Narrating Sexual Compulsion: Gay Male Writing Beyond Shame

Throughout Edmund White’s long and distinguished career, the openly gay male author has not only created some of the richest representations of gay male identity and sociality, but he has also repeatedly reminded us that sex, pleasure, and, indeed, shame about sex and pleasure are at the heart of what it means to be queer. White writes almost compulsively about the nexus of shame and sexuality, promiscuity, and the compulsion to be sexual. But for White, sexual promiscuity shouldn’t necessarily be shameful; rather, the pursuit of sexual pleasures and the delight in identities based on sexuality are a potent part of what makes queer life what it is. A paradigmatic example of such potency is White’s powerful memoir, My Lives, which offers a startling, graphic, and challenging accounting of sexuality, shame, promiscuity, and pleasure—one often eclipsed in more domesticating rhetoric about queer lives. For White in particular, compulsion and compulsive narration become strategies to intervene in how we understand and figure normative gay male lives. To show the power—and necessity—of White’s work, this article contrasts it with recent gay fiction, particularly Tom Mendicino’s much lauded novel, Probation, to examine how sexual compulsion and promiscuity are figured for different aesthetic—and political—ends.