GOOD DAMAGE

A debut author reflects on loss, surviving trauma, and finding oneself in this memoir.

“I was the guy people envied for ‘always having a smile,’” writes Toler, noting that behind “the jokes, the energy, the charisma” was “the kid sitting beside his mother’s oxygen machine, watching her sort through bills she had no way to cover.” These lines, in many ways, capture the ethos of the book, which evocatively juxtaposes the author’s gregarious personality with the harsh realities of a life full of hardship. Although many of Toler’s experiences from childhood through adulthood are certainly distressing—from his single mother’s constant battle with a barrage of medical emergencies when he was a child, to his partner’s diagnosis of cancer—the book is particularly adept at capturing how his childhood feeling that he didn’t belong continued to reverberate into adulthood. As a kindergartner with ADHD, he notes that his inherent loudness and desire to constantly “color past the borders on purpose” made him the frequent target of discipline by his teachers. Later, as a devout Christian who sought a sense of belonging in conservative evangelical youth groups, he heard pastors preach that being gay was an “abomination.” (“I never felt ‘Christian enough,’” he writes, because he “carried the constant ache that I was letting God down.”) As the work moves into Toler’s early adulthood, he effectively captures the millennial milieu of life as a gay man in the American South of the early 2000s, which he describes as an atmosphere with “an underlying discomfort everyone pretended not to notice.” Interestingly, although his outgoing, over-the-top personality drew teachers’ ire, it prepared him for a brief period as a stand-up comedian who would eventually perform at Atlanta’s Laughing Skull Lounge (where he would learn the trade under the tutelage of the wildly successful comic Margaret Cho). Although Toler’s absorbing volume doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of life, it is relentlessly optimistic and effectively blends his personal narrative with poignant observations on life in general. Overall, it feels well tailored to readers who might be experiencing similar heartaches and a thirst for belonging.

A candid and moving account that’s buoyed by humor.