EDMUND WHITE
"The Secret Order of Joy"

If the ultimate questions—the meaning of life, time, being—interested me now, it was only because they interested Tommy. To the extent the other kids thought of me at all they considered me to be something of a brain; certainly in their eyes Tom was a jock. Ironic, then, that he was the one who did all the thinking, who had the taste for philosophy—ironic but predictable, since his sovereignty gave him the ease to wonder about what it all meant, whereas I had to concentrate on means, not meaning. The meaning seemed quite clear: to survive and then to become popular. The game of king and servant I’d played in the snow or sand or in cloud castles now became real. The princess, asleep for so many years, awakes to the taste of the prince’s lips, a slightly sour taste; she stares up into a face visored in shadow.

EDMUND WHITE
Our Young Man

Guy believed everything in sex should be done slowly so as not to scare the wildlife and to ensure his own natural grace and poise.

I'm sad to see that Edmund White has died. 

We had a two-decade correspondence that ended when I became one of his "thinly veiled" examples of "what's wrong with queer men today" and I withdrew. 

He was a great writer and NOCTURNES FOR THE KING OF NAPLES (1978) affected my life significantly.

Obituary in The Guardian

EDMUND WHITE
The Beautiful Room Is Empty

No one respected them for their labor in a country where the idea of honorable poverty had vanished.

EDMUND WHITE
A Boy’s Own Story

Sex now seemed a strange thing to me, a social rite that registered, even brought about shifts in the balance of power, but something that was more discussed than performed, a simple emission of fluid that somehow generated religious, social, and economic consequences.

EDMUND WHITE

City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s

____________________

There was something stubborn in me that didn't want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he'd be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy disguise, but behind the disobliging exterior was the welcoming child I would always be. Of course, what I'd forgotten was that he was not Parsifal and I was not the Grail; the medievalism of my imagination was not sufficiently up-to-date to recognize that the lover was a shopper and I a product.

EDMUND WHITE
The Married Man
____________________

As you can hear, it’s difficult to learn another language after forty.

EDMUND WHITE
A Boy’s Own Story

____________________

For the real movements of a life are gradual, then sudden; they resist becoming anecdotes, they pulse like quasars from long-dead stars to reach the vivid planet of the present, they drift like fog over the ship until the spread sails are merely panels of gray in grayer air and surround becomes object, as in those perceptual tests where figure and ground reverse, the kissing couple in profile turn into the outlines of the mortuary urn that holds their own ashes. Time wears down resolve–then suddenly violence, something irrevocable flashes out of nowhere, there are thrashing fins and roiled, blood-streaked water, death floats up on its side, eyes bulging.

EDMUND WHITE from A Boy’s Own Story

Sex now seemed a strange thing to me, a social rite that registered, even brought about shifts in the balance of power, but something that was more discussed than performed, a simple emission of fluid that somehow generated religious, social, and economic consequences.

EDMUND WHITE from Our Young Man

These absurd showbiz queens are as much a part of New York street life as sirens, steam from manholes, or ghostly Asian deliverymen ferrying chop-suey-to-go on unlit bikes going the wrong way.

EDMUND WHITE
City Boy

There was something stubborn in me that didn’t want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he’d be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy disguise, but behind the disobliging exterior was the welcoming child I would always be.

Of course, what I’d forgotten was that he was not Parsifal and I was not the Grail; the medievalism of my imagination was not sufficiently up-to-date to recognize that the lover was a shopper and I a product.

EDMUND WHITE from City Boy - My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s

I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of “coffee shops” as they were defined in New York—cheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know.

EDMUND WHITE from Our Young Man

Guy believed everything in sex should be done slowly so as not to scare the wildlife and to ensure his own natural grace and poise.

EDMUND WHITE

The French have such an attractive civilization, dedicated to calm pleasures and general tolerance, and their taste in every domain is so sharp, so sure, that the foreigner (especially someone from chaotic, confused America) is quickly seduced into believing that if he can only become a Parisian he will at last master the art of living.

EDMUND WHITE from Our Young Man

These absurd showbiz queens are as much a part of New York street life as sirens, steam from manholes, or ghostly Asian deliverymen ferrying chop-suey-to-go on unlit bikes going the wrong way.

EDMUND WHITE

Nothing I did or said among the other boys came to me naturally. As a result, in every encounter, even the most glancing, I had to be a performer, for at all times I was aware I was impersonating a human being.