Hot sauce makes everything better. Everything. Tacos. Pizza. Chicken. Fish. Spaghetti. Greens. Grilled cheese. And I’m aware that I’m only naming foods, but I was just getting warmed up.
Hot sauce makes your days better. Makes your nights spicier. Hot sauce makes you feel invincible. It’s a testament of strength. It’s a challenge over which to triumph. It’s daring and bold. Hot sauce burns away the sadness, pierces through disappointment, and singes the remnants of hurt feelings. The painful feelings. The feelings that won’t go away.
I’m sitting alone, staring down at a trio of tacos. Traditional ones. Not the white boy kind. Perfectly marinated shredded beef on a tortilla, finely chopped cubes of onion and a pinch of cilantro. I reach for the hot sauce the server brought to the table moments ago. The hot sauce isn’t in a bottle. It’s in a tiny bowl, its chunkiness holding the promise of a searing blaze only possible from the careful mash and mix of pepper flesh and pepper seeds. Dayo would take one look at it and shake her head. She would wince a little bit as I scooped a healthy spoonful from the bowl and dressed my first taco with an excited shoulder shimmy. Even though I would offer her some, she would refuse, shaking her head and raising her eyebrows. “I don’t know how you do it,” she would say. I would keep trying, asking her to just try a little bit, just dip a fingertip, just taste it. I see her face so clearly. The round of it. The brightness of it. The fullness of her lips and lift of her cheeks as she smiled, adamant and beautiful in her “No.”
Trying my best to ignore memory, I take a scoop of hot sauce and drip it carefully, as evenly as possible, along the filling of my taco. I return the spoon to the bowl and lift my first taco. I pinch it between my fingers, bringing it to my mouth, anticipating the juiciness and the heat. I need the heat. The ache of it, the burn of it. I bite the taco. The garlic, chili, salt, and tenderness of the barbacoa feels like safety, but then a fire builds slowly, stinging my tongue from the inside out, a heat gaining in momentum, in urgency. My eyes tear in the corners. I’m chewing but manage to part my lips, sucking in a cool tunnel of air in a futile effort to abate the burn. The taste is complex, smoky with a hint of citrus. The heat is slightly sweet, a whisper of kindness that disappears as quickly as I acknowledge it. I finish my bite with my eyes closed. My lips burn. My tongue tingles. I need the hot sauce to have done its job.
I want it—no, I need it—to burn it all away. Burn away the memory. Burn away the visions of Dayo’s face. Burn away the ghost sensations of her fingers on my skin. Burn away the sound of her laugh. Burn away the echoes of her voice. Burn away the smell of her, the lavender and copal that lingers in my sheets and favorite hoodie. And since the fire is blazing now, the heat of that one bite raging still, I need it to burn even more shit, burn everything. Experiences that feel more painful than hopeful, more futile than fair: the signs we made to protest at the state fair, the crowd dividers and yellow tape, the cruisers exploding right before our eyes, their sirens charred and silent. Burn away the frustrating mix of excitement and sadness in Dayo’s eyes, in my eyes, in all of our eyes, as we chanted and marched, linked arms and raised fists. Burn away the feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself for the first time. Burn away the feeling of collective power. Burn away the weight of Dayo’s arm around my shoulders when I cried for the first time in a long time, tears for me, for her, for all of us.
“It matters,” Dayo had said that night. “It doesn’t always feel like it,” she said. “But it matters.” She kissed me then and undressed me slowly. She made love to me slow and carefully, licking my tears first then my mouth—lips and teeth both. Her tongue sliding along my neck weakened my knees, and by the time she parted my legs and her tongue found me wet and aching, I fell in love with her for reasons that went beyond touch and taste. I marveled at her multitudes, from passionate, righteous anger to passionate, riotous pleasure, Dayo showed me how to be alive.
“You doing okay?” the server asked, seemingly appearing out of nowhere with his hands behind his back, his white shirt wrinkled but clean. I nodded. He walked away slowly as if he didn’t believe me. He was correct to doubt. I was at a crossroads with no direction. I needed to take action. I knew what I wanted but needed to do something about it.
I stared down at my food. My appetite gone.