Encounters With Men

by Bob Ostertag

Encounters With Men is a searching memoir as only Bob Ostertag could tell it. In these pages are a lifetime of intimacies and distances, moments with fathers and teachers, friends and lovers, soldiers, cops, and criminals—even one of the great mass murderers of the late twentieth century.

Bob Ostertag writes of the men he has known in stories shot through with deep love and deep violence, sex often at the core. Here, we encounter the worst of the AIDS epidemic and the best of human behavior. Fittingly, the final encounter occurs exclusively online, a stark yet compelling portrait of the new sex work in the digital age.

Genres: Queer

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[Michael Erickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is no singular "right" way to be a gay man; we come from all sorts of backgrounds and express our love in different ways. But this book that purports to be a celebration of men instead came off as a sad series of zoo exhibits constantly evoking pity from me.

I don't necessarily consider myself a prude - like the author I've cruised and had sex with strangers I'll never see again - so this isn't me clutching my pearls at how casually his sexual encounters are recounted. There's definitely a generational divide going on here with how I reacted to these vignettes; I did not live through the worst of the AIDS years and did not have to bury entire social circles or reckon with a positive diagnosis of my own, so by definition I'll never 100% understand the perspective of someone who did. But that doesn't mean my generation that used/uses the internet to find each other instead of going to a bar or park or rest stop is any less valid, despite the strays we catch in this book.

There are a lot of stories of drugs, hooking up with very young men in southeast Asia, and niche fetish scenes which, sure, are parts of the larger community, but for as many snapshots of different men we get, shockingly few felt relatable to me, someone who is almost exclusively friends with gay men. Maybe there's a socioeconomic mismatch here as well because I tend to surround myself with middle class-ish guys instead of all of the artists, activists, and gay soldiers (who the author is oddly disparaging of in particular) that we read about here. I just went into this expecting to read hot hookup stories that sounded like something one of my friends would share with me. Instead I kind of got bummed out over and over by these brief snapshots of men in unfortunate situations.

[George Neville-Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and also scattered

Like any life these reminiscences are not laid out linearly. Some bits are better than others. Some hooks hook while others failed to land me. But overall it was an interesting journey if a bit of a rough emotional ride that maybe I might not have expected from the title. If you look up the author and his works though you can see that it’s not going to be a light fun read all the way through.

[Danny · Rating 2 out of 5]

i wanted to like this book so bad. i chanced upon it at a queer book store and flipped open to "The Artist", which was a short, beautiful, gut punching vignette that convinced me to give it a chance. unfortunately the rest of the book lacks consistent spark for me.

Encounters with Men reads like you're listening to bob himself reminisce about his life, which is fun and engaging at times. on rare occasion, it feels like i'm held captive audience with an older gay white man gripe about his particularities on how political correctness and identity politics has ruined everything fun. unfortunately those instances, along with other things i disliked personally, left me more disappointed than enlightened after this read.

"Today, having a party with gay male patrons and female staff would require lengthy political discussions beforehand about who counted as male or female, who would feel left out, who would feel oppressed. By the time such a discussion finally ground to a halt many people would have lost interest."

that passage caused the biggest eye roll out of all of the ham-fisted opinions offered in the book. tense shifts from his typical first-person retelling of past events into a hypothetical "if it DID happen it WOULD be like xyz". this makes me wonder if bob has actually experienced a party so mired by identity politics that nothing fun ever happened, or if bob is just making wide generalizations/assertions a la "kids these days with their damned pronouns!!!" without any actual understanding of what the scene is like these days. and if bob did encounter such an experience, why not give details as he had with every other life experience offered in the book instead of framing it as weird fantasy?

if anything, i read into these moments as roundabout, clunky expressions of frustration and grief over losing a unique form of connection. despite the oddities, Encounters with Men offered me a genuine glimpse into pre-internet gay life, and i find myself wanting more albeit via a different narrator.

[Nk · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am going to be thinking about this book -- and the people detailed in it -- for a long, long time.

encounters with men is such a moving, sometimes-funny-sometimes-wistful but always thoughtful work of writing about a life that i feel grateful to read about. bob ostertag is punk as hell and writes about every moment of his life with a beautiful poeticism, with such insightful (and wry) reflections of how gay culture has evolved and changed over the decades (and not always for the better? i appreciate his bluntness at times!)

in a time with gay history being ripped away from us, this is such an excellent read about families, friends, almost lovers, past lovers, and the missed connections that haunt you. man!

[Dédé Oetomo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Bob's latest book. It is a real page-turner. Many of his stories bring memories of my own encounters with men, or those I wish had happened. He is good at being honest without putting any self-importance to himself, and thus reading his book feels like having a warm conversation with him. Intellectually, I learned of his way of discovering your sexuality, which gives me lots of food for thought about differences in coming out and such processes even in the West.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fiercely intelligent series of personal essays explore the intersections of queer sex, cross-cultural hookups, lefty politics, bodies, AIDS, and masculinity through the an examination of the men who've traipsed through Ostertag's long and varied life. I devoured the whole thing (except one lengthy chapter on S&M camp, which I skipped because ICK and I don't care!) and was left wanting more.

[Ryan Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed exposition of Bob’s ~encounters~ over the years. Repetitive at some points and quite somber given the subject. However there are some really good life lessons in this one.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving, horrifying, heart-rending, heart-breaking, oddly celebratory feast for the senses and the brain and the body, about the title subject in so many ways.