CARNAL NATION

In his book, Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke, Russell Peterson writes: “The difference between mere truth-telling and the contemplation of truthiness lies in the distinction between merely pointing out the fact that the emperor wears no clothes and leading us to understand how we could have been led to ignore his nudity in the first place.”

So, it seems only fair to start with myself; to begin with my own body.

When I was six, although I had internalized society’s prudery, when a classmate got transferred to Reform School for exposing himself, I thought that was an unjust punishment.  The next day, I stood in front of the classroom and unbuttoned my fly, only to reveal a picture of my penis that I had drawn the previous evening as a self-imposed art-homework assignment.  The whole class laughed at the way I was bending the rules of indecent exposure, and I got away with it.  If I were a kid who did that today, I would undoubtedly be force-fed Ritalin through a Pez dispenser.

Five years later, I went to summer camp for the first time, and I was still a prude.  In fact, after I watched my counselor, completely naked, jumping on the diving board—his genitalia bouncing up and down like a featherless chicken—then plunging into the pool, I told him that a female counselor had seen him.  He shrugged his shoulders and said, “So what?”  The more I contemplated his two-word rhetorical question, the more I simply had no rational answer.  Recently, I watched a YouTube clip with a nude woman sky-diving, her outer labia flapping wildly in the wind, slaphappy as a clam.  We have indeed come a long way, baby.

In 1969, Richard Avedon invited me to be included in a collection of his photos of countercultural people; I accepted on the condition that my friend, soap-opera actress Jada Rowland, and I would pose together, and we could choose the pose.  What we had in mind was a take-off on the Unfinished Music, No. 1: Two Virgins album cover, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono stood nude, holding hands.  We would be standing naked with our arms around each other.  Jada would hold a patriotic drinking mug with stars and stripes, and she’d have arrows pointing to her breasts and crotch.  I would hold a small American flag, and I’d have an erection.  If the Two Virgins photo was about anatomy, this would be about physiology.

I had ingested a capsule of THC powder before the photo session. Jada and I were now standing before the camera, and the only thing missing was my erection.  I had heard that THC powder was actually an elephant tranquilizer.  I would soon find out if that was true.  Avedon asked what music to play during the session. I asked for the Beatles' “Hey Jude,” but he didn't have it.  He played my second choice, Bob Dylan singing “Lay, Lady, Lay,” and I began to kiss Jada.  Dylan was now asking the musical question, “Why wait any longer for the world to begin?”  My penis rose to the occasion, and the crew cheered us on.

I signed a release, assuming that the photo would never be seen because the publishing of an erection was so taboo.  However, in 1999—three decades later—my bluff was called.  A $75 book of photos by Avedon and Doon Arbus titled The Sixties, was published.  A review in the Los Angeles Times mentioned that I looked “sheepish” and “sustained an erection.”  Little did they know.

At a Christmas party in 1978, Larry Flynt hired me as publisher of Hustler so that, in his capacity as a born-again Christian, he could travel around the country and speak about his conversion by then-President Jimmy Carter’s evangelist sister in a plane that was owned by Elvis Presley and had now been painted pink.  I was scheduled to have my photo taken for the first born-again issue.  I had been wearing the same old green windbreaker to work every day, but on this particular morning I decided to vary my wardrobe by wearing an old cowboy hat.  Photo editor Frank DeLia asked me if I would take off my clothes and pose nude.

I agreed, though I got caught up in Hustler’s editorial schizophrenia.  In the “Advice and Consent” column at the front of the magazine, you could read about how penis size doesn’t matter, but in the ads at the back of the magazine, you could send away for penis enlargers.  Thus, when I went into this little bathroom at the photo studio to remove my clothes, I fondled my penis just enough to make it a little larger without becoming erect.  Then I posed for the camera, naked except for my cowboy hat.  This was the first time any publisher of a men’s magazine had ever presented his own full frontal nudity.

In 1981, I returned to stand-up comedy.  My daughter Holly had given me a pair of red cotton long johns for Christmas, and I wore them for the first time when I was performing on a cold night at a club in Sebastopol, Califorinia.  At one point in my monologue, I decided to show them to the audience.  But when I turned my back and pulled my jeans down, the long johns stuck to the jeans, and I found myself accidentally displaying my bare buttocks--in a spotlight, yet--to a large group of assembled strangers.

This was a dreamlike moment, but I couldn’t very well flap my arms like wings as a reality check--not without resembling a human bellows.  I was merely a victim of static cling.  I had heard that phrase before, in fabric softener TV commercials, but I had never experienced it before.  Recovering my composure, I said, “You see, actually, I came here to join the Moonies, and this is my initiation.”  With that as an excuse, I began to moon audiences deliberately, but only once in each city, because I didn’t want it to become a comedy gimmick.  Holly was there when I mooned the audience at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, and she called out loud, “That’s my Dad.”