from http://www.girlcomic.net/aug2k2_quickie_durham.php
Society Girl
By Deb Durham
Deb explains the life behind all that Jehovah's Witness door-knocking.
not doing. Anything. I mean, there are the obvious ones: no drugs, no smoking, no masturbation, no premarital sex, they even forbid oral sex among married couples. Then there is everything else: no R-rated movies, no rock music, no Magic 8 ball or Ouija board, no school sports or school activities of any kind, no acting or dancing or reading anything but the Bible. Sarcasm and irony brand you a heretic. All the Witnesses do is knock on doors, trying to sell their magazines to anyone who will give them the time of day..
I "came out" about my Witness background when I started doing comedy a few years ago. It was just too much fun seeing the audience's reaction to the fact that I, with my tattoos, foul mouth, and cat-eye glasses, was once a Child of God. After awhile, I began to feel that what I had been a part of was not so much a religion as an urban legend. Jehovah's Witnesses and their unwelcome visits are a staple of comedy. Everyone has heard of the Witnesses even if they've never seen one. People couldn't wait to come up to me after shows to tell me their own Witness stories. Every story revolved around shocking or offending said Witness by yelling insults at them or telling them you worshipped Satan. And I was amazed at how many of these tales involved nudity. Apparently, there is a whole faction of the public that has a Witness-flashing fetish.
I, myself, was sent into the preaching work at the age of five. I remember walking up to a large brown wooden door. My small hands could barely hold the two magazines, The Watchtower and Awake. My mother rang the bell. The door opened to reveal a huge man, a giant to me, with thick glasses and arms covered with coarse black hair. He looked at my mother, then down at me. He pointed his finger in my face and roared, "Spawn of the Devil!"
Many times as I grew to womanhood, I fantasized that I had been adopted. In my fantasy, I was the victim of one of those wolf-pack adoption dramas like in The Jungle Book. My real family was this group of whole-grainy, non-sectarian liberals who got swept away by a wave of Beatlemania, leaving me in the wilds of Southern Indiana, where I was found by a group of conservative, Bible-thumping Velveeta advocates. Unlike the rest of my family, I never learned to enjoy life without Christmas or birthdays or any holidays at all. I loved rock music and Magic 8 balls. All of my natural inclinations registered heavily on the Watchtower sin-o-meter.
By the time I got to high school, I had developed two distinct and separate lives: one at home, where I went through the motions of being a good Christian, and the other at school, where I was reading Kurt Vonnegut, taking acting classes, and writing a pornographic soap opera, starring all of my teachers, with my friend Jamie Palmer. I eventually won a creative writing scholarship to cover my first semester at Indiana University, where I moved into the dorms and I proceeded to do. Everything. I got drunk. I got stoned, I went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show on mushrooms. I acted in a play, I had sex, I bought Tarot cards and Christmas presents. I had a great year, academic probation notwithstanding.
Back at home, word had gotten around that I had been sinning up a storm. I was called before a Judicial Committee comprising three of the elders in our congregation. They asked me a lot of questions: What kind of drugs did I do? What kind of sex did I have? I thought they should get their own sins and quit living vicariously. I wondered why I was sitting there anyway. I knew they were going to kick me out, called "disfellowshipping." That meant that no Witness, even my own family, would ever speak to me again. I felt a huge sense of relief and I wanted to get this over with -- I had a party to get to. They were reading some scripture about fornication and drunken bouts and other sins of the flesh. They asked me if I had committed any of these sins. I pointed at random to one of the words: "See that one? Well I haven't tried that one yet." I was deemed unrepentant and promptly disfellowshipped. I count that as one of the luckiest and happiest days of my life.
Deb Durham is a writer and occasional comic in Chicago.
