Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk
A Novel
By Tony Dushane
214 pages, Soft Skull Press, $14.95

Many coming-of-age novels are not like boxes of chocolate. You know what you’re going to get: a guileless narrator seeking first love or first understanding from others and from themselves. There’s likely an unhappy childhood from which to flee. Count on heaps of self-discovery and, if lucky, any life lessons taught are done so subtly, softly and with bath bubbles.

But every once in a while, a coming-of-age novel does more. Anchored by a likeable narrator in a truly unusual situation, a good coming-of-age story makes us question the definition of right and wrong, perhaps even shine a light on institutions we know nothing about. If lucky, the characters stay with us long after we’re done reading.

Tony Dushane’s novel Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk does more. Not a memoir as the title might suggest, Dushane creates the little-known world of Jehovah’s Witnesses through the eyes of a teenager named Gabe, whose primary motivations for a good portion of the book are 1) to get laid to an elusive fellow Witness named Jasmine and 2) get into Heaven without being killed by God in Armageddon.

For the first part of the book, it seems there isn’t going to be much more than the ever-universal adolescent quest for nookie, which makes the drama decidedly more Jay-Z than Nas in terms of heft. Gabe has a few colorful friends in the congregation like Jin, a Korean kid addicted to junk food, and Peter, the wild man Riggs to Gabe’s more cautious Murtaugh. There’s even the obligatory humorous use of the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High and what, perhaps to this day, constitutes the finest work of Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s careers. Some dramatic tension comes from the fact that just about every teenaged rite of passage constitutes a religious sin (including sleeping in the same house alone with a girl even if when in a different room) punishable by death at the hands of God at the imminent Armageddon.

Lucky for Gabe and his friends, being Jehovah’s Witnesses doesn’t seem to stop them from partying and drinking and listening to good music, which inevitably helps Gabe get to first base, then second, then third and so on, all to the soundtrack of bands like Black Flag, Einsturzende Neubauten, and Dead Kennedys and the backdrop of puking teenaged girls. Gabe’s female interests are many, including the ideal Jasmine, Julia, a worldly girl who Gabe French-kisses with the subtly of a power drill, and most interestingly and incestuously, Karen, his dreadlocked, worldly cousin who takes him out to punk rock shows and exposes him to happy lesbian couples for the first time.

Just when it seems the book won’t go much deeper than boy-meets-girl, the book smartly shifts into darker, more significant territory. For seemingly trivial reasons, Gabe is disfellowed by church elders (after an inquisition nearly worthy of Guantanamo) and spends a full year with no more than secret contact with members of his congregation. The church’s surprising cruelty to Gabe begins to expose the darkness behind those Sunday Bible Studies in Millbrae, California. Gradually, Gabe becomes exposed to the questionable aspects of being a Jehovah’s Witness and sees Peter and Jin each confront the congregation about their personal crises with the faith. Even Gabe’s parents begin to crack under the pressures of their doubt.

If there’s one weakness in the novel, it’s the weakness of many coming-of-age novels: the far-too-passive lead. The reader questions many of aspects of Gabe’s life long before he does and while Gabe’s female interests and his friends are well-developed, Gabe’s parents and the backstory of how Gabe and his family came to be Jehovah’s Witnesses are little more than shadows in the narrative.

But by the time the climatic tragedy is revealed and all the characters are transformed forever, Gabe and the rest of his lovable lot of fallen sinners will stay in your mind like friends you know, long after the final page and if the Jehovahs are right, long after Armageddon.