Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

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

EASTER IS A HOLLOW WAXY CHOCOLATE RABBIT WHO SUFFERS IN AN UNSATISFYING WAY FOR YOUR SINS

WHAT THE FUCK DO CHOCOLATE RABBITS and marshmallow chicks have to do with Jesus dying on the cross? And how the fuck does god sending his son in human form (who may actually be god himself anyway), to be killed by people, wash away the sins of other people in the future—provided, that is, that those future people give their lives to him (who already owns them anyway), in appreciation of his having been tortured by himself in order to receive that “gift”?

No one knows. It’s nonsense, but I like hard-boiled eggs, and I hope that’s what Easter is really about. Michael Goudeau, who is my buddy, a cohost on my Penn’s Sunday School podcast and a Bullshit! writer, made a deviled ostrich egg once. It was huge, like two-dozen chicken eggs, but all together in one huge egg-shaped wiggly boat with a fluffy softball of yellow globbed inside. Scale matters with food, like those giant gummy bears. It tasted fine, but it was creepy. Funny creepy, but creepy. Not as creepy as Easter in general, but creepy.

———

Rabbits symbolize fucking, eggs are fertility, and Easter is really just a beautiful spring festival about glorious fucking that’s made creepy by adding in grotesque torture and capital punishment caused by a supposedly loving god whose holy book is heavy on rape, genocide, infanticide, slavery, hatred of family, but pretty light on the love. Creepy creepy creepy, with no sense behind it at all, and chocolate rabbits. That’s Easter.

Every year of my youth my dad and I spent Easter day, after church, driving to every drugstore in Greenfield, Massachusetts (there were three), looking for a “solid chocolate Easter rabbit.” My dad and I wanted a chocolate Easter rabbit with heft to it—density, solidity, comfort and joy; that reassuring heaviness of a nice full American breast or a large expensive professional juggling ball. We didn’t want a shell of crumbly, waxy chocolate in hard-to- open cellophane designed to conceal the hollow. We wanted a solid mass of chocolate goodness. A fulsome happy rabbit ear or leg with weight that Dad and I could share. We were chasing some sort of first high. I remember one big solid Easter rabbit, but I don’t know from when. Maybe my dad just told me about it. Maybe we were just snipe hunting. We’d always end up with a hollow fucking chocolate rabbit, just the shell of joy, with no content. A loving Christ who died for our sins is the shell of a good idea with no content. That’s why we have hollow chocolate Easter bunnies to explain the hollow empty disappointment of Easter.

I love gospel magic. Gospel music is a valid, inspirational form of music that comes out of Christianity. Gospel magic isn’t a real form of magic. It’s standard hack magic shop tricks presented as Christian parables. Christian music is among the best music of all time, from Bach to Ray Charles. In contrast, Christian comedy and magic aren’t the best comedy and magic in the world. The tricks aren’t deep foolers and the comedy is always with a k. The word “zany” is used a lot in the gospel magic press materials. I’m tempted to try to make the point that Christian magicians’ tricks aren’t that good because they feel that if Christians believe that Bible shit, how hard can it be to convince them that cupped right hand with the thumb sticking out and “flashes” between the fingers is empty and not palming a card that reads “John 3:16” in barely legible “Magic” marker? That’s an unfair shot; I don’t think gospel magicians do any cynical analysis at all. I think they’re sincere—most of them just aren’t that good. But most of all art isn’t that good, so they’re not special in that way either.

I love gospel magic because I don’t care much about the tricks being real mysteries. I ignore comedy with a k. Who cares? I love the passion of gospel magic and the naivete, but mostly I love the strained, overextended metaphors. A strained, overextended metaphor is a constantly changing labyrinth full of warm hot chocolate, where every belabored, sliding non-45-degree turn is uncertain and desperate like a waterslide crafted by a dull child on acid with a love of shapes and no knowledge of physics or architecture but a passion to not give up until everyone gets to the giant pool of marshmallow fluff at the bottom.

Let me lay on you the kind of performance you might see in gospel magic. The gospel magician takes the sports water bottle he’s been sipping throughout his metaphor-packed show and starts a parable trick about how it’s god’s pure water that he’s been drinking. He takes a big gulp and explains that the water is free of sin, the same way god created Adam and Eve, pure, fresh, and clear—even though it always seems like Eve’s pussy is pure evil, but the Holy Houdini doesn’t say that. He pours some of the water out of the bottle into a clear glass so the audience can appreciate the crystal virginity of sinless water that’s way away from Eve’s dirty woman hole, and takes another sip from the glass. Then the magic Christian (and not the cool movie The Magic Christian, starring Ringo Starr and Raquel Welch, who herself sported a perfect pair of totally solid