From the magazine

The sexual escapades of Edmund White sound like an improbably sordid Carry On film

The octogenarian writer seems unable to resist the burlesque, describing the most lurid encounters at an apparently droll remove

James Cahill
The young Edmund White, photographed by Lillian Birnbaum. Bridgeman Images
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 22 February 2025
issue 22 February 2025

Edmund White grew up in a world where sex, and gay sex in particular, was an unspoken reality. In 1950s Cincinnati, ‘no one “came out” except drag queens and the campy peroxided waiter at the diner’, he writes in the first chapter of The Loves of My Life. That blanket of near-silence doesn’t seem to have inhibited him much.

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