Writing = Life
Love, loss and writing
Dear Reader,
Way back in the mists of time – April 2007, to be precise – I published a novel called Lovers and Losers. It’s the story of a fictional ’80s synth-pop duo, inspired by the many real, often sexually ambiguous synth-pop duos who provided the soundtrack to my troubled adolescence and helped shape me as a young gay man – Erasure, Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Soft Cell.
Tainted Love
But those two words “lovers” and “losers” also hint at another, darker legacy of the 1980s. This is also a novel about the impact of AIDS – a subject I’d previously avoided in my fiction. Why? Partly out of fear. Fear of getting it wrong. Fear of tapping into feelings I’d somehow managed to suppress for so long, it was second nature to me.
I’d written about AIDS many times as a journalist – at Time Out, where I was LGBT Editor for 20 years, and in newspapers like the Guardian. But writing newspaper columns and magazine articles is very different to writing fiction. Journalism takes less time and feels more detached. Fiction requires me to inhabit my characters and the world they live in. And for a long time, this scared me.
I was 24 years old when the first of far too many friends died of the big disease with the little name. By the time I was 28, I’d lost so many people, the funerals all began to merge into one. I remember being at one man’s funeral and grieving for another man we’d cremated several weeks earlier. When someone tried to comfort me, I recoiled in shame. Nobody talked about survivors’ guilt back then. But the trauma was real – and it ran deep.
Act Up, Fight Back
I was 41 when Lovers and Losers was published. By the time I turned 51, I was in therapy and finally facing my demons. And in 2023, I published a memoir, We Can Be Heroes, about my various personal and political struggles, including my years as an AIDS activist with the direct action group ACT-UP London.
Our slogan was “Action = Life” – which sounded more hopeful than the more familiar “Silence = Death” but didn’t alter the fact that people were still dying.
ACT-UP London was founded in 1989, two years after ACT-UP New York. In the UK, the greatest number of AIDS-related deaths occurred in the early ’90s, before the arrival of life saving new combination therapies. The friends I lost all died between January 1990 and April 1994.
I think about my ACT-UP days a lot. In many ways, they were the making of me. It isn’t normal to lose so many loved ones in your ’20s. Desperate times called for desperate measures – and so I became a kind of desperado.
ACT-UP’s strategy of non-violent direct action led to many clashes with the police, who were far more hostile towards the queer community than they are today. Homophobia was rife, fuelled in no small part by scare-mongering media reports about HIV/AIDS. Officers wore rubber gloves as they manhandled us into the police van. An elbow in the ribs wasn’t uncommon. Plus there was always the threat of prosecution and a criminal record. Being on the frontline with ACT-UP demanded a degree of courage I didn’t know I possessed.
And still the losses mounted. Life became a not so merry-go-round of planning meetings, demos, arrests, hospital visits and funerals. And all before the age of 30.
Better to have lost in love
Now I’m at the stage of life known as “middle adulthood”, the themes of Lovers and Losers have come back to haunt me – as has the title of the novel which followed, The Gay Divorcee.
Earlier this year I lost a dear friend, a long-term survivor and the loving husband of one of my oldest friends. Paul Adams was a man of many talents and one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. His husband Andrew was my best man at my civil partnership. Paul sang at the launch party for The Gay Divorcee.
Two decades later, I’m in the process of becoming a gay divorcee. My ex is a good man, and I’ll always be grateful for the many happy years we spent together. Nothing will ever change that. But there’s a certain amount of sadness, too. You can’t share your life with someone for that long and not feel a deep sense of loss.
Last year I lost my beloved mother. She was my biggest supporter and the first person who encouraged me to read and write. She was funny, feisty and loved to dance.
Few things fazed her. She attended most of my book launches – including the one held in “the UK’s biggest gay shop” Prowler Soho, where I read a sexually explicit scene from Lovers and Losers and she wandered unawares into the back room where all the sex toys and porn DVDs were displayed.
After she died, I discovered that she’d kept scrapbooks containing almost every article I ever wrote – including many published in gay magazines. She’d been ill for some time, but losing her still came as a shock. It wasn’t my first experience of grief, but it was grief of a different kind – devastating, visceral, life changing. It felt as if a part of me had died, which of course it had.
I am very much my mother’s son. We’re alike in many ways and I take comfort in the fact that in some ways she’s still with me – each time I listen to her beloved Elvis, each time I find myself repeating phrases she used or cook a meal following a recipe she taught me. Her personal take on macaroni cheese will always be my go-to comfort food. (Cook pasta according to instructions, drain and add a tin of Heinz tomato soup, then heat thoroughly before adding grated cheddar cheese.)
People who know me well or have read my memoir often remark on how resilient I am. But in all honesty, these past few years have really tested my resilience. There’ve been some very dark days and some very long nights. There are still times when I wonder whether I’m as strong as I thought.
But then I think of my mum, who faced many challenges and rose to them with courage and good humour. The best way I can honour her memory is to follow her example. Stand proud. Walk tall. Do your best – and don’t let anyone put you down.
What are words worth?
Through all of this, I’ve continued to write. As a former AIDS activist, I know that actions speak louder than words. But as a writer, I also know that words speak louder than thoughts. The act of writing is how I make sense of myself and the world around me. I don’t know what I’d do or who I’d be without it.
I’ve been a professional writer for 35 years. Writing has been a source of income, a source of frustration and a source of pleasure. At times, it’s even been my salvation. Just writing this has given me more peace of mind than I’ve felt in weeks.
I write because I must. Some days are harder than others. But then I remind myself “Action = Life” and I carry on. One word after another. One sentence after another.
And when the words flow, nothing gives me a greater sense of well-being.
On days like these, Writing = Life.
© 2025 Paul Burston
Wonderful to read and I hope cathartic to write x
Your mum's scrapbooks! XX