John's eyebrow went up. "What?"

"You know, I was doing a one minute workout every other day."

Over the din of the bar chatter John wasn't sure if he heard what Dan said, and he didn't think he cared. John knew Dan had a habit of speaking complete gibberish but they were there together so John had to pretend he was listening up to the point when some girl walked by and he could break away and hit on her. "I'm sorry, but what the fuck are you babbling about?"

"I've been doing this one minute workout, well I was reading Maxim, and they had this special on dieting for the lazy man and a couple sections kinda jumped out at me." John gave no reaction at all to what Dan was saying. Any reaction on his part would encourage Dan to keep speaking. "So I really liked this part about how to burn calories while you're just sitting still, so what it said was the more mass you have the more calories you burn while doing nothing. So, I remembered being in like high school and training for football and I learned that if you want to build endurance you should do a lot of repetitions of easy stuff, but, now here's the clincher, if you want to build bulk you should do just a few repetitions of really hard stuff. So, you saw 'Cliffhanger' right?"

"What? The movie, sure." John looked around to see if anything new walked in.

"Well have you ever noticed in movies where the star falls over a ledge and just barely holds on with one hand while just barely catching the co-star with the other hand and like, swings the co-star up over the ledge to safety and then like pulls himself up over the ledge and the movie fades to music?"

"I'm sorry, were you talking again?"

"Yeah so wouldn't it be cool that if in real life that happened to you and you were able to not only pull yourself up and over the ledge, but save somebody too? Of course it would. But not like Sylvester Stallone in 'Cliffhanger', because he drops the girl, more like Bruce Willis in, uh, any Bruce Willis movie. So I thought maybe during my one-minute workout of really hard exercises I would practice pulling myself over a ledge. So during my workout, first thing I do five push-ups from a handstand. Then I do ten push-ups from the incline of my couch, followed by ten reverse dips from my counter top by the sink. And there I am, one minute later, completely worked out with endorphin rush in tow."

The last part caught John's ear, "Yeah, endorphins are cool, I like to eat a lot of peppers to get an endorphin rush."

"Peppers? Like what? Is that all like spicy and stuff?"

"Yeah, I do habeneros, aka scotch bonnets. They are really hot."

"How hot? Like a jalapeno?"

"No, jalapenos are for pussies, not even in the same league. On the pepper scale of one to ten, jalapenos are barely a five. Serranos are a seven, those florescent red chilies at Chinese are about an eight, and habeneros are a ten. PFH, Pretty fucking hot."

"Oh."

"Yeah, PFH. I'll cut up a habenero and mix it with my spaghetti. Afterwards, I'll just sit there as the endorphins pulse through me."

"What's that feel like?"

"I dunno, kinda like you've been chased down the street by a guy with a gun, when you've actually just been sitting still."

"And does that burn calories?"

"I guess so, yeah, I mean your body is all the rush. Blood flowing around everywhere. But, you gotta be careful with those things. They're serious. The first time I cooked with one I was slicing it by hand and not only did I rub my eye, but I touched Mr. Winky when I was checking the plumbing."

"Mr. Winky?"

"You know, my piece? My purple love truncheon? It was so sore I was washing it, but my eye was even worse, the burn! I totally flushed my eye with saline. I even had a red burn mark on my face from where the saline washed the habenero juice out."

Two weeks later.

Rrrrriinngg "Hi, this John."

"John, hey it's me Dan, how are you?"

"Dan, you wouldn't believe how good. I went snowboarding yesterday, Man it was good. I was doing all black diamond runs..."

"Skiing yesterday? How did you do that? It's barely November?"

"Oh, dude, Mt. Hood, year round."

"You drove up to Oregon to go skiing?"

"Uh duh, no! I flew. Any way, I was at the lodge at the top of the mountain and I had been skiing well. SO I decided to reward my self with some French fries and a diet margarita."

"Diet margarita?"

"Yeah, a shot of Hornitos tequila with salt around the rim and a lime. None of that girlie sweet stuff in it. So, I had been getting air in the snowboard alley and then I was eating some French fries watching snowboard videos at lunch and I realized that becoming a professional snowboarder was a really good idea. Hey, hold on a sec I need to, hey, talk to Sheila for a minute." John dropped the phone into Sheila's lap. She picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hi Sheila? It's Dan, how are you?"

"Uh fine, what 'sup Dan?"

"I just had phone sex to Muzak."

"Uh, what?" Sheila was almost used to this kind of conversation with Dan, but not quite.

"I had uh, you know, phone sex with Muzak."

"Yeah, I heard you, that's great and all, but what the fuck are you talking about?"

"What do you mean?"

"What the fuck does 'I had phone sex with Muzak' mean?"

"Uh what? Oh that. Well you know, I was with the phone in my... Maybe I should start from the beginning." Sheila didn't care about the pause. She continued to look John dead in the eye. John was making faces at Sheila while she talked to Dan. "Well, you know I had to call Pacbell to arrange that leased line connection."

"Speak English please." Sheila didn't think John's faces were cute or funny, especially with Dan babbling in her ear.

"Oh, an internet connection was to be installed so I had to call Pacbell and wait on hold for an hour to talk to someone, to find out if they had provisioned the, if they had done their work or not. And I've done this before so I thought while I'm on hold I'll take care of a few things. I went to the bathroom, and I did the dishes and picked up a bit and then I, you know..."

"I know what?"

"I you know, played with, uh, you listen to Howard Stern right? I you, know, pleasured myself."

"You mean you masturbated."

"Well, yeah in a sense I well, you know I, well yes I did. Yes I did while listening to Muzak. I was just worried that at that exactly wrong moment the music would stop and I'd hear a voice saying, like, hello or something, and I wondered, what would I do? Maybe say just a minute or ignore them or whatever, because you know, that's like a personal moment and wouldn't it suck if I couldn't speak at all and I had to call them back? And hold for another hour?"

"Dan, I'm going to put John back on the phone now." She handed the phone back to John. John had his tongue stretched out almost far enough to touch his nose.

"What's up Dan?"

"John, man, I had this habenero experience. I was sitting in the middle of the valley..."

"You computer guys are so like, geeky Dan."

"And I was at Cluck U Chicken."

"Yeah, Cluck u too buddy"

"Hey, don't talk to me like that. And I was debating the 911 challenge, and I thought, nah, I'll just get the global thermal nuclear wings"

"What? The who?"

"Wings, you know, like buffalo wings? But hot? They have a scale, mild, traditional death, atomic, nuclear, you know. "

"Oh hmmm I think I could do that. Well where is global thermal on the scale?"

"Like ten times hotter then atomic. Atomic, traditional death, thermonuclear and THEN global thermal nuclear. So, I eat the globals and I'm kinda high and, any way I had this feeling after eating them, like I was back at my parents house and I was nine years old and my older brother who had already reached puberty was chasing me around the house with tweezers, but I was just sitting still."

"Dan? I know you had an unusual childhood, that's your business, but I don't need that kind of graphic in my head."

"Well, the peppers like worked! I could feel the calories burning right off! And gosh those wings sure went through me fast."

"Dan, stop right there. Something bad happened to me."

"What? John? Are you OK?"

"I overdosed. I'm OK now, but for a while there, man, it was over."

"What happened? What were you on?"

"Well, I was out with Robin, and she dragged me into this knick knack store, and I wanted to leave, but she wanted me to see all the 'neat crafty stuff' so I went by this isle that had pepper sauces, and I saw they had Dave's Insanity. I'd had it before, about seven years ago when I had no tolerance for hot stuff, so I picked up a bottle and bought it so we could leave."

"John, are you sure you're OK?"

"Yeah, listen, so the next day I was working from home and I went to take a break for lunch. Although instead of cutting up a habenero for my spaghetti sauce I dumped about three tablespoons of Dave's Insanity on instead. So I take the plate over by the TV and turn on this movie I rented."

"What movie."

"You know, I can't even remember. Anyway so there's nudity in the movie so I'm just staring and shoveling this spaghetti into my mouth and it hit me. Something was very wrong. I put down the plate of spaghetti and walked into the kitchen, the buzzing in my mouth was turning into something else. Feigned paralysis was setting in. The fake burning was intense. These were all normal symptoms coming from eating such hot food. But something was wrong. You know how it feels like burning but it really isn't? Well my mind couldn't tell the difference. My mouth was imploding, burning from the inside out and it was getting worse. I decided I needed to slow this progression down so I could watch my movie. I needed raw peanuts or bread or something. I looked around. No peanuts. I opened the fridge and found only two pieces of bread. I knew I'd have to make them last. I put the bread in my mouth, made it gooey and swished it around my mouth in an attempt at mopping up the burn. I think I realized I was in serious trouble about the time when I was halfway through the second piece of bread and the burn was still getting stronger. My body was starting to register real pain, no longer just the brain/spice induced fake pain. As I stuffed the last of the bread in my mouth I was concentrating on making it count. It was then when the burn became noticeable in my stomach. I thought oh no, this is bad, I gotta settle my stomach, I need vinegar or milk. I knew there was no vinegar so I opened the fridge again and found maybe a half-cup of milk. After I drank that I was beside my self with burn stimulus. I thought, I better stop the movie, this could take twenty minutes. So I walked out into the living room and pressed stop on the VCR. It was then that I decided I'd rather throw up in the bathroom then the living room. I had just walked into the bathroom when I started doing my business. You know how sometimes when you do that some of the stuff comes up your nose?"

"Yeah..."

"Well that happened and I thought, throwing this stuff up is bad and all but, I gotta get this out of my nose or my sinuses will never work the same. So I was like blowing my nose, sucking in, washing my face with water and trying to suck in and blow out the water, oh it was a mess."

"Man."

"So like twenty minutes later I found myself sitting on the cool tile and leaning against my bathroom wall. The worst was over. And oh man, I had waves and waves of the strongest rushes flowing all through my body. I was so damn high. It was crazy. Did I tell you I had used the last of the spaghetti for that meal?"

"Uh no..."

"Well I did, and after I'd settled down I realized I was pretty hungry. I did through up the last of my previous meal too you know. So I looked around the kitchen and there was nothing left to eat and so I walked into the living room and saw the plate on the floor."

"You didn't, tell me you didn't."

"And I noticed that the sauce was in the middle and there was some spaghetti on the sides that were still all white. So I picked up the plate and cut off a little spaghetti and ate it. As I chewed I my nose picked up the slight smell of the Dave's Insanity and I knew I couldn't eat anymore. So I carried the plate into the kitchen and set it on the stove. I almost left a note by it for Sheila saying 'danger, don't eat this' but I thought, yeah right, like she'd eat my leftovers off the stove. And then I took off to get a tequila lime prawn taco from Baja Grille."

"Uh huh."

"I came back here like a half an hour ago and I see Sheila on the coach looking totally pissed off, sleepy and sick at the same time. And I'm like 'what's wrong' and she says 'Well I walked in and I knew we didn't have any food and I saw this plate on the stove, and I thought, John's so nice, he made me some spaghetti...'"