‘Whats up Stranger: Musings on Trendy Intimacies’
Printed by Catapult
Accessible Jan. 14; hardcover $27
Two strangers lock eyes throughout a bar. Or possibly they attain for a similar guide on a shelf in a bookstore. Or possibly they’re a mannequin and artist, exchanging nervous smiles because the artist tries to seize a bit of the mannequin’s soul on canvas or movie.
In a Hollywood movie, we’d be led to imagine that these moments are laden with momentous significance – a flicker of sexual cost and want, a chemical response that leads inexorably to life-altering romance and fortunately ever after.
However in his new guide of essays “Whats up Stranger: Musings on Trendy Intimacies,” queer Colombian movie and tradition critic Manuel Betancourt unpacks the notion that flirting must be something extra, suggesting that flirtation generally is a worthwhile endeavor in itself.
“One of many issues that when you learn any form of love story or watch any form of rom-com, you’re consistently inspired to assume that flirtation is kind of like preamble to one thing else,” Betancourt tells me over cookies exterior of Levain bakery in Larchmont.
“Really, flirtation doesn’t want to do this. You may flirt only for the act of flirting, and that may be enjoyable, and that may be nice. What’s it that you just discover as a substitute in that second of risk, at that second when something can occur? Simply what occurs whenever you’re attempting to be the most effective individual you might be? It’s virtually extra thrilling when you already know, there’s nothing else on the horizon.”
However “Whats up Stranger”isn’t a how-to information to flirting. It’s extra like a cross between cultural criticism and memoir.
Over a collection of essays that alternate between examinations of flirting scenes in films, books, and artwork, and anecdotes from his personal private life, Betancourt traces the ways in which we use flirting to create totally different sorts of intimacies.
“This isn’t a how-to, as a result of I don’t assume homosexual males need assistance with that,” Betancourt says. “However I additionally know that I’m a homosexual man in Los Angeles whereas I do know there are younger of us in Ohio that will not consider it this manner as a result of they’ve been conditioned, and truly we now have such a breadth of homosexual literature and a tradition that’s regularly instructing us we have to discover the one.”
The guide is a deeply private one for Betancourt, who lately bought divorced from his husband and joined a polyamorous relationship as he started writing it.
“I’ve been pondering quite a bit about totally different intimacies with strangers, with buddies, with lovers, issues that fell exterior of what we perceive as conventional. And so it felt like a simple solution to flip all of these items that I used to be coping with on a private degree right into a extra cohesive and coherent mission,” he says.
“I wished to assume via the place the enjoyment in flirtation lies. Like, why are we so drawn to it? Why was I so drawn to it? Why do I take pleasure in it a lot? And naturally, being the form of literary tutorial that I used to be, I used to be prepared to search out different folks should have thought of this, different folks should have depicted it on display screen and books,” he says. “Different folks can educate me about this.”
The guide begins with examinations of the fleeting, flirtatious intimacies seen in movies like “Nearer” and “Earlier than Dawn,” earlier than diving into extra difficult (and queer) relationships within the books “The Sexual Outlaw” and “A Little Life” and the portraiture of photographer Peter Hujar, utilizing them as springboards to look at Betancourt’s personal relationships to cruising, courting, nudity, and relationships each monogamous and in any other case.
“I wished to start with these straight, quite common, comprehensible methods of eager about these items, after which the guide slowly will get clearer and we finish in polyamory and conceptual monogamy, and these very other ways of pondering.
“What else I wished to do for these homosexual readers which can be possibly trying to discover one thing right here, is present that none of that is new. I believe numerous us attempt to assume, like, ‘That is fashionable and polyamory is so 2024,’ however what I wished to do is give a cultural historical past of that.”
Although it’s not an instruction handbook, Betancourt says he did enhance his personal flirtation expertise whereas researching the guide, as evidenced in a spicy anecdote he recounts within the guide about cruising a person in a lodge bar, the place he was truly engaged on writing “Whats up Stranger.”
“You simply have to concentrate, open your self up, which can be what Hollinghurst, writes in ‘The Swimming-Pool Library.’ His protagonist is ready to like cruise and hook up anyplace he desires to in London, as a result of he’s at all times trying, like actually trying. He’s consistently out seeing the world as if it’s a cruising playground and that’s all apparently it is advisable to do.
“Should you’re crossing paths and also you see somebody who you’re drawn to and also you lock eyes, that’s the second to make one thing occur and it’s about being open to the chance after which additionally letting the opposite individual know that you’re.”
Nurturing that openness was tough at first for Betancourt, resulting from his upbringing in Bogota, Colombia.
“For me it was a really totally different cultural factor due to the form of tradition of violence, the tradition of unsafety in Colombia. You’re kind of inspired to probably not belief anybody,” he says. “It takes virtually locking that away as a result of you possibly can’t method any of these conditions with worry.”
“That is about, like, instructing myself as a result of I’m not nice at it both. So, it’s about reminding myself, oh yeah, be open and extra attentive.”
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