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

Published January 21, 2025

Reviews

[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.

[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.

[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.