‘Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies’
Published by Catapult
Available Jan. 14; hardcover $27

Two strangers lock eyes across a bar. Or maybe they reach for the same book on a shelf in a bookstore. Or maybe they’re a model and artist, exchanging nervous smiles as the artist tries to capture a piece of the model’s soul on canvas or film. 

In a Hollywood film, we’d be led to believe that these moments are laden with momentous importance – a flicker of sexual charge and desire, a chemical reaction that leads inexorably to life-altering romance and happily ever after.

But in his new book of essays “Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies,” queer Colombian film and culture critic Manuel Betancourt unpacks the notion that flirting needs to be anything more, suggesting that flirtation can be a worthwhile endeavor in itself.

“One of the things that if you read any kind of love story or watch any kind of rom-com, you’re constantly encouraged to think that flirtation is sort of like preamble to something else,” Betancourt tells me over cookies outside of Levain bakery in Larchmont.

“Actually, flirtation doesn’t need to do that. You can flirt just for the act of flirting, and that can be fun, and that can be great. What is it that you find instead in that moment of possibility, at that moment when anything can happen? Just what happens when you’re trying to be the best person you could be? It’s almost more exciting when you know, there’s nothing else on the horizon.”

But “Hello Stranger”isn’t a how-to guide to flirting. It’s more like a cross between cultural criticism and memoir. 

Over a series of essays that alternate between examinations of flirting scenes in movies, books, and art, and anecdotes from his own personal life, Betancourt traces the ways that we use flirting to create different kinds of intimacies. 

“This is not a how-to, because I don’t think gay men need help with that,” Betancourt says. “But I also know that I’m a gay man in Los Angeles whereas I know there are young folks in Ohio that may not think of it this way because they’ve been conditioned, and actually we now have such a breadth of gay literature and a culture that’s continually teaching us we need to find the one.”

The book is a deeply personal one for Betancourt, who recently got divorced from his husband and joined a polyamorous relationship as he began writing it.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about different intimacies with strangers, with friends, with lovers, things that fell outside of what we understand as traditional. And so it felt like an easy way to turn all of these things that I was dealing with on a personal level into a more cohesive and coherent project,” he says. 

“I wanted to think through where the joy in flirtation lies. Like, why are we so drawn to it? Why was I so drawn to it? Why do I enjoy it so much? And of course, being the kind of literary academic that I was, I was willing to find other people must have thought about this, other people must have depicted it on screen and books,” he says. “Other people can teach me about this.”

The book starts with examinations of the fleeting, flirtatious intimacies seen in films like “Closer” and “Before Sunrise,” before diving into more complicated (and queer) relationships in the books “The Sexual Outlaw” and “A Little Life” and the portraiture of photographer Peter Hujar, using them as springboards to examine Betancourt’s own relationships to cruising, dating, nudity, and relationships both monogamous and otherwise. 

“I wanted to begin with those straight, very common, understandable ways of thinking about these things, and then the book slowly gets clearer and we end in polyamory and conceptual monogamy, and these very different ways of thinking. 

“What else I wanted to do for those gay readers that are maybe looking to find something here, is show that none of this is new. I think a lot of us try to think, like, ‘This is modern and polyamory is so 2024,’ but what I wanted to do is give a cultural history of that.” 

Though it’s not an instruction manual, Betancourt says he did improve his own flirtation skills while researching the book, as evidenced in a spicy anecdote he recounts in the book about cruising a man in a hotel bar, where he was actually working on writing “Hello Stranger.”

“You just have to pay attention, open yourself up, which is also what Hollinghurst, writes in ‘The Swimming-Pool Library.’ His protagonist is able to like cruise and hook up anywhere he wants to in London, because he’s always looking, like literally looking. He’s constantly out seeing the world as if it’s a cruising playground and that is all apparently you need to do.

“If you’re crossing paths and you see someone who you’re attracted to and you lock eyes, that is the moment to make something happen and it’s about being open to the possibility and then also letting the other person know that you are.”

Nurturing that openness was difficult at first for Betancourt, due to his upbringing in Bogota, Colombia.

“For me it was a very different cultural thing because of the kind of culture of violence, the culture of unsafety in Colombia. You’re sort of encouraged to not really trust anyone,” he says. “It takes almost locking that away because you can’t approach any of those situations with fear.” 

“This is about, like, teaching myself because I’m not great at it either. So, it’s about reminding myself, oh yeah, be open and more attentive.”

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‘Cher: The Memoir Part One’
By Cher
c.2024, Dey St.
$36/413 pages

Mother knows best.

At least that’s what she’d like you to think because she said it a hundred times while you were growing up, until you actually believed. One day, though, if you were lucky, you learned that Mother didn’t always know best, but she did her best – like in the new book “Cher: The Memoir Part One” by Cher, when Mom helped make a star.

Though she doesn’t remember it, little Cheryl Sarkisian spent a few weeks in a Catholic Charities orphanage when she was tiny, because her father had disappeared and her mother couldn’t afford to take care of her. “Cheryl,” by the way, was the name on her birth certificate, although her mother meant to name her “Cherilyn.”

That first time wasn’t the last time little Cher was left with someone other than her mother, Jackie Jean, a beautiful, talented struggling singer-actress who’d been born into poverty and stayed there much of her life. When money was tight, she temporarily dropped her daughter off with friends or family, or the little family moved from house to house and state to state. Along the way, relocating in and out of California gave Cher opportunities to act, sing, and to learn the art of performance, which is what she loved best.

In the meantime, Jackie Jean married and married again, five or six husbands in all; she changed her name to Georgia, worked in the movies and on TV, and she gave Cher a little sister, moved the family again, landed odd jobs, and did what it took to keep the lights on.

As Cher grew up in the shadow of her glamorous mother, she gained a bit of glam herself, becoming sassy and independent, and prone to separation anxiety, which she blamed on her abandonment as a small child. In her mother’s shadow, she’d always been surrounded by movie and TV stars and, taking acting classes, she met even more.

And then she met Salvatore “Sonny” Bono, who was a friend before he was a lover. So, here’s the very, very happy surprise: “Cher: The Memoir Part One” is a downright fun book to read.

If you’ve ever seen author Cher in interviews or on late night TV, what you saw is what you get here: bald-faced truth, sarcastic humor, sass, and no pity-partying. She tells a good story, ending this book with her nascent movie career, and she leaves readers hanging in anticipation of the stories she’ll tell in her next book.

The other happy surprise is that this memoir isn’t just about her. Cher spends a good amount of the first half writing about her mother and her grandmother, both complicated women who fought to keep their heads and those of their offspring above water. Readers looking between the lines will be enthralled.

Surely, “Cher: The Memoir Part One” is a fan’s delight, but it’s also a great memoir for anyone who particularly loves the genre and doesn’t mind a bit of profanity. If that’s you, then you got this, babe.

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‘I’ll Get Back to You’
By Becca Grischow
c.2024, Penguin Books
$19/320 pages

Christmas tree lots, ugh. Santa, New England, snowflakes, mistletoe, blah blah blah.

The cable TV lineup is full of that stuff this time of year but it’s nowhere near as magical as Hollywood wants you to believe. Honestly, thinking of romance (or the lack thereof) right now is almost enough to bring out your humbug. Get this, though: There’s plenty of romance to go around this Yuletide, but in “I’ll Get Back to You” by Becca Grischow, it might take some planning to find it.

It was supposed to be a great dual-birthday celebration.

Murphy and her BFF, Kat, were planning a “Blackout Wednesday” of drinking and debauchery, followed by a sleepover and snacks at Murphy’s house before they went to Kat’s parents’ place for Thanksgiving. That was the plan, until Kat ruined it by bringing her new boyfriend, Daniel, along and assuming that Murphy wouldn’t mind.

Murphy minded very much. She hated being the gay third wheel, and it was doubly annoying when they all ran into Ellie, who’d graduated a few years before Kat and Murphy.

Wait, Ellie was straight in high school, wasn’t she? Well, she wasn’t now and when Ellie, Kat, and Daniel started comparing notes about attending the University of Illinois, it was all Murphy could do not to roll her eyes.

She wasn’t feeling this holiday thing. She was feeling kind of loser-ish, in fact: still living in her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house, working a job she’d had since she was 16, still at community college and failing accounting.

And, apparently, failing at love, too, because Ellie told Murphy that they could be friends, and that was all. But when Murphy realized that Ellie’s mother was the professor who was about to fail her in accounting class, Ellie came up with a plan.

If they could pretend to have a relationship, then maybe Ellie’s mother would grant Ellie her dream of attending college in New York City. And maybe she’d “play favorites” and give Murphy a passing grade.

It was a weird plan. Super weird. 

Alright, let’s just admit this: A book like “I’ll Get Back to You” isn’t going to change the world or influence people in high places. It’s probably not going to land on the bestseller list. It’s just a light, fun little story – and isn’t that what you need during the holiday season?

With your typical girl-meets-girl, struggle-and-argument, wacky-plan-happy-ending format, author Becca Grischow tells a tale of friendship and romance and growing into the place in life that’s meant to be, which is a good but subtle reminder for some readers who need it. Grischow gives readers a cast of characters who are kind but authentic, fallible but trustworthy, and mostly pretty likable, too, which makes this an easy book to enjoy at just the right time.

If you haven’t found your holiday romance for the season yet, here’s one to look for beneath the mistletoe. Find “I’ll Get Back to You” and you’ll like it a lot.