Bill Dawes - December 18, 2007

As with any kind of killing, there always has to be a casualty. On this hot desert evening, that casualty was Jamie Kennedy. He had a wee bit of a time following me. It didn't help his cause that he played by the rules and went clean like he was unofficially/officially encouraged/commanded by the USO. It was kind of like a bunch of guys with boners were out there and all of a sudden a brown bear came onstage wearing a funny hat, walking on a striped red and white ball. I love dancing bears, don't get me wrong, but if one popped out in the middle of my favorite YOUPORN.COM video when I was in the middle of a fevered missile command style tug, I wouldn't be thinking "hey, check out that hilarious dancing bear!" and clap; I would be thinking "What the fuck is a goddamned dancing bear doing in my favorite 'Heather Brooke' deepthroat clip!?"

Now, obviously, this analogy can only be extended so far since no one was flogging their dolphin to my set, but you could almost feel the collective balls of the battalions buzzing in a state of Harmonic Convergence; and that wasn't going to sync with a ingenuous, G-rated bit about being an altar boy in Philly. Fortunately, things picked up when Stu stormed on and they started rapping their "Blowin' Up!" tunes, "Circle Circle Dot Dot" and "Rollin' with Saget." Come on, nothing says "hardcore" like Danny Tanner and getting "your cootie shot." Word.

And then Paul Wall came onstage.

Fuck.

It was as if Elvis had been resurrected on the 4th of July and then drove on stage in the "Dag gum Number 3 Car!" It seemed like every one of the 6,000 troops in attendance knew every lyric to his songs, songs which I had only begrudgingly listened to snippets of while browsing celebrity playlists on iTunes. Don't get me wrong, Paul is immensely talented. I guess I just feel a little douchebaggish singing about "Grillz" and "Purple Drink" now that I have shares in a co-op and a 401K.

With the energy still building, Stu summoned "the ladies" on stage to dance. About eight soldier girls immediately got up and started backing their asses up. They backed their asses up against every one of us, the speaker system, the microphone stand - I have never seen such aggressive ass-backing-up in my entire life. Since Paul's set was the finale of the show, we were all on stage and I found myself holding a wireless mic, sporadically yelling out the few words I knew from the refrain, a la "The Beastie Boys" (it's moments like that when you realize just how shitty those silly hebes were as rappers. Seriously. Squirrels? Silly Jews.).

A couple of the ass-backing soldiers had that look in their eyes; that same look that the protagonist had in the "Nestle Knockout." Garbed head to toe in digi-cammie and gear, two previously demur white girls clearly wanted me to suck the butane straight from their Zippos. One did the 'pump up da jam' grind into my patriotically frightened package, while the other one dry humped my leg in what I realized even then as a weird inversion of sex roles. Terrified, I retreated behind the sub woofers. Once I thought I was safe again, I emerged only to find a new pair of undersexed African-American enlistees looking to make me the white crème filling in their libidinous Oreo cookie.

It made me feel guilty to think that I could fly in there (ahhhh.... Business class Lufthansa), make a grand, not go through any basic training, and fecklessly get dry humped by all the horny women on base while the grunts had to watch helplessly from down below. I felt like a fraudulent asshole. I looked at Jamie and Stu from across the stage and I think they felt the same way. We collectively decided to kind of hang in the back and stay away from the dancing perimeter. In response, the ladies put on a little lesbian-lite show for their compatriots.

One of the magical things that Paul does (something, on a different scale, I've seen Dane Cook do at the Laugh Factory) is include people in his material completely on the fly. All of a sudden in the middle of one of his most popular raps, Paul started furiously rapping about "Joey Renteria's 30th birthday party in Los Cerritos" coming up "in two weeks." Then he started rapping about "Stu the Jew" and "Billy D." and we looked at each other like blushing Japanese schoolgirls. l felt like I was something special.

After I introduced Paul to my good friend Tucker Max, Tucker was subsequently blown away when Paul freestyled about his "boy Tucker Max" at a concert in South Padre Island. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was just one of Paul's amazing party tricks and I got a shout-out too, so there. It was almost like running "game." (Yes, Debbie, that IS an impressive card trick, but Mystery does the same thing with ALL the fake-boobied ladies at the Saddle Ranch. You didn't know that? Ooohhh, that's because you have fake boobies and, ergo, are dumb.)

At the very end, we got word that one of the Marines was jonesing to get onstage and battle with Paul. You could tell that the idea wasn't exactly filling up Paul's dick, but he eventually relented, and a gawky, Italian-looking kid from Brooklyn got up, snatched my mic, turned his cap sideways, visor up all K-feddy, and started a pre-rehearsed rap about being a marine in Baghdad... I guess. Truth is I couldn't understand a goddamned word he said, but the troops went ballistic. Most were cheering, some were even rapping along, like it was a rap he had been rehearsing for weeks on end in front of the mirror, and at this point, many of his friends had it memorized through osmosis.

The marine finished his piece and nodded at Paul, who started a freestyle rap about Iraq and how it's chill "inside the wire" -- the term for being inside a military secure base-- and how dangerous it was outside the green zone with a destabilized government and.... WHAT THE FUCK?! I guess he'd been paying attention after all. I almost thought he hadn't been absorbing the socio-political vibe, being too enveloped in his long distance calls to Houston. But here he was calling them "heroes" for braving it "outside the wire." Goddammit, how do you win a rap battle while simultaneously flattering the guy?

The lightest of drizzles started, like a gay God showing his approval for a great show by spritzing us all in a fantastic mist. Once again, I planted myself somewhere inconspicuous and tried simply just to look at the scene:

A truly charmed night emerged from out of the darkness of a desert war.

Seven thousand troops were waving their hands in the air... many ACTUALLY looking like they just didn't care. Ten girls were dancing with bootylicious abandon on the stage. Paul Wall and that skinny Marine with their arms around each other's shoulders in a show of camaraderie, as the two of them rapped in unison the lyrics to his encore single, "Grillz!" A couple of troops sporting actual grills hopped on stage and pointed proudly to their shiny mouths whenever the chorus started. It may possibly be one of the greatest moments of my life. It was an amazing moment for anyone there who was also a fan of happiness.

Watching Paul was also the first time I truly wrestled with the unmitigating truth that a comic is NOT a rock star. Only rock stars are rock stars...unless of course you are a rap star. Then you are rap star AND a rock star.

In short, Paul Wall is magic. If I ever find out something dark about him like he keeps a Jew shackled to the wall in his basement, I might have to off myself.

Shortly after this charmed night , a girl with whom I was in love would be summarily swept off her feet by a rockstar. The "Nestle Knockout" can't hold a candle to a well-tuned emo guitar. A joke can't compete with a song:

"Hey babe, I wrote a song for you. It's about the first time I heard you laugh. Wanna hear it?"

will ALWAYS trump

"Hey babe, I wrote a joke for you. It's about the first time I heard you queef. Wanna hear it?"

Sorry, Dane, you can do the Garden, but you're not Bruce. It'll never happen. It's the rock stars' world and that night I was fortunate enough to live in it.

The show finally wrapped, and we waited, again, in the green room for the picture processing line, formally known as the Meet-and-Greet. I had long since decided this shit was the most depressing part of the trip and loathed sitting there. Not because nobody really gave a shit about me (which they didn't); more because of the vicious efficiency with which the troops were cycled through by the commanding officers. I wanted to hang out with them, but that was impossible.

At one point, a young Puerto Rican kid tapped my shoulder and told me "this girl over here wants to talk to you." He pointed over to a beautiful blonde, blue-eyed girl who looked like a piping hot casserole of apple pie and whore. Now, I get this type of thing all the time at comedy clubs. As a matter of fact, the amount of "WHOO-HOOOS!" I get after a show is directly proportional to the number of propositions I get to "hang out."

"Hanging out" often means getting a drink and making out. That often means blow job. Using the transitive property of algebra, that means WHOO-HOO = BLOW JOB. It's my (almost) unbroken policy NEVER to leave with anyone from a show, even though the option nearly always exists.

"Why does SHE want to talk to me?" I thought to myself. Surely THAT option is not... an option.

Finally, after all the photos were snapped and all the t-shirts and posters were signed, I turned and saw my alcahuete (that's Mexican for "pimp". "Peemp" is also Mexican for "pimp") standing nearby, ready to take me to meet his "friend." She was leaning against a column with a sultry smirk across her face.

"Hey, how you doin'?"

"Hey."

Awkward dot com.

"I'm Bill."

"I know."

Smirkier. Sultier. Lean...ier.

Now, if I were in my early twenties and this was a party, I would already be chewing on her nipples. While I'm no Casanova, or Snoop Dogg, I was also never the rubik's cube geek who read "The Game" and followed the skullduggering douchebaggery of Mystery on VH1 to "kiss-close. " Rejection has never been anything but a funny story to me, so I pretty much step up to the plate swinging for the fences whenever enough blood flows south of my belly button.

There was something about this situation, though, that was just a little...curious.

We stood there for a second looking at each other, like we were auditioning for an Ang Lee movie. What did she want? To flirt? Did she want to do a mirror exercise with me? Surely, she wasn't expecting something more intimate...

Hey babe, come over to the Haji Hotel and stay with me. It's a beautiful suite, just me, you, a Jacuzzi bathtub, Stu, Casper, Paul, Joey Renteria, who's having his 30th birthday party in two weeks, the Captain who's the liaison for the USO, a bodyguard, and two random Iraqi guys who might be tech support.... But we won't even notice they're there baby! Oh yeah, I'm sharing a plastic queen size bed with Jamie. DP? Just a thought. Or we could go into a port-a-pottie and pinch our noses if you want.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asked, the corners of her lips turning in and up slightly in her best impression of the Mona Lisa.

"I don't know," I said back. ZING! I still got it. My voice was surprisingly small, like it was furtively peeking its head just outside my esophagus.

She giggled a knowing giggle.

I couldn't just kiss her, could I? Wouldn't I be breaking military and local Iraqi laws? Could I go be sent to the brig? What the fuck is a "brig?"

"You staying for the party?" she asked.

I acted "cool", kind of shrugging and looking around (if it was the 80's, surely I would have popped my collar), like I was considering the myriad of options that the night held before me. Maybe I was going to catch a movie or get into a karate fight by a bonfire at the beach.

"I don't know. I'm probably just going back to the hotel we're staying at." ("probably?" What a fucking idiot! Like I had a choice.)

I was bemused by the exchange. Is THIS how people have sex in Baghdad? Cryptic crooked smiles, small talk, and head nods? How does one close the chasm between this and getting surreptitiously blown behind, what's the proper nomenclature, "haji alley?" Was there some sort of Senator Craig gay bathroom Morse Code foot signal I was supposed to tap out with my Adidas that was covert soldier for "Go behind the building if you want to suck the oil off my freedom fries!" I had no intention of doing that, but I was eerily drawn into the silence that fell over the awkward shifts of gesture and body language between us.

Eventually, she seductively offered, "Okay, nice to meet you," and we shook hands, her wrist bending upwards, making me think I was supposed to kiss it in a parting salute of chivalry. Unfortunately, the wrist movement coupled with another mind-boggling firm female GI jane kung fu grip only made it seem like she was about to flip me aikido-style, a la Steven Seagal.

I eventually wrenched my throbbing hand free and walked away to the green room to recoup. It was that awkward walk where you know the person you are walking away from is looking at you, so you start walking in a way that you think is cool but actually makes you look like a retard. Your arms start swinging in synchronicity and you develop a mysterious limp and your butthole, in retreat, puckers so much that it feels like you pooped your pants. Just me? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Soon enough, I was being whisked back into the shortbus for the ride back to the hotel. It was like each time we had to move we were in a rush to catch some magic portal before it closed off for all eternity. Simply put, they could have chilled just the slightest bit of fuck out. We were going to sleep. Had the military drafted Mr. Sandman and put him on a tight military schedule in Iraq?

Private, sleep tight!

Sir, yes Sir!

Private, do NOT let me find out you let the bed bugs bite!

Sir, yes Sir, Sgt. Sandman!

As soon as I stepped into the bus, I heard "Bill!" from someone running breathlessly towards me. No, it wasn't the bunker Bettie. It was Kyle's cousin, who wanted to let me know that he had been able to make it in time for the show. I said "Great," we shook hands, and I told him I would let Kyle know that I saw him when I was out here.

Despite the fact that I should have been flattered he came to say goodbye and that it was an honor to do comedy for ANYBODY serving our country, I could only think.... "Why didn't he tell me how AMAZING I was?" As an actor, often times a stranger will approach me and say "Hey, I saw you in suchandsuch!" I will say, "Oh yeah?" expecting that to be the opening sentence of their next paragraph, and then they will just say, "Yeah!" and look at me, nodding. It drives me nuts! It drives all performers nuts! Motherfucker, time to get obsequious! Kiss my ass! Tell me I'm great! Let's be honest, performers only care about two things: attention and respect. Except for respect. Attention is really all we need.

There's a famous joke about an actor who thinks his wife is cheating on him so he hires a private detective. The private detective calls him with the news: "So, we tailed your wife and she met a man for lunch. They were very intimate and kissed and held hands throughout. Then he followed her back to your place with his car and went inside with her. I continued the surveillance to see that the man and your wife were engaged in sexual congress in your bedroom for over two hours."

"That's the worst news I've ever heard in my life," the man says, starting to cry.

"It gets worse," the detective says.

"How could it possibly be worse?!" the man asks.

"The man was your agent!"

The actor brightens suddenly and says, "My agent came over?!"

Once on the bus, Katrina told us the Navy SEALs had to cancel our rendezvous. Apparently, they weren't able to take us off to do some pretend killing because they had to take themselves off to do some actual killing. I didn't really care, though. To be frank, I had entirely forgotten about it. The idea of shooting some small arms, or even heavy ordinance, in the middle of Baghdad seemed slightly less exciting after a show like that night. In fact, as a comic with pacifist tendencies (read: I get laid a lot) and a gentle disposition (read: I have chronic vaginitis), the stage kind was really the only type of killing with which I was ever comfortable.

As a matter of fact, thinking about the potential SEAL adventure, I couldn't help but Scooby-doo-flashback to my brief stint as an officer in training in R.O.T.C . at Princeton: jogging around the perimeter of the campus at 6am every Wednesday singing army cadences, waking all the rich brats from their drunken stupors and Ralph Lauren flannel bedsheets. Minutes into the march, the battalion commander would begin to bark an antiquated cold war chant. I can't specifically recall the exact content of any of the verses, but they were invariably racist, along the lines of: "Killing commies, punching pinks, stabbing japs and shooting chinks! Sound off, one-two...." Or something like that.

We would then call back, a bunch of savvy 17 year-olds at the end of the millennium enthusiastically pretending to adopt an outmoded and xenophobic belief system. Not unironically, half the squad was fellow engineers (read: Asian) who looked around bewildered at the cadence. On one such crisp wintry morning, fellow aerospacer Wang Dong - who was probably even short-sheeted by Asians at camp with that two-pronged phallus of a name -- yelled back "This is some fucking burrrrrrshit!!!"

Back at the hotel, we settled into our little themed room -- the "TIKRIT SUITE." I'm still not sure what made our room Tikrit-ish, as the stark juxtaposition of the army cots and the ubiquitous gold painted plaster sobered up the garishness of the whole place. Maybe the room was inspired by the Tikrit region or maybe "Tikrit" is just the Arabic word for "shitty design." Immediately, I fell into bed and told myself to go to sleep. Unfortunately, Jamie, in a hyper-caffeinated state, had other ideas.

First of all, he made a point to inform everyone of the exactitude of the itchiness about and within his asshole.

He decided that, in honor of a newly democratic Iraq, he would put it to a vote about whether or not he should use the Tikrit suit turbo bidet to alleviate said itchy asshole. Everyone was skeptical, convinced that Iraqi anal microbes would wreak havoc on his digestive system. Not surprisingly, Everyone also encouraged him to do it. For some reason, Jamie thought this was a project or something, so he started walking around in his tighty-whities preparing for the makeshift enema. He was like Rocky warming up before a fight.

This isn't funny... necessarily, but comedy all lies in the contrast and the context. During the debate, two very professional-looking Iraqi guys were in the room sitting vigilantly in a couple of armchairs. Jamie thought it would be unfair not to include the local electorate, so he tried his best to enlist their opinions as well. It was unclear if they were just there until we went to sleep or if they were our guards for the night (to this day I have no idea who they were or why they were there). The only thing that WAS clear was that they were not comfortable with talk of "itchy assholes" and such things. They seemed particularly perturbed with the idea of a naked Jamie Kennedy two feet away from them casually chatting with droopy Fruit of the Looms that looked like dirty diapers.

Jamie went over to them in their chairs and instructed them to get in bed like a Jewish matriarch. To everyone's amazement, they stiffly got up and laid Nosferatuesquely in their bunk beds. Almost angrily, Jamie took off their shoes. Jamie then vehemently demanded that they "take those pants off!" They looked, for a second, very confused; like they had been ordered to follow Jamie's commands. It was so deliciously gay. It seems like you can't get a bunch of white kids together without a little bit of gay jest happening.

With a flourish, Jamie finally took on the bidet (in a fit of generosity, he left the door open in case anybody wanted to see him teabag the fountain of water). He then came out stark naked, demanding once more that the Iraqis "take those pants off!" Jamie continued to talk to them for the next half hour between trips to the bidet, admonishing them the whole time with increasing volume that they really had to "take off those pants!" Stu mischievously devil laughed while Casper, annoyed, tried to sleep as Jamie provocatively gallivanted (pale ass almost always exposed) amidst the pair of confused, motionless Iraqi men. I was unsuccessfully trying to sleep the whole time, unclear about whether to give in to my anger or laughter.

Finally, the lights went out. Not so fast.

That was Paul Wall's cue to start squirting lotion at everyone in the room and Casper's cue to fart. Squirt. Safety. Squirt. Safety. Pause. Safety. Squirty. That's when Paul started telling stories about his Houston grill shop in his inimitable patois. He was near delirious, though, so no one knew what the fuck he was talking about. After it seemed like silence was going to envelope the land, the ever ebullient Joey Renteria inadvertently brought the house down by reminding us how much fun the barbecue for his 30th birthday party was going to be.

Looking back at it, it's not really funny, per se, or even that interesting. I have never described that night in conversation to anyone because I'm sure I would laugh until the menisci of snot bubbles burst around my nostrils and the person with whom I was conversing would look at me like I was retarded before, finally and mercifully, saying, "I guess you had to be there."

As a comic, I don't laugh much anymore. When I do, it's more laughter of appreciation at a clever joke. My days of pounding the floor and gasping for breath seem, sadly, far behind me. Maybe it's because I'm jaded. Maybe it's because my humor has evolved. Or maybe the natural elixir of endorphins and opiates required to release my body into an abandon of unadulterated hysterical laughter has been drained.

I don't know.

I only know that it was good to be in the Tikrit suite in Baghdad that night, lying in a surrealistically flamboyant bed, listening to the cacophony of overgrown chidren, face in the pillow, crying sideways tears, laughing a silent laugh too visceral for oxygen. It was probably the same cathartic laugh we were all experiencing, slightly overtired and slightly overwhelmed, and always a little bit terrified underneath it all. I was 12 again with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

I knew it was also the end of the road: for my tour in Baghdad, my tour with Paul Wall, and, after a year, my tour with Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone. In two days, I would never see many of the people in that room again. But, this night, we were all lifelong friends who would stay in touch and stay cool and it was stupid and it was gayyyyy and summer camp 1986, and it was, also, impossibly perfect.

At some point I fell asleep, listening to a medley of cartoonish snoring, my tears caked like copper tailings on my desert-kissed skin....

Posted by Bill Dawes at 11:19 AM