Milestones in life feel like spankings from God. You know what you want, and the outcome lets you down. That’s the comfortable outcome for me. The flip side of that is the outcome exceeding your expectations. What do you do then?

This photo came up in my memories on Facebook from 15 years ago.

I was on stage a lot in those days in San Francisco. Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk had just come out, but even before that I was doing storytelling events and funny enough many of those chapters in Jesus Jerk were edited from the reactions I got from audiences. I actually workshopped chapters reading them from the stage, reworking them for my next event to see if I got a laugh, if I can elicit absolute silence in loud bars, if I could work the crowd.

There was no reason for anyone to publish my first novel. I’d been writing for years, one awful novel called Heartbreak that I’m so glad has gotten lost in the many moves and upgrading computers. I vaguely remember that book. It was about a breakup. Little did I know I was foretelling my divorce with that novel. That scares me to think about. It’s like the writing knows more than I know what’s going on in my life.

Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk wasn’t the original title. There were three other titles that stuck around for a while: Preacher Boy. Salvation. Holy Smoke.

Wait! I sold it as Memoirs of a Teenage Jesus Jerk, and my lovely editor Anne Horowitz suggested Confessions.

I wouldn’t title it that now. Looking back I realize it’s a mouthful. And it’s been misinterpreted too often as a middle finger to Christianity. That wasn’t the intent, yet, I had more of a middle finger to the world in 2010, maybe it was the intent. I wanted to tell the world to eat shit and die, everyone who told me NO, and growing up a Jehovah’s Witness your entire life is NO, except that one part where God kills billions of wicked sinners and you get the YES prize at the end to live forever and reconstruct a paradise earth.

I hate talking about this. I wanted my Jehovah’s Witness part of my life to just go away. I wanted to write the great American novel. I wanted to be canonized. I wanted the Man Booker, even though I didn’t know what that was then.

I didn’t know what anything was when the book was published. I never went to college. I had no degrees. There was just a burning desire to be on a library shelf smushed up next to Lawrence Durrell. The library saved me from suicide.

Wait, that was the milestone, when the elders in my congregation told me not to grieve my friend Gibby when he killed himself, because Gibby was disfellowshipped and had no intention of coming back to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He was already dead to God.

I couldn’t respond verbally to that. I knew I wanted to die. What kind of God would do that? Isn’t God love? Like it says “God is love”. How does that work?

I still knew in my heart, in my DNA that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only way to God and to living forever and that Armageddon was coming any second. I prayed about it, apologized that I couldn’t go to the Kingdom Hall three times a week after work anymore. I had to go somewhere else. I talked to God about it. My main question was, how do I not kill myself?

My uncle had already killed himself. My grandma had killed herself. My sister did a solid job at attempting suicide. The doors were flung open all over the place.

Instead of studying for the meetings and going to meetings after work every night I went to the library.

That was the milestone. Your Local Library Branch Can’t Be Wrong. I read Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer books. Just sat in those stacks at the Burlingame Library for hours at night. My Jehovah’s Witness friends pulled away from me. There was no real foundation for friends outside of the JWs because those friends are only a means to an end. In the faith you either are in business with them so you need them for money, or you’re trying to convert them. Any other angle was bad association.

It’s funny to say Tony Robbins saved my life. I saw his silly infomercials that would play on TV in the middle of the night, so that was the author I knew when I went to the self help section, or how I lovingly call it, the how-to-not-kill-yourself section of the library.

Before Tony Robbin's late night infomercials there was Tom Vu and his women selling get rich quick real estate seminars. Those bikini clad women on TV was the Pornhub of 1992. Get out of the way Tom Vu, I wanna see skin.

In a way, Tom Vu helped me not kill myself. That was the milestone. Falling asleep to Tom Vu, hoping for sex dreams, then Tony Robbins would be next on the broadcast with his sales pitch for his book Awaken the Giant Within.

That’s how it all started. It’s like Gibby was a fallen soldier on the battlefield and I had to learn from him.

When I’ve told people what the elders said to me about Gibby they get mad, they get angry for me, and I’m like, no, I’m so glad they were so fucked up, maybe I would have never entered a library, maybe I would have never ventured into the poetry section and into the fiction section, to read what would later become my literary ancestors, James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Laurence Durrell, all of these dudes who became my mentors and spoke to me in an emotional way. It felt like I found the spiritual center of the universe.

Over three decades later and I still feel even more grounded that storytelling is the center of our universe. How lucky I was to make a major decision to walk away for a little while from the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

When people walk away they usually go straight to sex and drugs, it’s what the JWs assume all ‘worldly’ people do. Then they go back and find out how bad it is out there. The story the JWs tell just goes against the human condition.

I knew in my heart The Truth was being a Jehovah’s Witness. Even when I was at the library on those nights I prayed for forgiveness for not doing my JW duties. I went back and married a JW, since I became a JW again. But, I still read books and was constantly at the library on my free evenings.

Novels are JW kryptonite. The elders didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t go drugging or sexing, I went to that intellectual place. They finally gave up on counseling me when I returned to the JWs, they said, as long as you’re not reading unscriptural novels (Henry Miller, ha), and as long as you keep up with your Watchtower reading, which I kind of did, they had nothing to say.

Funny, the same reason I got to see live bands and go to concerts, the elders were extremely upset, and as a good Christian Soldier I did know the bible front to back, read it twice, and when they gave me counsel, I returned with scriptures of my own. King David even sang and had concerts, I’m following King David.

Confused elders threw their arms up, told me to not bring JWs to see live shows to corrupt them, and to make sure I wasn’t corrupted. They wanted to hear the music, and I played them John Zorn, before I went to see John Zorn’s Cobra at the Great American Music Hall. They had no concept of things beyond that Satan dude Ozzy Osbourne.

Which, by the way, I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to Ozzy until I was 30 years old. Then I was like, oh, this is good. I was also like, that’s it? It did take me another five years to listen to the Crowley song though, that did feel demonized.

There’s no epiphany or conclusion here, or maybe there are some within the writing up there. It’s unedited, except for a quick line edit. I wanted to get a Substack post in before I hit 100 subscribers because I’ll be a different person. I’ll walk a little taller. I’ll whistle a little louder on my walks. I’ll commune with humanity on a different scale. There will be more Getty images of me online to use for reference when the world clamors for your attention.

It’s October 15, 2025 at 2:34pm Pacific Time.

The milestone is this minute. Where were you when this minute happened? I was typing.

Where are you in the future? What does 2:35pm Pacific Time bring you?

Somewhere on the other side of the world someone’s dreaming about their Substack subscribers going to three digits, in between dreams of women in bikinis standing awkwardly next to Tom Vu.

Where are those women now?

***

It’s October 15, 2025 at 4:48pm Pacific Time.

I gathered some photos and scanned them. Cried over the photo of Gibby and many other photos I sifted through, it’s mostly heartbreak looking back, yet there were some laughs. I sent a photo of my friend Jim and me with a big group of JWs, oh hell, I’ll put it here….we got giggles. I’m top far right, Jim’s bottom far right, the only person that continues to be my friend from that era.

You made it this far.

Currently reading The Fugitive by Marcel Proust.

I’m excited to teach this screenwriting workshop over the holiday break, join me, we’re going to get work done December 22 - Jan 2. Let’s start 2026 with an outline in hand. Link to register.

…and in case you’re not familiar with the title reference, here’s what inspired it. Thanks Elvis and Redd Kross.

Love,

Tony