The Taste Bud: My Personal Hot Wing Contest Meltdown

It started as an innocent little hot wings contest. It ended in an epic meltdown.

When I signed up for the Spring Street Spring Fest hot wing eating contest a week or two prior to the event, I really wasn’t even too nervous. I’ve eaten some of the hottest peppers on the planet raw, and I eat spicy food daily, literally. Like, very spicy food. I got this, I told myself.

Unfortunately, no one told my stomach.

It really was a well-organized event – nine of us sat at a long table, with bottles of water and canned PBR in front of us. Ben West, who manages Spring Street Bar & Grill, served as the emcee, and festival attendees gathered around to watch the carnage.

We were each assigned one water for the entire eight-round contest, no more. And the PBR was off limits, serving more as a mean-spirited tease to those of us whose faces were about to erupt in capsaicin-fueled infernos. We also were given black latex gloves to protect our fingertips. (Don’t touch your eyes, no matter what you do!) And the eight rounds included one wing per round, each wing getting gradually hotter.

Round One

The first round came out, and they looked a lot like the basic Buffalo wings served at Spring Street – I had just eaten a couple of them the night before. No problem, I’m thinking. And then Ben counted down from five, signaling round one was beginning. All I had to do was smell that wing as I brought it to my mouth in order to know this was no ordinary Spring Street wing. This contest was dead set on bringing the hammer.

I took two or three quick bites. It was flavorful, but a quick blitz of heat struck, and began to build. And that was the rub of this contest – you have 90 seconds to eat your wing, but then you have to sit there for a six-minute “burn period” to let the capsaicin, the substance in hot peppers that creates this sensation of heat, reach its peak. And then? Another, hotter wing.

After everyone finished their first wings, the nice woman sitting next to me said, “Ooooh, my mouth is getting numb.” I felt the heat, but I’d had far worse in my time, so I was feeling good about myself. Then Ben made an announcement just before round two began.

“Those wings were rated at 200,000 Scoville units,” he exclaimed through a megaphone, referring to the scale on which capsaicin is measured. And 300K is no joke, especially not if you’re a beginner.

Round Two

The round-two wings were placed in front of us – dark colored, like a dark red-brown, with a wicked aroma, hinting of barbecue sauce or maybe an Asian sauce. They smelled delicious. But the heat tickled my nose. Uh-oh.

At the count of five, I dug in, and yes, it was a hot experience, but it really was delicious. Nevertheless, the heat in my mouth ramped up. I got through the next six minutes without much problem, but found I was having to chew my wings more and more each round. My stomach had begun to tell me, “Hey, you up there, stop that.” Swallowing even such moist, tender meat was slowly becoming a problem for me.

Ben announced, “Those wings were 460,000 Scoville units, basically double round one. And if we doubled from round one to round two, what do you think we’ll do for round three?”

Dammit, Ben. Three of the nine contestants tapped out, including the woman sitting next to me. Guess her mouth numbness grew into pain, and I fully understood. Her consolation prize was a glass of milk. But if three lovers of spicy food can’t even get to round three, what must they have in store for us?

Round Three

Six minutes pass like an eternity as I slowly chew through what’s left of the wing, with the help of a couple of gulps of water. It’s at this point, unfortunately, that my memory starts to get fuzzy. A bright red wing was up next, and while I can’t remember much about the flavor profile, it smelled and looked deliciously deadly. Five, four, three, two, one … eat!

I dig into this tasty but unholy thing, and I feel the heat – yet it’s not really bothering me. I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t as big a jump this time, because my palate felt strong, like maybe I was extracting power from the heat like Godzilla does with nuclear energy. Now, actually swallowing the chicken wasn’t getting any easier, but I felt good about the heat.

After 25-plus years of eating highly spicy food, I have developed a certain amount of mind-over-matter power when it comes to capsaicin heat. I’m not a pro, but I can hang in there pretty well. Pair that mindset with stubbornness, willpower and a dash of good old-fashioned hate, and that can take a person pretty far in a hot wing contest.

Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself as I finish off this third wing, only to hear Ben announce that the wing I’d just eaten was something like 1.5 million Scoville Units. I can’t remember if that’s exactly what he said, because I was on the cusp of an endorphin rush that seemed as though it might have a chance to change the Earth’s rotation. As such, my brain was becoming scattered. And it was getting more difficult to swallow the chicken without the help of water.

But it was around this point that I turned around to wink at my fiancée, as if to say, “It’s all good.”

Round Four

The fourth round approached, and one of my competitors and I saw someone bring out a bottle of The Last Dab XXX from the show “Hot Ones.” That’s the Pepper X version – you know, the pepper that Guinness recently certified as the hottest pepper on earth, at roughly 2.4 million Scoville Units.

It bears noting that I have a bottle of that sauce and have decided that it’s not as hot as one would think. But if you slather enough of it on a chicken wing and eat it with multiple other stupid-hot wings, it’s going to sting. Just watch “Hot Ones” and you’ll understand.

So, I knew the sauce. I felt confident I could prepare my palate during the final few minutes of the round three burn period. I felt good.

Well, other than the fact that the skin around my face was burning, my nostrils burned, my head burned, the sun was beating down, my tongue was on fire and my water was slowly running out, I felt good. You know, so, pretty good.

But I was right. I got the wing down, just plucking the last of the meat in the final seconds of the 90-second countdown (swallowing was getting more and more difficult). I had to chew it for a while, but I didn’t feel it had added that much heat to my already blazing senses. Now I was feeling really confident.

Round Five

Wing five came, and it was downright scary looking. Nasty dark in color, like evil or death or my ex-wife’s disposition, it reeked of capsaicin, menace and despair. I think I may have heard it growl at me as I stared down at it. Five, four, three, two, one …

Yes. It was quite hot. Probably the hottest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life, or at least that’s what I was thinking when I took that last bite and coaxed the last bit of chicken down my throat with what little water I could spare. Yet I knew I had this heat conquered. Five rounds! I felt like I could go the distance. Mind over matter. I was out to win this contest.

And then my stomach raised its hand. I felt some of that chicken poking its head back up my esophagus. I managed to momentarily stop myself from vomiting all over my shorts and sandals, but I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, and I didn’t want to do it in front of 100 people. My palate was playing the hero, but my stomach had finally tucked its tail between its legs.

No. Mas. Dammit.

Tapping Out

I stood, raised my arms and said, “I’m out!” I suspect it came out as a garbled nothing, because I had to say it again before Ben realized what I was doing. To put on a show, I turned and walked to my fiancée and feigned like I would kiss her. She backed away, saying, “Nuh-uh!”

But by this point the endorphins had absolutely engulfed me. I’ve never done LSD, but I could imagine it being a lot like that. I mean, I was there at the contest … yet I felt like I was also somewhere else, like my brain was trying to disassociate from the punishment I’d just laid on my body. And at the same time, my stomach was still screaming at me, “It’s happening! It’s happening!”

As I staggered away from the stage area, looking for anything to drink, a familiar face appeared before me: It was my friend Adraine, whom I hadn’t seen in several years.

She gave me a big, lingering hug and said, “That was awesome! I was rooting for you!” I think I told her I was happy to see her, but who the hell knows at this point? Her husband stepped up and offered some encouragement (I assume), and I think I mumbled, “Great to see you guys!”

And then I stumbled into the Spring Street parking lot, which was littered with booths and picnic tables. I couldn’t even will myself to find something to drink; it just seemed like too much to accomplish. Instead, I found a garbage can, and yelled to my friend, Butch, who’d been filming the event, “Bring your camera! Bring your camera, I’m going to throw up!”

He said, “Huh? Oh!” I wretched but nothing came out, so I went and sat down at the nearest picnic table with my head on my knees. An unsuspecting young woman sat there looking at her phone. She didn’t even look up. And then, it finally happened. I jumped up from the table, and ran toward the garbage can – and the footage of me leaving a trail of stomach bile across the parking lot as I ran to the receptacle is magical.

As I stood there, a 58-year-old man with my head inside a garbage can, a random guy walked up to me and said, “You guys are savage! Savage!”

I mean, thanks pal, but I am currently puking into a garbage can at a public festival, and I can’t feel my eyeballs. So, I don’t necessarily feel savage.

And sometime during all this, Iam pretty sure I heard Ben announce that the last sauce was rated at 6 million-plus Scoville Units. Seriously? For reference, police pepper spray is about 2 million Scovilles. At this point, I might have needed to huff some pepper spray to take the edge off.

My friend Butch told me Ben said, “To make them this hot, we had to use science.” That sounds to me like capsaicin extract. Look it up.

My fiancée Cynthia took me home, and the block or so walk to the car was … well, I don’t remember much of it. The endorphins had me. I remember waving to my friend Ruth, who was outside watching the fun. I got in the car and slumped into the seat, barely able to swing my legs around and shut the door.

When Cynthia dropped me off, she said, “You have sauce all over your face. Don’t let Atticus (my dog) lick your face!”

“I’m going to wash my face as soon as I walk in,” I managed to say. I gave her a fist-bump in lieu of a kiss, lest I take her on this unholy ride with me. But what I was thinking was, Atticus is too smart to put this stuff in his mouth, unlike me.

The Mistake

I went straight to the bathroom sink and, rather than use a washcloth, decided to soap up my hands (they’d been protected by the gloves, remember) and wash my lower face that way, careful not to go above my nostrils. What I didn’t bank on was that tiny water droplets would splash up and make their way to … my eyes.

Oh, shit.

The burning in my eyes began around the edges, but quickly engulfed the entire area, marching in like a legion of flaming demons. I crumbled onto my bed, realizing I had, ironically, protected my eyes very well throughout the contest and then accidentally sabotaged the entire effort. If you’ve ever chopped a jalapeno and then touched your eye, you know that sting. Multiply that by a billion.

I am not a religious person. But at this point I may or may not have said a prayer to some unseen god.

I soon realized I should find a towel, wet it, and squeeze cold water into my eyes, and I decided that paper towels might be my best bet. I stumbled out of my bedroom and quickly slammed my shoulder into a door jamb. Turned the corner, and couch! Stumbled into the kitchen, fumbled for the paper towels, reeled off a bunch and then found the faucet. I could not open my eyes. At all. The pain was absolutely searing.

My dog laid by the front door during the whole thing, I believe, confused by all the stumbling about and cursing. At least that’s where I found him when I could open my eyes again.

So, still high on endorphins and temporarily blind, my face red, swollen and burning, nose dripping white-hot snot on my upper lip, a veritable flaming brick forming in my combustible stomach, I laid on my bed until, mercifully, gradually, over the next 15 minutes or so, it subsided. Then I drank small amounts of water every few minutes to slowly help cool my senses.

I am happy to report that I didn’t purge any further. But I texted Cynthia and said, “Never again” or something to that effect. Mercifully, the next day’s “ring sting” was only moderate.

As I sit here typing, I am sticking with my “never again” proclamation. But they’ll undoubtedly have another contest next year. And a year is a long time to heal.

So, who knows? Ask me again next spring.