God, No!

by Penn Jillette

  I booked Extreme Elvis for a party at my private home. I set up a huge stage, sound system, and lights in my courtyard and invited about a hundred and fifty people, about 135 percent of whom showed up. I booked friends to play all day as opening acts, and Goudeau was there making Elvis deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

  The party started at about noon, and Extreme Elvis hit the stage around two o’clock the next morning. His show is wonderful. “Every generation gets the Elvis they deserve,” he explained, and he gave us that. It was very intense. People who were afraid of naked fat guys and urine were on the second-story catwalk, and the real boys were down front. Extreme Elvis was funny, challenging, inspired, beautiful, and just amazing. We got so much more than we deserved.

  Extreme Elvis and I had planned that after his first set, he would take a break before his second set, right before sunrise. I would turn off all the power at the Slammer—not just all the lights, but all the power. No electricity. I have a rather large lap pool, and we were going to put his band in the pool, acoustic guitars and bongos held by musicians floating on rafts while his backup singers were treading water.

  The electric set had been confrontational, the theater of cruelty. He’d scared people and made them uncomfortable, and everyone expected the second set to be heavier, like he was going to shit on everyone or something. It was heavier, but in a very different way. We had tiki lamps and candles around the pool. There was moonlight. The guitarist strummed softly from the air mattress floating in the pool and Extreme Elvis, naked, sang “Love Me Tender” as he entered the pool like an apparition. Once the whole band was in the pool, I joined them. Elvis weighs more than me, but with the help of buoyancy, I went under between his legs and got him on my shoulders. By candle and tiki light he sang the most gentle and beautiful songs from on top of my shoulders. Soon most everyone took off their clothes and joined us in the water.

  He did “Suspicious Minds” and all my musician friends did the backup singing. The pool was filled with naked people and a big fat Elvis singing on my shoulders. When I write that Elvis went to “Kumbaya,” you’re thinking I mean that figuratively, but no, we were all singing “Kumbaya” and holding hands naked in the pool in a hot Vegas dawn.

  It may be important at this point to remind my dear readers that I’ve never had a sip of alcohol or any recreational drug in my life. My Slammer parties have included a South American man nailing his cock to a board, tying that board to a rope, and using that rope to pull a wagon containing a topless woman across my band room floor (which is carpeted, and I swear, I told him it was carpeted and that this would create more friction before he got there; it was a language problem, not a lack of compassion and foresight on my part). We also had nude cornstarch wrestling, where I wrestled my little-person (they prefer that to “dwarf”; I don’t get it, but I don’t get African-Americans preferring that to “black,” and it’s not my decision) Mexican buddy Arturo. His arms weren’t long enough to hold his head out of the cornstarch, so our wrestling turned into me saving his life—well, saving his life after being the one to almost drown him in gunk. After my children were born, the Slammer parties featured Nemo, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and Cinderella instead of cock nailing, nude cornstarch wrestling, and Extreme Elvis, but the same amount of alcohol and recreational drugs was present and that amount is always none.

  Holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” with fat, naked, badly hung Extreme Elvis sitting on my shoulders meant a lot to a lot of people. Several people have since told me that when they took off all their clothes and walked into that pool as the sun came up in Vegas and sang “Suspicious Minds,” they understood what atheism really was. It was an atheist baptism. Everyone seemed to be changed by it. As I type it, I’m aware that it seems like a crazy person is writing this, but with all the naked-fat-guy-pissing psycho energy of the night, it was mostly just a celebration of living a free and loving life. I guess you had to be there.

  As the sun came up, I sat in the hot tub with Extreme Elvis and the very well-hung and hairy porn star Ron Jeremy. Ron Jeremy said it was the best party he’d ever been to, and Ron’s been to some parties. I have a picture of me naked, with Extreme Elvis on one side and Ron Jeremy on the other. It could be used in a Trojan condom ad, with the caption “We Fit All Men.”

  Now back to AB’s slightly different atheist baptism. This one was also improvised. We took him into the All-American Bar and Grille and he sat down in the Christ position for the Last Supper. This was his first supper, his atheist communion.

  AB didn’t order. Teller and I ordered for him. We don’t know much about kosher, but we faked it pretty well:

  Shrimp cocktail

  Crab legs

  Clam chowder

  Oysters

  Pork loin

  Barbecue ribs

  and a

  Bacon cheeseburger, medium rare, with extra cheese and extra extra bacon.

  Many people have pointed out since that there was no way for us to know that AB didn’t have a shellfish allergy. We might have had to deal with anaphylactic shock at our communion. Instead of a born-again atheist, we might have had a dead Jew, and I might be writing this book from the High Desert State Prison, but if your grandmother had had tubes, she might have been a Jewish radio.

  The server asked us who was eating what, and we pointed to AB and said he was eating it all, we would just pick.

  The pork and bacon cheeseburger took a while, but the chowder and shellfish were out right away. There was a moment when AB just sat there and looked at the food. It was going to be an important moment and he wanted to take a minute and really decide what he was going to do. Teller grabbed the back of AB’s head, grabbed a shrimp, and just stuck it in AB’s mouth. What’s the use of being an atheist if you still have to stand on ceremony? AB chewed the shrimp and kind of shook his head. It was a big moment.

  I don’t know who died and made Jonesy a Talmudic scholar, but Jonesy said that eating the shrimp really didn’t count, that it wasn’t the moment, because AB hadn’t chosen to eat the traif—he had been forced by Teller. Jonesy knows how things look in the eyes of Yahweh. We all agreed that Jonesy was right, and AB considered for a moment, then opened up a crab leg and ate it. That was his defiance of god. If the religious can be silly enough to think that eating the right food makes you religious, we can play along for a meal and pretend that eating the wrong food will make you rational.

  He ate the crab leg, and our table erupted into cheers. We sounded like we belonged in a Vegas sports bar. AB wasn’t satisfied with the shellfish. He said none of this was really a new taste. There are kosher knockoffs of shellfish. He’d had Krab and fake shrimp. He’d had chowders that had the vibe of clam without the presence of an actual bivalve. It wasn’t dirty-filthy-anal-sex-with-two-nuns-on-Easter-Sunday sin.

  Teller, Zeke, Jonesy, our MIT friend, and I dug into the shrimp, crab, and chowder. It wasn’t an antireligious thing for us; we’re entertainers, and when there’s food around, we eat.

  The pork loin and ribs came and that was no big deal either. He’d had bovine versions. We were all just waiting for the atheist communion wafer, the pure symbol of free thought: the bacon cheeseburger. The All-American Bar and Grille at the Rio makes a fine one. They didn’t know how important this one was, but it was the last thing they brought. It was made with loving care.

  There it was, on a plate with some fries. A big fat ground-beef patty, medium-rare and juicy, just dripping goodness, with a few slices of cheddar melted on it, and strips, a lot of strips, of bacon, the candy of meat, draped over the top.

  You could hear the inspirational music swell. It was the monolith in 2001, the unholy grail, the covenant to not talk to god. We had symbolism up the ass. On that plate with the bacon cheeseburger were Mark Twain, George Carlin, Einstein, Ingersoll, and Butterfly McQueen. Frank Zappa, Martin Mull, Randy Newman, Richard Feynman, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. It was dripping like a hot shiksa. It was the Clash scream
ing, “You must not act the way you were brought up.” It was absolutely free—or at least Teller and I could put it on our hotel tab.

  AB looked at all of us. Made eye contact with each of us. Zeke said lovingly, “Do it, motherfucker.” AB grinned and picked up the burger. He held it in front of his face with the juice dripping and took a deep whiff. He sucked that good bacon freedom into his lungs and then took a bite.

  His eyes widened.

  “Goddamn, that’s good! Wow!” You can see why those whack jobs keep control over food. It’s powerful. It’s life. AB was transformed. The next day he would go to a fancy barbershop and get a real shave with a real straight razor. I didn’t know it, but that’s another thing some Jews can’t do: they can’t have a razor touch the skin of their face. AB’s life changed; it started way before the cheeseburger and it will continue, but I was so proud to be with him for that first bite. It was a celebration. It was one nation under a motherfucking groove.

  AB couldn’t get over how good bacon was. I tried to imagine tasting bacon for the first time. I can remember my mom putting bacon on the plate with my pancakes. You wouldn’t really put the pure Massachusetts (fuck Vermont) maple syrup directly on the bacon, but hey, if a little happened to flow over from the pancakes to the bacon, there was nothing you could do about it, right? I remembered the smell of our kitchen as a child and my mom draining the bacon on a double layer of paper towels. It’s a beautiful thing.

  AB and I became friends. I’m invited to his divorce party. His children have played with my children. He made sure it was not a high Jewish holiday and his sons wore baseball caps, the headgear of choice for the waffling Jew. Every time AB visits me, he brings me a big package of fancy bacon and some nice artisanal cheeses. He’s a good man.

  • • •

  Last time I was in New York City, I got in a day before I had to work. AB invited me to go to Traif. It’s a restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on the edge of the Hasidic community. It’s the perfect restaurant for AB to take me to. The menu is really good food, and it’s mostly traif. It’s bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with blue cheese. It’s pulled-pork sandwiches and bacon doughnuts. The food is great and the food is sacrilegious. My buddy SweetiePie, with the facial hair of the leather daddy in the Village People and from Michigan, was my date. SweetiePie got his nickname when he was our theater manager in Hollywood way back before Off-Broadway. His name was Michael and I asked him if he preferred “Mike” or “Michael.” He said “Anything is fine,” and I said, “In that case, I shall call you SweetiePie,” and it stuck. I think he has a different story about how he got his name, but neither of us is lying. SweetiePie is from as non-Jewish a background as Goudeau and me.

  It seemed like such a nutty event that I tweeted it, and because of that, some ex-Hasid Jews showed up. So it was AB, SweetiePie, an African-American model skeptic computer programmer whom AB had brought, a Russian woman who looked like she’d been downloaded from a porn site, a woman documentary filmmaker who was doing a movie on ex-Hasids, and three ex-Hasids. All of the ex-Hasids were men. There certainly are women who no longer believe, but it’s even harder for them to get out. They can’t fucking drive, for Christ’s sake, and maybe “for Christ’s sake” is the wrong ejaculation to use there.

  So, there we were, nine of us, all brought together to celebrate the flouting of religious dietary laws and have some bacon doughnuts.

  The three ex-Hasidic men were in three different stages of breaking away. The one nearest to me was just a guy, a little rockabilly and out of fashion, but still just a guy. He had sideburns, not quite as bushy or big as Extreme Elvis’s, but sideburns, very gentile facial hair. He had no hat and hair like an early Jerry Lee Lewis. He moved like and had the aggression of Lenny Bruce, and his face was not dissimilar to Lenny’s in his prime. He wore jeans and a shirt. He was in his twenties but talked like Jackie Mason. The sentence structure, accent, and inflections were not American, but he had been born in Brooklyn. He was as American as me, but seemed like a foreigner who’d watched a lot of Happy Days episodes to learn how to act. I will call him Sauly. Like a much more Jewish Pauly Shore. Sauly was loud, clumsy, and very lovable.

  I’m moving up in level of Jewishness: the second man I will call Moishe. He was a big man, not my size but close. He was wearing a hat that could have been Justin Timberlake’s but could also have been Hasidic; you’d have to see the rest of the outfit. But the rest of his outfit wouldn’t have told you enough. It wasn’t all black, like he was supposed to wear, but wasn’t a Hawaiian shirt either. He had payot, the Jewish sideburn curls, but they were getting shorter. He had come to Vegas a few months earlier and told me he was really ready to leave Judaism. He wanted me to cut his long curly sideburns, the way I had fed AB a bacon cheeseburger. The hair growing in his sideburn region had been down to his stomach, but lately he had been trimming it back as he felt less Jewish. He still wanted me to do the final cutting, but he was already back to being able to hide his payot behind his ears. Moishe was still deeper in the Hasidic world than Sauly. Moishe talked like Jackie Mason if Jackie had never wanted to be on TV. He was obviously from another country. He’d also been born in Brooklyn.

  The third ex-Hasid was hard-core. He was full-on guy-working-in-an-NYC-electronics-store. He was a small man, all dressed in black, with a hat, long payot, and a beard. He spoke English very well, but with a heavy accent, such an accent that the phrase “such an accent” would start at a middle C and rise up to about a B-flat by the last word. He looked and sounded like a cartoon of a New York Jewish immigrant. His name had no American equivalent. It wasn’t a name; it was a word. You know how gentile “Penn Fraser Jillette” sounds? Well, imagine the Jewish form of that. Not really a name, just sounds designed to be ethnic. I’ll call him Schmoozleschnu. Schmoozleschnu had been born in Brooklyn, NYC, USA, in 1985. He didn’t learn English until 2006, and it was his third language. He was raised speaking Yiddish, and he added Hebrew probably because it was a little less Jewish. His family didn’t have a TV, listen to the radio, or see any movies. He was from another world, and he was a twenty-minute cab ride from the MTV corporate offices in Times Square.

  The first nonreligious book he read—not the first book in English, but the first nonreligious book he ever read—was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. He had his mind blown by the bacon cheeseburger of comedy, George Carlin, when Schmoozleschnu first watched TV.

  Mr. Pie and I were about to learn a lot of stuff we never knew and would have a lot of trouble believing.

  I guess some of this is common knowledge, or it should be. You know the Pennsylvania Dutch talk nutty, right? We know that there is an enormous Latino population that speaks Spanish and has some different customs than mall Americans. The Amish and the Gypsies have their own style and language, kinda sorta. If you’ve ever been to Dorchester, Boston, or seen Gone Baby Gone or The Departed, or been in the Deep South, you know there are still some wild accents in our homogenized country. If you’ve heard me when I’m not on TV and I’m thinking about my mom and dad, I talk a bit like a Pepperidge Farm salesman. We all know about the diverse cultures of the United States of America. I mean, Christ on Italian beef, have you ever talked to someone from the real Chicago? It’ll put you off your feed.

  I knew all that, but I didn’t know there were people born in the USA who didn’t speak any English. We’re a nation of immigrants, and immigrants want to assimilate, but not the Hasids. It’s a very successful cult. It’s a subculture that has nothing to do with the rest of American culture. While they were full-blown Hasids, these guys had never heard of Madonna or the Beatles. They had never heard of Elvis. They had never heard of Elvis. They had never fucking heard of Elvis Aaron Presley, the good old boy with the Jewish mother. Moishe used the term “Looney Tunes” to describe the people he used to live with. I asked him how he knew about Looney Tunes. He said he knew them from retailing children’s underwear with those cartoons on them. His father had also shown him some Mickey Mous
e cartoons on a sixteen-millimeter projector on the wall of their home, and now his father felt that was why Moishe was going crazy and leaving the fold.

  Pie and I sat chowing down on bacon-wrapped shellfish while we found out that religious authority figures fucking little boys is not just a Catholic thing. Our new friends all had firsthand experiences. They all had been married to strangers while in their teens. Even in this tightly knit community, the people they were marrying were often strangers. Strangers they would fuck to produce a lot of children. The fucking-through-a-hole-in-the-sheet thing is a myth, but they really do fuck only at night in the dark, and there is no pussy-eating. You can’t get crazier than not allowing pussy-eating. Husbands can’t even look at their wives’ cunts, and this is a community without television. They are more lenient about blow jobs—some sages allow it, some don’t—but no matter what they do sexually, marrying a stranger in the twenty-first century is a little weird.

  Somehow in the mishmash of finally allowing American culture to flood over them, they had stumbled on me and my radio show’s podcasts. There are only a few dozen of these ex-Hasids and they all know each other, so if one of them finds something it moves through the expats pretty fast. Somehow by the weird random path of life, I was in the middle of this group of heroes.

  I asked Schmoozleschnu how he was led down the road to atheism. How did he end up eating traif at Traif with me? It’s the same one-word answer that you get to so many varied questions: pussy. He didn’t know anything about science, but he knew about strip clubs. He would go to strip clubs but had never heard of Madonna. It just doesn’t seem right. He said that most of the Hasids go to strip clubs and hookers. It seems like at strip clubs, American culture would wash over you, but I guess if you’re in a hat and funny clothes you still stay separate enough for god. Schmoozleschnu was getting a lap dance from a dancer and he asked her what religion she was. He asked her that because . . . well, I don’t know, I guess because he was a crazy motherfucker. She said, “Atheist.” Why don’t I ever get “dancers” like that? It seems all the dancers I see have big old hateful crosses hanging between their big brand-spankin’-new lovable tits, but Schmoozleschnu got lucky. “Getting lucky” in this case doesn’t mean getting laid, but rather having your entire philosophic underpinnings destroyed. He had never believed it really possible to be an atheist. All he had heard about us, in Yiddish I suppose, was that we were miserable monsters. And here was a miserable monster getting his circumcised dick hard. When I have a hard-on I want to talk evolution, and so did Schmoozleschnu. He asked her if she believed in evolution, and of course she did. He said he would disprove it, while she was rubbing her perfectly evolved ass over the burlap, or whatever, of his black trousers.