Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!: More Magical Tales from the Author of God, No! (20 page)

CHIQUITA BANANA WEDNESDAY

I LOVE ASH WEDNESDAY.
I like the fact that Catholics run around with dirt on their head for a day. I wish they did it every day. I like people committing to things that announce who they are. I have a couple of good friends who are little people. If I were a little person, I would like the term “little person” much less than “dwarf” or “midget,” but I’m not a little person so I don’t get a vote. I’m fine with the term “big person,” but then again I’m also fine with the term “big fat ugly motherfucker” and “Sasquatch.” That’s the kind of guy I am.

When I was young, I had hair that was too long and I wore eye makeup and capes and all sorts of hippy/glam garb, and I stood out, but I could change my clothes, wash my face, tuck my hair up under my hat and mix in with the farmers in my hometown. I’m tall, but not so tall that people outside rural China point, cower and laugh at me. My friends who are little people have to deal every second with a strong reaction from people, and I wonder if that’s part of the reason my friends are such strong and comfortable people. My little people friends are forced to be Robin Williams, and always be on. They can’t be invisible. They have to face who they are, every time they go out in public. A little person ordering a fish burger at a McDonald’s counter is a comedy bit for some people who live in the center of the height bell curve. My little person friends inspire me to try to be who I am all the time and never back down. I don’t want to have the choice to hide.

I like the drag-priests, and drag-nuns, and turban/beard guys, and yama yama Jews. I like that they dress so that they can’t back down from that part of who they are. Some people walk around in full basketball uniforms and I like that too. I wonder why they just do it for sports and not for firemen.

I’ve known a lot of people, women and men, who are sexually turned on by firemen. Why wouldn’t you want to fuck a hero? One Christmas a girlfriend bought me a fireman’s jacket. It was just a sex aid for her. It was buying your mom a toy truck for her birthday. The jacket didn’t have any insignias on it, but it was rubberized, had a reflective stripe around it and those sexy brass nautical clips to buckle it up. When I wore it in public, it was like I was a woman walking around dressed as a cheerleader, nurse or French maid. A lot of women started conversations with me when I wore that jacket. It wasn’t me—it was the jacket. Once they got to know me just a little, the jacket wasn’t enough to hold their interest in the face of me. I lost the girlfriend, but kept the jacket. I wore it all the time, even though I live in the desert and don’t hang around many hoses. I stopped wearing it on September 11, 2001—it seemed disrespectful to the real heroes.

I wear sneakers, jeans and a work shirt every day and then our P&T drag in the show, but I wish I were braver. I wish that one day I went out in one of the NASCAR jackets with all the patches, and the next day in a tux. I wouldn’t want to wear a basketball uniform, but it seems like a beekeeping outfit might be cool. I love beekeeping outfits. But I never do any of that; my sneakers, jeans and work shirt announce to the world that I’m a lazy slob, and I guess that’s enough. I can’t back away from that.

We had a few Catholics in my high school. I guess the Catholic school in Greenfield went only through grade school, so in high school the halls were peppered with students wearing their religion on their foreheads. They were a little awkward and self-conscious, and I was envious of that specialness.

When the fatwa was laid on Salman Rushdie, my buddy and hero Al Goldstein felt left out. Al, the founder of
Screw
magazine and a nut pornographer, loved being the center of free speech attention. He went to court in Topeka, for the right to send
Screw
to Kansas. Most people would have just said screw Kansas, but Al likes a fight. He’s a freedom fighter. So, the ayatollah told his followers they should kill Salman, and Al put a full-page ad in
Screw
saying he’d give a million bucks to anyone who killed the ayatollah. Al is now flat busted, but at the time he had the million. He also got some attention. The death threats flew in, and the same FBI agents who had been to the
Screw
offices to bust him were now protecting him. Some of his staff members who were crazy enough to work at
Screw
, but sensible enough to not want to be around this fatwa shit, just quit. The FBI suggested Al leave his offices and go somewhere and not announce where he was going. He wanted to be the center of attention and now he was in hiding.

I was in L.A. working on some movie script that no one liked, and Al gave me a call, “Hey, Penn, I offered a million dollars to anyone who killed the ayatollah, and now there’re lots of death threats and everyone is afraid to hang out with me. Wanna go to lunch and then to the Playboy Mansion with me and my son?”

“Yes.”

I made the same deal with Al that I made with Ron Reagan when his father was president and Ron was our nation’s most likely hostage. Ron refused Secret Service protection, and he called me to hang out one day. I told Ron I’d go to lunch with him, but I wouldn’t walk to or from the car with him, and I wouldn’t be in the car when he started it. Once it was running, I would go anywhere with him, but I wouldn’t walk by his side in public. I don’t want to get all conspiracy on your ass, but it seems there’s a chance that if the son of the president is being kidnapped, the Secret Service and FBI would shoot
at
him just to remove that monster bargaining chip. I just made that up, but I’m pretty sure that both sides would shoot at the big dumb screaming Sasquatch who was pissing himself at the hostage’s side just to get him out of the way so they could think.

Here’s the story of me going to the Playboy Mansion with a pornographer who threatened the ayatollah: There were no women at the mansion. I saw the “grotto,” in the pool where so many of the “pictorials” of my youth were shot, but there was no one there. Al’s twelve-year-old son and I fed the koi fish (never saw a foldout of them), and then Hef came out with his girlfriend or wife or whatever and she said, “One of these guys threatened the ayatollah and the other one thinks it’s funny to drown his partner onstage. I don’t want them here.” That was that. Al and his son walked to the car, started it up and drove up the block. When it was safe, I joined them and they drove me back to the hotel to work on my shitty screenplay.

Al didn’t read
The Satanic Verses.
He didn’t do anything to help Rushdie; he just wanted to make sure that if a billion people on the planet were going to try to kill someone, he had a piece of that attention. I got free lunch, got to feed koi fish with his son and was asked to leave the Playboy Mansion. It was a fine break from my shitty screenplay.

In high school I was envious of the Catholics on Ash Wednesday. I liked that they were declaring publicly who they were and what they believed. I love rituals and I love symbolism. Before I found a way to do an atheist baptism and an atheist first supper, I created Chiquita Banana Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday, I would pull the Chiquita banana sticker off a banana and put it on my forehead. It’s a life-affirming colorful celebratory answer to the black mourning and death cult of the capital punishment symbol made of ash. I try to do it every year, but as the years go by, I’ve used a Dole banana sticker. I have no brand loyalty. A bunch of my friends in high school did it too.

I was called into the principal’s office.

“What’s that sticker on your forehead?”

“For Chiquita Banana Wednesday.”

“Take it off.”

“No.”

“It looks like you’re ridiculing other students’ religious beliefs.”

“I am.”

“We support freedom of religion.”

“Yes, we do, but I can ridicule it. I’m not trying to stop them; I’m just making it clear I don’t believe. It is wicked stupid, don’t you think?” We’ve always liked “wicked” as an intensifier in Massachusetts.

I can’t remember if the principal had ashes on his forehead. I can’t even remember if I was thrown out that day for that. I obviously don’t remember the exact conversation above, but I do remember that I didn’t take that fucking sticker off my forehead. Fuck your burnt palm leaves hieroglyph of suffering.

If you happened into the Starbucks where Michael Goudeau, Teller and I were working last Ash Wednesday, you saw us all wearing colorful festive banana stickers (Dole) on our foreheads as we wrote our not-shitty TV show.

We want everyone to know we’re atheists.

You know I’m an atheist, right?

Listening to: “I Won’t Back Down”—Tom Petty

HAVE A NICE EASTER, YOU CHRISTIANS YOU

MY BUDDY MATT STONE SAID
that
The Book of Mormon
(the best show I’ve ever seen), the musical he wrote with Trey Parker, was “a love letter to religion, written by an atheist.” I’d like to add a couple
X’
s and
O
’s to the bottom of that love letter and sign my name. Christians have treated me fairly. When they disagree with me they represent my position fairly. I don’t believe in god. I’m an atheist. I mock religion. They say that about me. They argue with me. They pray for me. They give me Bibles and have their children write me letters begging me to try to see the light. They send me tweets about how they hope I’ll find god. Sometimes they say that I’m going to be punished in hell. I consider all that fair. A very small number have accused me of being a Satan worshipper, but I think that’s simple ignorance. I just have to explain to them that if I were going to have faith I wouldn’t pick the side that loses.

I used to date an Israeli woman. She was in this country illegally and she was thrown out of Israel, as far as I could tell, for being too pro-Jewish. She claimed that
The New York Times
was anti-Semitic. She spoke nine languages. We couldn’t get in a cab in NYC without her talking to the driver in his native tongue. She was just stupid sexy and wicked smart. We hung out with her Israeli friends, and they would talk Hebrew and I would sit there wondering if they were talking about me. Her being in the country illegally was really sexy to me. At the time we were dating, Penn & Teller were regulars on
Saturday Night Live
, and I was invited to a lot of premieres and red carpet events. I would bring her as my date, and since there were photographers and she was illegal, she would cover her face as we walked in. I fancied that her hidden identity made people wonder who it was who couldn’t be seen with me. I still like that thought. I hope someone is still wondering.

It’s really hard to break up with someone from a different culture. Every relationship problem we had could be blamed on cultural differences and misunderstanding. “No, baby, the problem is that you didn’t realize that was a reference to
The Flintstones
, it was a joke about Fred talking to Wilma, I wasn’t really saying that to you personally—it’s a cultural thing. By the way, do you know
The Flintstones
theme song? Let me sing it for you. . . . ‘Through the courtesy of Fred’s two feet’ is the line there. Yeah, it’s hard to understand even for an American. And you know, the chord changes in that are standard jazz changes, called ‘rhythm changes,’ from the chord progression of ‘I Got Rhythm’ and a zillion other jazz songs. . . .” How can you break up when you can fall back on that shit? I loved the cultural misunderstandings with her. I laughed harder in bed with her than I’ve ever laughed during sex. The first time she used the word “schmuck” for my penis, she used it like a sex word, like “cock” or something. I said, “What?”

“It means ‘cock.’ I thought you knew that.”

“Of course I know that, but it doesn’t mean ‘cock’ like that, it means ‘cock’ like ‘dick.’”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not a sexy word, it’s a comic word. This western Massachusetts goy learned it from Lenny Bruce. When Lenny was busted for using it as a dirty Yiddish word for penis, he said something like, ‘Tell me how it means “penis” in this sentence: “I, like a schmuck, drove all the way to Jersey.”’”

She didn’t really understand, and after a little more manipulation of my schmuck, I was fine with her calling it whatever she wanted. In the Israeli army she had shot guns at people. She had pointed guns at people and pulled the trigger. I think she’s the only person I’ve ever had sex with who has done that. She wasn’t the only person I’ve had sex with who could kill me, but she was the only one who might have an idea what it would really feel like. I got in my head I wanted to hear the most offensive word in the world, so I asked her what she called Arabs. I wanted to hear what pure hate sounded like. I wanted to hear the word and the translation. She asked me what I meant. I told her a few of the hateful words for Jews that we have in English. She knew the words, but she couldn’t understand what I was asking her for. I said, “You tried to kill Arabs. You fought them. You hate them. What’s the worst word you can use for them?” She thought for a moment and said, “‘Arab.’ It’s just the word for Arab.” Wow. Of course it’s just Arab.

A few years after that, there was a guy named Dave who really pissed me off. I got away from him, and in the privacy of my home I called him all sorts of names—“motherfucker,” “asshole,” “dickwad,” “shithead,” “cunt pickle”—but none of them felt right in my mouth. None of them were bad enough. All of a sudden my Israeli girlfriend’s simple truth came back to me. He is Dave! What a fucking Dave. That felt right.

The worst word possible is simply “Arab,” a name both sides agree on. It’s deeper than an insult, it’s not a line in the sand, it’s an intellectual difference. It crossed over from insult and comes out the other side as respect. When Christians are showing their disapproval of me, they call me “atheist.” It’s the word I use for myself, and to them, it’s a bad thing. “Infidel,” “Heathen,” “Godless”—they’re all insults and they’re all the truth. It’s the deepest insult possible, because there’s no bullshit insult—we agree on what I am, it’s just they think it’s wrong. There’s no Yankee Doodle required. We all agree on what I am.

We atheists need to do that more. I’ve used the word “theist” for someone to let a fellow atheist know that this is someone who I fundamentally disagree with. That seems fair. But I try to only say about them what they’ve said about themselves. If they use the word “Fundamentalist,” I’ll use that—that’s more wacky shit they believe. Same with “Evangelical,” “Catholic,” and “Mormon.” I try not to use things that could be said about the Westboro Baptist Church to attack someone who is a Congregationalist.

So, this Easter, I would like to apologize for all the atheists who have called you true believers “racist” and “sexist,” when you’re not. I would like to apologize for the atheists who have called you stupid when you’re not. I’ll just call you “Christians,” and let’s leave it at that.

But fucking Dave, man, what a fucking Christian schmuck.

Listening to: “Onward Christian Soldiers”—Moron Tabernacle Choir