From the legendary author Edmund White, a stunning, revelatory memoir of a lifetime of gay love and sex.

“In his panoply of sexual encounters, Edmund White’s love of sex makes us proud to be human. And the story of his sex life reads like a beautifully crafted, very moving (and very funny!) novel.” —John Irving

"A raw, frightening, funny, and beautiful testimony, brimming with transgressive wisdom." —Robert Jones, Jr.

I’m at an age when writers are supposed to say finally what mattered most to them—for me it would be thousands of sex partners.
The 85-year-old “paterfamilias of queer literature” (New York Times) recounts the sixty-plus years of sexual escapades that have inspired his many masterpieces. He explores the sex he had with other closeted boys of the 50s Midwest, with women as a young man trying to be straight, the sex he’s paid for and been paid for, sex during the Stonewall and HIV eras, and in the age of the apps. Through tales of transactional sex, mutual admiration, open relationships, domination, submission, love, and loss, he paints an indelible portrait of queer history in America and abroad in a way only someone who has lived through it can.

Written with White’s signature honesty, irreverence, and wit, The Loves of My Life is the culmination of a legend's life and work, a delightful and moving tour of over seventy years of being unabashedly gay and in love with love in all its forms.