The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir

With his trademark irreverence, White (The Humble Lover) celebrates more than six decades of sex in a candid memoir that doubles as an indispensable work of queer history. A “practicing gay” since age 13, White, now in his 80s, catalogs sexual encounters spanning from pre-Stonewall America to the dawn of online dating. White’s partners include hustlers in 1950s Cincinnati, boarding school classmates, a smattering of women intended to “cure” his homosexuality, and a much younger Spaniard he met on the internet and spent a summer with. White has no time for prudes; his prose is redolent with the funk and flavor of male bodies, describing one straight lover—a wrestler—as “deliciously under-washed.” There is so much sex, in fact, that the proceedings occasionally threaten to become monotonous, but White saves the day with his poignant portraits of a bygone era. Remembering the 1970s, he writes, “To be carefree, young, loving, promiscuous, and post-religious, free of grim American morality... we would never again enjoy sex in a happy, unworried, arcadian way.” Such asides, including one reminding younger generations of the legal advances that “permitted us to put our creative energies into something other than simply enduring,” provide the proceedings with welcome gravity. Delightfully raunchy and affecting, this steamy account is full of pleasures. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency (Jan.)