Saint 1001

For more than 30 years, S corresponds with her first love, J. There is one story she does not tell: one about three men and an alley. She learns a new story: one in which she is unable to leave the two blocks surrounding her house, and unable to tell J exactly what happened to her. Isolated by trauma and depression, S finds a way back into her skin through the strangers she meets online for sex. The retellings of her adventures titillate J, who urges her on to more encounters. As in the 1001 Nights, this is a story made of stories: S’s own stories are interrupted and overwritten by similar, culturally reified stories. S’s life becomes scenes from everything from The Graduate and The Story of O to the words of Charles Manson and the Bible. What emerges in words, invocations and collage is a grasping at presence and absence in the age of the internet: to be read in real time is life, and the blank screen is death.