couple thousand creeps a night wanted to see our weird-ass shit. Creeps wanted to see us on TV. It still shocks us how many fucking creeps there are.
After I read the Silverman book, I realized Houdini was nothing like me. In the nineties, Stern was “The King of All Media.” As brilliant as Stern was, as far beyond anyone’s expectations that he’d risen, Stern was never satisfied. King of all media wasn’t enough. He was disgusted that people listened to anyone on the radio besides him. Similarly, when I talked to Madonna in the eighties, it was clear that she didn’t even consider the possibility that she had peaked or ever would—people needed to forget there was ever a Marilyn Monroe or Debbie Harry or Elvis, and she still wouldn’t be satisfied.
I finished the Silverman book in the bathtub at about two a.m. and the alarm went off at five a.m. to get in the limo and head uptown to do the Stern show. As I sat in the limo, thinking about Houdini, I realized that if I wanted to know what Houdini was really like, I should not look into my own heart, but I should look into Stern’s eyes. Stern and Madonna were driven beyond anything I’d ever imagined. I enjoy working in showbiz, but they need to be famous and that’s all the difference. Houdini could have talked to Stern and Madonna, and they could have argued about who was more famous. Houdini would have had nothing to say to me, not a word. Houdini would have said that he heard that the little guy and I did a cute little show for a few creeps. Hating psychics was not the point; fame was. It was during that limo ride, that I decided that it wasn’t only lack of talent and looks that put the cap on my career. It was also my own satisfaction with my success. I didn’t know it—it didn’t happen until decades later —but it was that morning that I decided to try to become a good father. I still worked really hard and wrote and did TV and radio and shows, but I knew I wouldn’t ever speak for anyone but Teller, let alone a whole generation. I would never define anyone but myself. That shouldn’t have been a revelation. Everyone else knew what league I was in, but I needed to read that book to realize I wasn’t in the league with Harry, Howard, and Maddy. They weren’t having fun doing shows; they were walking on the moon.
About a decade later, another Houdini book came out and again I was reading it at two a.m. in the bathtub, and again had an epiphany. This was Ratso’s biography,
Before I started the book, I knew I wouldn’t identify with Houdini, but with a warmth in my heart that heated up the bathwater, I realized I identified with Mayer Samuel Weisz. I’m much less of a rabbi than Mayer was. Our different philosophies didn’t matter. I couldn’t even lie to myself that Rabbi Weisz was an atheist. But Mayer was a dad, and as I read in the bathtub, my infant son slept in the next room. I loved thinking that one day I could be fewer than eight pages into my son’s 608-page biography. That would be enough for me.
I don’t need or even want my son, Zolten Penn Jillette, to have a biography written about him. I don’t want him to be in showbiz. I don’t want him not to be in showbiz. I don’t want him to be driven. I don’t want little Zz to grow up to be Houdini, Stern or Ciccone, but I don’t want him not to be like them either. I don’t really have any plans or dreams for him. If he’s an alcoholic pastor who listens to the Grateful Dead, I’ll still love him. What I want most for him is for me to love him, and again that goal has also been surpassed. Perhaps the greatest thing about overshooting my goals, being more successful than I deserve or I had planned, is there’s nothing I need my children to finish for me. Earl Woods got too late of a start to ever be the golfer he really wanted to be, so he helped Tiger be the greatest golfer of all time (so my wife tells me, I don’t even know what end of a golf club to blow into).
My mom and dad didn’t push me. They were older when I was born, and they didn’t want anything for me except for me to be happy. As far as my children are concerned, I’m not even sure I need them to be happy. We all want happiness for our children, but they don’t have to be happy about everything all the time. Life must include sadness, and there’s peace and truth to be found in sadness. The best times are not always the happiest times, but the times spent in the flow, the times spent getting things done, the times spent living.
Right around when Zz was born, I took a set of clothes that I wore performing the Penn & Teller show and put them aside for Zz in the future. The Keith Richards belt that I’d worn in every show since the first Off- Broadway run, the Dr. Martens, the pork pie hat that I wore to play pre-show jazz, the gray suit, even my boxer shorts. I had them all vacuum-packed like a wedding dress and put into storage. I don’t know what he’ll do with them. Maybe he’ll keep them for his children, if he has them, and let them throw out the vacuum pack if they don’t want it. I like the thought of that generation throwing away my show clothes. But if he wants, Zz will be able to see what his dad wore onstage around the time he was born.
My mom and dad (and most moms and dads) said that I would never understand how much they loved me until I had my own children. I’ve started saying that often to my children. I want Moxie and Zz to know that they don’t understand that yet, so that when they do understand, their hearts will explode in joy. It’s the love you don’t choose, the animal love that gives the reason to live.
Love for one’s children is like a hard-on in a strip club. It’s purer and stronger feeling than the place in my brain where I make decisions. I chose to love my friends. I chose to love my wife. I think I even chose to love my parents as I got older. But I had no say in loving my children. The love for my children is beyond my control. It’s animal. It’s like hunger. It’s more than hunger—there have been times I could control my hunger (although I can’t remember any off the top of my head). I love my children like I need to breathe.
One of the things I love about going to strip clubs is getting turned on by women I don’t like. I love that I can see a woman naked except for a cross around her neck and feel my cock getting hard. That cross around her neck means I would never want to hang out with her, but my body doesn’t know that. My body thinks that I need to be fucking her soon, so we better get the cock ready.
The one thing that every one of our ancestors back to single cell sludge had in common was they reproduced and their offspring reproduced. If an organism failed to reproduce, that organism was a dead end, not an ancestor. The love that I feel for my children is different from the love I have for the cute things they say that get quoted by my wife on Twitter and the fun I have with them. It’s different from the hugs and the kisses they give. The real love is a biological urge. Love that is like breathing.
I was the center of my parents’ lives. Every one of my accomplishments meant more to them than it did to me, and I was sure the center of my own life. In the bathtub that night, reading Ratso’s book, I went from thinking of my own biography to thinking of being a few pages into Zz’s biography and that brought me so much joy. I felt a new kind of peace after the Silverman book when I realized I wasn’t like Stern, that I could be happy as the center of my own life and I didn’t have to be the center of everyone else’s.
The next feeling of peace came in the moment when I didn’t even want to be the center of my own life anymore. The peace of wanting to be just a few pages in Zz’s life.
Zolten Jillette’s father was named Penn Fraser Jillette. Zolten’s first name was his mother Emily’s maiden name. “Zolten” means “King” in Hungarian, and Zolten’s father often weakly quipped that they’d named him after Elvis (Elvis was a popular singer in Houdini’s century who was also called “The King” of the popular music at the time). Zolten’s father was born in 1957, in Turners Falls, New Hampshire [writers never get that shit right]. The older Jillette was not a well-educated man. In his early life, Penn was homeless, worked carnivals and teamed up with Rudy (?) Teller to work as a comedy/magic duo, called Teller & Penn. The Teller & Penn show moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, at the sharp turn into the twenty-first century. Emily Zolten, then a golf producer, met Penn Jillette after a show. The two were married, and Zolten’s sister, Moxie Crimefighter Jillette, was born in 2005. Zolten Penn Jillette was born May 22, 2006. He would, of course, go on to lead the overthrow of the United States government and…
It goes on for another 607 pages, but that’s the only place I’m mentioned.
AND SPEAKING OF… KEVIN POLLAK NEEDS TO PLAY HOUDINI IN A GREAT MOVIE
