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Michael Hone: His World, His Loves

Name: Michael Hone: His World, His Loves
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Michael Hone

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At the end of Marco Polo’s book he wrote, ‘’I never told the half of what I saw.’’ My narration is infinitely more modest, but I can nonetheless say the I’ve told only half, albeit the most important half. At age 18, the moment I was old enough for a passport, I left the citadel of the Mormons and the country of my birth for France, returning only long enough to finish University and two years in the Peace Corps. In May 1968 I was at the Sorbonne and in the streets of Paris during the Student Riots, harbinger of student movements throughout the world, while my own irrevocable defection had taken place in 1963, a consequence of the assassination of the President I had worshipped in high school. The sexual revolution followed, and in my adopted home of Paris I found first love in, of all places, the Salle des Vases Grecques in the Louvre. I took a year’s sabbatical in Berlin, the pre-W.W. II capital of homosexual love, scene of the violent death of my lover and my hospitalization. Fourteen months of trips to Myconos followed, Berlin’s replacement as today’s equivalent of no-holds-barred promiscuity. Fleeing the memory of the loss of another companion, I sailed the Mediterranean, my homeport Beausoleil, bastion of the Riviera’s jeunesse dorée, centered on Monaco and debauchery. Forced to leave, I’ve exiled myself to Hossegor, the surfing capital of Europe, where I now live and where I’ll dedicate what remains of my years to historical works that recount the fabulous lives of men and boys who preferred other men and boys. The reader will have his doubts about the reality of certain parts of this book, as readers have always doubted Marco Polo’s chronicle, in which he never mentioned the Great Wall, drinking tea or chopsticks. I can only say that I’m incapable of invention, invention that I find superfluous when reality is infinitely more unexpected and damning, although, for reasons the reader will discover, I’ve been forced to change the locations of many incidents.

330 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 6, 2019