States of Desire Revisited : Travels in Gay America

365 Pages·2014·20.425 MB·English

by  White, Edmund

Praise for States ofD esire:
"With no holds barred, each center is classified .... Always we hear
the private voice of Edmund White, humanist yet unsentimental,
tough but never cynical, luscious though not campy. ... The
prose glimmers and surges into channels far wider than his stated
theme." - Washington Post Book World
"[White's] novelistic gifts-curiosity about character, an alert ear
and eye for revelatory detail-make this book absorbing."
-Newsweek
"Fascinating and deeply disturbing ... This amusing and colorful
tour ... uses the predicament of the homosexual minority to
demonstrate what is very wrong with the social health of the
country." -Christopher Isherwood
"In Edmund White we may have found our gay De Tocqueville."
-William Burroughs
Also by Edmund White
Forgetting Elena
TheJoy of Gay Sex (with Charles Silverstein)
Nocturnes for the King ofN aples
States ofD esire
A Bay's Own Story
Caracole
The Beautiful Room Is Empty
The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction (editor)
Genet: A Biography
The Selected Writings ofJ ean Genet (editor)
The Burning Library: Essays (edited by David Bergman)
Skinned Alive: Stories
Our Paris: Sketches from Memory
The Farewell Symphony: A Novel
Marcel Proust
The Married Man
The F!ftneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes ofP aris
Loss within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS (editor)
Fanny: A Fiction
Arts and Letters
Fresh Men: New Voices in Gay Fiction (editor)
My Lives
Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel
Chaos: A Novella and Stories
Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
City Boy: My Life in New York during the 1960s and 70s
Jack Holmes and His Friend: A Novel
Sacred Monsters
Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris
STATES OF DESIRE REVISITED
Travels in Gay America
Edntund White
The University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press
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Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
uwpress.wisc.edu
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden
London WC2E 8LU, United Kingdom
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Copyright © 1980, 1983, 1991, 2014 by Edmund White
All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical
articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any means-digital, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise-or conveyed via the
Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin
Press. Rights inquiries should be directed to [email protected].
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, Edmund, 1940-, author.
States of desire revisited: travels in gay America / Edmund White.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-299-30264-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-299-30263-4
(e-book)
1. Gay men-United States. I. Title.
HQ76.2.U5W452014
306.76'620973-dc23
2014007459
Four chapters of this book have appeared in different form in Christopher Street.
To Patrick Merla

Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
INTRODUCTION xi
Los Angeles 1
San Francisco 30
Portland and Seattle 70
Santa Fe, Salt Lake City, and Denver 93
Texas 121
The Midwest 155
Florida and the South 194
New York City 250
Boston and Washington, D.C. 295
Epilogue: Self-Criticism 334
AFTERWORD 337
VII

Acknowledgments
Charles Ortleb, Publisher and Editor·in-Chief of Christopher
Street, originally suggested the idea of this book to me and guided
four chapt~rs of the manuscript through publication in his maga·
zine. I am grateful to him for his advice and encouragement as
well as the inspiration to do the book.
Bill Whitehead, my editor at Dutton, has also lavished his
intelligence and careful attention on this book; he has been of
especial help in preparing the final manuscript.
Christopher Cox provided endless hours of moral support
and critical acuity during the writing of this book. He has been
over every word of the text several times. David Kalstone has also
given me the benefit of his thoughtful reactions and friendship.
Old friends in New York and new friends in the cities I
visited shared their lives with me and put me in touch with still
other people. Their openness and generosity helped me all along
the way. Without that help this book would never have 'been
.written.
I quickly learned how hospitable gays everywhere are to
each other; the warmth and candor with which I was received
bear witness to that kindness.
IX