Treehab: Tales from My Natural Wild Life by Bob Smith; University of Wisconsin Press, $24.95
The 12 terrific essays decorating comedian and author Bob Smith's new book Treehab are at once thought-provoking, provocative, humorous, and true to the author's style, unflinchingly honest. Readers familiar with Smith know that he was the first openly gay comedian to appear on The Tonight Show, produced a successful HBO comedy special, and is a prideful father and a lifelong nature lover. What is not common knowledge about Smith is that he has suffered with debilitating, non-familial ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease since 2007, which has not only robbed his physical livelihood but also cruelly vanquished his vocal abilities. Smith communicates solely through his iPad.
ALS disability notwithstanding, the author appears in fine form here, with nods to his career, his enduring sense of humor, and everything flourishing in the outside world. Smith's unflagging love and Thoreauvian appreciation for nature and all things Native American have been a part of his existence since he was five, when going camping with his family in the Adirondacks was as pleasing as the subscription his aunt purchased for him to the children's version of National Geographic. Nature grounds the collection, as does Smith's career in comedy and his life thus far. He shares insights on how to quell a homophobic heckler at his stand-up comedy shows, how hooking up and having great sex can be the best way to fall in love with a particular place, and on his requirement for being a close friend: "a gay man who would rather go camping on a prairie than see a production of Oklahoma."
He shares stories of his four best friends known as the Nature Boys, and his opinion on California redwood trees. "Walking through a redwood forest, you wonder why anyone would want to cut them down. I owned a house in Los Angeles that was built in the 1920s and was horrified to learn that it was built out of redwood. It's like building a baby stroller out of baby bones."
Later chapters find the outspoken comedian astonished by the great cell reception at Walden Pond reservation in Concord, Massachusetts, and offering a brilliant compilation of Ten Deal Breakers for religion. Smith is hilariously opinionated on just about everything. Lesbians, for example, "can afford to be ruthlessly discriminating when picking a sperm donor," he admits. "In fact if all women were as selective as lesbians, we'd have evolved into a race of gods by now." Fickle gay men don't get a pass either. "Every gay man has a history of meeting guys you like immediately whom you don't like later." A chapter on mixed sexual signals finds Smith opining that "evolution really should have evolved a pheromone that works like a fart: letting the room know you're horny. Or even a phero-moan, a grunt that signals you're in the mood." But not everything the author writes is strictly for comedic effect. His chance encounter with outspoken British paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey while on a catering assignment in his youth spawned an epiphany about unapologetically living the way one wants to live. "Leading a curious life is the most practical thing a person can do."
His awareness that ALS is robbing him of his vital faculties is palpable throughout these pieces, but that sadness doesn't make the book somber or fashion it into a plea for sympathy. Instead, what Smith finds most painful is the complex machination of the corporate health care system, which he has been frustratingly navigating for over a decade, and which he feels is "designed as a form of euthanasia, since you'd rather die than deal with its pernicious complexities."
Still, he continues doing what he does best by sharing insights, wit, and food for thought about everything under the sun. "My illness has made me understand that our sixth sense is our sense of humor."