Witty and winkingly playful, Manuel Betancourt’s Hello Stranger explores modern queer romance and the expansive possibilities of ephemeral intimacies

“Hello stranger.” As an opening line, you really can’t ask for better.

Hello Stranger is a book about chance encounters—at a bar, through social media, in a bathhouse—and what a stranger can reveal about who we are and who we could still yet be. A stranger, after all, is a site of endless possibilities.

As Manuel Betancourt looks back on his past relationships, he turns to characters and narratives that helped him question notions of what monogamy and coupledom (and relationships and marriage) can and should look like. From films like Before Sunrise and Cruising to the poetry of Frank O'Hara and the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, Betancourt uses pop culture to make sense of the alluring prospect of forging intimacies with strangers—even, or especially, the strangers within ourselves.

At once a personal excavation and a broad cultural critique, Betancourt grapples with everything from online sexting and real-life cruising to divorces and throuples. Hello Stranger examines the intimacies we crave, value, and oftentimes destroy with rote familiarity.