There’s nothing funny about Mace. I’m talking about pepper spray, of course, and not the rapper (there are plenty of funny things about him). Sure, no one talks about it anymore because Tasers are the popular thing now, but Mace can still mess you up pretty badly. There’s something to be said about the old fashioned ways of hurting people; they might be outdated, but I’ll be damned if they don’t work. Just because no one uses enormous wooden clubs anymore doesn’t mean I want to be on the receiving end of one.

I have heard so many horror stories about people screwing around with Mace and regretting it.

For example, I have one friend who actually wanted his friends to spray him in the face on the condition that they surprise him and get it on film.

Of course, afterwards he realized it was an awful price to pay for a funny video, but at least now he knows. On Friday night I had the pleasure of witnessing yet another friend learn the hard way that Mace is nothing to play around with.

My friend and I were walking around Federal Hill with his girlfriend when she dropped her keys on the pavement. She carries Mace on her key chain, and when the container hit the ground it popped out of its casing and rolled across the sidewalk.

My friend, being the gentleman that he is, picked it up for her and offered to try to fit it back into its shell. We watched nervously as he fiddled with the black plastic vile and finally pressed it back into place. It went in without incident, but we all felt the need to do a test spray to make sure it was working properly and also because we thought it would be cool. What harm could there be in spraying a little bit into the night air and then walking briskly in the opposite direction?

Probably not much, but when that went well, my friend’s girlfriend wanted a test spray of her own. That, too, went well and we were all on our way. We all stopped to urinate in someone’s backyard before the drive home.

Not five minutes into the ride, my friend turns down the radio and demands silence from everyone in the car.

“So… I don’t want to alarm anyone,” he began. “But my penis burns. A lot.”

We all laughed because there is nothing funnier than an awkward penis comment. As the laughter died down, though, his girlfriend spoke up.

“I was just getting ready to say, my nose kind of burns!”

We all laughed again. They looked at me, but I had nothing to add (thank God).

On the ride home, their respective burns kept getting worse and worse as we tried to figure out where we had gone wrong with the Mace.

Ten minutes in: “My dick is on fire. It feels like a dragon is eating my cock.”

That’s when it hit us. We realized that, obviously, our bathroom break before the ride home had probably been a bad idea. I guess playing with mace and then handling your junk can have consequences. Who knew?

Thirteen minutes in: “It’s so hot that I would fuck a polar bear. I’m not kidding.”

We made it home after a few more inappropriate animal references and everyone went to wash themselves clean of any Mace residue. No one suffered any lasting discomfort, but it really goes to show you how dangerous that stuff is. If a chance contact like that feels like being fellated by a dragon, imagine what a full blast to the eyes would feel like.

I was sitting on the couch the next morning when my friend and his girlfriend came downstairs.

“Not to be vulgar,” she said. “But we had sex last night. And it burned.”