THE LOVES OF MY LIFE
A Sex Memoir
by Edmund White
Bloomsbury. 225 pages, $27.99
IT HAS BEEN SAID that the three stages of sex are feel, squeal, and congeal. All are abundantly present in Edmund White’s new collection of mini-memoirs. The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir rises to the challenge of its subtitle by being both an enjoyable memoir and a lively book about sex, which the author discusses in a clear, open way that’s refreshing, and necessary, in a society as puritanical as our own.
White has been a towering presence in gay fiction for as long as most of us can remember. The memoirs came later; this is arguably his third or his sixth, depending upon what counts as a memoir. While most memoirs tend to have a chronological structure, White’s approach is looser, such that earlier experiences can be interspersed with later ones. His back-and-forth among people and events works reasonably well insofar as each story is anchored by one relationship and is largely free-standing. Now and then the reader needs to recheck their mental calendar or atlas to adjust to the fact that White is abruptly naked in Italy, not in New York, or that a hot guy is offered a job somewhere when we already know that he works there.
As for sex, this book is about the big-city male experience of the last half of the 20th century. The tone and content can be viewed as an upscale version of John Rechy hustling in City of Night, or perhaps a character’s life from Samuel R. Delany’s sexually adventurous Hogg, celebrating mostly familiar sex acts. White introduces us to several seminal players in his lengthy sex life, each of whom gets a juicy vignette focused on his looks and body. These lead characters rise above a passel of less significant but equally studly men who join White in various locales, having wandered onto the stage of a great writer who will one day immortalize their bodies, if little else.
The collection features midnight (and midday) tours of places where gay men went for sex, and we meet some surprising people hanging out with White and his friends. Who knew that Cicely Tyson showed him how to use poppers? The thrust of exhilarating sexual and social freedom in the 1970s flows through the middle years of the story, when White is in his thirties. That is inevitably followed by the deepening shadow of AIDS in the 1980s, and a desperate search for hope. His physical and geographic settings are burnished by an evening sun as he salutes the people and places that light the long tunnel of events that made him who he is. His outlook in all of this remains fundamentally positive, even cheerful. We need that in our time.
The author notes that he likes to represent the thoughts and feelings of someone during sex, including “the comic aspects of the body failing to meet the acrobatic ambitions of the imagination.” We’ve all been there! In one story, our hero clambers through the window of a man he knows but doesn’t realize that his sex object, in bed without his contact lenses, doesn’t recognize him and needs to be re-introduced—a deflating start. Today’s White is a mature, comfy hus-bear, partnered with one man for thirty years, so the image of him bursting through the window of a desired bedmate is inherently risible, as though Santa had mistakenly tried the cat-door. Yet the author, who just turned 85, was once a hot young thing: Eddie White’s creamy rump was apparently the most popular tail in town—many towns—at least from what we read here.
One interesting aspect of these stories is how the practical routines of sex for hire worked in White’s youth. This topic is not raised often in gay society, though a friend once sent—to my office—A Consumer’s Guide to Male Hustlers. White participated in this sex economy, so readers hear how it was managed in different countries and situations. A whole chapter focuses on this direct yet unpredictable way of getting sex. White reminds us that sex is not necessarily a tender, rosewater-and-kisses activity. As we penetrate deeper into the exceptionally active sex life of our host, we encounter some of the messier, more overripe aspects of the human body at play and work.
No one can fault White on grounds of clarity, but some of the descriptions become repetitive. It may be that each fervid cock was a special delight and every juicy plug-and-play was glorious—for those who participated. The reader did not, so these episodes tend to blur together as the book goes along. Still, there are entertaining nuggets in most of them. If a given body seems stale, recycled, or overly moist, just skim on until your interest is aroused or you find a good laugh.
There are occasional fuzzy aspects to a tale—for example when the author says that he went from San Francisco to the Berkeley Hills by way of the Golden Gate Bridge. This is either a lengthy and perhaps misremembered detour or he’s channeling Dustin Hoffman’s similar geographic ineptitude in The Graduate. Sometimes there are so many naked bodies going in and out, up and down, that the reader needs a dramatis personae at hand. Now and then an opaque term that could use an explanation slips quickly by. What, for example, is a “Kennedy man,” mentioned only for unexpectedly wearing a hat while committing a murder? He remains nameless and fully clothed, including the hat, so why is he in this book?
These minor potholes are few, and they don’t harm the overarching stories. We don’t know whether this will be White’s final emanation on the subject of gay sex, but if it is, there are worse literary curtains for his life’s winning tale to end on.
Alan Contreras, a frequent contributor to The Gay & Lesbian Review, is a writer and higher education consultant who lives in Eugene, Oregon.
