God, No!

by Penn Jillette

  After reading the Bible, I started arguing with the pastor. At first he encouraged me to ask anything. I started listening to Martin Mull, Randy Newman, and Frank Zappa for my atheist music. I read “Why I Am Not a Christian” and Catch-22, and lots of Vonnegut. My discussions with the pastor got better and better, and then they got really great, and then . . . he needed to have a little talk with my parents. He explained to them that I wasn’t getting much out of youth group. He told them, with a laugh, that I was converting the other children to atheism. He told my mom and dad that I should just read and think on my own. He shut me the fuck up, and I was thrilled about it. My quitting the church was sanctioned by the church. Sweet! My mom and dad couldn’t very well argue with the minister about my religious education, so I got a free walk out of church. I was the first in the family to split.

  My dad was not a Bible thumper, but he had a deep belief. When he died, we respected his wishes and had a minister at the graveside services. It was just our family, and my mom took the minister aside to say, “We’re all atheists. Sam wanted to have you here, but keep it short; none of us believe.” I don’t know if my mom lost her faith or if she never really believed. She liked church music and hearing her husband sing in the choir. She liked seeing her young son with his hair combed once a week. I like to give credit to writers, artists, and myself for my atheism, but, like everything else, it’s probably all my mom. I remember her saying to me after church, “I believe that when you die, that’s it.” That may not be out-and-out atheism, but you can sure see the entrance ramp from there.

  My dad was still praying for me the week he died. He was so proud of me and loved me so much and supported me in everything I did. He tried to assert that I was a good Christian because I lived my life in a way he mostly approved of. I tried to tell him that denying Jesus Christ as lord really did make “good Christian” hard to stick, but he kept saying, “When I get to heaven, I’m going to have to do a lot of talking to persuade them to let my wife and children in, but I’ll do it.” He lived through the Depression and, with only my mom helping, built the house we lived in. They carried every cinder block and hammered every nail, by themselves. If there is a heaven, with him up there to lobby for me I’m a shoo-in.

  My mom and dad were elderly when Pastor Shirley was hired as minister at the First Congo. My mom was thrilled to have a woman in charge, and my dad liked Pastor Shirley. She lived with her female friend, and when Pastor Shirley would come and visit, my dad would ask when she was going to find herself a husband. He wasn’t making a joke, he was making conversation. It never crossed his mind that Shirley’s roommate might be more than a friend. Pastor Shirley was kind to my mom and dad. At this point in their lives, they couldn’t get to church without a lot of help, but she came calling and would do what all visitors were forced to do: talk about me and sometimes watch a video of Penn & Teller’s latest Letterman or SNL.

  This book is not your best choice for information on the politics of the United Church of Christ, but as I remember, the whole organization was taking a vote about the “Open and Affirming” policy around 1985. Some ministers brought it to their congregations to vote on whether the United Church of Christ should accept gays, but Pastor Shirley didn’t. As I understood it, she just said “Fuck yeah!” (or whatever church talk for that is) and sent in First Congo’s okay. The church elders, who in this church were really way elder, went flip city. The way my mom explained it, these “old men” were very frightened by lesbians. They figured that Northampton was only a half hour away, and Northampton, with Smith College, is seen as the Frisco of Sappho. Were they really afraid of a flood of lesbians driving north on I-91 to get a taste of that small-town “open and affirming” pussy eating? That’s not the way my mom put it, but it sure was how I understood it.

  The end began when my sister went to all the trouble to get wheelchairs and help my mom and dad into the car and get them to church. When they got there, instead of coffee Jell-O and Cool Whip, they got a bunch of old men trash-talking hot girl-on-girl minister action. They were scheming to force Pastor Shirley out of her job. Maybe the ostensible reason was that she hadn’t brought the vote to the church, or maybe they were honest enough to say outright that it was her sexuality, but my mom and dad were having none of it. They took the old New England libertarian position that it was none of anyone’s business. One of the anti-diesel-pastor folks said, “Read your Bible,” and pointed out a passage or two that said god wasn’t thrilled with same-sex sex. My mom responded, “Phooey on your Bible!”

  She meant it. My mom didn’t use obscenities. Her two strongest ejaculations were “GD” and “phooey.” I think she might have said “shit” in my presence once, but it was after most of her body was paralyzed—you gotta give an old girl a break at that point. I never heard her use the word “fuck” or “cocksucker”; “cunt” and “felching” were never mentioned. “Phooey” was strong language for a proper New England woman in her eighties. I never used obscenities around my mom and dad.

  They died before my movie The Aristocrats, about the dirtiest joke ever, and our obscenely named and themed show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! came out. I always wonder if I would have done any of those if Mom and Dad had still been alive. Probably not. It would have embarrassed them too much to be worth it. My mom read my interviews in Rolling Stone and Playboy and said, “It’s amazing how they have to add all that swearing to how you talk to make it fit in their magazine.” I didn’t want to leave that lie hanging. I explained that I really did talk like that, I just tried to be respectful around her. She shrugged. I’m not sure she really believed me. I’ve always sworn a fuck of a lot, but I never swore in front of Mom and Dad.

  “Phooey on your Bible!” was the end of my mom in that church, and in theism. My dad was still a believer, but he was disgusted with the First Congo. He didn’t have any idea that Pastor Shirley was a lesbian, and really neither did anyone else. I had met her and I made some jokes to my parents about her not being much more of a lesbian than Gertrude Stein, but my dad didn’t like that. He didn’t know or care if I was right, he just knew it was none of my business. It was none of my business and it was none of his business and it was none of the elders’ business. Their nosiness made him sick. They were forcing Pastor Shirley out of her job for something that was none of their business. Crimes against nature didn’t bug my dad, but he had a zero-tolerance policy for crimes against privacy. Pastor Shirley did her job as minister, and she was kind to him, and what she did with her friend in their house was her own business. He kept a faith in god in his heart and prepared arguments to get Mom, my sister, and me into heaven, but when they got rid of Pastor Shirley, he was out of the church. My mom and dad always gave generously to the church, and they had already made their pledges through the end of that year. Even with Pastor Shirley gone, they didn’t go back on that promise. They left the church but still sent in their tithe until the end of the year.

  My sister and brother-in-law did the same. The next time she saw me, my sister said to me, “You were right. You’ve been preaching your atheism to us for thirty years, and you’re just right. These are church people acting like this. That’s wrong. There’s so much suffering and unkindness in the world. There’s no god.”

  My sister gave notice to the church that they needed to phase in another bookkeeper, and my brother-in-law resigned from all his grounds committees. My sister made plans to take all the money that they had budgeted for the church in future years and use it for good causes. They started with bulletproof vests for local police and “jaws of life” for ambulances. Hey, you talk against lesbians around my fucking family, we take you down to Chinatown.

  I was doing the Penn & Teller show in New York City when all this happened. I had met Pastor Shirley, and she was very respectful of my atheism. She sincerely cared for my parents, and her view of religion seemed to center on kindness. I liked her. I spoke with her honestly about our disagreements and my gratitude for the solace she brought my pa
rents. When my mom called to tell me the story and explain how they all had quit the church, I was flabbergasted. I cried on the phone. I was so proud of them.

  I have a good friend from Louisiana. He’s a bit older than I. He talked about his dad being raised a racist. It was just the way things were. In the sixties his dad and the whole community changed. Racism was wrong. That generation really did change. Racism didn’t vanish overnight—it’s still with us today—but it started to go away. My friend threw me a challenge. He asked me, if I was presented with absolute proof that racism was the correct way to think, would I be able to change? Could I make as deep a change in my worldview as his dad had? I don’t know.

  Is there something that could make me join a church? Maybe my mom was always a heathen. Maybe my dad didn’t get rid of his faith, he just left the church. But it still seems like leaving that church was a difficult, heroic act. Whenever I’m confronted with big changes around me, I think about my mom and dad sticking up for Pastor Shirley. They stuck up for her and still kept their financial pledges. Goddamn.

  When I stopped crying, I gave my mom some advice. I warned her that she had to be strong. I said, “Pastor Shirley is going to come by the house one of these days, and she’ll thank you for your support, but she’ll tell you that your faith is more important than the petty politics of one church. She’ll say the church is more important than a few individuals. She’ll say that you must keep your faith and keep the community of the church. That’s the way it works. You’re going to have to be strong and stick to your beliefs.” Yeah, I was telling my mom and dad how to be strong. That’s the kind of asshole I am.

  I was right. Pastor Shirley did stop by the house a while later for a visit.

  She thanked them for their support, told them she’d found a job in a church far away, and then inquired about their health and asked how I was doing in New York City.

  That’s all. Not a word about their going back to the church or to religion.

  Phooey on my cynicism.

  “We Shall Overcome”

  —Pete Seeger

  “Jesus Is Easy”

  —Martin Mull

  Auto-Tune, Tattoos, and Big Fake Tits

  Penn Jillette’s first rule of tits: all that matters about them love jugs is how much the person whom they’re attached to likes them. I’ve heard a lot of men complain about “fake tits.” They’ll say stuff like “Those aren’t real.” They don’t mean they’re just imagining them, they mean these particular ganastahagans are not genetically coded. In my experience, the men who say this are men with very little experience with aftermarket heavers. Women who have had their breasts altered often like their surgically “enhanced” breasts more, and if they like them more, I like them more.

  The Eskimos—or as I think they’re called, the Inuits, or maybe the correct term is now “Frozen-Ass Aboriginal North Americans,” I don’t know—do not have twenty-something words for snow. That’s not true. But the Brits do have more than a hundred and fifty terms for male masturbation. If you’re in England and someone uses a verb and you don’t know what it means, it probably means jacking off. For jilling off, female masturbation, our brothers and sisters across the pond stick to “auditioning the finger puppets.” In the good old US of A, if you have a plural noun and you don’t know what it means, it probably means breasts. I can’t think of a plural noun whose meaning I don’t know that wouldn’t be better off meaning “tits”—jelutongs!

  One of the quickest ways for a man to make me uncomfortable is to talk about strip clubs. I’m very judgmental about how men enjoy strip clubs. If I hear a man say anything negative about a stripper’s body, I never seem to get over thinking that guy is a little creepy. I’ve been to strip clubs with fat men who’ll call a woman a third their size “chubby.” It makes me crazy. I just overflow with hatred. I can’t defend my position. It’s not logical, it’s emotional. It’s fine to judge an entertainer even if you can’t do what that entertainer does. You are welcome to come to our show, not being able to do a lick of magic, and say we suck. Even if you couldn’t be funny riding the ass of a smoking monkey, you’re welcome to judge a comedian’s ability to tell a joke. We all judge people who are doing things that we can’t do, but if you do it in a strip club in front of me, I’ll remember that for as long as I know you and I’ll hold it against you. I find it really unpleasant. To me, working in the sex industry isn’t about what you’re showing off, it’s that you’re showing it off at all. That’s what I love about it.

  I used to go to strip clubs a lot. One night I walked in and Valentino was sitting with a bunch of dancers at his table. You don’t know who Valentino is. You shouldn’t know who Valentino is. You don’t even care who Valentino is, but I’m going to tell you. Years ago Valentino was on shitty TV as “the Masked Magician.” He did a few shitty TV specials where he pretended to give away shitty magic secrets while wearing a shitty mask so no one would know who he really was. It wasn’t really a mask, it was more a black and silver bag over his head. He didn’t really give away secrets, because no one would watch that. The way you keep real magic secrets is to make them uninteresting. The way you keep magic secret is by making the secrets really ugly.

  The secret to one of the greatest magic tricks you’ve ever seen is public information; it’s patented. You could search for it right now. I’m not going to say which trick it is, because I don’t want to piss off the magician even more than I already have, but if you think about one of the best tricks, really any of the best tricks, the secrets are out there and you can find them. If you go to the U.S. Patent Office website (while you’re there, search for “Penn Jillette”; I have a patent on a female masturbation device called the “JillJet”—really; I care about women cumming) and search for the best trick you ever saw, it’s there. It’s a cool, cool trick, but the method is ugly. You won’t get through two pages before you lose interest. You’ll skim over the diagrams. That’s what keeps professional magic secrets secret: they’re ugly and boring. Genius magic designer Jim Steinmeyer said the real secret of magic is that we magicians are all guarding an empty safe. There are no real secrets in magic. We do things just the way they have to be done. We sneak things around, we use gaffer’s tape, and we lie. Whenever they do a TV detective show with a magic trick as part of the plot, the secret has to be a forty-five-degree-angle mirror. In a detective show, there has to be an “a-ha.” You don’t get “a-ha” in real life. Real-life detectives don’t get it, and real-life magicians don’t use it. When Penn & Teller give away magic tricks, it’s really hard work. We have to design magic that’s made to be exposed. We make the way we do it as beautiful as the trick. That’s a sneaky thing for us to do. It makes the audience think that the tricks we don’t give away are also beautiful, and that fucks up their shit. When you’re looking for something beautiful and satisfying, it’s much harder to find the ugly truth.

  The big secret of magic is we are willing to work harder to accomplish something stupid than you can imagine. We’ll practice things for years that you wouldn’t consider investing an hour in. You can imagine spending half your life under a bridge learning to play sax like Sonny Rollins, but you can’t imagine spending five minutes learning to drop a palmed cell phone into a little pocket behind a cardboard cutout of Criss Angel while hanging a cross around its neck and talking a mile a minute without the slightest pause. I had to practice that a lot. A lot more than you can imagine. I had to practice it a lot more than you think it’s worth. Our big secret is that it’s worth more to us to do our tricks than you can even imagine. Our deep secret is simply misplaced priorities.

  Shitty Valentino and Fox TV had to pretend magicians were mad at them for exposing secrets. It was pretty embarrassing and desperate. I remember a TV crew following Lance Burton and me to dinner, trying to get us to say we were pissed at the Masked Magician. We didn’t care. We gave them nothing. They got a few amateur magicians, starving to be on TV, to act pissed off, but professionals didn’t care. V
alentino was a two-bit dove magician in Laughlin, Nevada, and he became the Masked Magician and thought he was a big star.

  At the strip club that night, Valentino was surrounded by women whose job it was to be sitting around whoever sat down with money. He’s one of these really creepy guys who goes to a strip club and acts like he’s on a date. He was talking to the women instead of having them rub their asses against his cock. That’s really creepy. Sex isn’t creepy, loneliness is creepy. Valentino thought some of the women recognized me, and he beckoned me over to his hired table full of hired women. “Hey, Penn, I was just telling these beautiful ladies that I was the Masked Magician and they don’t believe me.” Has any non-dipshit man ever used the word “ladies” not followed by the word “room”? But he wasn’t done. “Would you tell these fine ladies that that’s me, that I’m the star, I am the Masked Magician?”

  I stood in front of Valentino and his “ladies” (even typing that makes my skin crawl) and started listing names: “David Letterman, Deborah Harry, Picasso, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Ke$ha, Bill Clinton, Mark Twain, Tom Jones, Fergie, Salvador Dalí, Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley, Ayn Rand, Che Guevara, Ringo Starr, Janet Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Bette Midler, Cher . . .” I went on and on, yelling over the music. After about twenty names from politics, science, and the arts, I asked, “What do all these people have in common?”

  Valentino and his “ladies” shrugged their shoulders, jiggling their bountiful jelutongs. I gave them time to think, and then I yelled, “We know who they are because they didn’t put fucking bags over their heads when they worked.” I paused for another moment and then looked all the women in the eyes, ignoring Valentino, as I said, “I have no idea who this asshole is.”