Even tough guys get choked up
ANY guy will tell you. Eating is far more than a social ritual and a handy way of getting nutrients into your body. It is also a crucial test of manliness. And wherever two or more are gathered in the name of food, opportunities arise for men to demonstrate their resolve, the steel of their very intestines, by eating macho.
For a man of my inestimable manliness, then, it was a bit surprising how poorly I handled that one pickled jalapeño at the Greek restaurant the other night.
My man Chris had said something like, “You’re not going to eat that whole thing, are you?” with a look of pretend-shock.
I knew what it was, though. It was a challenge. So I took off my jacket and got down to it. It was 9pm in the restaurant, prime time. We had a couple of lovely ladies with us and my manliness was going to be on full display.
It was one of those pickled chillies. Enormous, about the size of a cow’s heart. I took the thing and shoved it so deep in my mouth that the pointy bit was playing speedball with my tonsils.
Then I sank my teeth into that sucker like a multinational tearing a cobalt mine out of a rainforest. That is to say, I took a massive bite.
The thing with pickled chillies, though: they are full of chilli-flavoured vinegar. So when you plunge your incisors into one, that vinegar has to go somewhere. In this case, about 70ml of chilli-vinegar squirted into each of my eyes at the same time.
I gasped in phantasmagorical agony, and breathed half of the biggest chilli I’ve ever seen into my left lung.
Now in danger of dying in public, I turned purple and began coughing, dryretching, and crying vinegar in lateral streams like I was squirting tears out of my eyes with syringes.
Fortunately, the chilli piece popped out of my ribcage and came to rest on my lapel. I had now lost control of my body to such an extent and was making such strange, involuntary noises, that I began head-butting the table to try reboot my constitution.
“No, no! Really, I’m okay!” I blurted, as an 11-year-old girl got up from her table and prepared to give me a Heimlich.
Cutlery rattled and fell from the table with every convulsion. I was now officially making a scene anyway, so I grabbed my napkin and ran for the toilets, sobbing like someone who’s been in a crash.
As I sprinted, crying tears of green hell, I kneed a Greek widow in the bicep and she poured her glass of Graça all over her front. I heard a waiter’s tray crashing to the floor, but that must just have been my turbulence.
I locked myself in the bathroom and began climbing the wall upside-down so that I could lie with my head in the basin facing the ceiling and run a stream of cold water into my eyeballs at full blast until I resembled Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars in chilli flavour.
I felt like one of those girls who gets drunk at the office party and then refuses to come out of the loo until everyone’s left. But I wasn’t quite that bad.
So when I had regained my sight, and the Parkinson’s symptoms subsided, I sauntered back to the table, chuckling. Ready to make light of it. I was greeted with some alarm as I’d developed a rash of raised bumps across my face.
To my dismay, Chris was seemingly completely unaware that we were having a competition to prove our manliness. He was sipping a glass of water, having given up drinking for his wedding, or something.
Struck mute by the trauma, I simply nodded meaningfully at each of my companions in turn. My eyes were bulging like Chinese-checker marbles. These people knew who was the toughest guy at the table. Did I hear you say, the dumbest too? Probably.