Everything Is Wrong with Me (15 page)

[The Scoville scale] is named after Wilbur Scoville, who developed the Scoville Organoleptic Test in 1912. As originally devised, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until the “heat” is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable even undiluted.

An example to help explain. Your typical jalapeño is in the bottom third of the Scoville ladder, coming in at 2,500 to 8,000 units. As Wikipedia points out, that means that its extract has to be diluted 2,500–8,000-fold before the capsaicin, the heat of the pepper, can no longer be tasted. Conversely, our friend the Scotch bonnet is near the top of the Scoville ladder, measuring anywhere between 100,000 and 325,000 Scoville units. Therefore, it needs to be diluted up to 325,000-fold before you can’t feel its heat. That’s some serious fire.
*

How a case of these peppers ended up in Petey’s hands is unknown. One could buy them at a gourmet grocery store, but there were no gourmet grocery stores on Second Street. And I don’t think Petey grabbed some on a trip into Center City, Philadelphia’s downtown, while picking up the ingredients for his famous red wine reduction, since I never saw Petey actually make anything, although once I did see him microwave a pack of cigarettes when he was drunk after an Eagles game. Most likely, some came in “through longshore.” This means that a ship carrying the peppers docked on a port on the Delaware River. I can see it now: a produce ship from South America (or wherever the hell Belize is) comes in and the crew tells the local longshoremen about the legend of Scotch bonnet,
La Pimienta del Diablo
. After getting a complimentary case of the peppers,
*
one neighborhood guy thinks to himself, “I know a guy who’d have some fun with these…” And once Petey got a hold of the Scotch bonnets, in his infinite mischievous wisdom he devised a contest. The word quickly spread through the neighborhood. Anyone who could eat the peppers and go an allotted time (thirty seconds, sixty seconds, etc.) without drinking anything would get cash. Simple as that.

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 Chuckie 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.