After all the photo ops and autograph signing, the Captain ushered us back to our waiting short bus to get some "grub" and then head off to "Camp Victory" for the second show of the day. Within minutes of leaving Camp Liberty, we found ourselves winding through more nondescript, muddy trails carved out between the T-walls. We were all buzzing from a good show, and siphoning off the endorphin rush into sarcastic slams against one another, particularly Casper. With each putdown, he would smirk angrily from beneath the odd juxtaposition of his watery blue Frodo Baggins eyes and his double-pierced brow. It was too tempting and we were too high. Inevitably, our ADD-riddled brains wandered over to the stoic side of the bus where the captains sat. An affable and attractive female captain, Katrina Echele, was telling Stu that she wanted to go to FIDM (Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising) to study when she was done with her current tour.

"Oh my God, FIDM?" Stu ejaculated.

"Yes," Katrina confirmed.

"You know how many SLUTS go to FIDM?"

Katrina answered the question with a stunned and silent expression.

Undaunted, Stu soldiered on. "You know how many famous porn stars end up coming out of FIDM?"

Everyone turned their heads to witness the slow, painful digestion of shoelace and sneaker. No matter what Stu said, his shit shovel only seemed to stuff more Adidas into his gullet.

"I mean, not YOU, obviously. You're obviously not a whore, but I'm just saying A LOT of the women there are like total sluts and do porn. I literally know like four porn stars out of FIDM."

It was as cringe-worthy as watching an anaconda swallow a goat, inch by inch.

Jamie came to the rescue in his inimitable way. "What the fuck are you talking about, Stu?" It was not an actual question. It was more of a rhetorical question that is also its own answer, along the lines of, "Are you fucking retarded?" Fortunately for us bystanders, Stu thought Jamie actually wanted further elucidation on the number of whores who were educated at the esteemed Fashion Institute in downtown LA.

"I'm serious, Jamie, remember that porn star I used to hook up with? She went there. Like, her coworkers went. That place is like a slut factory....I mean, you're married, this clearly has nothing to do with you, Ma'am."

It was like when Isaiah Washington vehemently denied his homophobia by yelling, "I never called T.R. a FAGGOT!" In much the same vein, Stu was incapable of simply stoppling his mouth. He just kept trying to cover his ass with apologetic turdlets. Being a person who finds himself both chronically troubled and in trouble, I took great pleasure in lacing my fingers behind my head, leaning back, and enjoying the awkward squirming of someone other than me for a change.

Stu finally exhausted the law of diminishing returns and stopped talking to Katrina, attempting to shrug it off like it was a cocktail party faux pas. We would have NONE of that; so, as his good friends, we proceeded to do everything possible to maximize how shitty he felt.

"How could you, Stu? This is a nice lady! What's wrong with you? I can't believe you!" and so on and so forth, concealing our wicked mirth as best as we could.

Discreetly, Katrina leaned over to Tracy and had a long sidebar as we rocked through the bemired trails in titillating silence. Stu put on his headphones. Paul Wall scraped his nostrils like he was getting the last portions of icing out of a Duncan Hines can. Casper called "Safety."

Finally, we arrived outside the Camp Victory mess hall. We fell out of the bus, video cameras trained on Saddam's famous conical "bat houses" (yes, cones chockful o' bats) and anything else that might spark an idea for a joke. Off to the side of the parking lot a lone palm tree drooped over to the left in a windless imitation of a tree in a hurricane. It looked remarkably like a sad phallus. Stu blurted out, "Look, it's Jamie's penis!" Never satisfied that he's being adequately heard, he increased his volume: "Hey, look, JAMIE'S PENIS!"

Jamie laughed at the reference to his dog leg left, the subject of the comedy rap song "Crooked Stick." In a flash, Tracy drew Stu aside and spoke quietly to him over by some parked Hummers. I never quite got what he was told, but I'm sure it had something to do with being quieter when comparing the local flora to Jamie's penis (later I found out he was also told not to insinuate that a captain in the army was a "whore"). We quickly and giddily gathered around Stu after the rebuke like retards around a bowl of Jolly Ranchers. Trying to make Stu feel better, one of the privates (not Jamie's penis), a young black guy with a big smile and an inevitable stash of weed under his bunk, put his arm around Stu like a frat boy and coolly started to explain Stu's mistake.

He started, "You see, man, you gotta understand the way it is around here--"

"Stand down, private! " It was Katrina, the future non-whore FIDM student.

"I'm just--"

"STAND DOWN!!!" Katrina snapped. The arm and the smile vanished as the black soldier stepped away from Stu and snapped himself into rigid attention under Katrina's withering gaze. She slowly positioned herself close to him, standing a full foot shorter than the man. Katrina stared him down from head to toe as he uttered "Yes, Ma'ams" to her barely audible inquisitions.

It was intense. It was humiliating. Sucka!

After what seemed like several minutes, she abruptly turned, smiled, and waved us into the mess hall. I couldn't help but feel that some of her anger towards Stu was being (mis)directed down a comfortable and organized path of aggression toward lower ranking military personnel. Clearly, she had no idea how to address her grievance with Stu other than telling Tracy that he was pissing her off, but she could effectively dress down a lower ranking officer with precision and clarity.

We entered the dining facility as giddily as third graders returning from recess after a fight during kickball. It was an appropriate feeling considering "The Mess Hall" seemed like a huge public school cafeteria. It was noisy, bright, with that same sloppy-joe-beef/Clorox smell that seems to permeate all cafeterias. Throughout the entire room, football, hockey and baseball banners hung down from the ceiling in a festive manner. It looked like the grand hall of a Hogwarts post-quidditch tournament. There was food everywhere, a different section for every style of cuisine: Indian, Thai, Italian, Chinese, Sushi, Middle-Eastern, and even a little American. Hundreds and hundreds of muscled, jovial, and loud soldiers were walking around, trays heaped with every type of entrée imaginable. The look of the place made me feel a little bit better about the current state of the war. The closet Republican in me couldn't help but think "Go, Halliburton!"

Of course, my mind had to ferret out the most depressing aspect of the whole place and fixate on that. Beyond the hurly-burly and aggressive American bustle, I couldn't help but laser in on the servers--little quiet and still mocha men, bedecked in humble white server's outfits and white hats. I asked Tracy about them and she said they were "Iraqi civilians" hired by the US Military. I don't know too much about "Iraqi civilians" because they are rarely featured in US Weekly or TMZ, but I found myself inordinately curious.

I wanted to know what their deal was. Did they like us? Did they used to be prominent doctors, lawyers, porn stars? Were they considered turncoats? Where do they go after this? I felt like I had found the Oompa Loompas in the Chocolate Factory. I wanted to talk to them. I felt like a tourist from Idaho in Harlem seeing black babies for the first time. I wanted to say "Lookit, lookit" and point at them. Maybe this sounds horrible, but it was hard not to think about. The juxtaposition of size, uniform, and color alone between them and the troops was enough of a sight gag by itself. Add the sociopolitical underpinnings and you have a cable sitcom (too edgy for network).

I brought my tray up to the American cuisine section and looked into a particularly sad face I imagined had a story. Maybe it involved death and destruction. Maybe it involved palace feasts and harems. Now he wears a paper hat and scoops Freedom Fries into bowls.

I smiled broadly at him and said, "Thank you," as sincerely as I could. His countenance sat somewhere between "I could give a shit" and "Why are you talking to me?" I took my food, wanting to compliment him for the meal. All I could come up with was a glance at my grilled cheese followed by a disingenuous "mmmmm."

I walked away toward the beverage fridges feeling stupid, and suddenly heard my name from across the hall.

"Bill Dawes?" a soldier approached me. "Yes," I said, as I grabbed my Nesquik chocolate milk.

"I'm Kyle Fincham's cousin, he told me you'd be here," he said.

Kyle Fincham, a fellow comic at the New York Laugh Factory, told me weeks ago to look up his cousin once I got to Baghdad. I was like, "What do you mean, 'look him up!' How am I supposed to do that?" He insisted I try and I rolled my internal eyeballs when I told him "I would do my best." Of course, I had completely forgotten about it all until right then.

"Holy shit, yeah, were you at the show?"

"No, but I'm gonna try to make the one tonight. I got guard duty, but I'm going to try and run by after."

"Awesome, man, well, say hey after."

He said he would, we shook, and he walked away. I guess Baghdad was a pretty small town after all.

I sat down across from Paul Wall and watched him pray before eating his meal. He was the most gracious, thankful, genuine person I think I had ever met. This realization quickly led to thoughts about ways I myself could be a better person. Scramble as they might, these thoughts just couldn't get a foothold in my mind. It was like the neurons carrying these thoughts on their back quickly got winded jumping over synapses and said, "Fuck it!" Within 30 seconds, I was thinking about what the little Southern blonde corporal at the next table looked like nekkid. I'll be a better person...tomorrow.

I was further distracted when Tracy sat down next to me. Seemingly randomly, she started talking about the venue for the show that night, which was supposed to be packed with 7,000 troops. That would easily be the largest crowd I had ever performed in front of PLUS they were all packing. I was starting to get butterflies.

Then Tracy lowered the boom. She leaned into me and lowered her voice a little bit.

"Hey, Bill, I wanted to talk to you about that Puerto Rican joke..." She started. Awwwwww, shit. Here it comes. I should have known.

"What about it?" I played dumb.

"Well, I would advise you against performing it tonight."

"Why?" I instantly bristled.

"It's a much larger audience tonight and there will be A LOT of women there."

"So?"

She took a pause and sighed. Clearly, there was something she was trying to say and there was a Persian Gulf of communication between us. I wasn't being a dick (okay, maybe I was partly being a dick), I was really curious what she meant.

"You have to understand that there is no difference between men and women here. They are soldiers and they are treated the same way. The U.S. Army does everything it can in order to ensure that."

"What do you mean?" (Once again being a hybrid of dick and genuinely curious.)

Tracy shifted in her seat, clearly feeling uncomfortable with both the subject matter and the need to explain it to me.

"Things LIVE here after you leave," she finally continued. "You can tell a joke that can have a life afterwards. Some of these women might have to live with the repercussions of the joke for months to come."

I nodded in faux-understanding. At the core, I really didn't know what the fuck she was talking about. On one level, I guess, she was saying, "Hey, a joke about fisting a white chick in the rectum might make some women uncomfortable." But on another level, I couldn't help but feel a certain hint of pre-WWII Nazi book-burning mentality in her words. Was she insinuating that the troops shouldn't be exposed to jokes and thoughts that might make their minds run rampant? If that was the case, was all R and X-rated comedy material banned from the DVDs they bought, the magazines they read, and the internet they perused?

I looked up and saw FOX NEWS on the flat-panel TV mounted on the cement support to my left. I definitely got the feeling they never had it tuned to The Daily Show on Comedy Central. I took a second to absorb what I was being told: although previously, I had been told explicitly that I could go as Apeshitty as humanly possible in war-torn Baghdad, I was now being "advised" not to do one of my favorite jokes because...the U.S. Army is breeding hermaphrodites and jokes are like the AIDS virus in 1980s San Francisco? Something still wasn't really adding up for me. Was I being given an order? Tracy kind of addressed it in a very shoulder-shruggy, lunch-convo manner, but what was really going on?

I decided to gently press the issue.

"I thought the policy was that we were allowed to pretty much be as filthy as we wanted once we got here?"

"Oh, you can be filthy. I don't have a problem with dirty material. It's just we should be careful with the female contingency and remember that things have a life."

"Okay."

I decided to let it go and went back to my pasta primavera (yes, I combine as many cuisines as possible when I dine in a foreign country to ensure the most interesting diarrhea concoctions). I opted to have the rest of the conversation strictly inside my head. So FILTH was okay as long as it didn't make women uncomfortable....Hmmm. It's not like the Nestle Knockout was a "rape" or "incest" joke. Compared to the infamous Aristocrats joke, it's actually pretty tame (oh yeah, it's also different because it's funny). I don't murder anyone or cornhole my mother with a dead fetus in the joke. And it DEFINITELY wasn't a rape joke! If anything, the only one who gets raped in the bit is ME. I thought about fellow comic Russ Maneve and one of his classic crowd quips: "Is anyone here getting laid tonight?" (smattering of applause) "I KNOW I'm getting laid tonight because I'm a rapist." (shock, dismay, laughter). Another comic I work with sometimes comments on the DUKE Lacrosse case, remarking that "raping a stripper is like getting extra food at an all-you-can-eat buffet."

Now, I'm not saying that you have to find those jokes funny. I think the stripper joke is more mean-spirited than funny, but people laugh so it fucking counts, right? And if people are disturbed, so be it. I am one of those people who think that the whole point of art is to disturb, and if EVERYONE likes you, clearly you are doing something wrong. There was something very integral to the whole reason I even DO standup that was being challenged by Tracy's cryptic message. And by that, I'm not decrying some First Amendment freedom of speech platform. I'm definitely not going to on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and say something like, "Hey there woman in the front row, your pussy is a nigger!" I get it--FCC, children, Midwestern housewives and Nielsen ratings. But this was a goddamned war zone! In a broadly hypothetical and extrapolated sense, weren't these people here so that I COULD say whatever the fuck I wanted to? I think charred bodies and bullet wounds are going to be living with them a lot longer than stupid jokes about oversexed kindergarten teachers. So, they could face Al-Qaeda and enemy fire but not the danger of a horny white girl?

I ate the rest of my lunch in silence, still intrinsically missing something and still unsure how I felt about what I had been told. As I picked up my tray to empty into the garbage, I decided that I would lose the joke and go with a different closer. I was shoveling my refuse into the bin when an African American major who had been sitting at the table with us sidled up to me.

"Hey man, I was there at the 3 o'clock show. That joke was hilarious."

"Which?"

"The Hershey Punch one or whatever it's called."

I laughed, "Oh, thanks, man."

"If there's anybody who needs to laugh, it's those guys out there. Don't listen to her. Just do it."

He then slapped my back and walked off.

He IS a higher-ranking officer, I thought, doesn't that count for something?

I stood there with my empty tray and mulled over my options for a long moment. This was tough. Finally, I made up my mind once and for all!...I would get another frozen yogurt and try the Szechuan shrimp.

Posted by Bill Dawes at 1:29 PM

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