SEXTING DENNIS COOPER

BUTT: Into?

Dennis: Haunted-house attractions, animated horror props, fog machines, latex monster masks, giant sized bags of trick or treat candy, Wack-o-Wax Candy Vampire Teeth and horror movies… My sex life is on vacation until November.

What’s the last thing that gave you a jumpscare?

I’m a weird person because I never get scared. I don’t know if it’s because I got hit on the head with an axe when I was eleven and grew up with an alcoholic, terrorizing mother.

If you could build your dream haunted house, what would it look like?

It’d take place in a massive mansion and instead of monsters, I’d populate my haunted house with 100+ emo and goth teens. If anyone out there would be interested in bankrolling this, please get in touch.

What’s the spookiest thing you can imagine seeing on the other side of a glory hole?

Any dick where I couldn’t see what its owner looked like would spook me to some degree. I don’t have a thing for decontextualised sexual organs.

In your writing, there seems to be a fascination with violent sexual impulses. Do you find sex inherently violent, or is violence inherently sexy?

Sex and violence are two things that have such a complicated effect on those perpetrating them and/or observing them that trying to describe them verbally reduces you to giving them a blurb. Combining the two makes them even more implosive and explosive. I don’t know why that makes me want to try to depict that combination in writing in a deep and thorough way, but I keep going there.

You famously published ‘The Sluts’ in 2004. Is this a label you have ever identified with?

The characters in ‘The Sluts’ are guys who are sitting at their computers and having unbridled fantasies based on photos of cute guys, then sharing those fantasies with other like-minded guys also sitting at their computers. I’ve certainly been that kind of slut, although in my case it’s through my books rather than the internet.