Having just interviewed comedian Gary Gulman, my most treasured takeaway is that he uses the phrase, “Oh, my word,” with such casual regularity that it proves my long-percolating theory that he is an utter delight—and sadly, it’s no surprise he was bullied as a child in the 1980s.
That’s a whopper to unpack, but the comedian does just that in his new book, Misfit, and its corresponding stand-up tour. It’s been a long journey for Gulman—who stands at the near-giant height of six foot five—and in a delightful literary-esque plot twist, his quest is not unlike the famed Gulliver’s.
Since awkwardly looming over his peers in grade school, Gulman’s travels have centered around the challenge of coming to terms with what his father and society expected of him (physical dominance, athletic prowess, and its inherent yet perverse power) in contrast to his gentle, self-described Hufflepuff soul.
As SparkNotes succinctly sums up—might versus right.
“I’d never been called a momma’s boy, but I cringed whenever I heard the term because it so clearly applied to me,” he explains in the book.
He goes on to say that it felt like he was drowning at times during childhood. The comedian struggled to make sustainable connections with peers, exacerbated by his father asking the school system to make Gulman (a burgeoning scholar) repeat the first grade. He claimed his son wasn’t mature enough—but it was a calculated ploy to give his son an edge in sports (don’t worry; Dad saves the day in a later chapter). Though the seeds of emotional turmoil had been previously planted, this proved a Miracle Grow dusting of cataclysmic proportions.
Gulman’s newly released book and current stand-up tour use his childhood as a way of “immersing people in the experience of [his] brain,” and both projects are nothing short of inspired.
Comedians often joke about taking medication or going to therapy. Still, Gulman’s immersive level of detail and come-hither use of language allows the bit (or chapter) to be enchanting enough to wander into that oh-so-dark forest quite willingly.
“When I’ve suffered from depression,” he explains to me on the phone, “I thought—wouldn’t it be great if I could redeem this somehow, find a silver lining in sharing this and make people understand it better? The challenge of course—and it’s still a challenge for writers who suffer from depression—is to find a way to express it in the English language in a way that people who haven’t experienced it can understand and empathize.”
As it turns out, the key to success here is his level of detail, which is intimate and dabbled with the hard-to-write yet easy-to-digest fruits of cultural nostalgia. With the dexterity of a top-notch DIY crafter, Gulman gift wraps his pain in a mood board hodgepodge of 1980s toy references and effervescent adjectives.
It gives the reader’s brain a distracting trinket to ease the discomfort of consuming his pain—much like a child psychologist might offer some Legos. Unfortunately, the child psychologist he briefly visited offered no such bauble, but confirmed his suspicions that most people generally consider little boys who prefer books and creativity over wrestling to be a bit odd.
“I hated every minute of camp,” he recounts in the book, “But there were two reprieves from the sports obsession…One [was] arts and crafts, which the boys called ‘farts and craps.’ That type of hackneyed wordplay infuriated me. How dare you?“
“While the losers with mezuzahs grunted and groaned through violent games of dodgeball…I joyfully designed colorful candles, ceramic-tiled ashtrays, and jazzy bracelets,” he continues, and these in-depth though innocuous little runs of nostalgia are the deposits of fortitude he knows we’ll need to get through the pages devoted to his feelings of isolation and deep sadness—described in equal depth. These frequent verbal treats buoy the reader and audience enough to stay with him when he eventually puts a knife to his wrist.
“One of the interesting things about language is that the word depression is the same word we use for this debilitating illness as we use for the feeling we get after the Boston Celtics lose in the playoffs,” Gulman tells me. He laments that he “wasn’t able to get that across, and it’s so frustrating when you’re not able to express how you’re feeling…I haven’t found that analogy or description that unlocks it.”
When Gulman was little, he wrote a book called The Lonely Tree, a cry for help that went unanswered. Anyone who reads the Misfit book and experiences the show and post-show book signing will see that he has “unlocked it.” Perhaps the tree just needs to listen more closely to the hushed chatter in the forest he’s now surrounded by.
After his show at The Wilbur Theater in Boston, Gulman invited the entire audience to stay for the book signing. He made a heartfelt declaration that he wanted to meet everyone and thank them for their support. This, he says, is not a grueling, exhausting chore but a source of rejuvenative energy for him.
Gulman stayed and signed every book and hugged every fan in that book line. And he hugged me—a hug connoisseur of the highest standing. I can tell you this:
Gary Gulman is the real deal, folks. Genuine AF and an excellent human being.
There’s nothing funny about clinical depression or mental illness. Yet, Gulman throws open his personal Pandora’s Box and pours in an entire two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and about 33 packets of Pop Rocks and invites us to the ensuing explosion like some side-splittingly funny National Lampoon version of a NASA launch.
It’s a bit unnerving, and you’re holding your breath, but when the smoke clears, you’re so grateful to have witnessed brilliance—in all its messy truth.
Misfit by Gary Gulman is on sale now.
Melanie Carden is a Boston-based travel and lifestyle writer.