In 1983 I am performing in a bar in Beaumont Texas and a heckler yells "do some nigger jokes!" It was so shocking that someone might yell that, I can't quite react. I just stare at him. He yells it again, "I said, do some nigger jokes." I try to joke out of it, by saying he's reading off the club's old joke menu from 1883 and the item has been dropped. He hits the redial button, "Do nigger jokes." I try another escape, saying something about believing people should make fun of their own kind. Let the Jews make fun of the Jews and the blacks make fun of the blacks. That's why I make fun of assholes. Now he's pissed. "Don't you got some nigger jokes?" He's accusing me of coming to the club unprepared. I go after him. It wasn't hard to run him down, he looked like Yosemite Sam and he was stupid even before he got drunk. In two minutes I have not only the whole audience laughing at him, but his date. He finally leaves, alone.

I am feeling mighty superior. I had never run a heckler from the room, but no one deserved the honor more than this guy. I finish the show and head for the bar to get drunk.

The club owner hustles me into the kitchen, "Whatever you want I can bring you here."

I tell him I want to drink in the bar. He explains that Yosemite Sam is out-front waving a gun. He can't afford to let me get shot because, "One more violation and I lose my liquor license." I tell him if I do get shot they have my permission to drag me into the alley and tell the police it happened there.

The bartender brings me drinks and turns on a speaker so I can enjoy the amateur comedy contest that followed our show. Joke after joke features the "N" word to get big laughs. Yosemite Sam was not an aberration, just honest ,and at the wrong show.

I awake in the bartender's trailer twenty miles out of town, stranded because her ex-husband has swiped her truck. She finally manages to get her last ex-boyfriend, living in the next trailer, to give me a long silent ride back to town.

I make it home alive, but no one can say I didn't try to get shot in Texas.