Kiss of Pain
Dear Rex-o-Meter,
Why do some people enjoy hot chicken wings that hurt their mouth and tongue?
Signed,
Blazing Burning Question
Dear BBQ,
At first glance, it seems a simple online search could answer your question.
But no matter! I took the liberty of perusing for answers.
My online sojourn crashed out in disappointment.
For I learned about capsaicin receptors, and nociceptors, and something called a transient receptor vanilloid 1 (“TRPV1”).
These receptors signal the heat and pain to your brain. Your brain is alerted to danger.
The trick: there is no true danger. You chose this food. Thus giving your brain a feeling of hazard without risking any actual peril.
Like skydiving, perhaps, or riding a roller coaster.
Endorphins!
These are the details, as far as I can grasp.
Science has measured what it could. Wonderful! But it lacks one thing: poetry.
Is Humberto the Human Cannonball powered merely by compressed air and nitrocellulose and the sway of gravity?
Is he not also driven by creative spark?
Pageantry and prowess? Spectacle and astonishment!
That is what a good chicken wing is: an alchemy of surprise and menace.
“O benefit of ill! Now I find true,
That better is by evil still made better;
So I return rebuked to my content
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.” Shakespeare, Sonnet 119
There has to be something else, right?
Something ineffable in our character.
Something unseen in our construction.
And this unknowable, inscrutable ember?
I think that’s why some people like hot chicken wings.
Counterpoint commentary by …
Lindi Dee DuVerne, Fire Breather
People always assume I’ll want hot sauce, spicy food, you name it.
That’s a pig in a poke!
My taste buds are slower than maple syrup down a snail’s back.
Got no real feel in my mouth at all, save for a kiss here or there.
Why do people want to taste a sauce that makes them wince?
Well, that question is finer than a frog hair split in four ways.
But me? I eat what I want. Ain’t no one around to smell my breath these days.
Got no one to care about my dealings.
That’s okay! So much to do. Shoot, I’m busier than as a one-eyed dog in a smokehouse.
Chew on whatever side of your mouth you please, I guess.
But bread will always fall butter-side down.
I ain’t got much appetite these days, I reckon.
Play gooseberry all you want.
Remember that the burn is not always the brightest where the fire flares the hottest.
