In her uproarious memoir, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing, poet and stand-up comic Kyria Abrahams dishes the real dirt on those friendly faces who show up at your door, trying to get you to read The Watchtower. Like, did you know Smurfs were demonic? Or that items purchased at yard sales could be possessed? And yet, despite avoiding the bad toys and cartoons, Abrahams still managed to grow up to be demon-filled. Trapped in a loveless marriage at 18, the only way out for Kyria was adultery and disfellowship—being cast away from the only world she ever knew. Abrahams succeeds at making a painful young adulthood hilariously entertaining, and never indulges in demonizing her fellow Witnesses.

I didn't know Jehovah's Witnesses could drink! There's quite a bit of drinking in your book.
Oh yes. Jehovah's Witnesses can and therefore do drink! Once you take away sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, it's pretty much the only outlet we had left. I think the worst offenders were the traveling overseers—who were kind of like couch-surfing evangelists. One year, our family had the "privilege" of hosting an overseer and his wife. All I remember is that he brought his own bottle and was passed out in a dining room chair within two hours. The people in my congregation also loved to quote 1 Timothy, where it says "use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent cases of sickness." Personally, I've never heard of using Maker's Mark for an ulcer, but, hey, whatever worked for Timothy!

I was also surprised by your pop cultural knowledge. How did you ever see Monty Python's Flying Circus?
I think that's a combination of my father's well-honed sense of humor and our family's lack of cable. PBS played a lot of droll BBC programs like Are You Being Served and some show about Brits in a tenement called Rising Damp. They were all pretty incomprehensible to us, but at least Monty Python had a giant cartoon foot. Either way, my father loved them. We were allowed to watch with him as long as we promised not to ask, "What are they saying, Daddy?" every five seconds. Unfortunately, that meant we couldn't understand anything they were saying.

Smurfs versus Snorks. Snorks were OK, but Smurfs were called demons that would rise up from the bed sheets and dance around the room. Have you ever been able to figure out why some things were OK and some things weren't?
It's pretty random, which adds to the fundamentalist mystique. After all, if we could figure out for ourselves what is okay and what isn't, we wouldn't need a religious overlord to lay down a series of disconnected rules for us. There's also something the Jehovah's Witnesses refer to as "a matter of conscience" which is a convenient way of saying "You are allowed to make your own decisions in life, but please know that we will judge you negatively for them." For example, one of my favorite movies was (and, quite frankly, continues to be) Clash of the Titans. Oh man, do I love the claymation out of that movie! So I was understandably psyched when, in the sixth grade, I discovered that we were going to turn off the lights in the math center and spend the afternoon watching the best Harry Hamlin-as-a-Demigod movie of all time! Unfortunately, my Jehovah's Witness friend Anna, who was in the same class, was told by her father that she couldn't watch the movie. Apparently it was about other Gods and there was only one true God—Jehovah. Naturally! Our teacher called me into her office and I remember a very awkward discussion where I basically made Anna look like a fool. You got served, Anna! Perseus 4-Eva!

I was surprised that you bought the vintage wedding dress, since pre-owned items could be demon-possessed. Couldn't someone start a JW-only thrift store? And do you still get a little nervous buying vintage?
Some things never go away. I will always have a split-second twinge of "Oh no, this is bad!" every time I walk into a second-hand store. But for some reason, buying vintage clothes wasn't seen as the same kind of threat as buying a vintage rocking chair. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that clothing can go into a washing machine. Do demons drown? Is it possible that the devil's Achilles' heel is Snuggle? I'm not sure. A lot of people in my congregation wore second-hand clothes but would never touch second-hand jewelry. Again, it's all so random—when you try to live your life through a series of arbitrary rules, the logic is going to unravel very quickly…much like the threads of an affordable second-hand sweater being ritually cursed by a coven of evil warlocks.

In the book, you write about the demon-possessed glassware you bought at a flea market that you had to destroy. How can you tell when something is possessed?
I'm not sure how I determined what was and wasn't possessed. I believe the crack youth detectives of Scooby Doo would describe it as "having a bad feeling about this place!" I've always been far too imaginative, and reading about demons every week gave me free reign to be as kooky as I wanted. If I heard our creaky old building settling, I immediately pinned the noise on demons—I think life was just more interesting that way. I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies, so I created them in my own mind. I'd be certain that the eyes of an old photo were moving or that a ghost had appeared in the bathroom mirror. I got a lot of "bad vibes." I was an overly-dramatic, gothy teen, after all. I couldn't watch The Crow, but I could smash dishes in my kitchen and pretend I had a demon infestation.

The book is hilarious, but how hard was it to write about difficult subjects like your parent's divorce and mother's disfellowship, your own rushed and failed marriage, the drinking and the OCD?
The most difficult part was remembering the details in such a way that I could relate the story to other people. I was eager to get the truth out there, so if anything, I mostly felt elated to have a chance to tell my story. I was mostly concerned with being as honest as possible—although, as with any memoir, there are some scenarios which necessarily must be glossed over because other people's privacy would be involved.

I noticed a definite theme of entrapment and escape in your book. Both you and your mother commit adultery to get out of marriages, and you essentially got married to leave your parents' home. Is this pretty common for women who are Witnesses?
I think it is very common, yes. The more ex-Jehovah's Witnesses I talk to, the more I hear this same story. Jehovah's Witnesses tend to get married pretty young because there's just nothing else to do. You can't date outside the religion and you're not supposed to even date another person unless you think of them as a "suitable marriage mate" (the question, of course, is how are you supposed to know you want to marry someone without dating them?). So I think it's very tempting to just pick the closest Jehovah's Witness you can find and ask them to be your betrothed. People want to experience what having a relationship is like, but unfortunately, they have to get married to do it.
Jehovah's Witnesses also discourage dating as recreation, which leads to a whole lot of really naïve marriages between couples who have never been with anyone else. I think dating as a teenager is as important as playing house when you're ten. You need to learn the rules of adulthood by being immersed, by play-acting as a couple. Personally, I think it causes a lot of problems when you restrict this kind of behavior.

I had no idea that there was special training for witnessing, via the Theocratic Ministry School. Do you think your early performing experience in the school prepared you for your future stage work?
Yes, I think it definitely helped. When you've been speaking publicly to strangers from the age of eight, it takes a lot of the initial sting out of it. At the same time, I still get nervous when I'm performing—much more so than I did as a child. When I was eight years old, everything I said was pre-approved by both God and my parents. It's hard to get nervous on stage when you're a naïve child reciting ultimate truth. I don't have the same amount of hubris now that I write my own material. I wish I did!

(March, 2009)