Authors: Penn Jillette
“Thirty seconds!”
Like a ton of bricks. I scrambled to the wall. I breathed through my nose. I lifted my arms and it took all I had. I could feel my stomach, and my head was hard to hold up. This was only 1.8 G, but thirty seconds is a long time.
Weightless again. Billy and I were laughing, hugging, and floating. I did all the stuff I remembered seeing astronauts doing. I got myself spinning in one place in a little ball. Up and down didn’t matter. We were all bumping into each other. Well, wait a minute, not all. Billy and I looked over at the cocky medical team. All but one of them were in their fancy scrubs, still seat-belted in, vomiting their guts out in sheer misery. I don’t know if they had even stood up. It was going to be a
very
long two-hour flight for them. They weren’t going to be there to help us. I said to Billy, “Yeah, flight doctors aren’t ready for this. But the old road dogs can do anything—we’ve played Cleveland!” Billy got to laughing, spinning in space with his stupid hat, hillbilly beard, voodoo necklaces,
and tight rocker jeans, yelling, “We’ve played Cincinnati!” (He changed it.) It was wild.
“Thirty seconds!”
I wasn’t quite sitting down, just kind of hovering near the side of the plane, and I slid down the wall as the next heavy leg began. They had told me to keep my head up, so I fought—man did I fight—and I got to a sitting position, and I tried to breathe slowly and remember it would be over soon. We were weightless over and over: I got into a full-lotus yoga position and floated around. Billy liked that, and then next time he did it too. We sat next to each other like gurus and got all ready—we took off together and floated by the video camera. I found myself on top of Billy as “Thirty seconds!” came and had to use all my strength to not crush him. The same thing happened later with the girlfriend, and I used a little less of my strength and crushed her a little just for fun. She was fun to be on top of.
It was time to get to work. Billy went first: he got out his guitar, this beautiful Gibson that he’d borrowed for this flight. The NASA guys didn’t sit down at 1.8, they walked around. Nothing changed for them, except how they moved. They went back and forth from flying to trudging, but they were over helping the vomiting medics, shooting the video for Billy, and running up and talking to the pilots. These guys were used to it. So they got Billy’s guitar out and they shot some rock video stuff. I tried to stay out of the shot, but as he was spinning the guitar, ZZ style, in front of him, he lost control and I had to catch it. The other novice, the blonde, was trying to get into the shots. It looked great. The beard flying, the necklaces flying, and the guitar just floating.
I played around with a ball; it would just float in front of me. Amazing. And even more amazing was tossing the ball in 1.8, because you’ve never seen
that
in movies. There’s no way to fake it. Throwing it hard, I couldn’t hit the ceiling. Throwing and catching the one ball wasn’t easy. Amazing. I want to try to juggle three in 1.8. It would take some time.
Billy had gotten the video test that he wanted, and it was time for me to work. I was going to strip like Jane Fonda in
Barbarella.
We had
been back and forth a lot of times and I was getting beads of sweat on my forehead and it was getting tough. The rich guys who do it now are doing fifteen parabolas maximum, and we’d already done twenty. I was getting a little panicky, but it was time for the real wildness.
I told everyone that I was going all the way, that I would be naked. I let my hair down and it flew better than Jane’s. I licked my lips. We went 0 G and I tried to work the camera and lick my lips and play the eyes and get my hands in my hair. I sexily unlaced my big old size 15 Doc Marten and let it float, with my sock, in front of me. Man, it looked great.
I couldn’t do the whole strip in thirty seconds, and even in hunks of zero G it would take too long, so I had to keep stripping in 1.8. Man, that was hard, but I got my other boot off. Everything I removed the NASA boys had to grab and tie down so it wouldn’t hurt anyone. I undid my belt, played with it stripper style, and let it go to float like a sea snake. Next were the pants, and those came off while I twirled in a ball. In a few thirty-second hunks, I was down to T-shirt and boxers. I whipped the shirt off and then tried for a move I was really hoping would work. I pushed off the wall so I would be spinning, and I took off my boxers as I floated toward the camera. I timed it right; it was perfect: as I took them off my ass hit the camera.
Now I was in zero G and naked! I was free, the first person to be naked on the Vomit Comet. (If you have the desire to see me naked in zero G, first of all, I’m flattered, and second, you can see it: we showed a clip on one of the
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
shows on Showtime, and the clip is on YouTube, so if you want to see it, go ahead. And thank you.) Seeing me floating around naked, the NASA guys had to prove they weren’t gay. “It’s the first time I’ve been nauseous in zero G!” one said, and the one with the camera panned back and forth between me naked and the medics throwing up.
The next few times, I was just going wild. I put my hands over my package and went spinning on my axis. I was trying to cover my dick and balls and do all the sexy Jane faces—Jane was coy, and I had to be too. This was science, this was the
Barbarella
project. With my arms being used to cover my cock and balls, navigation was tough.
I inspired the NASA guy’s girlfriend (I don’t like calling her that, but I want to respect her privacy). She had been told she couldn’t strip, but as I sat across from her in 1.8, she lifted up her shirt. In 1.8 gravity, her saline bags did not even bend. Man, that’s some nutty surgery. Those huge tits didn’t even feel the 1.8. Wow. I think she was starting to understand that maybe we could fuck for science, but there was no time for me to work her. I had plans, while she was taking her shirt off, to spin around naked. The video guy didn’t know what to cover. He knew he should cover me, and he wanted to cover her.
Well, as I was spinning, and she was starting to strip, we got a gust of negative G that threw us to the ceiling. I was rolling, naked, across the ceiling, and then the thirty seconds were up, and I was back on the floor rolling. As I went by, I hit my belt and saw that my dad’s silver dollar was gone from the buckle, the silver dollar my dad had given me. He had just died. Dad had worn that silver dollar belt buckle all his adult life and now it was mine. I was really worried. I yelled, “Find the silver dollar, please!” I thought I was going to cry. I should have known that the fuselage was closed and I couldn’t lose it, but I was naked and confused. NASA had no trouble finding my coin, but in all the excitement—of being naked, being bumped around, huge breasts whacking the ceiling, and just worrying about the belt buckle—I didn’t get myself to a nice seated position by the time 1.8 came around, and I couldn’t get my orientation. I couldn’t get it together. I was dizzy from spinning (that axis thing is an advanced move), and,
bam,
did I feel sick.
“Man, I’m going to be sick.”
NASA got me a bag, and I leaned over into it and started vomiting. It really hurt the muscles in 1.8; then we went weightless, and I panicked a little. The video guy said, “I’ve got you, don’t worry about anything.” He held my arm as I floated, naked and vomiting. He told me later he kept the camera on me while I floated naked and vomited into my hair, the bag, and all over him and myself. Sexy! Actually, I didn’t really vomit on myself or him. The vomit just floated there in 0 G, then it went to 1.8 vomit and landed all over us. Heavy vomit.
NASA was all over me with paper towels, and they really cleaned me
up. I don’t like to vomit, but I’ve heard on heroin you vomit and don’t care. This was like that. I didn’t care much. Also, this wasn’t flu-bile-pizza vomit. This was friendly caffeine-free-Diet-Coke-and-bits-of-Cinnabon, we’re-having-fun vomit. Billy had almost vomited a while before and was staying cool. He didn’t vomit. The problem was that I got a little nauseated and then did all this stupid stuff for the camera.
After I was cleaned up, I put on my boxers in 1.8 and felt mostly better. We only had a couple of zeros left and I enjoyed them quietly. I really enjoyed them. I floated in my boxers. The girlfriend gave up on getting her top off; she was never able to do it—it takes a man to strip in space.
We were done and had to fly all the way back to the airport. It was about an hourlong flight. I was uncomfortable but elated. I sat down next to the vomiting medics (great name for a band), who hadn’t had any fun, and I talked to one of the NASA guys about having spent his first two days in space really, really sick. They said I was over the worst, and next time up even the 1.8 wouldn’t bother me much. My whole body was different. Every time the plane took a little dip, I got ready to lift off. Man, my body knew what it was to fly and I couldn’t let that go.
It was a long flight back to base. I came off the plane in my boxers. I got dressed. I didn’t know what I was feeling. I wasn’t even excited. As Billy said, I had to “get back my sea legs.” I didn’t know what to feel.
Billy, the NASA guys, and I went to a Mexican bar and restaurant. I was hungry. Throwing up in your hair gives you a hell of an appetite. We talked. I pitched an idea for the Zero G ZZ Top/P & T video to Billy, thinking we needed to find some way to do this again. We talked about how to get the Zero G guys to make a ton of money off this and how to get through the rest of the red tape that had already held them up for six years. I see they’re selling rides now, so I guess they solved it, and I hope they’re making money. Billy and I never did the video, but we’ll share that day forever. He calls me once in a while and there’s that special bond you have with a guy who’s played guitar while you’ve floated around naked in zero G.
After four hours in the bar I got a lift to the real airport and flew
back to Vegas. I slept on the flight, and every time there was a little bump, my arms went to the arms of the chair, and I was ready to push off and fly.
In bed that night I could feel myself getting light. I was sore and tired the next day, but every ten minutes or so I would feel like I was able to spin in the middle of the room. And even today, just sitting here, I have the feeling that I might be able to just float away.
My body has learned that it can fly.
“Tush”
—ZZ Top
Supreme Court Justice Ron Jeremy
I
live in a nutty house. We call it the Slammer. It looks like a prison. It’s very industrial, lots of concrete and chain link, but it’s not called the Slammer because it looks like a correctional facility or because my dad was a jail guard. It’s called the Slammer after the groovy quarantine facility at USAMRIID, the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick in Maryland. USAMRIID’s stated purpose is “to conduct basic and applied research on biological threats resulting in medical solutions to protect the warfighter.” Cool!
Around the time I was moving from New York City to Las Vegas (when you’re doing Off-Broadway and Broadway in New York City, and you tell your peers that you’re moving your show to Vegas, it’s a little like being a New York City fine artist and telling everyone in SoHo that from now on your media will be fluorescent paints on black velvet and your subjects will be exclusively Elvis Presley and Jesus Christ sweating and crying, respectively and vice versa), we did a Penn & Teller run at the Capitol Theatre in Washington, DC. In that show I had a broken-bottle juggling routine that was about thirty seconds of juggling broken liquor bottles and fourteen minutes of monologue that rambled a bit, like this
book. During that monologue I talked about how the audience didn’t have the proper sympathy for me. They didn’t have enough empathy to fear my getting hurt juggling the impossibly difficult, jagged glass bottles. I told them, “Even if I were to dip these bottles in fresh Ebola Zaire virus, cut myself, come down with hemorrhagic fever onstage, and have my eyeballs pop, most of you would turn to the person next to you and say, ‘I hope Teller doesn’t catch it, he’s kinda cute.’”
The big cheese from USAMRIID was at the gig that night, and my hemorrhagic fever reference suggested to him that I might be interested in a tour of his facility. He allowed me to invite our crew to join us for the tour, and most of them did. It’s still the most P & T crew members who have ever shown up for a field trip. When we were all invited to see U2, I could get only my manager and my wife to come along. With the USAMRIID tour, our guys had found what they were looking for.
The tour was amazing. I wanted to sign up to do some “guinea pigging,” which is being used as a test subject to see how people react to catching a certain virus. It would be a way for me to help people without having to do any work. I could sit in a room, read, and have blood drawn every few hours. They wouldn’t let me do it.
We learned a lot on the tour and saw a lot. I looked through the thick glass of the negative-air-pressured room at the woman who works with airborne, fatal, incurable diseases all day long. We flirted, as best we could, through the glass. I found her intact airtight positive-pressure suit so sexy. It was the kind of suit Dustin Hoffman wears in
Outbreak.
That movie was bullshit, of course, but I would have loved to watch it with the cats and kitties from USAMRIID. It would be like watching
Silence of the Lambs
with Jeffrey Dahmer. You got to hand it to Dustin Hoffman; you have to be a pretty serious actor to look like Dustin and wear that stupid hat with a magnifying glass over your nose. The USAMRIID woman in the serious infectious disease room filled out the crucial bunny suit very nicely, and I found her job so sexy. This is a woman with some serious balls. So sexy. She’s not going to worry about that little cold sore on your lip before she kisses you. I never got to talk
to her, though; it took her too long to get through the showers, so she couldn’t greet tour guests.
Right after I watched Ms. Ebola in her room, our host showed us “the Slammer.” It was a room that
nothing
went out of; every molecule of air was treated. If Ms. Groovy Diseases had ripped her suit on a broken infected monkey tibia, she’d have been rushed into this room for extreme quarantine and kept there until she died. I had been working on Broadway and doing TV for a while, and I thought that my Fortress of Solitude should be extreme quarantine, a place where I could stay until I died. As I began to plan my house, I decided to call it the Slammer, and the name stuck.