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Edmund White Taught Me That 3000 Is Just A Number
If you’re counting, you’re missing the point.
Looking at Edmund White’s memoirs for the tenth time, I find myself laughing. Not that comfortable laugh when you find light humor — but the nervous, almost hysterical laugh of someone facing truths so raw they hurt. I thought nothing could surprise me anymore.
I was wrong.
It’s the kind of laughter that comes when we realize we’ve spent decades performing an acceptable version of ourselves, while White simply lived. A laugh that masks the discomfort of realizing how many masks we still wear, even when we claim to be authentic.
Deep down, it’s the laughter of someone who finally understands that the greatest perversion isn’t in the acts themselves, but in denying our own nature. This nervous laughter hides an even more uncomfortable truth: while we judge White’s 3000 encounters, we keep counting our own secrets, burying desires in drawers locked with seven keys.
White didn’t just have sex with 3000 men — he documented each encounter like someone cataloging butterflies: with scientific precision and poetic reverence. From Kentucky hillbilly prostitutes charging $10 in the ’50s to reluctant virtual sex at 85, he transformed every moan into literature. Every sigh into raw poetry.