A Joke Written for My Girlfriend

Last week I thought up a joke for Audrey. Not a joke for Audrey to tell as a part of her act. I wrote this joke for Audrey to think it's funny. Here it is.

Preface: Audrey does comedy open-mics. These open-mics are dominated by "bros" who are probably told by their friends "Dude, you're really funny. You should do stand up." The results are exactly what you would expect, especially if what you're expecting is a lot of unfunny date rape jokes. Wait, that's redundant. So I wrote this joke for her since I know how much those jokes agitate her.

When I was younger and more carefree in the world I did some hitchhiking. I spent one entire summer standing by the side of the road with a small "Need a ride" sign. At times the experience was great. Others it got a little hairy.

There was one time a semi pulled over for me and as I was running up to the cab I saw the "Ass, grass or gas: Nobody rides for free" bumper sticker which I was sure they didn't even print anymore. I didn't have a lot of money and what I did have I wanted to spend on weed. So as I was pulling myself up into the cab by the mirror (something I later learned is a faux pas) I thought to myself I would go for the "ass" option and see about calling the truck driver's bluff. I was a good looking 20 year old but noone would ever confuse me as feminine.

Well, the truck driver and I totally fucked. But I must not have been very good at it because at the next rest-stop she still made me buy her a tank of gas.

Is that funny?

I love that joke and not just because I wrote it. I love it because it contains three inversions and one negation. In other words, there are three points where what you would normally expect is flipped on its ear and once where the absurdity of the underlying point is exposed and used to destroy the point itself.

The first point (and it's a sneaky one which isn't revealed until the end) is when the truck driver is a woman. It reminds me of that "brain-teaser" where the son is in a car accident with his dad and yet the doctor at the hospital can't operate on him because the boy is also the doctor's son. Truck drivers are assumed to be men in the same way doctors are.

Secondly the traditional idea of the feminine sex drive is inverted. This is the idea of women wanting sex and wanting random sex outside of a relationship writ large. In the traditional morality, women who want sex and who want non-relationship sex are either weak-willed and easily-manipulable or whores and home-wreckers. Basically there's no room for a woman to act like we easily assume a (male) truck driver does. This joke inverts the traditional idea by giving a (later-revealed) woman that same and equal interest in sex and random anonymous sex at that.

The third inversion (and the root of this joke) is the idea of the male being made into the object of sexuality. The aforementioned date rape jokes are "funny" because if the woman (and these "bros" are never date raping dudes) is made from a subject into an object she loses her humanity and her rights. The reason rape is a crime is because it infringes on the right of an individual to choose their sexual partners and the extent of their sexual activities. However an object doesn't share those rights. So the making of a male into a sexual object (something which could be done to these "bros") makes that denial a two-way street and the "bros" are driving into traffic.

Which is why the negation is my favorite part. It takes the idea of the male as infallible sexual subject and eliminates it completely. The "I" in the joke isn't "the male as sexual god" whose prowess doubles as ascendancy and overwhelms any *cough* complications along the way. The "I" is an inexperienced 20 year old on the side of the road. While the virility of a 20-something male is sanctified under the traditional morality, in reality a truly experienced individual knows it's not something worth sanctifying.

For that reason the entire system is negated. If the value it holds up as the pinnacle of virtue is something of no value at all, then the system itself is of no value at all. That includes the aforementioned "male as sexual god" paradigm used as a justification for the unfunny date rape jokes. Wait, I already said that term was redundant.