OK, the word hot in restaurants is such an overused word.
For those of us who like hot stuff (Jud, Chris, Will) I can attest that I am an afficionado, or at least was one once.
To this day, my pallate craves the sweet smelting smoulder of a nice fresh jalapeno. You see, the heat, that spice is actually the taste. It's odd to put hot in a category of taste, but there ya go.
The sweet burn of the habanero/scotch bonnett makes my eyes water, both with love and because my mouth is grasping just how extreme the tase is, for the umpteenth time.
We walk into a thai restaurant and not that I'm actually looking for it, the hot dish or dishes, but rather, it doesn't cross my mind to avoid them. And sure, most of the time, I'll get the dish in question.
...you know the one with the fresh jalapeno resting on top of it.
The waiter ALWAYS, ALWAYS asks, mild, medium, hot or native and invariably, I answer native. This is not so much boast as again, I love this stuff. The server invariably gives me the once over and then brings food over and yummy! But Hot? Spicy, yes.
I keep thinking to myself and as Paul Simon sings, "is this some morbid little lie?" That most places I go, the hot food is basically spicy is now deriguer. Totally commonplace, it is its own form of inflation.
So imagine innocent me traipsing off to Grinders during Mammopalooza, a cool little Breast Cancer Awareness Fundraiser sponsored by those crazy kickballers, WASA.
Thinking, inflation, I ordered the wings...the menu duly warns that the wings are hot, but after years of messed up spice ratings, I ordered the hot.
Even the server warned me.
It's not, again, like I'm some pain-monger. I'm not. I just like hot food.
So, waving off the warning, waiting for a few moments and talking with Laurie and having a good 'ol time until the wings came did not seem like it was going to be a before Grinders wins and AFTER Grinder's wings.
I tell you what... Biting into that first wing, one of the flat ones you have to work around was delightful for a few moments.
I thought to myself, hmm, really plain pepper taste, nothing to get in the way and a little bland, but still something is .......
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
I became deaf and blind, Helen Keller of pain, my tears burned my eyes.
I thought, maybe just one more and I'll get used to it...
AUUGHHHHH!!!
My world dissappeared. No longer was I Nathan Granner, opera singer, I was a big tongue and a nail and the wings were the hammer driving it through to the table...
"Laurie get me a beer!"
"What?" She replied.
I never hated anyone more in my life until I realized that this was all instantaneous and going on inside my head. In spice, noone can hear you scream.
"Get me a beer!"
"What?
She really wanted me dead I thought plaintively. Adn then realized that what came out was
"LGlauhgi game a breejjaghh!"
Decisively, I leapt from the table, to the beer shack, where WAKA had been kind enough to offer free beer (thanks guys!) and grabbed a couple of Buttlights. As they were pouring I managed to tell the tenders what had happened...through my tears...
The lady said to the gentleman as an aside, as though I couldn't hear! "He's crying cause he had those Grinder's Wings..."
I poured one down my scorched maw. No tonic there indeed. In fact, it just spread the pain to everywhere else.
Eventually though, the waves of angry pepper convulsions ebbed to a tender throb and I was left feeling a little elated. I was able to make a recovery - of sorts.
Looking down, I saw I had only been through three wings. Apparently my brain had been deeply traumatized because before I could even sstop myself, I had grabbed another wing and stuffed the fourth death-stick between my teeth.
Gnah! Gnahh! Ygnagh!
The sound of me screaming as I chew with my mouth open and my ears hearing only "whooooosh!" as more and more blood rushed to my head.
Two more, only two more!
The snot actually flooded onto the fifth wing as I ripped into it.
I am reminded of a story a friend once told me about eating peyote.
"The world and reality was ripped straight away...just underneath this veneer of solidity and oxygen and whatnot are fractals and colors and things that if you were sober, you'd probably have a hard time explaining.'
I thought about this as I stood up and began to aimlessly walk about the Crossroads Festival compound. I thought how strikingly familiar this explaination was to my then current situation. I thought about how good the soft earth felt under my feet while my head was divining dark matter.
Somehow I made it to the server who set the little cardboard tray of perdition in front of me in the first place.
"Wowh, thosz are realligh hottht"
"I tried to tell you, " She said straight out of the devil's handbook.
"Yeahg, I gotthruu Fiv of tdhemh"
"Next time you read the words hot, maybe you should think a moment before you get it."
"Yeahgh."
How could I tell her with what felt like canuba wax in my mouth that Grinders is to only place where hot meant hot, Or that...
... I wanted that last wing.
end
best,
Nathan Granner
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