WARNING: My parents and sisters prolly shouldn't read this 'cause it's, erm, vulgar.
Spaghetti for dinner. Christian offers me some red pepper stuff from a small jar. I'm a little confused by their appearance, but he walks me through the process. You take one of these tiny pepper babies, rub it until it splits open, and there inside you find pepper flakes like you see in the shakers at Pizza Hut. Which is weird, because I always thought those flakes at The Hut were dried versions of something else. I didn't know they naturally looked like that.
So I put some on my pasta and start chowing down. But apparently the flakes are more potent in their natural environment, because my mouth is really on fire. I'm solo drinking a liter of milk to try and quell the madness, but it's not going too well. Christian thinks all of this is very funny. He tells me to be sure not to touch my eyes now, because they will turn into fiery orbs and burn my brain. He says to be careful of whatever I touch, especially when doing things like going to the bathroom, 'cause there's room to get into a lot of hot water in that department.
I start to smile, but my nose starts running and I have to grab a tissue before I sneeze. I make it in time, but then I half to blow my nose for a good thirty seconds straight because my sinuses have decided that snot is my body's best defense against this new evil. I use thirty napkins to staunch the torrent. Finally a lull, and I, not to be deterred, return to my pasta.
By the time I finish my heaping plate, my nose has started to burn. I guess the napkins weren't thick enough to protect my nostrils from the acidic residue, or maybe I plugged a finger or two up there in the maelstrom. In any case, I am getting quite uncomfortable. I make a beeline for the upstairs bathroom and shut myself in. I blow my nose before any of the mucus drips into my mustache. A few more elephantine expulsions and I start to feel better. I realize that all that milk is going straight through me, so I take a leak. I wash my hands thoroughly and then do my best to flush out my nostrils which have are starting to really hurt again. It kinda feels like I have a volcano for a nose. I dry my nose off and look around for something medical-esque. I find a bottle of what appears to be moisturizer. The labels written mostly in Greek but it does say "Body Milk Gardenia" somewhere in there. I guess that means moisturizer, I've never actually heard of body milk. Maybe it's breast milk?
I daub some of this mystery cream on the interior of my nostrils. It feels good. I breath a sigh of relief. And then the tingling commences, followed swiftly by an attack twice as bad as before. I give up on trying to fix it and go back downstairs, trying to breath through my mouth and daubing at the corners of my eyes.
I sit down on the couch and play backgammon with Meli for a bit before me and the fam go to a tango concert in town. She's beating me two to one, but only because my nose hurts so bad. Then I feel a familiar tingling and realize I better quit playing. I rush to the bathroom and lock the door.
I don't know why there was a prolonged delay, but I now realize that while upstairs, I had entirely disregarded Christian's jovial warning about using the bathroom without properly cleaning my hands. And now my dick's on fire.
I fill the sink up with soapy water and frantically start scrubbing. I'm struck by the irony of there being a bidet one floor up which I've always thought was weird to have in a house. I drain the sink, rinse and dry off to no avail. I feel like my pants are filled with taco sauce. Not that I really know what that would feel like. I try and think of something I can do to save myself from the agony. I can't think of anything.
"Nicolas? Are you ready to go?" Christian asks from outside the door.
I throw water on my face then tenderly arrange my, er, stuff and walk out of the bathroom. Smiling with eyes too wide, I turn to Christian. "Sure!" I creak. "Let's go!"
Walking through the garden to the street, I think about claiming some lame (but less embarrassing) malady and staying home for the night. But I don't think it will be much better if I'm home alone with nothing to think about but my burning manhood. I feel a sort of kinship with syphilis patients and their eventual insanity. I decide to tough it out and strut bow-legged toward the Santiago sunset.
I survive the half hour it takes for the pain to subside. A little bit after, we reach the square where the concert is taking place. I sit down with my back against a low stone wall with Christian and Vicky on my right side and some girl I don't know on my left. I'm glad I chose to come out tonight because the group turns out to be really great. There's a violinist, a bassist, a pianist and an accordionist. I don't really know tango music, but the quartet sounds like the soundtrack to Waking Life, which I like. I expect to start floating into the air at any moment. That doesn't happen, but perhaps to match the mounting tension of the music, my nose and unmentionables come back with a crescendo of their own.
I'm really wishing I had some Gold Bond to empty into my shorts when I see that the girl on my left is applying some lip balm. I instinctively turn to face her. I'm about to open my mouth and ask to borrow it, but fortunately consider the logistics involved: Me, using my grade-school Spanish to ask a strange girl if I can borrow her chapstick (don't know that word) because I accidentally have applied red pepper residue (nope, don't know that either) to my nose and penis (definitely don't know that one, though I'm sure I could gesture.)
She turns to look at me and I quickly shut my mouth (which has been open for a good fifteen seconds) and turn back to overenthusiastically applaud the group, who has just finished their last song. Bravo.
