THE LOVES OF MY LIFE: A SEX MEMOIR
EDMUND WHITE
© 2025 Bloomsbury
$27.99
256 pages

When an accomplished novelist reaches the middle of his eighth decade, he should state what's been most important in his life. For Edmund White, it's the "thousands of sex partners" he's had since he was a mere child.

He was ten years old or thereabouts when he fell in love with a boy he alternately calls Nick and Cam. They spent a lot of after-school time together, wrestling and roughhousing, as boys do, and it eventually became sexual.

Six years later, White was working for his father and making enough money to hire men for sex, mostly straight men who hailed from Kentucky, just across the border from White's Ohio home. Sometimes, doing so put him in danger, because being Gay then was something shameful and undiscussed.

At around this time, he met an older, "camp" man who taught him the slang of Gay life. He also met lovers on Craigslist and some while traveling with a man he calls his "first husband." He loved younger men and older men, from Madrid, Boston, and Scotland; met them at bathhouses and parties; and had several love-of-his-life romances. Sex, says White, was always linked with love.

(He also sought therapy, hoping to be "cured" of homosexuality, and briefly fell in love with a woman, thinking he'd get married and raise a family.)

All this was fun then, he says, but "now in the cold, polar heart of old age," he looks back at it all "as comical and pointless, repetitious and dishonorable."

Considering that The Loves of My Life is subtitled as it is, it's not as explicit as you might think. Yes, this memoir will steam up a window, but the heat is tempered by White's sense of humor and wry outlook.

Those two aspects tend to give a reader a break in what would otherwise be a long string of fast-and-furious romps and a litany of randiness. The stories connect, but you can enjoy each for its own merits of exploration and joie de vivre, accompanied by straightforwardness and what feels like honest soul-searching without much gratuitousness. White also freely admits to a few mistakes in his lifetime, further endearing himself to readers.

It shouldn't need to be said that there's profanity in the book, but beware if you're looking for pearls to clutch. For readers who don't care about that and want a decent memoir, The Loves of My Life is a very pleasant distraction.