I identify as a picky eater, but it isn’t my fault. My mother was one of those overbearing ones that forbade me from eating anything with artificial flavoring, abundant sugar, non-GMO, anything fried, and especially anything imported from out of the country. If it had an ingredient list longer than 10 ingredients or had anything you couldn’t pronounce in four syllables, you might as well put it back on the shelf. I love my mom, may she rest in peace, but I can acknowledge that she overstepped her boundaries. On hot days she wouldn’t let me be in the sun for too long or else my hands got too red. Which I got checked out and I just have flushed skin. In fact, I learned a lot about myself once I left home. I learned I had a high pain tolerance and a high alcohol tolerance thanks to the crash. I learned that piercings and tattoos wouldn’t make me bleed for a month. I learned that I can explore, and live life, without the fear of constant death around every corner.
One thing I never learned to get over, however, is how picky I am with my food. And picky is an understatement. I’ve tried and tried again to branch out, but fried food, exotic fruit, processed snacks, it all makes me want to vomit. I have this friend who has been helping me get over this. We’ve been taking it slow. One night a week, he invites me over to his place where he cooks me a meal. We started with fries since he believes that no one can have a fulfilled life until they have experienced french fries. I still struggle to get complete joy out of them, but we at least got to the point where I can eat some Lays chips without needing to sit over a toilet. He started by making me some mashed potatoes with celery sticks and a side of gravy. The next week he made baked potatoes with cheese and sour cream. After that, baked potato wedges with a tomato sauce that I think was supposed to be a ketchup substitute. We would tackle ketchup later. Next dish was homemade baked potato chips. Then, he cooked a batch of baked fries, and that same night I found the courage to tackle fried fries. It didn’t end well.
I came back the next week willing to try again, and this time I managed to stomach them. My last test was to try a medium fry from McDonalds, and I don’t know how you do it. The feeling of grease on my fingers alone made me feel like a centipede was crawling up my neck. My friend, I’ll just call him Henry to make it easier, was proud of me and promised we could move on to something else. We’ve been doing this tradition for a year or so now, and everything has gone as well as it can. Until Henry brought the blushed peach.
I can’t stomach fruits with seeds, or stringy parts, or any kind of extra bits. I buy my apples sliced and my oranges peeled. So, when Henry wanted to introduce me to a blushed peach, I think that was the closest I was to quitting this whole thing. For those who don’t know, blushed peaches are an uncommon variant of peach that have a deep red color and a thick coat of fuzz - almost like hair - around the outside. The inside had a pit like a normal peach but much smaller, which also means easier to choke on. It was a combination of everything I hated. Part of me couldn’t even look at it without parts of my spine and arms convulsing uncontrollably.
Henry is very patient with me and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. It took me two weeks before I would sit down to eat the first dish in our plan, which only had a peach jam as a topping. I eventually ate it, only after I imagined it was some honey, but I enjoyed the taste. Very sweet, edging on sour, but then a soothing coolness as it ran down your throat. Henry did a good job.
Skip a few weeks ahead and Henry wants me to eat some slices of the blushed peach that had been pealed and de-pitted. For this dish, he had baked me a shortcake with whipped creme, dollops of strawberry syrup, and of course the slices of peach. I ate the entire cake before I even considered the peaches, but in the end, after about half an hour of encouragement from Henry, I put I slice in my mouth and swallowed. I had grown to expect the chill sensation as the peach fell down my throat, but eating a slice whole had an entirely different effect. I felt as if my breath would be frozen as it left my mouth, like a cold winter morning waiting for the bus. I couldn’t believe it when the thought popped into my head, but I liked it. No food had made me smile before just by the sensation it had elicited in my mouth. I ate the rest in three quick gulps and Henry and I laughed our way through the rest of the evening.
The next morning I awoke with a smile plastered on my face. I had dreamed about eating an entire three-course meal of just the blushed peach slices. And over and over again how it made me smile and how it filled my mouth with the feeling of a cold Christmas morning.
My smile faded and my mouth closed. Sitting on my tongue, no thicker than the space between my fingernail and my finger, was a hair. My head threw back and my face contorted with disgust. I didn’t feel as if I had much control over my body at the time. I could only feel my hands clawing desperately at my tongue to get it off.
I didn’t calm down just because I got it out of my mouth. No, it was still on my hand. The small, red hair that stuck to my flush hand. I screamed and ran to the bathroom where I profusely washed and scrubbed my hands free of it. My first instinct was to call Henry and share with him my experience. He then apologized like he had killed my own dog, and promised that he would not let the mistake happen again.
Because of that incident, our progress got set back a few weeks, and I won’t bore you with those details. The only thing important to note was that I began to inspect Henry while he cooked. When I asked him if I could do so, which I was afraid would annoy him, he much calmly obliged and let me stand in the kitchen while he cooked my meals.
We tried the peach slices once more, this time I inspected each greatly before I put them in my mouth. I thought they all looked clean. But one of the peach hairs must have found its way inside the fruit, because I woke up the next morning with another red hair resting on my tongue. If only I could express to you how repulsive that sensation is. The closest example I have come up with is running a sharp blade over your eyeball. Every single inch of me just begins to feel like it’s crawling with grasshoppers and I can’t get rid of it until that hair is gone entirely. And even when you rid of it, that lingering coolness stays to taunt you, so you’ll never forget what had invaded your body.
When I called Henry this time I was a little less pleasant, and I regret that now. I acknowledge that he has been so gracious with his time and patience and the least I can do is give him the space to make mistakes.I decided to give the peaches one more try before I asked to move on to something else. Henry agreed to this, on one condition, I skinned the peaches.
I hated it, I hated it, and I will say it one more time, I detested the feeling of those damned blushed peaches. Those red hairs were so dark. In my nightmares, I would conjure up images of the hairs becoming erect and sprouting a slimy body. The peach would no longer be a peach, instead a hivemind of centipedes crawling over one another until they found my hand. Then, their legs would begin to inch up my arm, up my chest, and eventually into my mouth. The centipedes would rest their eggs in my mouth - tiny eggs that resembled hair - which I had no choice but to swallow. The eggs would hatch and begin to crawl through my lungs, my heart, and my veins until they were creeping everywhere inside me. After those dreams, every time I looked at the peaches I would just imagine the hairs hatching in my body.
He allowed me to wear gloves while cutting it. I don’t think I could have done it without them. I managed to cut the peach into a cube, de-pit it, and wash off any excess hairs that had managed to avoid my knife. I inspected it thoroughly before handing it to Henry who would cut it into whatever form he would feed me.
One last time I ate the shortcake, and one last time I ate the peach slices, which were now smaller than my thumb. With each course, Henry had cut the slices smaller and smaller to avoid any chance of residual hairs. I managed to put one in my mouth, but then I just let it sit there. I let it sit and flipped it over with my tongue like I sometimes did with my apple slices. There were no unusual bumps, nor any hairs that I could feel. I did this with each of the four slices until I cleared my plate and Henry allowed me to leave for the night.
When I got home, I scrubbed my mouth and tongue with a toothbrush for nearly fifteen minutes. I couldn’t feel anything but neither had I the other two times, so who’s to say that a hair hadn’t lodged itself between one of my molars? With extensive care, I flossed and cleaned out every nook and cranny that I could reach, and when I was sure that I was good, I finally went to bed.
I woke up to the detestable sensation of a thin hair nesting on the back of my tongue. At this point, I was more pissed than disgusted. I don’t even know who or what I was mad at, I was just upset that yet another hair had found its way past my extensive process. I pinched my fingers and reached back into my mouth to grab the hair, but lost it on my first grab. The slippery thing couldn’t escape for long, for I eventually pinched and yanked it free from inside me, but, I did not see just a thin, red hair. Oh no, my eyes followed a line that ran from the tips of my fingers and disappeared below my nose. Beyond what I could see, I could feel the line continue past my tongue and down my throat.
Something out of my control stopped me from breathing. That thing occupied me and it took full control of my actions, I felt like. If I swallowed, the hair drank it, and if I breathed it could feel the cool twine press against my esophagus. As I maneuvered to the bathroom I tried my best to not let the hair touch my lips or tongue. I was already freaking out on the inside, but if it let it crawl back in, whatever it was, I knew I would pass out and never wake up.
The mirror reflected back to me what I already feared, that this was real. Something about seeing myself, seeing the hair in its entirety, just broke me. I wanted it out and I would be done with those damned fruits forever. I yanked once on the hair and it reached my elbow. I yanked again and it reached my stomach. And it had arms. Tiny tendrils sprang out at different intervals that branched into red, buggy fingers. I couldn’t tell what sensations were real and what were conjured. I pictured in my mind the red fingers digging into my throat and pulling itself downward, resisting my grasp. Would it tare at my throat? I feared I was practically ripping my own throat out but I couldn’t stand it.
Just pulling at it with my right hand was taking too long, I needed it gone. My other hand came up to the hair that hung limply like a hellish vine, but it would not clench. I could feel my brain sending signals down to my fingers but they would not react. My hand was pure white. Now that I had been kicked from my haze, I also noticed how cold my left hand had become. It was the hand of a deadman. The only sign of any life present was a throbbing vein that crossed over my middle knuckle.
So, I did what I felt like I needed to do, and pulled the hair, and the vein moved. With a small tug, it slithered down to the top of my wrist.
The next hour was a blur. I know that I managed to call an ambulance and I went to the hospital where I finally passed out. I woke up in a whirl of machines and noises that I didn’t understand. The hair was gone from my mouth, finally, and I cherished the feeling of the roof of my mouth. I smiled a bit at the small triumph. As ridiculous as it may seem, the moment felt like I had defeated a dragon. I still couldn’t move my left hand, however. It was the same rigor-mortis dead hand that I had that morning.
A doctor came in sometime later and sat down with me to explain the situation as best he could. He told me that I somehow pulled all the veins and arteries from my hand. He pointed to a small table beside me where an intricate, branch-like structure sat.
“That,” he explained, “is a portion of your circulatory system that pumped blood to and from your hand, and it is somehow out of your body in one, well now two, pieces.”
The other half had been taken to a lab somewhere to be studied.
I asked if there was anything they could do to fix my hand, but they sadly couldn’t. The next day, my hand was amputated.
I let Henry know the situation, and he has expressed he’ll never be able to forgive himself. I don’t blame him, I don’t know if that’s a mistake. I’ve decided to end our dinners for the meantime so I can heal, both externally and internally. I have a lot of time on my hands, well, hand. I’ve still got a few more days in the hospital before they release me and I’ll stay with one of my brothers until…well I’m not really sure. I don’t know what’s next. What I do know is that I’m never eating a fucking peach again.