I’ve done my share of stupid things for money or even just on a dare. Growing up, my brother and I would dare each other at the kitchen table to see who could fit more food in their mouth. I remember the bet was always for a quarter, but the real prize was the pride of being able to fit the most peas, or jello, or pot roast in your mouth. If you lost the bet you always had the satisfaction of slapping the other in the stomach and seeing food fly across the room from not only the mouth but also the nose. Sadly, one family Thanksgiving dinner, Mom put a stop to all of the chicanery. In the midst of one of our bets, my brother had just crammed most of the meat from a drumstick into his mouth along with half the contents of the nearest gravy boat. I had just forced in my second bun over the top of a quarter pound of stuffing. Then tragedy struck. Grandpa finished telling a story about his old army days which involved three of his buddies, a case of surplus army motor oil, a pineapple, and apparently the most flexible woman on Guam. At the climax of the story, the contents of my brother and I flowed forth like geysers. Relatives across from us looked like a cross between a Picasso painting and a Bukake porn star. Worse yet, we had to call the bet a draw and the competition needed to go underground indefinitely. We are no longer allowed to sit by each other at family gatherings.
Of course age hasn’t made me any smarter; rather I’ve taken on dares that are probably more threatening to my health. This bet in particular was to see who could eat fifty chicken wings at our local Quaker Steak and Lube. There were around six of us and we ended up eating the equivalent of over one hundred birds if you figure that each bird sacrificed at least two appendages.
Our server, a one hundred pound albino that could have used a few wings himself, brought heap after heap of greasy, slightly warm chicken. I stuck to my plan of drinking a minimum amount of fluid, saving that space for more bird pieces. In no time I had downed thirty pieces. That was about the time that they started to taste like slimy gritty pieces of mud sliding around my mouth. People started dropping out between 35 and 40 pieces, others trudged forward with sweat beading on their foreheads and pressure building in the bowels. One person fell off of his chair and started sobbing uncontrollably. Another shat himself while trying to make it to the bathroom. The albino smiled menacingly and spoke of the man who had eaten over a hundred wings. We decided that the albino was full of shit, probably needed to be beaten in the parking lot, and should really eat a cheeseburger or something.
The goal neared and only two of us remained. My stomach felt stretched and hot. The chicken no longer looked appetizing at all. While it was probably just a trick of the mind, it appeared that the pieces were increasingly odd parts of the chicken that had been deep fried and then tossed in more grease. I pictured an old Navajo Indian speaking to the youngsters in the tribe, “We use every part of the chicken,” he would say. “Well, except for this one. This goes to Quaker Steak for deep frying.”
Alas, I managed to down the fiftieth piece, my cohort managed fifty one. My night was far from over, however. I managed to excuse myself from the table without crying or shitting myself. The pressure in my midsection had built up and felt like some creature trying to escape me like in an Alien movie. It was difficult to slide into the driver’s seat of my truck because it meant putting pressure on the pile of undigested bird in my gut. The earlier uncomfortableness was now replaced with pain that only mildly diminished in the fully reclined position. I wondered what I would say to the police when pulled over as I drove with my seat reclined all of the way and barely able to see over the wheel. By the time I made it home, my stomach felt like it held two rabid wolverines fighting over a baby. I stumbled my way to the bed and found the pressure even worse when lying down. I contemplated forcing myself to vomit but thought that would be cheating my achievement of having downed fifty wings. Through the course of the night I found that the pain somewhat subsided when on my hands and knees. I managed to assure my wife that I was not waiting for some sort of twisted sexual tryst when she found me on all fours in bed. I finally fell asleep at around two or three in the morning when the chicken had apparently been distributed throughout my colon. It was still a restless night accompanied by the lingering pain in my abdomen and punctuated by psychedelic dreams featuring our albino waiter and Colonel Sanders.
The next day held a number of ‘hot’ bowel movements that I will spare you the details of, suffice to say that they were ‘emotional’. I promised myself that I wouldn’t take part in any more competitions to see how much I could eat. Instead, tomorrow I’ll be seeing if I can handle the hottest wings that Madison has to offer. Apparently I’ll need to sign a waiver…
