RA UBASTI: FANGSMITH

Ra has been wearing fangs since high school and sometimes dresses like the Queen of the Damned, but she doesn’t consider herself a vampire. She’s not into drinking blood and she generally avoids vampire kitsch: “Twilight,’’ Bela Lugosi vehicles, HBO series about the undead. For Ra, an artist, wearing fangs is “spiritual,’’ a practice she associates with the Egyptian cat-headed goddess Sekhmet and West African tribes who prize sharp, filed teeth as a mark of beauty. As “New York’s Only Female Fangsmith,’’ Ra sells custom-fitted fangs made of dental acrylic to clients who include actors, blood-drinkers, Latino men from the Bronx and soccer moms.

When I first got my fangs, it was awesome. It was like getting a tail. It’s feral, it’s primal. When you’re in official garb and the corset fits right and your hair is done proper, it forces you into this posture. And when you pass the mirror you’re you, but a different part of you.

When you’re wearing a pair of plastic CVS teeth they sell at Halloween, you act silly. You make faces, you don’t feel sexy. When you have something that looks like your teeth and stays in place, like if you licked it you'd feel that smoothness, when everything is polished and garbed, its like “yeah.’’ It’s something that your DNA forgot. There’s not this schism: humans look like this, animals look like that. In that moment, you’re crossing that line. When I got my first set made, they were too pointy and long. Now I think natural is better.

When you’re speaking to people with fangs on, they react a certain way. If you’re dressed up and you have all the black on and the make up, people are like, “yeah I was kind of expecting fangs, you look like a freak.’’ But when you just act plain normal, when you’re wearing light colors and it’s all every day? I like to go up to people and see how they react. When I have my fangs in and I’m just asking for directions or something, most people don’t know how to respond. You can see them thinking, “maybe she has messed up teeth. But maybe she’s from a foreign country. Or maybe she just has messed up teeth...’’ You know people are trying not to look, but they’re looking. When the entire package looks very different from what the mouth looks like, you get some complicated reactions.