Don’t be deceived by the title, Edmund White’s latest book, The Loves of My Life, A Sex Memoir, is an important volume of Queer History. By chronicling his sex life–so far–this great octogenarian author gives us deep insights about the decades he lived through as a gay man. It is a definitive history and it is substantial. It also highly entertaining and very, very sexy.
While Mr. White explored some of his sexual history in his autobiographical novels and his previous memoirs, here he fills in the blanks. From his childhood experiences in Evanston, Illinois to his teenaged encounters with numerous male prostitutes in Cincinnati, Ohio to more than sex decades of adulthood in New York City.
Surprisingly, the picture he paints of queer life in the sixties is frankly, grim.
Some people romanticize the pre-Stonewall period, but in truth there was a high rate of alcoholism among gays then, it was rare to meet a committed gay couple, no gay I knew had children, few gays had splendid careers, many were in therapy to go straight–there’s a whole litany of gay deprivations from the pre-Stonewall years. Most of us devoted all our energy merely to being gay. It wasn’t something you could assume and just get on with your life. Employers were suspicious of or revolted by gays except in a few industries (hairdressing, for instance, or interior decoration). My father would fire an employee because he was thirty and suspiciously unmarried.
It’s also easy to get nostalgic about the decade that followed the Stonewall riots. In New York City it was an era when sex seemed ubiquitous, omnipresent. For gay men, “turning tricks” was a way of life. It was a time of backroom bars and bathhouses. And it seemed like everywhere there was a place of assignation–from the municipal parks to the notorious trucks on the west side of the Village to the crumbling piers of the Hudson River. Even subway men’s rooms had the potential for being the sites of gay male orgies. On Saturday nights in the Village and the Upper West Side, gay men had sex in doorways and even in between parked cars. We were free at last and with that realization came a certain exuberant exhibitionism. The scent of amyl nitrate was seemingly ubiquitous too–no more so then in the numerous dance floors that punctuated the cityscape.
The reality was, of course, more complicated. You could still get fired for being gay in New York City. Gay partnerships–let alone gay marriages–were not accepted by society or most families. Churches–particularly the Catholic Church–were hostile to gays and their rights. Perhaps it was their opposition–along with that of emerging anti-gay activists like Anita Bryant–that fueled the manic intensity in New York City’s overfilled nightclubs.
And then came AIDS.
Then in 1981 the AIDS era ended the party. Gay cruises and resorts went bankrupt. Hospitals were overwhelmed by the ill and dying, I was one of the six founders of the Gay Men’s Health Crisiss. Hundreds of our friends and acquaintances and celebrities died. As the writer Fran Lebowitz pointed out, not only did gay creative people die but so did their gay audiences, those cultivated men who’d been the consumers of high culture. Suddenly everyone wanted to look healthy; going to the gym replaced going to the opera.
More than just a “sex memoir”, this is the story of the men Mr. White loved–sometimes for a long time, sometimes for a not-so-long time. Mr. White has kept up with most of them and it’s astonishing how many turned out well–becoming highly successful in academia, finance, even show business. It’s almost as though Edmund White gave them a bit of good luck. Or maybe he just knows how to pick them.
Needless to say, Queer Reader strongly recommends this important book.
Edmund White’s The Loves of My life, A Sex Memoir is published by Bloomsbury Publishing.
March 7, 2025