for me. I want someone who takes care of himself.” I nodded politely, distinctly remembering how awful I felt as a child when others assumed my natural teeth were the result of not “taking care of myself,” as opposed to a combination of biology and difficulty accessing health care. It was one of the worst and best compliments I’ve ever received.

To tell you the truth, I do not play with a stranger’s affairs. My veneers are the first thing people see in job interviews and I take full advantage of it. I didn’t go to an Ivy League university. I have no family connections in any industry. But I can smile like my life depends on it. These days I’m a writer, which you’d think is the only career where appearance doesn’t matter, but with the rise of social media, writers are increasingly expected to be complete brands. With the pressures of maintaining a platform and invitations to speak on panels and read my work in public, I am forced to smile more than ever.

This would be fine except for the problem of my veneers falling off. Every time it happens, I’m thrown back into a past I’ve tried so desperately to forget, and once again I’m that insecure teenager who sees no point in trying. Making a living as a writer is hard enough (for reference: for my last book, my publisher paid me $15,000, before taxes, over three years) and with my mother aging out of the workforce and increasingly dependent on me for financial support, it is unlikely that I will be able to save up $10,000 to replace my teeth anytime soon.

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I don’t feel sorry for myself. I won’t lie. I did run away from these bad boys. But I wish 16-year-old me had been better prepared for the responsibility of maintaining veneers. Even so, I don’t regret getting them. If I hadn’t had the procedure done at such a critical point in my life, I wouldn’t be where I am today, both because of the confidence they gave me and the doors they opened in my profession. At the same time, I’m anxious about where I’ll end up if I can’t keep them. It helps that I’m not alone in my fear. Losing your teeth consistently ranks as one of America’s top nightmares. It just so happens that their nightmare is my daily reality.

I’ve been lucky so far. I once found a dentist who bonded one of my teeth for $50. Others have done some clever maneuvering with my dental insurance, which I only have because of my partner. Each time, I am sent off with the warning to be more careful, because next time the damage may be too drastic to repair. I try to stop as much as I can: brushing and flossing after every meal, avoiding hard foods like apples.

I feel strangely comforted by the fact that other people are as desperate as I am to have beautiful smiles. Today, I can’t turn on a TV without seeing a celebrity in a pair of blinding white veneers, whether reggaetón stars like Bad Bunny or drag queens like Sasha Colby. But veneers aren’t just for the rich and famous anymore. It’s no wonder average Americans choose to have the procedure. Some of them fly to Colombia or find “dentists” on TikTok who promise veneers at a fraction of the cost. I would do the same, but I’ve read too many horror stories of people cutting corners to get quick fixes only to end up with evil smiles.

Seeing this latest rise in veneers, especially among influencers, reminds me that it wasn’t just a vanity process for me, but directly connected to my ambition. When I was younger, I thought I needed the perfect smile, just like I thought I needed a fancy suit and tie to complete the illusion that I was someone worth taking a chance on. Did my plan work? It’s hard to say. What I do know is that my chosen profession often puts me in the public eye, something I never would have done as a teenager when all I wanted to do was hide.

The irony is that now that I’m in my 30s and fake teeth are everywhere, the people I envy the most are the ones with natural, imperfect smiles. I love a gap, Zendaya’s slight pout, all those little personal details that separate a face from the rest of the crowd. I get jealous when I see strangers biting apples, without worrying about the consequences. Meanwhile, I can barely look at a corn without cringing. It’s been said before: You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. With the expiration date on my veneers fast approaching, I can only hope that in the years to come, I will find a way to keep smiling.