Headless

By Benjamin Weissman. Akashic Books, 157 pages, $12.95 (paper)

All short story collections are bathroom reading, some more than others. Certain collections of ponderous near novellas require either awesome concentration or awful constipation to follow their narratives. But few books are as suited to water closet consumption as Benjamin Weissman's Headless, especially once you eliminate the ones with "Uncle John" and "Darwin" in the title.

It's not just the fact that most of book's 22 stories are short and snappy. It's also that they're twisted as fuck and frequently indulge in bizarre bathroom humor. For example, "Hitler Ski Story" ends with the führer taking a dump in the snow, "Death by Toilet" has a boy recording himself making a U-shaped turd for a bathrobe-wearing pervert, and "The Fecality of It All," well, let's just say it lives up to its title.

In between the poop jokes are some screamingly hilarious monologues, like "Pink Slip of Wood," in which the speaker fires a subordinate whose oversize prick drives his coworkers insane with insecurity. In Weissman's world, parents and children scheme each other's death, gentle lumberjacks and highway patrolmen escort family men into permanent gay servitude, and insanity lurks just beneath the surface of the most mundane domesticity.

An unflinching examination of the meaning of masculinity, the book is divided into four sections. One addresses violence and squalor; the second, romantic relationships in which men are often either perplexed or infantilized by their "mommy" partners. The third section takes on sexuality (and sexual insecurity), and the final section looks at fathers and the damage they do, by their presence as well as their absence.

Headless has moments of unbearable poignancy hidden in the weirdness and jarring experimental wordplay. Most notably in "Marnie," the story of a man whose friend goes into a coma after a skiing accident, life's random absurdity dishes up grief, and suddenly you may need your toilet paper to dab at unmanly tears.

Charlie Anders