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Back in his college days, partly on a dare, partly from fatigue, and partly for love, Benjamin Johnson ate an entire jelly donut in one bite. Ben and three friends had gone to an all-night donut shop to blow off steam during final exams week. They weren't terribly rebellious considering a dozen bars dotted the area. But who needs alcohol when there are donuts to be consumed? They were the only customers in the place at 2:30 a.m., each of them munching on a fourth or fifth donut. The combination of study fatigue, suddenly full stomachs, and post-sugar buzz had set in hard, so they were in danger of falling asleep right there at their table. Something had to be done to liven them up before they drove back to the dorm to continue studying. Ben slammed both palms on the stained formica and announced, "I can eat an entire jelly donut in one bite!" His friends jumped about six inches out of their seats, swore at him, and then started protesting. "No one can do that!" Sarah cried. "I say bullshit on your donut!" Mike ranted. Mike was pre-med. He had taken a biology final the previous day and a chemistry final that morning, and he was dreading a physics final the following afternoon. His head was stuffed with science, and his belly filled with donut sugar and fat, so he moved between anger and frustration, shouts and tears, more than a few times that night. "If you can do it," Susan said with a smile, "I just might marry you." "Why?" Sarah asked. "Think about it," Susan replied. "Oh," Sarah said. Mike tried for a few seconds, but his brain didn't have room to work out what they meant. Ben had only a slight inkling, but that inkling certainly made him look at Susan in a new way. Sarah pushed a blueberry-filled pastry toward Ben. Blueberry was his favorite. It was the last one left on the table. "I've been saving this one," she said. "If you can eat it in one bite, I won't marry you, but I'll give you a dollar." "Me too!" Mike and Sarah chimed. Three dollars--this was getting interesting. Ben was a poor college student who saw actual paper money about twice a month. Three whole dollars qualified as an academic scholarship. The donut was about four inches in diameter and two inches thick. Powdered sugar covered the surface, and blueberry jelly oozed from a dime-sized navel on one side. The thing looked pretty darned big as Ben examined it. Under normal circumstances, he would have needed maybe seven or eight good bites to get it down. But then he'd probably think, "Wow, that was so small. How about another?" Ben picked up the donut. It seemed to weigh a pound because, he guessed, jelly is heavy stuff. Three pairs of measuring eyes darted back and forth from his mouth to the donut. He turned the navel toward himself to prevent spillage and brought it to his lips. On the first push, a third of the donut easily entered his mouth, but then he encountered resistance and had to shove first the left side and then the right side to keep it advancing beyond the corners of his mouth. This trundle method worked fine until the donut encountered Ben's epiglottis, the little flap of flesh at the back of the throat. He began to gag. It took all of his self-control to keep from yanking the thing out of his mouth. At this point, the first tear plopped out of his eye and flowed down his cheek. But Ben kept pushing. The donut crammed up against the back of his throat and started expanding upward into his pallet and downward around and under his tongue. By then, it had lost most of its structural integrity, becoming nothing more than a fused blob of pastry and jelly conforming to the inside of his mouth. The tears began to flow freely now, and some sort of liquid threatened to spill from Ben's nose as well. He sniffled as forcefully as he could, snorting up a big dose of powdered sugar in the process. If the sugar had been cocaine, Ben would have overdosed. Every force in his body urged him to get the thing out of his mouth. But Ben kept pushing. A few more tucks at each corner, and the donut was inside. He clasped his teeth together and sealed his lips. "Jesus," Mike gasped. "He did it," Sarah said. "Not yet," Susan cut in. "I won't marry him unless he swallows." The three of them began chanting, "swallow, swallow, swallow." They began in a whisper, then built to a low moan. "Swallow, swallow, swallow." For human beings, chewing usually precedes swallowing. Ben parted his teeth and closed them again, then repeated the movement a few times, being careful not to open his lips--not out of politeness, but to keep donut paste from spraying across the room. Normally, the tongue is used to roll the food around the mouth so that it gets ground up by the teeth. But this takes lots of open space, something Ben had none of in his mouth, filled as it was with donut. His chewing efforts managed only to mush up the small fraction of pastry directly between his molars. In short, the whole mess was stuck in Ben's mouth with no real way for him to chew it. In fact, it was actually expanding as it soaked up his saliva at an alarming rate. To keep his cheeks from bursting open, he had to do something fast. "Swallow, swallow, swallow," they chanted. Ben's gag reflex came to his rescue. As he involuntarily tightened the back of his throat, he could feel those muscles smashing a small portion of the donut back there. In desperation, he clamped down harder and found he could actually "chew" with his throat muscles. After a few more contractions, the donut was soft enough to get some down. Ben swallowed a small portion, freeing up enough mouth space to guide more donut to the back of his throat where he muscle-chewed and swallowed a bit more. "Swallow, swallow, swallow." Ben then discovered that he had just barely enough room to do a little traditional teeth chewing. This was tough going, but it began to work. Bit by bit, he managed to swallow more and more of the donut until the task didn't seem quite so daunting. "Oh my God," Sarah muttered, breaking the chant. "I think he's going to do it." It took another full minute, but Ben was able to get the rest of the thing swallowed. His throat burned. His face was streaked with tears. Sometime during the process, he had lost control of his nose. The results were not pretty. Susan grabbed a handful of napkins and mopped Ben's face. "That was amazing!" she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. When she pulled away, Ben saw tiny flecks of powdered sugar on her lips. Ben had never really looked at Susan's lips before, but he was having trouble looking anywhere else at that moment. Her tongue slipped out to lick the sugar from her lower lip, the fuller of the two. "I don't believe it," Mike said. "Make him open his mouth." Susan gently grasped Ben's jaw, and he opened his mouth to display its lack of donut. "Ugh," Sarah moaned. Apparently, she had glimpsed some donut residue still in there. Ben took a swig of hot chocolate (now cold), rinsed it around his mouth, swallowed, and opened again. "I'll be damned," Mike gasped. "He did it!" Sarah cried. The three of them broke into applause, nearly awakening the high school kid snoozing through his late-night shift behind the counter. Susan gathered up the three one-dollar bills from the table and tucked them into her shirt pocket. "I'll just hold onto these," she said. "My abnormal psych final is over at noon tomorrow. If you meet me at the student union, I'll buy you an ice cream cone." She winked at Ben. "I'm dying to see what you can do with that."
John Sheirer teaches at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut. His books include the memoir GROWING UP MOSTLY NORMAL IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, and LOOP YEAR, and account of hiking the same nature trail every day for a year. For more about his life and writing, check out www.johnsheirer.com.
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