I recently returned to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival for the first time since 2017, the year before I was wrongfully accused of sexual misconduct by a transient photographer who briefly worked there. Before that, I’d spent more than four decades walking its grounds as a seasonal performer.
I hadn’t planned on going back until Penn and Teller, the Las Vegas magic duo, asked me to be there as part of their 50th Anniversary Tour.. I knew them long before there was an ampersand between them, meeting both in 1974 as performers at the festival, youngsters.
I was friends with Teller first. He was, from the beginning, a world class magician. He was silent when performing, but soft-spoken, smart, and articulate offstage. At the time I was a kid with a myopic interest in magic, already performing small shows using gimmicked props. But Teller’s magic was otherworldly.
I had a cheap set of linking rings once, the kind any kid could buy. Teller performed with the same trick, but in his hands it became extraordinary—silent, precise, unforgettable. The same was true of his infamous needles routine: a stunt any magician might attempt, but he transformed it into pure theater. Teller reminded me that the trick was never the point. It was his presence and performance that made it feel like magic real.
Penn Jillette is, to use his own words, a “tall (6,6) square-headed fuck”, who juggles. Penn is the mirrored opposite of Teller, a loud and provocative carnival talker, whose juggling skills were simply the vehicle for his non-stop comedic patter. He was the funniest person I’d ever met, and I couldn’t get enough. Where Teller is silent, Penn was mouthpiece.
Penn was the first adult male I fell in love with. Having been raised by a single mom, my only experience with an adult male had been Stan, an effeminate neighbor who took me fishing a couple of times but did not to possess the kind of manly or fatherly influence my mother had imagined he might.
Penn swore, a lot. This was a revelation to me, because it was frowned upon in my home. He didn’t just say the word fuck as much as he used it like punctuation, a verbal ornament underlining his thoughts. He was also an outspoken atheist, libertarian, and unapologetic mama’s boy. Though only a few years my senior, he seemed so much older and certainly wiser, because he was. He talked endlessly about music and movies, read voraciously, kept a daily journal, and still had time for a gawky, uncool kid hanging around backstage.
Over the years, our friendship endured. Whenever I visited Las Vegas, I’d catch up with them, and whenever their show came through the Twin Cities, we made a point to connect. So when they announced their 50th anniversary shows at the Festival, of course I wanted to be there. But returning wasn’t simple.
After being so roundly maligned and attacked in 2018, I feared running into the pietists who once bayed for my exile. One of the Festival’s managers even declared I wasn’t allowed on site, something I’d never been told before. They worried my presence might stir the zealots and “bring all the stuff up again.”
I understood their concern. The place has more than a few obscurantists who would love to wring their hands at my return. So, the management of the fest determined if I did return, I’d have to stay backstage in the greenroom set up for Penn & Teller.
But Penn and Teller, along with their manager, had a different idea. Knowing my life had been turned inside out, and having followed the trial and outcome closely, they wouldn’t accept the Festival’s imposition. After all, they said, I had a trial, I was found not guilty, and I have no criminal record whatsoever. They made the case that I would be present and wouldn’t have to hide backstage. The details of their negotiation aren’t important, but it was eventually cleared that I could be there and come and go as I wanted. And, contrary to rumors posted on Facebook, security wasn’t following me around. In fact, Marian and I walked around without incident.
In the end, there was no drama. I was treated warmly. The duo had 2 shows to a packed theater. I sat with my partner Marian in the front row, happy to be included.
I got to see so many friends still working the show, all of them happy to see me, and fortunately I didn’t run into any of the crooks or the crown. It was a great day.
No surprising, the following morning, I was greeted with screenshots from some of the bedlamites, who were enraged that I had the temerity to be on site. One witless numpty repeated the ruse that I was a “known predator” and should never have been allowed on site. Another sent me an anonymous text calling me a “shit bag” and “how dare you” kind of gibberish. I wanted to fight back but it is pointless.
Winston Churchill wrote, “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”
Thinking back, there was a moment when I felt really uneasy about this day. Penn and Teller, and their team, were being picked up and driven out to the festival in three shiny new black SUVs limos, complete with Hollywood tinted windows and chrome trim. Marian and I met them at the hotel in our truck, and they followed us out. On the road behind us it looked like a presidential motorcade. When we arrived at the festival, we drove through the participants’ parking area and service road, passing costumed participants. I said to my wife, “This is so strange to be back, it’s a little uncomfortable.” She looked back to the motorcade, turned to me and said, “I’m sure it is, baby, but just look at how you’re returning.”
Philosopher, Hannah Arendt’s idea, is that action always exceeds its setting, it has unpredictable, sometimes expansive consequences. My return wasn’t grandiose; it was simply showing up, and because some friends took a stand for me, I returned with dignity. But even that carried the seed of something larger. As Arendt wrote: “The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.”
Indeed. Thanks to the Penn and Teller team, I was the king that day.
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I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. Many thanks to Penn and Teller, and Glenn Alai, for making it all happen.
