some like it hot

and that is one reason why i love indian food more than anything else in the world. so i twisted emily's arm and we went to india fusion immediately after school on wednesday. (we sometimes like to eat at four...with all the senior citizens) i hadn't been to india fusion for a long time and they had a new item on their menu: phall challenge! what is phall?

"it is one of the hottest forms of curry regularly available, even hotter than the vindaloo, using a large number of ground standard chili peppers, or a hotter type of chili such as scotch bonnet or habanero," says wikipedia.

and because i think i am rough tough stuff when it comes to spicy food and never one to back down from a dare (note i said dare. i hate being challenged, but i like dares.), i ordered the phall, despite the valiant attempts of the waitress to dissuade me. i knew i was in trouble when the fumes stung my eyes. (emily informed me later that the waitress said the chef has to wear a mask while preparing phall.) but i could not show any weakness. i dug in.

tears ran down my face. my nose dripped like a faucet. and for the first time in my spicy food career, i started sweating. my throat felt like it was closing up, so i was pretty sure i was going to suffocate. i couldn't taste a thing. (good thing i got the chicken and not the lamb, that would have been $3 down the drain) i also wanted to die. i was so miserable i politely asked my personal cheerleader to please stop talking. i had a 30 minute time limit and had actually finished half of it within 10 minutes. then i hit a wall. mostly because there were rumblings i'd never experienced, which i later realized was the sensation of my dinner burning holes through my vital internal organs. then deja vu: the same feeling i had this summer in egypt after being a little too carefree in what i ate: total and utter rejection by my previously supposed cast iron stomach. i visited the bathroom. (so glad it was clean, i spent lots of time there) i'll spare you the details, but i will say that it hurt just as much coming up (all 5 times) as it did going down.

so then we left. and emily felt so bad for me that she offered to buy me an ice cream (plus, i was hungry and that waitress did NOT box up my leftovers like she should have). we crossed the street to walmart where emily went to check out the ice cream and i went to check out the restrooms. luckily there was a screaming baby (i'm pretty sure her mom was pulling out her eyelashes) and two obnoxious teenagers, so no one heard me retch 3 more times. or if they did, i'm sure they all just thought it was part of the circus that is walmart. because after all, it makes perfect sense to leave the nice indian restaurant to throw up in the toilets of walmart. and what they say is true, the 8th time IS the charm because after that i felt just fine. (well, until the next day, but that is beside the point)