Author (#32)May 2006 Archives

I'm disappointed. I'd hoped to eat 50.5 so that the heading of the IFOCE's press release would read, "Janus Shatters Chestnut's American Hot Dog Eating Record!!!" I blew it.

On Wednesday, the Carnegie Deli will hold its biennial pickle eating contest. Will you attend?

No. Not a chance. I've got better things to do.

Oh, yeah? Like what?

Like Eater X's First Annual Radio Controlled Monster Truck Rally on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. I set up a couple of ramps. I'll be selling corn dogs and sodas and beers. It's gonna be huge! But bring your ID if you plan to drink 'cause I card.

I hear you're heading to New Haven on Thursday. What's the deal?

I'm gonna break my own Doodle Burger record. Some magazine wants me to do it.

Cool. Are you gonna crush it?

I'd like to, but it depends on what Rick at The Doodle has to say. If he asks me not to kill it, I won't. He wants other guys to want to try to break it. It's good for his business.

If he says you can smash it, will you?

Yeah. I'd like for the heading of the IFOCE's press release to read, "Janus Merely Breaks Doodle Burger Record."

I think it's time to give that joke a rest. You've made your point already. You're just acting like a baby now.

I know. I know. I should. I will. Thank you.

On Thursday night, the NYPA will hold its prom at Otto's Shrunken Head on 14th Street between Avenues A and B? You're going, right?

But of course.

And will you bring a date?

No. I'll go stag.

How come?

(Squirming nervously and obviously lying) Um, because my girlfriend's at summer camp.

Are you sure about that? It sounded like you were asking me a question.

(Getting angry) Well, I wasn't!

Okay. Okay. Relax. Geez!

(Still angry) I'm fine. Next question.

Okay. Are you gonna drink at the prom?

No.

Why not?

Because the next morning I have to eat ice cream in an IFOCE-sanctioned, Goldenpalace.net-sponsored competitive eating contest.

Will you win?

Fuck you.

I have shot the messenger. I did. I have. I have shot him dead.

I shot him dead because he looked at me cross and mocked me with a message sent from others that read, "You're not good enough anymore. You'll be finished soon. They're coming." It stuck in my craw. It burned my skin.

I shot the messenger thirty-six and one half times, but I could have shot him more. I should have shot him more. I just ran out of time. After my fourteenth shot, when I knew he would die, I stopped to flash a gang sign to my friend, and I stopped again at twenty-one to flash that sign again. At thirty-three, as the messenger lay dying, I paused to celebrate, held my bullet high, straight above my head for all the world to see. I tried to shout a crack of thunder, to fire it from my chest to both ends of the earth, but I couldn't make a sound come out. Killing the messenger had stolen my voice.

I'd heard it before, what the messenger delivered. I'd heard it and hated it and wished to hear it stop. That moment in time when sound becomes silence goes unnoticed by ears too often. But my ears hear it all. That sound to them is sweet--a song, a syrup, a savior.

And so I finally shot the messenger. I did. I shot him dead. Thirty six and one half times. He fell hard and cracked the ground beneath him.

When I turned to walk away from where I'd shot the messenger, a little boy without a name ran up to me. "Mister. Mister. At last you've shot the messenger! You've saved us all! Can you rest now? Are you fine?"

I took a knee to look him straight in the eye and put my hand upon his shoulder. His eyes were brown like his skin, which the sun had stained darker. "Boy," I said, and I spun him around and pointed to the mountains surrounding us on every side. Upon the eastern mountain a human silhouette was rising to the top. To the north a tiny speck was hiking down one side. And to the south, atop the highest peak, a figure waved semaphores and danced. "Do you see those shadows on top of those hills way, way, way out there?" I asked the boy without a name. He nodded yes. "Those shadows are messengers, too. They'll be here soon with messages." And the boy without a name didn't say a word. He just looked at me. "Pretty soon up there," I said, and I pointed to the mountain to the west, where no shadow could yet be seen. "Pretty soon from up there a messenger will come too. And he'll carry a message as unkind as the others. Because that's what messengers do. They keep coming to bring us messages."

The boy shuddered and cried and begged, "Save us, please!"

And I told him, "Don't worry. Be a kid now. Let me. I will."

And I prayed to God for the strength to shoot them too.

Say what?

I say, I say, you're invited to Eater X's Perm Party.

What in God's na...When?

Friday, May 12th, at 7:30 PM.

Where?

At the gayest hair salon my friends Dave and Jennifer could find, The Service Station on 8th Avenue in Chelsea.

Good Lord! Why?!?

Because I wish to answer a question that has puzzled the human mind since the Ancients roamed the earth: What happens when Eater X says, "Fuck it!" and perms his hair?

Explain.

Dave and Jennifer and I have finally broken our impasse and come to an agreement after two years of heated perm negotiations. Despair at last brought us to our senses, and for the good of everyone involved, each side sacrificed so that a deal could be made. Dave and Jennifer will pay for my perm and for two fancy dinners and for all of the drinks I can drink, and I will wear my perm, and let them pet it, without a hat for three consecutive days.

And just how tight will this perm be?

Very tight I think, though we haven't yet decided. Dave would like me to have pristine ringlets, just like the ones his grandmother wore, but Jennifer favors an "African" look. Personally? I kind of like what Dave's suggesting because if I decide to keep my perm, my hair might some day look like Michael Landon's.

So will you grow it out?

I don't know yet. If the curls are tight, I might look funny when the straight hairs reach a critical length. I'd have a bundle of curls hanging inches from my head, like broccoli upside-down.

Well, then will you cut it off?

I don't know about that either. If I were to get my hair cut the normal way, I'd have curly hairs on top and next to nothing on the sides and back. It might look fine at first, but given time it might look foolish. I drew a picture once of the worst-case scenario---long, straight hairs hanging down flat on the sides and in the back, and a crest of curly hair sitting powerfully on top---but I haven't figured out how to scan it and upload it to this site.

So then shouldn't you just shave it off?

Ugh. I don't like very short hair.

Okay, now. Back to this party. I can come to it?

Yes. You can come.

And I can bring a friend?

Sure. You can bring a couple of them.

And what can we expect?

Gabbing.

And should I bring a gift?

I would very much appreciate it.

And what if I can't come?

You can see it on Eats of Strength.

There is a grilled cheese sandwich that lives down the street from me in New York City, and he never lets me forget that Grilled Cheese has ruined my life. He takes great pride in reminding me, on a daily basis whenever possible, of my well documented failure at the Grilled Cheese Eating Championship in February 2006.

"Hey, X!" he'll cry out if sees me sneaking down the street, hiding behind trees and lampposts and bushes, trying to avoid his detection. "You can't hide from me. I see you."

He lets me know that he sees me so often that sometimes I wonder if he has anything better to do with his time.

"Get a job!" I'll plead. "Leave me alone!"

It is a pointless request. He'll just laugh and sing back mockingly, "Don't need one. Gotta trust fund. And now I've got a hobby: taunting you."

This grilled cheese, The Grilled Cheese of West 19th St., gives Grilled Cheese in general a bad name. I hate this grilled cheese. No. Correction: I hate all grilled cheese.

Which is why I can't understand what the good folks at the IFOCE are thinking. Someone over there, a grilled cheese lover no doubt, an Eater X hater perhaps, thinks it'll be funny to film me eating grilled cheese sandwiches for high-definition television. It'll be part of their new series of competitive eating TV shows, Eats of Strength, in which eaters attempt to break existing world records and answer questions of consumption and capacity that have long plagued the human mind. My episode, to be filmed on Long Island this weekend, will document my attempt to reclaim from Joey Chestnut the title "Grilled Cheese Eating Champion of the World."

"This is great!" The Whaler shrieked when I told him about the show the other day. I hadn't seen him so excited since he decimated a pod of sperm whales off the coast of Belize back in October. He'd returned to shore feeling so flush that he spent five days in a leisure suit getting drunk at his favorite bar, buying rounds of shots and bar food for his "bestest" 20 friends.

I cocked an eyebrow and stared at him quizzically, wondering why exactly this was so great. "Huh?"

"Because," he said, beaming, blissfully unaware of the potential of this attempt to go sour. "Because now you can get back your record! You loved that record. You did! I know it."

I looked at The Whaler's smile and envied it. I looked at his eyes, wide and white, and envied them too. I sat down on the bottom stair of the stoop outside my apartment and patted a dusty patch of it next to me. "Come here," I said. "Sit down. Listen." I handed him a Werther's Original, and then in painstaking detail I explained to him my feelings.

I told him that when I eat grilled cheeses competitively, I believe the grilled cheese is my partner. "Without its complete cooperation," I said, "breaking Joey's record will be impossible. If they're overcooked, cooked too soon, stored improperly, or prepared with the wrong bread, they're gonna be too slow to eat quickly. The IFOCE knows that. Charles Hardy, my good friend and the IFOCE's Commissioner, told me as much back in February. He said, and he hurt my feelings in the process, 'The only reason you and Joey ate so many [in your qualifiers] was because you had perfect sandwiches.' So my question then, Whaler, is this: If the IFOCE knows that a perfect sandwich is required to break the record, shouldn't they guarantee me sandwiches that allow me at least a chance to succeed? Shouldn't they go out of their way to provide me with the same quality sandwiches that were provided to me and Joey when we set the last two records?"

The Whaler's expression of naive happiness gave way to a look of increasing concern, and I continued.

"There's a 5-second rule, Hardy's rule, right?" I asked rhetorically. "Says you can't dunk anything longer than 5 seconds." The Whaler nodded. "That 5-second rule wasn't in effect when I broke Sonya's record back in August, and it wasn't in effect when Joey broke my record back in October. Same thing for the rule against dunk tanks. It wasn't until the finals in February that the IFOCE began to consistently disallow any cups not provided by the sponsor. So in the interest of giving me the same chance to break Joey's record that Joey was given in breaking mine, shouldn't we play by the old rules, the rules that governed our qualifiers? Shouldn't I be given an equal opportunity to succeed?"

"Yeah, of course," said The Whaler. "You wouldn't run a footrace on a flat track one day and then run it on an incline every day thereafter. Records lose their meaning when the rules under which they're challenged are changed."

"Exactly," I said, chagrined by the cold, hard truth of all that stood in my way. "But I don't know what's gonna happen on Saturday. And I don't know that any one cares besides me. I might be the only one who's taking this seriously."

The Whaler looked angry for a second because he grasped why I was concerned. His eyes, once wide and white and the envy of mine, grew thin and red and mean. His smile, once broad and strong and toothy, shriveled and shrunk into a sour pair of sunburned lips.

"So what are you gonna do?" he asked slowly, teeth clenched, as if to motivate me to fight back.

I paused. "You know it wasn't too long ago that kiting a check was a cutting edge crime," I said. "But now it's a crime for the desperate and dumb." I smiled as if to hint that something big lay beneath the surface of my brow, but The Whaler just looked at me confused, as if what I had said were nonsense.

"Come again?" he asked.

"My point is that when things are primitive, when they're new, there are loopholes, and there are always ways to make a statement. When something evolves, the loopholes tighten. But competitive eating hasn't yet evolved; some rules have yet to be written. A guy like me, just sort of smart--kind of smart maybe?--can still stay a step ahead of the game. You can bet I'll have something planned for that day."

"Like what?" he asked, relishing the prospect and promise of my revenge.

"Just wait," I said. "You'll see."

And The Whaler laughed, and I laughed. And I reached for my Werther's Originals.