Tag Archives: Dirty Joke

Bitten by a Black Widow… on his Genitals

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: Electrician for SoCal Edison
Residence: Palmdale, CA
Performance Date: 4/4/23
Primary Language: English

Context

My father has been an electrician for SoCal Edison for the past two decades. His job involves traveling around the Southern California desert inspecting isolated electrical substations. He is an avid oral storyteller, and his stories often come from the blue-collar line of work that he finds himself in. This is one of such stories about his good work friend who suffered a black widow bite to his testicles while using a porta potty in one of these desert stations. A white man leathered by the sun, my father colors the story by imitating the Mexican accent of his friend, including certain Mexican Spanish slang terms like “cabrón.” This is a story I’ve heard many times, but it didn’t fail to make me cry with laughter during this recording. The story has become a legend among electricians in Southern California, which is what made me think of it for this archive. He told me this story over dinner at my family home in this particular iteration.

Text

SS: The Legend of Hector the Electrician. They were working out at a, at a facility. He had another guy with him. And we were, we had a crew of about eight people, ten people. And they were working together, and I was working somewhere else with somebody else. And they were out in the middle of the desert. And if we work safely for a month, we get a safety lunch, paid [for us to go] out to lunch somewhere. And so I had just gotten to Home Depot for something. I was sitting the parking lot, getting ready to leave. And I get a call from Hector.

SS: And he says, “Hey, cabrón. Just forget about the safety lunch this month.” I said, “What did you do?” And he goes, “Okay, I got bit by a spider.”

SS: And I said, that’s the first question, right? “Where’d you get bit?” He said, “In the balls.” And I said, “No, come on. Just stop messing with me. Tell me what happened.”

SS: “[Imitating his friend] No, cabrón, it’s true!” And I started laughing so hard. I couldn’t drive, I had to stop. I was laughing so hard. And he says “It’s not funny!” Yes, I’m still laughing, and I said, “Well, how’d you know it was a spider? I guess both you and that spider felt a little prick.”

SS: So he was working with this other guy. And his, this guy’s name was Roberto. And he said, “Well, I was lucky I had Roberto along to suck out the poison.” ‘Berto’s in the background saying, “Hell no, that’s not true!” So anyway, he went into an outhouse and sat down on the outhouse in the middle of this dusty desert and there was a black widow spider up underneath–up underneath the toilet rim–barely. Black widow spiders don’t like being ‘teabagged.’ So he did it and he got bit. So we got pictures of him being carried off of an ambulance with a big-big-bag of ice on his balls on a gurney, so, and he was off for a couple days. And then the jokes started flying around, about, because we all knew his wife, about, you know, what happens now, you know? Instead of shooting, you know, [explicit gesture] when he’s, when they’re like getting intimate now, is he like, sticking on the walls? [laughter]

SS: And, and, so you know, it was a good laugh and then and then when he came back, we got his hard hat, we put spiders on it, we put like spider webs all over his desk and everything else. And and and we just, we just made it all up.

SS: So he came back, and kind of a full circle to the story: Sometime later, I was working with a different group of people and I was working in this office and there was these contractors. They’re doing something entirely different–but electrical–and we were talking about, you know, different things we’ve seen, you know, rattlesnakes and things, you know, these guys work outside in the field also. And one of the guys was just sitting there eating lunch and one of those contractors I’d never met before says, “[imitating] There’s this legend about this guy out in the desert that got bit in the balls by a black widow spider. But it’s probably an old wive’s tale.”

SS: And I go, “So let me tell you a story!” [laughter] So that’s a story of Hector and the black widow spider.

Analysis

I chose to include this story in the archive because it is direct evidence of how a true story can become legend. This is indeed a true story; my father works directly with Hector, and I have been over to his house–which is in my neighborhood–for pool parties many times. But the story had the perfect makings to become legend among SoCal Edison electricians and contractors.

The environment, subject, and folklore group are key in understanding the spread of this story as legend. Electricians and contractors in Southern California often come into contact with dangerous wildlife like rattlesnakes and black widow spiders regularly, especially when they are working out in the isolated desert. Thus, the fear of being bitten by a venomous spider is something that resonates among this group, and the idea of being bitten in the testicles is something that is particularly fantastical. It is so fantastical, in fact, that it escaped the boundaries of “fact,” separating from its original subject to become a “wive’s tale.” Instead, the subject becomes a nondescript male electrician, someone who can easily be identified with among the folk group that shares the legend. The legend itself might serve as a warning to electricians who find themselves using porta potties in remote locations to always check under the seat before sitting down.

Thumb War Masturbation Joke

Nationality: Puerto Rican
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: February 16, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text

“One, two, three, four,

I declare a thumb war.

Five, six, seven, eight,

I use this hand to masturbate.”

The joke is performed in the context of a traditional “thumb war,” in which two opponents hold hands and attempt to press down the other person’s thumb.

Context

AD is a college student from New Jersey. He first heard this joke in middle school, around sixth or seventh grade. “It was right in the beginning of puberty,” he explained. “So nobody really knew what was going on.”

Thumb war tournaments at recess and lunchtime were already a big thing at AD’s school, and there was one boy who would perform the joke. “He was always the kid that would say that kind of stuff… Everybody was scared to say that word, but he would say it,” AD explained. “Everybody would get around him and wait for him to get somebody new. We would go up to the younger kids and do it, too.”

“If you didn’t know, you would freak out the first time you heard it.” The trick is that you are holding hands when the ‘punchline’ drops. “That’s the fun part,” AD said.

AD noted that the joke was exclusively performed among boys.

“It’s stupid now, but back then it was the funniest thing.”

Analysis

AD’s joke stood out to me largely because I had never heard of it before. Another male-identifying friend of mine from California had an experience almost identical to that of AD, even from across the country. As someone who has been socially conditioned as a woman, it made me curious about the differences between boys’ and girls’ experience of the social construction of their sexuality.

It is not surprising that such a joke was popular as AD and his peers entered puberty. Jokes have a normalizing function, providing a safe space for pubescent boys to explore their sexuality.

However, the boys’ self-policing contained the joke within their gender, and I am unaware of an equivalent masturbation joke for girls at this age. I see this discrepancy as deeply reflective of the differences in the social construction of boys’ and girls’ sexuality during puberty. Masturbation is an action — an act of agency over one’s body and sexuality. That the normalization of this action is denied to girls of the same age thus denies them a form of agency over their sexuality.

In a larger context, the deficit of sexual jokes of any nature among pubescent girls may contribute to a lack of knowledge about their sexuality, and feelings of shame due to missing out on the normalizing function of such jokes. This can lead to misinformation or shame about sex and sexual development, rendering teenage girls vulnerable to sexual abuse. 

I would argue that folklore in the form of sexual jokes can function as a form of sex education and that pubescent girls may benefit from sharing this folklore amongst each other — especially with relatively harmful jokes, such as this one. (Note how AD now finds the joke “stupid.”)

Lastly I would comment on the adult policing of pubescent sexuality. It really stood out to me that only one boy was bold enough to say the word ‘masturbation’ in a public context, under the potential surveillance of teachers. Such jokes are seen as taboo and ‘dirty’ even as they can have a positive function. I am curious how the awareness of adult policing of sexuality at this age may contribute to shame surrounding sexuality for both boys and girls equally.

Elephant Baseball Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC Student Housing
Performance Date: 2/20/23
Primary Language: English

Main Performance:

BH: What do you do to an elephant with three balls?

Me: What?

BH: You walk him and pitch to the rhino.

Me: *Chuckling* I don’t get it

BH: It’s a baseball joke.

Me: OH haha… that’s good I like it!

Context: The informant is from San Diego and remembers hearing this joke as a child from his dad. He also didn’t get it at first, so his Dad told it to him multiple times.

Thoughts/Analysis: This joke plays upon many themes that are present in both American and global culture. Firstly, the set up sets the expectation for the listener that the joke is going to be a dirty one, as any use of the word balls in the context of a joke is most likely going to mean testicles. The punchline, however, works because it subverts the expectation of what “balls” mean in the first place. Additionally, it conjures up the idea that an elephant is playing baseball, which is an absurd and silly idea. The joke also relies upon the listener to be a baseball fan, or at least have base level knowledge of the rules, in order to understand that a fourth ball would be a “walk”. One last thing about this joke is that it contains the idea that those on the same team would be animals from the same region, perhaps alluding to American tendencies to have communities of similar ethnic origin.

Dirty Dentist Joke

Nationality: Former Soviet Union/Ukranian/Russian
Age: 50
Occupation: Business Owner
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/10/18
Primary Language: Russian
Language: English

Main Piece: [Dirty] Joke

Original:

Женщина идет к дантисту в местной клинике. Когда она идет по коридору, она ошибочно входит в кабинет гинеколога, понимает, что это не то место, и идет к следующей двери. Она садится на стул дантиста. Входит доктор, сильно пахнущий водкой. Он подходит к ней и говорит: «Ок, открывай!» Она открывает рот. Он говорит: «Ок, немного шире!» она открывает рот шире. Он восклицает: «Эй, у тебя там зубы!»

Phonetic:

Zhenshchina idet k dantistu v mestnoy klinike. Kogda ona idet po koridoru, ona oshibochno vkhodit v kabinet ginekologa, ponimayet, chto eto ne to mesto, i idet k sleduyushchey dveri. Ona saditsya na stul dantista. Vkhodit doktor, sil’no pakhnushchiy vodkoy. On podkhodit k ney i govorit: «Ok, otkryvay!» Ona otkryvayet rot. On govorit: «Ok, nemnogo shire!» ona otkryvayet rot shire. On vosklitsayet: «Ey, u tebya tam zuby!»

Translation:

A woman goes to the dentist at the local clinic. As she’s walking through the hall, she mistakenly walks into the gynecologist’s office, realizes it is the wrong place, and goes to the next door. She sits down in the dentist’s chair. A doctor walks in, smelling strongly of vodka. He comes up to her and says “Ok, open wide!” She opens her mouth. He says, “Ok, a little wider!” she opens her mouth wider. He exclaims, “Hey, you have teeth down there!”

 

Background Information:

  • Why does informant know this piece?

He likes to tell jokes and learns them wherever he can.

  • Where did they learn this piece?

He learned this joke at a party.

  • What does it mean to them?

He thinks this is a hilarious joke.

 

Context:

  • Where?

At a party or other social gathering.

  • When?

Whenever it is appropriate to tell a joke.

  • Why?

In order to amuse people and make some people uncomfortable

 

Personal Thoughts:

I’ve heard this joke since I was a small child, but I only understood that a drunk gynecologist accidentally ended up in the dentist’s office and why that is amusing when I grew a lot older. These kinds of jokes are very common at Russian parties and gatherings. The most popular jokes are as always, the most inappropriate.

The Blowjob Frog

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

The source was told the following joke by an Irishman, while he was on a family vacation in Martinique in the Caribbean. He believes it has origins in Ireland. He generally only tells this joke when he’s in a group of other men, he would only tell it in the company of women if multiple people were sharing dirty jokes.

The Blowjob Frog

A wife is out looking for an anniversary present for her husband. She’s walking by various stores looking in shop windows for something he’s really going to like, but she’s having trouble finding anything, right? But then she walks past a pet shop, and there’s a sign out front that says: ‘Blowjob Frogs, 5$’.

So she goes into the shop, and says to the guy who runs it, “Blowjob Frogs?” And he says, “Blowjob Frogs”. She asks what they do, and he tells her its pretty self explanatory, right? They give blowjobs. So she thinks its funny and that her husband will like it, so she buys it for him.

That night the husband and wife have a lovely, romantic dinner at their home. And they exchange presents. He opens his and he’s surprised. “A frog?” he asks, “A blowjob frog” she replies. They laugh, and put the frog in a box with some water so it’ll be alright until they figure out what to do with it in the morning. And they spend a passionate night together in the bedroom, best sex they’ve had in years.

She wakes up in the middle of the night, and she sees that the bed is empty, the husband’s gone, right? Then she hears the clattering of pots and pans in the kitchen. So she gets up to investigate, and when she gets into the kitchen, she finds her husband in there, with the blowjob frog on the counter.

So she says, “What are you doing in here?”

And then he says, “If I can teach this frog how to cook, your ass is outta here!”

 

This joke is funny on several levels. First it plays on the common husband/wife stereotypes, and implies that a man really only keeps a woman around for home cooked meals and blowjobs. Also, bestiality is definitely a major taboo, and freaks a lot of people out, so the joke allows people to discuss it. It would also make sense if the joke really does have Irish origins, because it might be more acceptable there than in America, which still tends to be fairly Puritan, and uncomfortable with sex.