On HAUNTED
What do we owe our ghosts?
This spring, I responded to a reader question about how you are supposed to write about sex in your work while knowing—unbearably—that people who know you will be able to read it. It’s a question close to my heart, as someone whose prurience both personal and professional has defined her work and practice. I have long been fascinated by the language we put to explicit sexual storytelling—how we define the erotic, the pornographic. People are very, very obsessed with this distinction, especially as it permits them to feel superior, make rules, draw boundaries, use us vs. them language. (It is not so different than the people who insist on drawing distinctions between, say, literary and genre fiction.) I, on the other hand, find the the undefined borderlands between—encompassing?—these ideas to be exciting and rich with potential. So when the folks at AORTA Films approached me and asked me to tackle a project precisely at this intersection, how on earth could I say no?
For the last year, I have been incredibly lucky to be work with AORTA for their Induction Series, in which they ask artists from outside the queer porn industry to collaborate on projects that invite the artist’s perspective on embodiment, identity, sex, and pleasure. Haunted began as a conversation with AORTA creative director Mahx Capacity, about where my interest in sex and horror might meet. We conceived of a rough plot involving a ghost hunting team, thinking a found-footage or reality-show style porn film could be fun. But as soon as I started writing, I realized there was something lusher and thornier at the center of the story—not just ghost hunters but documentarians, chasing a question about queer life and grief and ghosts straight into an apartment building teaming with answers. It surprised me, no different than any essay or short story I could write might surprise me. And I so I followed that surprise—into the the past, into pleasure, into darkness and its corresponding light.
I am so, so excited to see Haunted on the big screen. It has been an honor to have been invited into this space—one that encompasses both our most ancient form of storytelling and something that is a part of so many people’s erotic lives—and I cannot wait to share it with you.
If you are interested in helping bring Haunted to life—or just seeing our extremely funny pastiche of the Jonathan Frakes Beyond Belief Supercut meme—the Kickstarter is going on from now until midnight on November 9th. We have a bunch of incredible backer rewards: everything from a digital copy of Haunted to a limited-run chapbook of the script to getting to participate in the film as a whispery, terrifying voice. (Also, stickers!) Please consider supporting Haunted, and spreading the world. Thank you, darlings.