If these stories are Tales of Modern Love, then we all would just be way, way better off alone. Lust, heartbreak, disillusion, despair and meaninglessness infest the pages of Michael Weinreb's GIRL BOY ETC. like kudzu gone wild in a grove of southern poplars. Like the fast-growing vines, however, the painful altered states and dark emotions explored in these stories aren't necessarily fatal, and enhance their host's image most of the time, making them strangely more beautiful to behold.

Not to say that a few stories in this collection don't collapse under the weight of their own glib non-sensibilities. 'Bear claws the size of her head,' in particular, is a bunch of vaguely amusing snippets strung together by the 1st person narrator that illustrate his vacuous personality and his pathetic love life, and it fast becomes tedious. The story 'Satisfaction' is another clinker wherein the complex of lusty alliances and settlements are so confusing that they are shown on the page as some kind of scientific equation. Nice idea. But the story has nothing going for it but the fact its protagonist is a hopelessly befuddled lout who can't get over the fact he is enamored of another man's girlfriend. These two stories ultimately don't work because there's essentially no story there but for the narrator's real or imagined slights and ultimate failure. Not to mention most of the action takes place in bars. All tired territory these two stories mine for not much gold.

Now, when Weinreb actually attaches his characters to some kind of plot line beyond their own masturbatory meanderings, the results can be stunning. The story 'All I know about it' starts out inside the narrator's confused head, who then in turn relates his adventures in Russia, among strange architecture and customs and in the thick of a love affair he knew was doomed from the start. "I will admit this: there was a part of me that told myself to stop it right there, to walk away, to pinch my arm or recite the alphabet backward. Anything but kiss her. But it's like when you're a little kid and you start barrel-rolling downhill, and halfway down you realize you're going too fast and you have no way of stopping yourself." Of course, he kisses her, and the barrel roll begins. The reader is already clued to the fact this affair won't last, but the couple seems so perfect together, the reader can't help but root for them to beat the odds. The story is funny, full of great dialogue and so poignantly resonant of that intangible something to which we all can relate: how something can be so right, but still not work out in the end.

And even when you are steeling yourself for the inevitable disappointment by tearing her down, you can't help but idolize her. "What happens when you start to cherish her flaws more than her perfections, when you look at that mole and you feel like you could kiss it until your mouth is sore?" It's just a very beautiful story that may be, all by itself, worth the price of the collection.

There are other standout stories whose merits are well worth extolling. 'Pictures of my family' tells the story of an abnormally dysfunctional family gathered to honor the ancient matriarch at a banquet where nobody can find anything more complimentary to say about the dame of honor than: "Edie … You are one hell of a piece of work."

'The Fox Hunters' is probably the weirdest story of the collection, but gratifyingly so. It's about a man trying to get over a particularly debilitating breakup who meets a strange lady in a New York park who comes up to him and starts touching him as if she were measuring him for a jacket. "There was a rim of black around her front teeth, like she'd had her gums caulked." She gives him her card and tells him he could and should be a model. He calls her up one night after beating up his roommate (don't ask, you'll have to read the story) and she gives him directions to her place. Their encounter is very strange, very entertaining and highly recommended.

'Old men on spring break' follows the adventures of some old fraternity brother's fending off reality by spending a week in Key West during the particularly orgiastic time of year mentioned in the title. It's a coming-of-age story for middle-aged men who, even as they carouse and canoodle, and whether they consciously acknowledge it our not, already realize that all is vanity. "I'm saying it all gets boring after a while. I'm saying that's life. You get a girl, you don't get a girl, you're always going to be miserable."

Weinreb's dialogue distinguishes itself throughout the collection as one of his strongest suits. One would expect that the exclusive use of 1st person point of view, as well as nothing but youngish male narrators, for each story would make the stories' redundant, but, to Weinreb's credit, this is not the case. There are no clear-cut happy endings and a lot of ambivalent ones. There are some stories that go on too long and end on some glib non sequitur. But you could chalk this up to sloppy editing on the publishers part.

All in all, GIRL BOY ETC. is an impressive collection of stories that will make men recall the bittersweet idylls of their youth and women wonder if there is anything but remembrances of full frontal nudity running on a perpetual film loop over and over and over again through a man's head.