Heidi and The El Cats
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2/29/2008 11:33:09 AM
---- Updated 2/29/2008 6:51:35 PM
Hot Sauce Confessions- By Bob Slentz Kesler
I am a hot sauce addict. I can never get enough. I’ll eat hot sauce anywhere, at any time of the day. I am easy, and I can’t help it. I spend many daylight hours fantasizing and daydreaming, imagining various scenarios with different types of hot sauce. Over the years, though, I’ve learned to control myself. It was much worse in the early days.
I used to prance through the aisles of Fowler’s Gourmet in Durham, North Carolina, clapping my hands wide-eyed at such juicy titles as Pyromania Hot Sauce, Pain 100%, and 99% Meltdown Habanero Paste. Fowler’s has such a fabulous selection: Scorned Woman, Ass in Space, Nuclear Hell, Sudden Death Sauce. And who, in his right mind, wouldn’t be intrigued by Smack My Ass & Call Me Sally? Spicy!
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a complicated relationship with hot sauce. My family never talked about it in the house. My parents taught me nothing about hot sauce, about what a big step it was to eat hot sauce, about the responsibility and the potential risks. I was left on my own to explore, to fantasize, to fill in the gaps with my own imagination.
I had my first experience in high school. It wasn’t meaningful. I wish I hadn’t rushed, that I’d waited until I was ready. But I was young and eager, so I really can’t blame myself. The first time, it happened very quickly. We were all eating lunch in the cafeteria at Loudoun County High School in Leesburg, Virginia, and the new kid from Texas pulled a bottle out of his lunch box. He pulled it out, right there in front of everyone! I couldn’t believe it. The boys at the table saw it, but no one asked him any questions. We knew what it was, and we didn’t care where he’d gotten it.
"At first it was sweet. It teased me, as if to make
me want more—as if to make me believe it would
never hurt me. And then the truth came out."
The label had been removed, and we could see the liquid from all angles, layers of red, from deep crimson at the bottom to yellowy plasma-looking fluid at the top. And sprinkled throughout were flat, yellow seeds.
"Bob’s never had hot sauce," said Tim.
Damn. This wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted publicized, and he knew it. The other boys nodded solemnly, and the jerk from Texas locked his eyes on me as he shook the bottle and then slowly unscrewed it.
God, NO, my brain was shrieking, but I was too cool. I knew I had to do this. I held out my nacho cheese Dorito, and the jerk from Texas dribbled a few drops on the edge (oh, he wouldn’t let anyone touch his bottle). He doled out the portions himself.
I held the Dorito in front of me and opened my mouth to receive the chip. But what did I know about eating hot sauce? It was my first time. I was fifteen. I foolishly rammed the chip into my mouth, hot-sauce-corner first, so when the thing was completely in my mouth and I crunched it, the hot sauce grabbed the back of my throat, as if scraping the soft flesh of my tonsils with sharp fingernails.
The pain! No taste, only pain. Why did young people have to go through this? Why hadn’t the school counselors given us some sort of seminar, or at least tossed a brochure at us during freshman orientation? The library certainly had no books on the subject (I had checked—many times). And in 1982, we didn’t have the Internet, only magazines like this one that our parents and teachers promptly confiscated.
My throat burned. The back of my head screamed. My eyes flooded. The boys at the table watched silently. The jerk from Texas laughed.
"Hot, ain’t it?"
In that moment, I experienced simultaneously an insane hatred for the eloquent bastard from Texas, and a feeling of accomplishment at finally undergoing this initiation. Even in the grip of pain, in that moment, I knew everyone would see me differently now. I had arrived. Mucus dripped from my nose, and I rushed to the bathroom as howls erupted from the boys at the table.
College was a time of experimentation and exploration. I had countless flings and a few serious relationships. I us
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