THE VEIN, a memoir

Terror in a restaurant.

 Tim had a talent for eating. I guess one might say that it was beyond a mere knack or proclivity, it was a passion. Yes, a passion that burns as strongly today as it did thirty or more years ago. Some people travel to see the sights and take in the ambiance of a place using the senses of hearing and sight. Tim travels to taste and smell the sights using his digestive processes to literally eat his way through an environment. It’s not to say that he does not appreciate other aspects of culture, he simply chooses to use a gastrointestinal approach to reaching the heights of satisfaction and bliss.

 

Such an infatuation for eating does not come without risks. Once many years ago, my wife and I were fortunate enough to have dinner with Tim and his wife to be Penny in a restaurant in San Francisco. I believe it was a Korean restaurant, which was famous for its extremely hot dishes. Very cramped and dark the interior had an exotic feel to it. The antagonist in this story was a nondescript chili pepper that could easily be taken for a harmless morsel of almost any of the food groups, especially if it had been in any way deformed in the cooking process. The inferior lighting was undeniably a contributor, a catalyst for things to come.

 

For Tim, eating was not just eating, but more like an athletic endeavor. One criterion was how much an individual could consume; size did matter in the world of a competitive eater. Tim was not a large man, but he had a stomach that was capable of considerable expansion, especially when there was a competitive element thrown into the mix. I have been in Mexican restaurants with Tim where he ordered what most people would consider two, if not three meals. He used a rather sly method of ordering by first ordering a normal meal then do what I call “piling on.” “Piling on” is an insidious technique where the customer, over a period of time, orders several additions to his meal, thus avoiding the possibility of sending companions into a state of shock and awe, which might arise if the food had all arrived in one monstrous mass; also, there was often a limited amount of space on the tabletop.

 

Another aspect of competitive eating is how much heat you can take. If your palate is not cauterized closed after a meal, then you must be a “weenie” in the estimation of and Olympian eater. The kind of heat I am referring to is not measured in Fahrenheit, but rather in terms of chemical heat that can roast you quite well at room temperature. The kind of searing heat that burns at the meal, then several hours later unforgiving burns again. Sadly, the second burn is in another location and can be somewhat distressing in terms of its severity and duration.

 

On this particular night, the object of the eating ritual was heat and how much of it you could take. This stuff was hot, real hot, and I tacitly understood that I would be paying a heavy penalty when it came to the “second burn.” I also knew Tim could “out heat” me unless something happened to get in the way of his ultimate triumph, it did.

 

During the same time frame this meal was taking place, there was on television a hugely popular commercial by E.F. Hutton, a large brokerage firm. The idea of the commercial was that everyone was interested in what Hutton brokers had to say, so if they began to spew forth information about the market everyone in proximity would stop what they were doing and bend an ear to get the scoop. What happened in the restaurant with Tim was very much like the commercial. The only difference was that instead of waiting for Tim to give out some precious knowledge, people were instead waiting to see if he would keel over and die or not.

 

Apparently, what happened was Tim had the extreme misfortune of getting some food caught down the wrong pipe. The most dreadful part was not only was the food down the wrong pipe, it was the nature of the particle that was down the wrong pipe. If you haven't guessed already, it was one of those nasty Korean chilies! Tim looked like a full sized male elephant was sitting on his, dare I say, testicles. The most prominent feature on Tim was the large vein that was bulging on his forehead. Why it didn't burst I will never know. The elasticity of that particular vein was monumental. It was protruding out so far that it cast a shadow on his forehead that I swear was in the shape of Vermont.

 

Every head in the restaurant was turned toward Tim; complete and utter silence dominated the room. The next stop for Tim seemed to be the floor for almost a certainty. The expression of horror on Tim’s face only gave proof to the fact that he knew what he had done, and the outlook was not good. The Heimlich maneuver had not been invented yet, so, I went for the old-fashion method and began to beat on Tim’s back. Who knows for what reason it worked and Tim began to suck air again! After the dust had settled, and the crowd in the restaurant realized that their meal was not going to include watching a death, we all went back to our meals, including Tim, which only stands to prove that this guy lives for his digestive tract. Fortunately for Tim, he ended up marrying Penny who is an uncommonly talented cook!

Reviews

[roarke]

I think I'll fast for a while.... certainly Tim is a wealth of anecdotes to write about.... with or without his vein...
Eating, and for that matter cooking IS an adventure and should always be approached that way. Restaurants, chefs, waiters, hostesses... all add to the "bread and circuses" Z your powers of observation and storytelling are like dessert to a hungry man.... er, maybe not Tim though....lol.