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Torrid Tales Of Teenage Kicks

An interview with Melvin Burgess about his book ‘Doing It’, published in the Manchester Evening News, 1 May 2003

SEX sells, but would you expect to find it at the core of a book written for young adults? Well, yes if we’re talking about a guide book on safe sex, but rarely in a work of fiction. It’s not that sex is a taboo subject in books for young people old enough to legally do it, it’s a strong case of cold feet from timid authors and risk-shy publishers.

All this has changed, thanks to Manchester-author Melvin Burgess’s latest foray into the world of teenage trials and tribulations. His new book, which has the succinct title ‘Doing It’ (Andersen Press, £10.99 h/bk), takes readers through a testosterone-fuelled period in the lives of three seventeen-year-old boys as they rebound to and fro from being conquerors to being conquered, and emerge older and wiser as a result.

Burgess, 49, from Fallowfield, describes it as a ‘knobby book for boys’. His publishers have used this casual remark on the book’s jacket, so what does he mean by it? “I felt that whilst there are many boy/girl books, they are almost all for girls – no one writes about young male sexual culture,” he said.

“Young men can be very isolated about how sexual relations work – the relating rather than the actual mechanics. I think it’s an entertaining, funny, emotional, passionate part of young men’s lives that has been largely left alone because some people find it distasteful. As a result, we have let young men down in terms of writing for them.”

Burgess, who has teenage sons of his own (15 and 17), didn’t talk to teens when he researched the book. “I felt it would be inappropriate,” he says. “For someone my age to elicit sexual stories out of teenagers feels wrong to me. I researched it by asking everyone I knew for their stories. The themes of the book [loyalty, lust, betrayal, deceit] reflect those stories.”

Do any of these themes reflect his own adolescent experiences? “I added my own stories, of course, but they are not particularly predominant,” he said. “Like everyone else, I was obsessed with sex, but spent a lot of time pretending not to be. I remember sexual thoughts and feelings as being indescribably delicious. Writing ‘Doing It’ was great because it reminded me of just how nice it really was.”

As a shy 14-year-old he was picked up by a girl. “I remember being amazed that anyone would actually want to go out with me,” he says. “We went out for a summer and then stopped seeing each other. I didn’t get another steady girlfriend until I was about 16. Then there were the odd snogs and gropes. It was great. I’d like to think it never went far enough, but the fact is I guess it went as far as we both wanted things to.”

On the subject as to whether he ‘did it’ as a teenager, he’s frank: “Oh yes, I did – but as quite an old teenager.”

So, does he think today’s teens are any different from when he was their age? “There are differences in detail – people are better informed, reach puberty earlier, society is more sexualised: but the general sexual culture hasn’t changed all that much as far as I can tell,” he says.

For the book’s threesome, high on hormones, sex is the number one topic of conversation as they taunt and tease each other, and support one another in times of need. They have respect for themselves, the friendships that unite them, and, importantly, for the girls they encounter. As Burgess’s teens slip into – and out of – relationships, there’s a growing awareness that this is real life, not a read-through. Age is almost an irrelevance.

Burgess, who’s no stranger to writing challenging fiction (his previous book, ‘Lady’, set in Manchester, featured the sexual adventures of a teenage girl), sums up his attitude: “I think sexuality is something that should be written about because it’s an important area of our lives. It’s something that gives enormous pleasure and forms the basis of the most important relationships we have. What possible reason could there be for not writing about it?”