Later, on a visit to the homestead where his father grew up, a special meal is prepared with a sauce made from the most unbearably hot species of the hot peppers that grew in that hot country. The cooks were careful to avoid skin contact, lest blisters be raised. The mere effluvia stung one's eyes. The former attempts to warn off the unwary but usually with such an overlay of macho challenge that it produces the reverse effect. A New York restaurant, for example, offers chicken wings in the categories of mild, medium, hot, abusive, nuclear and suicidal.
Few customers order the mild, medium or hot.
Machismo propels them straight to the abusive end of the scale. They should wear gloves, he cautioned. Magazine writer Keith Blanchard also touched graphically upon peppers' after-effect upon the male organs. With controlled understatement, Blanchard goes on to describe the burn from habaneros as comparable to drinking molten pig iron. I stop when I feel my tail is going to fall off.