How To Execute A Jellyfish

Dan sparked the fat Zippo with a soot-blackened thumb and touched the flame to the wick. The torch lit instantly; yellow flame grew from low blue roots in the smooth vapour cloud that wrapped it. He pocketed the lighter, raised the torch in a salute, paused, twirled the torch once like a majorette, threw his head back and plunged the flame into his mouth. A short, controlled breath sent the fire racing into the dark air of the nightclub and it was gone. He showed us the extinguished torch and smiled.

“That’s all you have to do,” he said to the watching class.

“That’s all?” said a middle-aged woman with a nervous laugh.

“You’ll be fine, it’s safe if you do it right and I will make sure that you do,” said Dan, with inflammable authority.

That’s all, I thought as I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans and stood up to go and fuel my torch, leaving my better judgement at the table.    

Being in a nightclub during the day creates the same peculiar sense of disorientation as being in a closed shopping centre at night. There’s a constant whispering anxiety that you are somewhere that you simply should not be. Teenagers seem to delight in this. I do not. Even as a teenager the idea of any significant transgression filled me with dread, and it had been bred into me that being where you shouldn’t be was one of the cardinal transgressions. I was someone who had never been able to relax in a shop or a restaurant which was near closing and emptying out. To me, an empty beach was a worrying sign that everyone else had the good sense to be where they should be, and I didn’t. A quiet theme park wasn’t an opportunity for short queues and more fun; it was as sad as a poorly attended birthday party. I needed the validation of the herd. Unfortunately, the herd didn’t sign up for fire eating lessons, but here I was, in a class of only six people, trespassing in a nightclub on a Sunday afternoon holding a torch dipped in fuel, walking towards a man who snapped his Zippo open with a grin.  

Dan stood, lean and louche on the dancefloor, reeking of bohemian cool and lighter fluid. The effect was only slightly spoiled by the yellow and black safety tape that marked the rectangle around him in which fire was permitted. The tape imbued the space with the grey glow of health and safety legislation and I felt my heart rate slow slightly. I noticed a fire extinguisher near to where Dan stood and felt better still, remembering that I was in the hands of a professional. He took my torch from me, spun the excess fuel off it with a dexterous flick, ran the wick along his middleweight’s forearm and set himself on fire. After a second he casually blew the fire out and handed me back the torch.

“We’ll learn that one later, but for now we’ll focus on the basic eat,” he said.

“Right,” I said, trying to think of any possible situation in which the smell of burning hair wasn’t profoundly worrying. I took up an approximation of the stance Dan had demonstrated and tried to suspend a lifetime of sensible caution. “Is it ok if I don’t go first?”

Three other people were watching. Two more experienced fire eaters practised on their own, popping burning torches in their mouths like tic-tacs and flourishing the extinguished wicks before an imagined audience. My real audience waited expectantly. The middle-aged woman gave me a maternal smile of support. A young couple whose tattoos and piercings suggested that they might already belong to the same tribe as the more experienced members of the group, and that this class was part of some kind of initiation, looked on with patient smiles but shuffling feet.    

“I’ll go first,” said the middle-aged woman who I now noticed was wearing a Fuck the Tories T-shirt and Doc Martins’, and was possibly only about ten years older than me. After a couple of business-like questions she executed the move with the self-assurance of Clint Eastwood mounting his horse.

The young couple followed. They filmed each other’s first attempts; hers a competent mimic of the first woman, his a slightly messier affair involving a powerful exhalation when the torch was not fully in his mouth leading to a fireball and an unextinguished torch which he then cockily grip-smothered after a few very rapid pointers from Dan. They laughed at the disgusting lighter fuel flavour of a celebratory hydrocarbon kiss.

Then it was my turn.  

“Nice stable stance, head right back, tongue out; the tongue is the target. Ready?” said Dan, proffering the Zippo.

“Yep,” I lied.

He lit my torch and snapped the lighter shut.

“Deep breath in before you start. Nice and steady. Any problems, just stop. If the torch is in your mouth take it out, or close your mouth, either is fine. Whatever you do just don’t breath in.”

“What would happen if I breathed in?”

“If you took a deep breath in when the torch was in your mouth? That would be bad, very bad. But don’t worry, take a big breath in before you start and you won’t, couldn’t if you wanted to.”

“Right,” I said and sucked in a volume of air that would have impressed Houdini.

Head back, tongue out, I looked up into the dark nightclub ceiling where a withered balloon nestled among the piping of the sprinkler system. I raised the torch above me, focussed on the flame, and began to lower it towards my face.

“Ok, just a second…” I said straightening up and rolling my shoulders as if it was some kind of minor muscular discomfort that had stalled me and not the fear of doing something which seemed indefensibly dangerous. 

“Plenty of time, no pressure,” said Dan taking the torch from me and extinguishing it by carefully wrapping the wick in a fearless hand, a more confident performance of the grip-smother that he had taught the other student. “Try again?”

“Yes,” I said without allowing myself to contemplate the alternative. Whether it was latent bravery, macho pride or a need to get value for money, I had to try again.

“Your form is good; you just need to commit. Get it on your tongue, guide it in, short sharp breath out, done.”

“Right, yes, let’s go again,” I said, taking the torch back in a grip firm enough to suppress a slight tremor.

“Nice and easy. Feeling reluctant to put a burning torch in your mouth is an entirely natural and sensible reaction. The first time will feel strange.”

“Yes, well, usually if I was putting my face this close to a flame it would be because I was about to get some birthday cake.”

“Millenia of evolution has taught human beings to be afraid of fire. What you are about to do will make you quite unusual. I would say, cooler than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population of the Earth.”

“Or quite a lot hotter, if I get it wrong.”

“You won’t. Concentrate and relax.”

I took a deep breath and blinked slowly with a slight nod, as if my eyelids were heavy with self-confidence, hoping to deny to myself and my classmates that I actually possessed the composure of an angry bee.

“We could do the arm one first?” I suggested with a level of sincerity that betrayed my fear.

“It’s up to you, but you were nearly there. I think you’ll get it if you just go for it,” said Dan.

As a child it had taken me weeks of hesitant belly-flopping to learn to dive into a pool. My natural preference was for reading or playing rule-heavy games with other non-divers, not throwing myself face first into water that was deeper than I could stand up in. Ever since, I had spent my life doing my best to avoid situations where I was out of my depth. Situations which felt risky weren’t exciting to me, they were just risky.  

“Ninety-nine point nine-five percent,” said Dan.

I didn’t even eat spicy food.

“Ready?” he said, snapping the Zippo open.

I was scared of bees. Could a grown man who was scared of bees be ready to do this? Was that possible?

Dan lit the torch. I noticed the lighter had a four-leaf clover design on it.

Houdini breath… feet-planted-head-back-tongue-out, thetongueisthetarget, target acquired. Touchdown! It’s in. Breath out.

A ball of flame raced away from my adrenaline-lit face into the dark ceiling of the club.

“Perfect,” said Dan. He took my torch and relit it. He swept it up in front of him with a balletic smoothness and then reversed the motion, sweeping the torch back along the path it had travelled and throwing off the billowing flame which rolled in the air for the beat of a sparrow’s wing and was gone, the torch extinguished, as if a switch had been flipped.

“That’s called a jellyfish. We’ll learn that next.”