Sex with Strangers

by Michael Lowenthal

A fiercely honest exploration of the risks and rewards of contemporary relationships—and hookups— Sex with Strangers embraces the dizzying power of attraction across the spectrum of passion and infatuation. In this fearless collection, lust and loneliness drive a diverse cast of queer and straight characters into sometimes precarious entanglements.

Recognizing that any partner is unknowable on some level, Michael Lowenthal writes about how intimacy can make strangers of us all. A newly ordained priest struggles with guilt and longing when he runs into his ex-girlfriend. A woman weighs the cost of protecting her daughter from a man they both adore. A teenage busboy has a jolting brush with a famous musician. A young man tries to salvage a long-distance relationship while caring for his mentor, an erotic writer dying of AIDS.

In edgy, disquieting stories, Lowenthal traces the paths that attraction and erotic encounters take, baffling and rueful as often as electrifying. This fraught and funny volume forces us to grapple with our own subconscious desires and question how well we can ever really know ourselves.

Genres: Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Fiction, LGBT

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 16, 2021

About the author

Michael Lowenthal is the author of the novels Charity Girl (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), Avoidance (Graywolf Press, 2002) and The Same Embrace (Dutton, 1998). His short stories have appeared in Tin House, the Southern Review, the Kenyon Review, and Esquire.com, and have been widely anthologized, in such volumes as Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge (HarperCollins), Bestial Noise: The Tin House Fiction Reader (Bloomsbury), and Best New American Voices 2005 (Harcourt). Three of his stories have received "Special Mention" in Pushcart Prize anthologies. He has also written nonfiction for the New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Out, and many other publications.

The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, the MacDowell Colony, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Lowenthal is also the winner of the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize. He teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Lowenthal worked as an editor for University Press of New England, where he founded the Hardscrabble Books imprint, publishing such authors as Chris Bohjalian, W.D. Wetherell, and Ernest Hebert. He studied English and comparative religion at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1990 as class valedictorian.

Lowenthal lives in Boston, where he is an active former board member of the literary human rights organization PEN New England.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, a short story collection with the title, Sex with Strangers, made me a little wary. I wasn't really in the mood for a series of stories focusing on tawdry hook-ups, whether they might be sexy, or funny, or dark. Thankfully, and I should have known better, Michael Lowenthal uses sex... or perhaps more accurately, desire, as the starting point, or perhaps, the driving force behind the motivations or actions of the characters in this handful of stories, some written specifically for this collection, others collected from his career. In fact, there's actually very little explicit sex in the book at all.

The characters in Sex with Strangers span the Kinsey scale, gay to straight, and include men and women. The stories that I enjoyed the most, in fact, tended to be the ones about heterosexual relationships, or at least ones where the protagonists were straight. Occasionally the stories about two men ventured into territory I often roll my eyes in both fiction, and life, but I suppose that speaks more about me, than it does the writing style, because Michael is a strong writer. He handles language very confidently, and is prose is eminently readable. There's a strength behind the words and the structure, and not in a macho, male way, but more the strength of a tree, knowing when to bend.

Overall, I ended up enjoying Sex with Strangers much more than I expected, which makes me very happy. I've enjoyed Michael's work throughout the years, and as I said, reading about sex, or more broadly, relationships, is always good self-therapy as well.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories by Boston-based gay writer Michael Lowenthal features often not-fully-likeable characters struggling with their longing. Indeed, several of these stories could bear the title "NOT having sex with strangers or anyone else" because the sexual tension is unrealized. Moreover, the "strangers" of the title in many instances proves to be the main character's own lover (or husband, in the case of the creepy and harrowing story "Do Us Part").

All the stories create fully realized worlds (with many Boston-area references for locals, including many now-defunct gay venues), but occasionally it seemed the voice slipped and Lowenthal himself sounded through, or the narrative otherwise struck a false note. There is also something a little unsettling about the fixation with twink-y youth that animates many of these stories, though nothing hidden about it; Lowenthal makes clear this is one of his preoccupations, from the vantage point of middle age.

Nevertheless, the best characters here (the gay erotica author dying of AIDS complications, for example) are genuinely moving, funny, sympathetic, and full of affection, even when the main characters are not. While there's not a great deal of suspense, the imagery with which Lowenthal punctuates the stories is vivid and surprising.

[Jim Gladstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Lowenthal drops eight emotional bombshells over the course of a scant 150 pages in his slim, potent new story collection, Sex With Strangers. Slimness and potency are among the subjects obsessed over by Keith, the 29-year-old doctor at the center of the opening story, “Over Boy”; he’s painfully caught up in gay culture’s reverence for youth to the extent that he “preemptively” breaks up with a boyfriend who casually notices a gray hair on his chest. “Keith had hoped that, just as his childhood yen for grape juice had yielded to cabernet, his sexual tastes, too, might mature.” And yet, despite his better instincts, he continues to opt for Twinkies over vintage. “You Are Here” finds a recently ordained priest adrift: During his stint as a cruise ship chaplain, a vacationer confides that she’s considering leaving her husband for another woman, and his own pre-priesthood flame shows up on board incredulous about his vow of celibacy. Other stories here touch on pornography and pedophilia, but at the center of them all is a mesmerizing cross of passion and perplexity. Lowenthal employs clean, clear prose and humane generosity in suggesting that every one of us contains a volume of mystery stories.

[Quinn da Matta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a huge short story collection fan, but I will always make an exception for Michael Lowenthal. And I was not disappointed. Each story is so vivid, and the characters feel so alive—having just finished it, I am still thinking of some of these characters as friends: Keith, my alter-ego; Father Tim and his regrets and doubts; Uncle Kent’s honesty about his past behavior; and how much I have in common with Ben (and it frustrates me!). I thoroughly enjoyed these stories because I fell in love with all these characters.

[Celeste Mohammed · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was difficult to pick a favourite among these stories. Each is a study in emotional intelligence and honesty, laced with subtle humour. Lowenthal is a master at depicting the duality of the human heart. I will read this book again, slower, learning from his not inconsiderable talent as a writer of literary fiction.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once in a while I read a collection of stories and immediately want to go back to page one and re-read everything--just to experience them again. This book does that for me: finely-crafted characters, impeccable dialogue, well-grounded in details of setting. Lowenthal pays close attention to the nuanced moments that comprise our emotional selves and motivate our longings. Really well-done.

[Mark Waldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It should be titled Intimacy with Strangers. I bet the publisher insisted on the title Sex with Strangers because it would sell. But it's several very different discoveries of surprising intimacy. Enjoy.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories about hookups and insights of the characters.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it a lot!!

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection, although personally a few stories left me feeling more uncomfortable and concerned in a way I didn’t particularly expect when I picked up this book.