Pradipta Ray | Guy Next Door / 2015

when a gay ghost gets horny

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pradipta Ray (screenwriter and director) Guy Next Door / 2015 [9 minutes]

 

Indian director Pradipta Ray’s 2015 short film Guy Next Door is rather a meaningless ghost story in which evidently through the help of the internet the virtual becomes the actual, a least for a few moments, Grindr-like monikers such as “Guy Next Door” suddenly appearing at the door willing and ready for sex.

 

     Ray might have been able to take this trope and develop into a whole series of hunk-like figures called up through the click of the keyboard. Certainly, that what seems to happen to the lazy hero of this film Aditya (Aditya Joshi) who lays on the floor reading a book and drinking a beer when his computer calls out to him. Finally getting enough energy to check it out, he finds that the “Guy Next Door,” after evidently months of on-line chatter before a long silence (had he “ghosted” is correspondent), is ready to come or “cum” immediately, and appears at Aditya’s door in seconds after making his request. All Aditya had to do was close his eyes and count to ten.

       Aditya—hardly what you might describe as a handsome man—is delighted with his hairy-chested guest with dark glasses which he refuses to remove. For me the chucky guy also leaves something to be desired, but Aditya seems overjoyed and he quickly texts his friend that he’s found a “hottie.”

       They do indeed seem to have intense sex, with Aditya having his next-door friend’s hand print planted, like a Xeroxed hickey on his chest. We see, however, only the shadow of all this.

        And before we know it, the couple are through, the visitor visiting the bathroom. Aditya is overjoyed, particularly when it appears from new messages on his computer that the “guy next door” is ready for a second round. Even he is amazed by his fortitude and goes to the bathroom to tell him so; but there is no one there. No one in the bedroom. No one in his kitchen. Where has his phantom lover gone to?

        The hand-print is still there, so it couldn’t have been merely his imagination, but…. Don’t worry, Ray provides no answers. Virtual or real, Aditya has certainly enjoyed his Sunday afternoon.

        Now if only the couple had both been beautiful, and the camera had politely focused on their sexual activities. This could have been the start of something big, with the mysterious interloper popping up and over whenever either of them got an urge. Or maybe other computer monikers knocking at Aditya’s door, just itching to enjoy what he had to offer. A new ghost popping in for pleasure every week. With chance of AIDS, Covid or any other disease, it’s sure to be a hit!

         As it is, the artifact upon the screen of my computer had very little to offer.

 

Los Angeles, February 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).