Starred review from December 15, 2024
A celebrated queer author shares a lifetime of formative erotic encounters. Despite admitting he falls short in the male equipment category, that has never stopped White from enjoying sexual escapades with a wide variety of boys and men around the globe across his 84 years. Heady flashbacks of his first experience lusting over a classmate and wrestling partner in fifth grade give way to unreciprocated dalliances with Cincinnati "hillbilly hustlers" as a teenager in the 1950s. Acknowledging the power imbalance and social disapproval, White is frank about his long history as a customer of male escorts; he prefers the quality, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and accommodation they provide. He shares varied romances--some fleeting, some enduringly romantic--and a few faux-curative interludes with female partners. Moving portraits of men like tall, blond swimmer Jim, whom White met in his 20s, and Pedro, the randy Spanish Ecuadorian young man with whom he spent several months, temper a frequently steamy narrative. Throughout, White remains fearless and purposefully blunt with descriptions so exacting that some readers will be able to imagine the funk of his lovers in full bedroom bloom. Graphic depictions of sexual hookups and lovemaking are grounded with poetry, opinionated musings, wistful remembrances of carefree sex in the pre-Stonewall/pre-AIDS era ("seduction on the hoof"), and notes on the evolution of gay history, the enduring queer struggle for human rights, parenting, and how all of these issues continue to affect the LGBTQ+ community. In crisply written episodes laced with a wry sense of humor about his own shortcomings and social foibles, White remains a talented, carnally flagrant raconteur whose memoir thumps with the palpably racing heartbeat of life, sex, love, and unbridled desire. An irreverent and unapologetically provocative scrapbook of an aging author's sex life.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
December 1, 2024
This memoir from White, the author, now in his eighties, of more than 30 novels, memoirs, and nonfiction books, shares sexual experiences from nearly his entire life, from childhood fantasies and pubescent explorations through episodes across thousands of lovers. Non-chronological chapters center on specific men or topics like sadomasochism. He recalls losing lovers to AIDS, undergoing therapy ""to go straight"" in his twenties, having sex with straight men, reading about sex (""sex is better on the page""), and being raped (""although we didn't call it rape then""). While nothing is taboo here, one topic is off-limits: White's husband. ""I've never written about him; he's too precious to me."" White relates encounters in vivid detail, as if glorying in their mundanity, but existential truths nonetheless rise to the surface: being gay is what allowed him to survive his upbringing; the victory of Stonewall ""permitted us to put our creative energies into something other than simply enduring."" Character portraits emerge too, often in a sole sentence, especially, of course, of the author himself, and his life in love and writing.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.