Everything Is Wrong with Me

by Jason Mulgrew

  This was one of the first times that I doubted Petey. I didn’t see what he had to gain in this experiment, so I didn’t know why he would make this offer. I figured that obviously someone, probably several people, could eat this pepper with ease. Not me—I still brushed my teeth with bubble gum–flavored toothpaste because I thought that the mint variety was too spicy, and the very smell of buffalo wings would send me hiding to my room until the house was properly fumigated—but a lot of people liked peppers. And as for those who didn’t win the bet and had to drink the water, so what? It’s too hot, they drink the water, they cool off, and that’s it. What’s so great about that? Of course, neither I nor anyone else knew about the strength of these peppers. To us, they were just glorified jalapeños, a minor obstacle in the way of making a quick fifty dollars. Uncle Petey would have the last laugh.

  My call came on a summer evening with a knock at the door. This was early on in the contest, perhaps even the second day. I hadn’t heard of anyone who had actually tried to eat the pepper yet, and I was only vaguely interested. My indifference stemmed from my aforementioned confusion as to why Petey would have the contest in the first place. My friends Jimmy (called “the Muppet,” because he was small and looked like a Muppet) and Chuckie (nicknamed “Eclipse,” because he was big and blocked out the sun) were on my porch trying to convince me to come up to Petey’s house to try the pepper. In my most diplomatic way, I vehemently objected to any participation in such a contest, citing my lack of tolerance for any and all spice. Before I could properly launch into my spiel about how the whole thing was stupid anyway, Chuckie reached into his pocket and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. He looked smugly at me and said, “I did it.” Knowing that fifty dollars was enough to get me by for a solid month, I looked at Jimmy, shocked, and he added, “I almost did it. I got to twenty-eight seconds, but had to take a drink. And Petey wouldn’t give me nothing.” My eyes drifted back to the fifty that Chuckie held in front of him, and my mind was made up even before he said, “Seriously, you should try it.”

  Down to Petey’s I marched, followed by Eclipse and the Muppet, where I found Petey and Screech waiting for me. Like a chubby, sexually insecure mouse being led to a trap, they even had one of the bonnets out and a glass of water on the end table next to the couch, ready to go. Petey sat in his recliner, looking intently and trying to hide a mischievous smile, at that moment looking very much the part of Rat Bastard. I was ready for my cheese, thank you.

  I was sat down on the couch and was debriefed. Eat the pepper and go thirty seconds without drinking the water and I get fifty dollars. Go a whole minute and I get a hundred. As Petey went over the rules, Jimmy the Muppet again lamented, “Man, I can’t believe I missed it by two seconds!”

  Petey gave me the pepper and I looked it over. It was small and green and looked unimposing. I decided that my best recourse would be to put the whole pepper in my mouth, chew it up, and swallow it down, rather than nibble away at it. I looked at the guys and told them I was ready, and Petey put on the TV Guide channel, which had the time in seconds and would act as a stopwatch for the event. When the clock struck exactly 7:12 P.M., I popped the pepper into my mouth. It had begun.

  For about two seconds, I thought I was going to walk out with a hundred dollars in cash. The texture of the skin of the Scotch bonnet was sturdy but slightly chewy, the inside mostly hollow and a little moist. As my teeth clenched over the skin and began to mash the pepper, I felt very little heat at all, and heard just the crunch under my teeth. I can do this, I thought. I can definitely do this.

  But then the inside of the pepper, with its moist inner walls covered in small seeds, reached my gums. And the underside of my tongue. And the inside of my cheeks.

  And then my mouth completely exploded.

  Each little seed, of which there were dozens, expended and injected an enormous amount of heat into my mouth and my body. Each one was like a land mine, like a land mine on cocaine, and all these coked-up land mines were spreading around my mouth, lodging themselves into the fleshy insides of my cheeks, between my teeth, burrowing into the recesses in the very top and in the very bottom of gums and where my teeth and gums met, exploding with a heat I never dreamed could exist in food form; such heat should be reserved only for weapons of destruction and celestial beings. My mouth was stinging sharply and my breathing became slow and heavy, each breath like I was shooting fire from my mouth and nostrils. The pain was overwhelming in the most literal sense; I could not process the trauma that was going on and all reason escaped me—what was happening to me allowed no room for thought and my body was reacting on its own, without any help or direction from me. I lost control of all the bodily fluids of my face: Tears were streaming from my eyes, drool from my mouth, and snot from my nose. Every pore of skin on my body opened up and sweat surged out. I could feel it coming out of my armpits, covering my forehead, in the small of my back, on my thighs, and even in my feet. I began to shake. I swallowed the pepper (or rather, the pepper slid down my throat) and I could feel it being swept past my tonsils and down my esophagus into my stomach like a heat-seeking missile.

  I stumbled off the couch and from my knees reached for the water, which I poured down my throat, doing so with such urgency that I spilled it over my mouth and shirt. The pepper’s seeds had successfully turned my saliva into hot lava, a thick, mucusy acidic potion, a condition made worse by the introduction of the water. Before, the pain was somewhat localized, restricted to my mouth and the back of my throat. Drinking the water was like pouring kerosene on a kitchen fire, and now the pain extended to my whole esophagus, my lips, and even my face. Now the whole house was on fire.

  I looked up and through the tears I could see my four “friends”—Petey, Screech, Jimmy, and Chuckie—doubled over in laughter at my condition, their eyes also filled with tears (albeit for a very different reason). I decided that I would torture and murder them at a later date, but at the moment I was more concerned with putting an end to this pain that I was certain was going to kill me. I made a decision. Since there was no way I was going to be able to deal with this heat, this pepper had to come out. I ran or stumbled or clawed my way upstairs to the bathroom followed by the four idiots. I fell to its warm tile floor, made sticky by the summer heat and humidity, and kneeled over the toilet. I tried to make myself vomit, but this plan backfired. The heat of the pepper mixed with my stomach acid was an unholy concoction and it was when I felt it rise from my belly into my throat that I began to scream (or yelp or whine). Puking is nasty enough in itself, and trying to make yourself puke is even worse. But the pain of inducing vomit after consuming one of the world’s hottest peppers is a displeasure that I would not wish on any other human being, no matter how full of rage I may become.

  Petey, Screech, Jimmy, and Chuckie were still in hysterics, crowding around the bathroom door, their heads poking around the edges of the door frame, watching me retch on the floor. I heaved again and again, choking back the bile and pepper juice, nearly suffocating from the heat. I couldn’t throw up, I couldn’t get the heat to stop, I was stuck. Broken and defeated, I lay there on the bathroom floor, swallowing back vomit and drinking water straight from the spigot of the bathroom faucet, desperate but with nowhere else to turn, waiting for the heat to just go away. Seconds or minutes or hours passed there on the floor: me unsuccessfully and involuntarily heaving into the toilet, me kneeling to drink water from the sink, repeat. When it stopped being interesting, the guys retreated back downstairs. The show was over for them. The pricks.

  Eventually—and I use that word in the broadest possible sense—I started to regain control of my body. I was able to walk down the stairs, still shaky, where once again I was greeted by the laughter of my friends. Petey came up to me as I reached the bottom of the stairs, slapped me on the back with one hand while he wiped the tears from his face with the other, and said, “That was the best one yet!”

  Then it was confession time. It turned out that Screech, Jimmy, and Chucki
e had all faced similar fates as I had. None was able to successfully eat the Scotch bonnet and win the cash and all had equally miserable experiences. The key was information control. Screech, as he was Petey’s nephew, was the first to try the pepper, in the presence of only Petey and a couple of his buddies. After he had failed spectacularly, crying and screaming at Petey for more water, he was “in.” Screech then duped Jimmy into trying the pepper the same way that I was duped: by showing up at his house with the fifty-dollar bill, telling him that if he could do it, anyone could. Jimmy fell for it. Then Jimmy and Screech did the same to Chuckie. And Chuckie fell for it. And so it went with me. I too was now in on the joke, and that proved to be the only silver lining from the whole experience. Over the next couple of days, I watched countless people try the peppers, and these were some of the most memorable and funniest days of my life.* Everyone from the neighborhood came in to try the pepper, from kids my age to Petey’s friends and even some fathers, and I was one of the select few who got to watch each sad attempt. Watching a person trip or seeing a man get hit in the balls has always been the gold standard, but I’d like to introduce a new contender to the physical comedy throne: watching someone eat a superhot pepper and almost die in a pool of their own sweat, drool, snot, and tears. If you haven’t seen this, I feel sorry for you.

  The peppers eventually ran out, or people wised up and stopped competing; I’m not sure which. After the peppers, Petey cemented his legacy as the neighborhood prankster. Individuals would go on to tell of their horrifying experiences with the peppers, at bars, at their jobs, to their friends and families, and Petey was at the center of every story. Those who tried and failed could only shake their head at the end of their tale and say, “That motherfucker Petey Duffy,” with more than a tinge of respect, and maybe even a hint of affection.

  That was Petey’s gift: his levity. I suppose I could dig deeper and write about how, in his own twisted way, he taught us about male bonding, and by extension about humility, by taking us down a notch or two when we thought we were hot shit, and confidence, by praising us and treating us like his friends and equals, not some kids who hung out with his nephew. But Petey would have none of that. He’d say that was a ballbuster, plain and simple, and we were his targets. And that’s fine, because in some ways that’s true. But I know that he would ask, like he always asked, “It was fun, right?” And me and Screech and Jimmy and Chuckie and everyone else would have to say, “Fucking-A right, it was.”

  Now if there was only a way for us to get him to eat that pepper.

  Post Script

  I have told what is now known as “The Uncle Petey Pepper Story” dozens—possibly hundreds—of times since it happened in the early ’90s. And every time I finish telling it, I’m met with the same reaction: “Dude, you’re a pussy. I love hot food—I could totally eat that pepper.”* Obviously, this is something easier said than done, and each time I faced this retort I only strengthened my resolve that the next time I told the story I’d be sure to carry a Scotch bonnet, just to whip it out in front of the nonbeliever to say, “Yeah, well, try it, bitch.” Unfortunately, my amazing capacity for laziness far surpasses my desire for vengeance, so I never grew motivated enough to actually go to the fancy grocery store to buy the pepper for my glorious retort.

  A year after I graduated from college, I was living in New York City working as a paralegal at a large corporate law firm. Over happy-hour drinks, I told the Uncle Petey Pepper Story to some friends and coworkers. They turned out to be much more ambitious than I was, and we were shortly planning our own Pepper Party. The concept was simple: the fifteen dollars it costs to get into our little shindig would cover the cost of booze and the prize money. Just because you came to the party, you did not have to eat the pepper—that was optional. We would have a sign-up sheet, and unlike Petey’s contest, there would be no time markers for cash awards. We thought this would get too complicated so instead we decided that all contestants would eat the peppers at the same time. The last one standing who didn’t drink or eat anything would get the cash. The rest of the party would cry tears of laughter as contestants fell into paroxysms of pain. A good time would be had by all.

  We were able to get the Scotch bonnets from a Jamaican grocery store in Queens, grabbing a few dozen of the little bastards. I had not seen the peppers since that summer at Petey’s house, and when I looked at them in their little plastic bags, I got chills. Or rather, I should say, sweats. After the incident, I looked at the Scotch bonnets in the same way that I imagine a shark attack victim thinks of sharks, postattack—with an unnerving sense of terror but also a profound sense of respect. I daresay that there was also a sense of kinship, as if I could approach the bonnets and say offhandedly, “So, how about these poor bastards? They have no idea what they’re getting into, the stupid sons of bitches!” And the peppers and I would laugh, laugh, and laugh, and maybe go grab a drink and catch a game.

  In addition to the peppers, we also made sure to get lots of booze, some liquid courage to help any takers on the action. We didn’t know how many people would be willing to eat the peppers, and so we also got lots of white bread, milk, and ice cream. This way we could ensure successful triage if needed, coaxing those who weren’t 100 percent sure into taking the chance. Every contestant had heard the story, but none had previously eaten the pepper. This didn’t stop the contestants from displaying various level of arrogance running the gamut from “I’m pretty sure I can do this” to “You might have to give me two.” But as you might guess, they weren’t feeling so full of themselves once they popped the bonnet. One thing that was different this time around was the availability and consumption of booze, an unfortunate upshot (no pun intended) of which was that people were throwing up everywhere (though we had large trash cans set up for such purposes). It went from funny to really funny to nasty to oh-man-that’s-terrible very, very quickly.

  And there was another difference this time around. Someone ate the pepper without a problem. A guy named Calvin, who said his parents raised him on a steady diet of spicy foods, ate the pepper and stood calmly as the people around him descended into hysterical madness. While water and milk were spilling everywhere, people were vomiting into the trash cans, and slices of white bread were flying through the air, Calvin chewed his pepper, swallowed it, and sat back and waited to be named the winner. He was cold as ice, and we could only assume that he spent a portion of his childhood living on a pepper farm and/or the sun.

  So the moral of the story is that yes, it can be done. But at the same time, please do not try this at home. I don’t want to be held responsible for anyone getting seriously hurt because they tried to eat a hot pepper, and if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure, you may actually die if you attempt to do this.* Not because I have a conscience or anything, but because I already have enough legal problems on my hands. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

  Chapter Eight

  Intermezzo: The Top Six Most Influential Songs of My Adolescence

  “Crazy for You” Madonna

  If you were to stop a person on the street and ask him or her what lovemaking sounds like, he or she might moan, shout, purr, or, in the case of my ex-girlfriend, make absolutely no sound except for saying, “Seriously, you’re not done yet?” after about forty seconds. If I were one of the people you stopped and you asked me what lovemaking sounds like, I’d take off my iPod, put it on your ears, then play this song. Then you and I would make love. Not right there on the street, but in my car, which is parked right around the corner. It’s not far, I swear.

  If I’m not mistaken, I believe I was reprising John Travolta’s Danny Zuko in this photo.

  I did not know what the word sensual meant when I first heard this song as a seven-year-old, but last year when I finally did learn what it meant, I immediately thought of “Crazy for You.” While Madonna has been known as the embodiment of sexuality throughout her career, in this song she expresses a more delicate and vulnerable sid
e of herself and her music. This is what makes this song unique and all the more appealing. While “Like a Virgin” is a thinly veiled satire that overflows with sexuality, “Crazy for You” oozes with genuine naïveté. At first, the protagonist appears to be cool and confident in a sexual setting (the dance floor), but soon she reveals her anxiousness and unfamiliarity with her simple, poignant lyrics (“I never wanted anyone like this…”, “Trying hard to control my heart…”, “It’s so brand-new…”, etc.).

  But any way that I analyze it, one fact remains constant: this song gets me hot. To this day, I have an unhealthy obsession with it. Every time I hear it I experience the same reaction—I feel nervous, I get sweaty, and then something comes out of my bird that is like pee but not quite because it’s clearer and more sticky and it smells like bleach. If I ever found a woman with low enough self-esteem or one who spoke such poor English I could trick her into agreeing to it, I would make love while this song played, on a bed of red silk sheets, in a room filled with tall candles, with slow, open-mouthed kisses, fingers passionately running through hair, a bowl of strawberries and whipped cream on the bedside table, and me in a Dracula costume. Until that happens, I’ll have to stick to the status quo—jacking off at work while this plays on my iPod. Let’s hope that by next Valentine’s Day I’ll have a reason to buy the red silk sheets I’ve always wanted.