Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies

Betancourt (The Male Gazed) considers “new ways of redrawing how we conceive of closeness” in this seductive blend of memoir and cultural criticism. Drawing on his own relationships and a broad range of pop culture artifacts—films from Bringing Up Baby to Before Sunrise, literature from Madame Bovary to A Little Life—Betancourt reflects on the allure of the chance encounter and the opportunity flirting with strangers offers to “see ourselves anew.” He writes sharply about internalizing messages from his favorite films about the difficulties of monogamy and the liberation he felt while chatting with anonymous internet users as a sexually curious teenager (“They were the first instances where I could take labels like gay and queer out for a drive between slow-loading JPEGs and heavily pixelated MP4 downloads”). The chapters strike an exhilarating balance between steamy and cerebral, with casual analyses of Anna Karenina brushing up against frank assessments of Betancourt’s excitement at “getting a cute guy to send me a dick pic.” The result is an intoxicating invitation to push beyond one’s comfort zone in pursuit of pleasure. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Jan.)