DAMAGED GOODS

There is a perpetual sullenness that belies a true romantic, a theme that pulses like waves through SNAFU and Net Love and As The Worm Turns, and before long you're ready to snuggle up to the writer with your favorite passages highlighted in pink marker. Over the next sixteen stories, you'll meet little lost girls and heartsick gentlemen who find solace in porcelain; he'll take you to the circus and then to London and then leave you someplace between a damp wall and an army of eight-legged adherents. He's mean like that. But it's hot, and you want him to do it again.