The holy book of the beard

Twenty-two-year-old Jasper John has come to San Diego on his broken-down Harley to put a hell-raising and felonious adolescence behind him. He attends college part-time, but his involvement with the employees and regulars at the diner where he works forms his real education.

Here the sublime meets the ridiculous (the chef sings opera while throwing steaks on the grill); the sacred collides with the profane (a persecuted professor turns Romeo and Juliet into a ribald porno-flick script); and Thanatos crowds libido (a formerly fast-living waitress longs for reunion with her dead husband). Jasper's tempter comes in the shape of the bearded, devilish Henry Hankformer pimp, sometime thief, full-time badass - who is always trying to inveigle Jasper into his shady, sometimes illegal schemes.

Along the way there's death, a near castration, a good many brawls, and lots of sex - all as Jasper tries to figure out what it really takes, and what it really means, to be a man and find love in a broken world.