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 Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 8:45 pm
"I wasn't responsible for Chickie and Pete's," the doctor argued. "Anyone you chose to moon while under the influence of alcohol was totally up to you, whatever you say. Can't pin that on me." They'd done a lot of things with alcohol's blessing, and more than a few had gotten them kicked out of somewhere or other. Then again, a few things had gotten them accolades, too -- including their ability to perform the Big dance on anything remotely resembling a giant keyboard. College had been busy, particularly in Gene's major, but somehow it had always seemed like they'd had too much time on their hands. Maybe they'd had a time turner or something.
"Alright, hoss. Let's do this thing."
Gene dug his fork down deep into the dish of wooden-colored edible poison, and heaped up a good-sized forkful. He narrowed his eyes, with a prayer for strength -- saluted Ray with the handle of his fork -- then took his first bite.
"OH ********>" he blurted out around the mouthful. It was like someone back there in the kitchen had taken a gigantic drill, drilled down past the Earth's crust and into the mantle layer, scooped up a large ladle full of hot magma, and doled this out onto a plate which a sullen waitress had just set down in front of Yevgeniy Baskov. It was a random act of cruelty. "<******** s**t," he said, gasping for air while chewing, reaching up a hand to cover his mouth for politeness's sake. "Pissing hell, helling -- helling ******** --" He looked up, locking eyes -- manfully watering eyes -- with Ray, and through the haze of pain of his taste buds burning up in re-entry, he did the one thing he could think to do that gave him any chance of survival.
He shoved his fork back down into the satanic curry and started eating it as fast as he possibly could.
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Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 9:03 pm
After his own mouthful Ray blinked right back at him and chose to express his own personal world of pain in different words. He was blinking pretty hard. Tears were in his eyes. "Oh my sweet little baby Jesus, I think this stuff is against the Geneva Conventions," he said, promptly revealing himself as the sort of person who referred to them (correctly) as the 'Geneva Conventions.' "Goddamn. I think they developed this specifically for pain. I think they developed this to torture suspects that they can't leave marks on," he took another, dainty bite, "aside from the psychological marks this is leaving on me. I do believe I am already developing post-traumatic curry disorder. I do believe I will need counseling. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Oh, God Almighty. Oh, Mithras. You know, they say if you keep your mouth moving it lessens the pain? Chewing or otherwise. I bet I could make that sound sexy if I wasn't in agony."
Gene ate like his pants were on fire and nothing could put them out except shoveling molten lava into his mouth. Ray ate like he was taste-testing nuclear waste for science and knew it, with a lot of chatter: "-- oh, my dear sweet Savior Lamb of God transparent Indo-European messianic figure help I'm running out of things to take in vain --" and a lot of interesting faces. The interesting faces, in fact, were some of the only respite from their shared torment; at one point they looked at each other and laughed and wiped tears out of their eyes and kept eating.
"You know, I hear it's not real burning -- not real damage," said Ray, eating the last pieces of ice in his water glass and then attempting to lick the inside of the glass. Some other patrons were staring at them. "Capsicin, I mean. They say it's all in your head. There is no curry, Gene. There is no curry."
Gene was definitely beating him out in the race. This was a decidedly Pyrrhic proto-victory.
"You know, I don't ******** believe them," said Ray, giving his next bite a dismal look before he gulped it down. "Ma'am? Would you mind getting me a metric ******** of dairy? That's a milkshake. Or twenty. Thank you, ma'am. Oh, Jupiter."
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Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 11:10 am
The upswing of Gene's technique was that a lot of the devil's pork passed between his fork and his stomach with only a minimal layover on his actual tastebuds. He chewed like a man possessed, and indeed he was -- Gene was possessed of a fierce will to live, and survival seemed to be contigent on his surviving the Chernobyl-Hiroshima-mini-reenactment going on inside his mouth at the moment. Someone had always joked that it was possible to survive nuclear fallout by simply swimming to the bottom of one's swimming pool and not breathing. This now seemed like an appealing prospect, and one he stood a better chance of surviving than he did the Five-Alarm Red Curry Challenge.
The downswing of Gene's technique, on the other hand, was that eating anything very, very quickly was a sure way to send yourself right to the brink of throwing up all over everything. Gene wondered, with new terror, if red curry could burn on the way back up, too. He dropped his fork, grabbed a whole disc of naan out of the basket between them, and promptly applied the naan to his own tongue like a cold compress. Now people were really staring.
"Ahhhnn," Gene whined in agony. Tears were streaming down his face by now, so -- in for a penny, in for a pound -- he took the end of the naan that wasn't currently swabbing his tongue like God's Own Sponge, and used it to wipe the tears off his cheeks. (His forehead was beading with sweat too, a bit, but the naan wasn't that big.)
Food products weren't ideal for skin care -- he'd likely have blackheads tomorrow morning -- but there was skin care, and then there was dignity, and sometimes the only way to preserve your dignity was to make a fool of yourself. "How you holding up, Sasha?" he said, words slightly naan-garbled.
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Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 11:49 am
How "Sasha" derived from "Raymond" was a mystery to all but them both. Came his reply: "Better than you. Louder, babycakes, your suffering gives me solace." It probably did, too. Ray looked like he had a miserable headcold -- definitely miserable, but still a headcold. He blew his nose on a napkin and made a face that indicated that someone had applied red-hot tongs to his sinuses. His pace had kept up unslowed and unhurried: one forkful after another, which had to be some kind of unholy drawn-out agony of burning, but he seemed more willing to risk it than damage to his stomach lining. This kind of steadiness always served him well in drinking contests. (If there was such a thing as being "served well" in a drinking contest.)
The waitress, bless her merciful heart, came back with two big vanilla milkshakes. Ray picked his up daintily, forewent the straw and attempted to slam the whole thing back like a giant shot of tequila. Partially this worked, but partially this coated his face with whipped cream, which he started wiping off with his fingers and then licking them. "Life-giving penicillin," he pronounced, abandoned the rest of his shake and went back to eating.
They were, amazingly, finished pretty soon. Ray chased the last grains of rice around his plate with his fork and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He'd flushed about 800% less than Gene, which was about 800% unfair. His eyes were red, though.
He hummed the Final Fantasy victory fanfare and held his hand out for a high-five.
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Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:02 pm
Gene didn't remove the straw from his milkshake, nor from his mouth, as he reached out to smack Ray's hand with a resoundingly loud, needlessly hard smack. It was a little painful, on the scale of overly-macho high fives where you both smacked way harder than necessary, but such pain seemed impossibly tiny in the face of the Everest of Agony they'd just climbed side-by-side. It was just one of those things.
There was no more milkshake left in his glass, so the sound of his sucking through the straw at scattered bits of vanilla froth was enough to turn away some of the other customers that were staring at them. The rest, that didn't turn away, got to watch as Gene pinched his straw between his teeth, lifted it out of his own glass, and redeposited it into Ray's, which -- despite looking like someone had forgotten to put the lid on the blender -- still had some milkshake in it. "The jokes tell themselves," he said while siphoning. "Depending whether you prefer song lyrics or movie quotes. Are we famous yet?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:29 pm
"I am the Third Revelation! I am the Third Revelation, Eli!" Some things Ray Gordon could be counted on never to pass up. The opportunity to quote something was, generally, one of them. He sat back in some amusement as Gene devoured the rest of his milkshake and flagged the waitress down -- for "one more Oreo shake and the check, would you kindly?" -- and then sat looking between their empty plates, and the list of brave souls on the wall, and then their empty plates again.
There was no question they had just underwent a certified bromantic bonding experience. Their first certified bromantic bonding experience had probably been getting locked into their room in fall 1998 by a malicious hallmate during what they hoped was an impromptu 4 AM fire drill, but which spurred them to discuss idly what in their room would make a good parachute -- 'idly,' really, in Ray's case, who'd been counting out a list which included "pillowcase" and "those big-a** sweaters your mama knits you," while Gene was busy freaking out over all his ******** books and how the ******** he was supposed to jump out a ******** window with all his ******** books.
It'd turned out to be a tenth-floor kitchen fire. And as for Chad Michaels, well, they got him back anyway. But it was bonding. It was the first time, in their first month together, that they'd ever thought of an us rather than two separate thems.
Now it was up to Gene whether that was still true. He never did had much chance of winning here.
Ray received his new Oreo milkshake and immediately wrapped both his hands around it in a vise-like protective grip while he stuck his straw in with his teeth. Then he raised his eyebrows at Gene, relented and let him share this one too with an indulgent, theatrical shake of his head, as if to cluck his tongue and say just this once. So they sat there and drank in momentary silence like some kind of American Graffiti tableau while the waitress dropped off the bill, which Ray claimed.
He looked away long enough to dig open his wallet and fan it open. It was the same wallet as ever, with the same driver's license, where, staring straight-on at the camera with his unspectacled baby blues, Ray looked like a "serial killer" according to just about everyone who looked at it.
He dropped the bomb casually, without looking up: "You know, it's good to see you again." And he smiled, which crinkled his eyes at the edges. "It's been a while."
Yeah, Ray Gordon wanted something.
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