White's exposure of himself to public scrutiny and judgment finds him at his most vulnerable in "My Master," the psychodrama in which, like an experienced ecdysiast , he gradually reveals his escalating sessions with a dominant young Adonis and their explorations of primal pleasure-pain.

Like an ecdysiast who slips behind a backlit screen to tease the house with a silhouette, the planet Venus performs directly in front of the Sun this month in its first transit since 1882.