Sit Down, Have a Beer is not for the faint of heart. But if you like blunt, sometimes gross, sometimes scary, sometimes too-real stories, then this is the book for you. Most of the book is poetry and just good storytelling that will make you either chuckle or roll your eyes. I am a girl who likes guy humor, so I found great humor in poems like “The Pubic Hair Blues,” which was about three guys living with one woman (poor thing) and her telling them what she wants:
“i want the crud
& the public hairs
cleaned up
before I get in
that tub.”
There are also some poems in the book that were both true and non-PC. “Kids,” for example, is about how the author doesn’t like kids because what he sees are:
a future drunk
a future mass murderer
a future computer programmer
a future soldier
a future mortician
a future highway fatality
a future child molester
a future corporate exec
a future wife beater
a future junkie
a future Nixon
even a future asshole”
Kind of depressing, no? But so very true as well. I also liked less morbid poems such as “Metamorphosis,” where a guy wakes up to find out he is a hamburger, “Paranoia,” with its little green men and the author freaking out about not having a gun even though he doesn’t know how to use one, “Just Thinking About,” a poem about life and how to keep the fridge full and the landlord off his case, and of course, “Survival” in which you:
take the number of times
they can knock you down
subtract the number of times
you can get back up
if the answer
is zero
you still have a chance”
Makes perfect sense to me!
The last third of the book is an excerpt from the author’s novel, When Life Was Like a Cucumber which is about “a young man’s journey of self-discovery and sexual awakening as he tries to find his place post-Sixties America.” The excerpts were really interesting, to say the least, and I found myself wanting to know what happened next with each short story. I may need to grab a copy to see if I can find out what happened to Charles Darwin.
This book is witty and gritty and a whole lot of fun. I recommend it to people who like a little dirty humor and understand what real life is as opposed to the sugar-coated ones on social media. Cheers, and enjoy!