Melissa Etheridge has NO idea...

Ate a curry last  night.

Oh my goodness gracious me. I ate a curry last  night.

There’s a fairly rad little restaurant in Happy Valley called Chapel. No idea where the name comes from given it’s an Indian restaurant in China, but whatevs. It’s still good. They’ve got very awesome garlic naan – always a winner – a really tasty fish curry, lots of choices on the menu, & a happy hour that runs all day until 8:30pm. (Where else but Happy Valley?). They also have The Truth. The Truth is not a meal, it’s an emotion. It is exactly like someone dosing you with LSD while simultaneously punching you in the face & gently stroking your hair. So you read the warning: “Very hot. Only for a select few, etc. etc.” And what does a white male think? ‘That’s totally me’. So the bloke next to me obviously felt the pinch in his pride gland worse than me because he went for it & ordered up the dreaded lamb vindaloo. It came out looking pretty damned angry. It was a deep ochre red, like wet clay & was almost bubbling with the amount of energy it was barely containing. But I ignored & happily munged away on my fish curry, enjoying the hell out of it. Dinnertime conversation ensued & as I was drawing near the end of my excellent meal I realised that I was now sitting next to a sweating, catatonic husk. “How is it” I asked. “h o t” came the stilted response.

Whoa. Sounds nasty....My curiosity took about 7 seconds to muscle its way right into my frontal lobe & start marching up & down banging a drum & bellowing AlabamaAlabamaAlabamaAlabamaAlabamaAlabama! “Gah! I need to try this stuff, gimme some.” So I spooned a great big gob of lamb with plenty of curry sauce onto my plate & got a bit more rice ‘to help with the spice’.

Now I’ve never swallowed a tear gas grenade before, but I’m absolutely convinced that I know exactly what it feels like. Anyone ever been hit in the face with an exploding can of capsicum spray? I have. How about being sexually assaulted by a rampaging herd of frothy, meth-head gibbons? Yep. Done it. Had your entire oesophagus tattooed with fire by an off-meds Michael J Fox? Hurts. I should know! In short: This. Shit. Was. Hot. And as the initial blast recedes & all you can hear is ringing in your ears, & the slow rolling kettle drums of the impending nuclear fallout that some call an aftertaste, somehow, through the sheets of white, flashing pain & torrent of steaming eyeball sweat you swear that someone is playing the intro to Dr Who on the wall opposite you.

Silence.

A few seconds pass.

“Ha ha. Are you okay man? Hot enough for you?”

GEIF ME BEEER! I GNEEED YOGRT!! FGNiiiiiiiiiiiiiii squeak! *slump*

I had two napkins going for about 5 minutes. One for the horror sweats & one for the constant flood of tears. Four tough as balls mouthfuls of this horrendous magma just about burned a hole through the back of my skull & cost me all motor function. And now as I sit writing this, my poor innocent bunghole finally recovering from the shock of the reverse macing that it just copped, I idiotically feel I’ve just been issued a divine challenge.

I’m going to eat fire. I will conquer this nightmare curry & when I do I will climb victoriously to the sun on the broken corpses of the chillies I have bested in battle. Gingerly. And probably with a glass of water handy. And maybe a bathroom in close proximity too. But I’ll do it.