Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!: More Magical Tales from the Author of God, No! by Penn Jillette Page A

state of being. Of course, I would think, “purpose.” I was trying to make art, Ginsberg was art. And I end with “onstage.” I was trying to be on a stage, Ginsberg was just being.
    I thought about my failures as a poet for a while and then called Scotty, Katrine and the curator who was showing us around over to the naked picture. I told them how important this quote was and is to me. I talked about how much better it was than I had remembered. I asked Katrine if she had a camera on her cell phone. I started stripping off my clothes.
    I didn’t think I deserved to be the same as the poets. I don’t deserve to stand symbolically beside them naked before the world. I was too lazy to take my shoes off, I didn’t want to crawl around looking for my clothes, and I didn’t want to get dressed after the picture was taken. I left my shoes on, I dropped my baggy jeans in a rumpled pile over my shoes. I pulled my boxer-briefs down to my knees, at prostate exam level. I unbuttoned my workshirt to show my fat stomach, but I didn’t take it off and throw it. I glanced over at Allen and Gregory’s picture, and I tried to match their hands on my penis and testicles.
    I wanted to stand naked with the poets in the public museum, but I didn’t want to have to lace up my shoes again. So I just pulled down my jeans and underwear and unbuttoned my workshirt. I also felt that to stand completely naked would be to call myself a poet, and I just couldn’t do that. If Allen and Gregory had been there, and stripped, I couldn’t have put myself in the same category. I aimed for poet and hit Vegas headliner. Billy West, the greatest voice guy in the world (he’s
Futurama
,
Ren & Stimpy
and the best M&M—red), once said there was just one showbiz and we were all in it. Teller says art is anything we do after the chores are done. I agree with them both very much. I believe that Ron Jeremy has the same job as Picasso and Bach. I know that the mall Santa is the same as Bob Dylan and Katharine Hepburn. I know all that and I believe all that. But still, magician has to be a damn sight lower than a poet. We’re above ventriloquists, but not near poets. Imagine if someone said, “A magician stands naked before the world.” The answer wouldn’t be, “Isn’t that brilliant” but rather, “Isn’t that illegal?”
    I am one of two magicians who has stood naked, if not before the world, then at least before a paying crowd in a casino showroom in Las Vegas. The other magician is not Houdini, who always had chains in front of his junk and always wore a swimsuit. The other magician is Teller. In the history of Vegas, Teller and I are the disappointing first male full frontal nudes onstage. Yup, Vegas has male strippers—Chippendales, and Thunder from Down Under (which always struck me as an unpleasant name, bringing to mind ripping loud farts instead of sexy ripped Australians). Vegas has had a bunch of shows full of gorgeous, hunky, hung, ripped, sexy men, and yet, the first guys to stand totally naked onstage there were two middle-aged magicians. If that doesn’t prove to you that there’s no god, I don’t know what would. Teller and I ended every show for a few runs at Bally’s (the same stage Sinatra and Dino played on, and Dino and Tom Jones were still doing runs there while we were) stripping completely naked. The joke was simple—magicians are always accused of having something up their sleeves, and we wanted to prove we didn’t. We would take our shirts off, and then our T-shirts, and then with a few jokes to shoes and socks, and finally down to just boxer shorts. It was a drag, because I wear my microphones in my glasses and the battery packs go in a pouch on my T-shirt, so I had to take all that off and go to a hand mic.
    Teller would get a couple volunteers from the audience, usually an older woman and a young guy, and we’d bring them onstage to examine us. A pair of crew guys would bring out a thin band of translucent