Dazed after a weekend of sun, rum and fun, I went to the boxing gym. I was non too alert, but Bruce is always telling me not to think when I’m training. “Don’t think!” It’s a motto I have been toying with and applying to many different situations lately. So, I was in a strong position to succeed.I had my weekend hangover, and impaired mental functions from the herbal painkillers I’d been given to block the pain of crippling sunburn. In the boxing ring, I got my ass kicked by a girl. It makes me feel so much better when that happens. Amanda isn’t particularly big or strong, but she seems at home behind a fist. Other bashings were to follow in the day.
Guy the gun-toting room-mate drove us to the laundry. The car in front hit a car that had stopped in the road to turn left. I wasn’t watching but Guy pointed it out, and we slowed behind the accident. The reverse lights of the car in front then came on, and it hurtled towards Guy’s car before smashed into the front of it. All three cars made it to a sideroad without further incident, and the defective driver came out to assess the damage. He was clearly in no fit state to assess his own belly button fluff, let alone be behind the wheel of a two tonne juggernaut of destruction. It was about 4pm, and he was dribbling drunk. He couldn’t say sorry enough. He wouldn’t stop saying sorry, even when we saw that there was no damage and we got back into the car to leave. He kept trying to give us his phone number, and apologise. As we pulled away, he was still saying that he was really, really sorry. He’s probably still there, apologising to the tarmac.
Laundry was started. We went off on errands, as is our habit, and we wound up at a shop that sold only hot sauces, to satisfy Guy’s fine palette for such dressings. I get a bit blas? about chillies, hot sauces and curries. Everyone has a story about how hot a sauce can be, and which country / cuisine / bar has the hottest sauce. I’ve watched people eat jars of lime pickle. I’ve struggled most of the way through a Gate of India phal. I’ve come to that point in my life where I don’t have to order a vindaloo when I go to an English Indian restaurant – I’ve done spicy, I’ve lived among endorphin junkie spice munchers, I’ve tried Dave’s Insanity Hot Sauce. So when the little lady at the counter said, do you want to try the hottest sauce we have, I have no idea what compelled me to try it. It might have been the fact that she said a small bottle was a hundred dollars, and that we could try it for free. She carefully put the tiniest of drops on the sharp end of a toothpick, and handed it over. I placed it on my tongue and waited. Not too bad, I thought to myself, as a warm tingle spread from the point at the back of my tongue where first contact was made. Within 20 seconds, the woman behind the counter was smiling as I ran with my eyes streaming and grabbed a drink from the freezer. I couldn’t speak, and she joked that my root beer was going to cost ten dollars. I was incapable of appreciating her humour. I was incapable of speaking, as I hiccuped every few seconds. I thought I was going to be sick, and I didn’t know which way to point. I inhaled the root beer, as every time the liquid stopped flowing, the air would hit my tongue and make me think I had been gargling with battery acid. The root beer took the burning into my throat, and I stumbled outside the shop. Guy was having similar difficulties, and ran across busy 6th Street to an ice cream shop which was unfortunately closed. I ran back inside and asked the woman if she had an antidote, prepared to pay a hundred dollars to make the pain stop. Guy later commented that he was about ready to kneel down and beg to be shot. We spent ten minutes in agony, before we could function. I went back inside and bought a bottle, purely based on the amusement that the woman behind the counter had just enjoyed.
When Guy had recovered sufficiently to entertain the idea of driving, we left the car. A short, bald, shirtless muscle-head approached and demanded money from Guy, who declined to give. I looked down at the muscle head’s shiny head, wondering if the sun had fried his brain yet. The muscle head turned to me and shouted, “Get out of my way, homey!” I took a step and explained that I was “out of his way”, and he moved on. Which was lucky for him. Not because he would have otherwise had to bruise his knuckles beating me like the ginger-haired step-child he always wished he’d had, but because Guy subsequently confided in me, “If he’d have threatened you, I would have shot him. That’s the law.”