It’s All Relative by Wade Rouse

“We’re human. We all occasionally wet ourselves. No one is really better than anyone else. We’re just all trying to make it through the year as best we can. We screw up sometimes. We succeed sometimes. We laugh. We cry. We go on.”

I read a lot of memoirs, mostly because my standards for what I will read are very low. The author doesn’t need to be famous. I don’t need to know anything about them prior to reading. I do prefer them to be funny. I do demand that they be honest, and willing to poke fun at themselves, in addition to others.

Wade Rouse mostly accomplishes this. He grew up in a tiny Southern town, always knowing he was different from his classmates (he wanted a Barbie, his dad bought him a BB gun). He spent a lot of time using alcohol to cover up his true self, until he met his partner Gary and came to terms with who he really was and could be.

The book follows a cute format: he organizes it according to the calendar, and tells a story for various holidays. He covers everything from New Year’s Eve to Arbor Day (one of my favorite stories). It bounces around a bit in time — some take place in his childhood, some during his closeted young adult years and many as an adult living with Gary. This was my one real complaint–it would have been nice had he put dates (at least years) at the beginning of each chapter so I didn’t have to scan for clues on his age at the time.

Rouse is brutally honest about himself, usually to his own detriment and the delight of the reader. He casts himself as the grumpy stick in the mud and lets those around him shine. The book gets sappy at parts, but not terribly so. Mostly it’s a fun little read about a family just as messed up as yours.