Derleth
November 13, 2016, 7:23am
57
Since others are quoting previous posts, I might as well do the same:
Ilsa_Lund : I’d be honored, and I’ll have an excuse to giggle inanely each time I see it again.
Heh. Dave’s is as hot as I’ve gone, and it’s as hot as I’ll ever go. I like Crystal sauce on crackers, and I can spread the Tabasco-class sauces pretty liberally on most otherwise-unspiced foods, but Dave’s is out of my league.
I’ve only had it once. I’d like to say it was a mistake, but the only mistake was my ability to ignore every survival instinct mom and Ma Nature gave me. I was in a Devil-may-care state of advanced machismo when I walked up to the fridge of the hotel room in Edmonton. The state that enables the continued sale of tequila and keeps Pamplona in donated organs slightly foxed by rampant bulls. I hooked a corn chip, a bland yellow vehicle utterly innocent of prior culinary sadism, and with a confident hand and a steely squint I took hold of the glass bottle containing the condensed essence of pain.
At this point, you expect the author to merely use a little on the chip. You expect to hear of the barest dusting of molecules, a delicate dew dabbed on by expert hands. You would be sane, rational, and holding a much better opinion of the author’s mental competence than is warranted. For I, your faithful protagonist in this house of pain, dolloped onto that willing chip a dime-sized deposit of Dave’s Insanity Sauce. A dime-sized deposit that was a full half-inch deep.
It is difficult at this remove to describe the transports that single chip, eaten whole, induced in me. I do recall holding my mouth open and staggering around the room like an ataxic wildebeest. I recall attempting the decidedly Cool Hand Luke -esque stunt of downing an entire loaf of thickly-crusted bread in one frenzied gasp. I recall my sinuses becoming free for the foreseeable future, as my mucus membranes decided to divest themselves of their entire holdings. I do not recall the pain itself, merely that I no longer have a fear of getting my tongue pierced. The brain has ways of protecting itself.
History happens twice, once as tragedy and once as farce. Dave’s Insanity Sauce also happens twice, and the encore performance is held in the location the brains had apparently lodged when the first showing was booked. My anus did not actually bleed, but I have an intimate knowledge of why the hedgehog never gets picked to do `the bump.’
(You can click the blue square to see the post in context.)
And that’s still the hottest I’ve gone, even though I’ve picked up quite a taste for both Thai and Indian food since then. I can definitely tolerate hotter food now than I could back then, though, so I wonder if repeating the stunt would be as painful now as it was, but I really have no love for painful levels of spice in and of itself. I’m just glad I can tolerate heat well enough to enjoy a huge range of cuisines.