01 Moved into a bright house, pale-oak timber (cannibalistic), numerous rooms, spacious, airy, well-lit, sunbeams streaming in from yawning windows, high rafters of cottage-style exposed beams, fresh-pine smell emanating from decorative boughs (still living, un-slaughtered), main hallway splitting off into royal staircases, white bannisters, all constructed around a circle, countless rooms, multiple bathrooms, dining rooms, guest rooms, a nursery and playroom. The entirety of squirrel-palace wraps around a sturdy old oak tree holding the home aloft several stories above the forest floor with knotted, grandfather arms. I want to stay for a long, long time. I ask mom if we can keep it forever. She seems confused. Not sure, honey.





















03 Apollo has been sending out invitations to friends and extended acquaintances to stay in Tokyo over the upcoming summer break with his mom and Dennis. Apollo has been shilling crypto with Dennis who owns a printing factory harboring a stock of mining computers in the basement and lines of amphetamine. I’m not impressed.


























One early evening, Apollo comes to visit me in a drafty, minimalist-style condo with high ceilings and sparse, brutalist furniture populated by crowds of strangers, also groomed in minimalist-fashion. The mingling and champagne-sipping stifles my fragile, forest lungs. Piss-tone bubbles swirling about skinny, glass flutes are the only color against slate suits and black cocktail dresses. Oh, and the occasional red lip, popping like cherries on vanilla ice over bleached smiles. Teehee. I’m getting dizzy, dizzy. Following the tall, bent silhouette somehow darker than the accent ottoman in obsidian. He disappears and reappears behind the grand piano to steal an olive from a stranger’s (distant acquaintance’s) glass, moping like a sprained-ankle ballerino, as if the fallen locks half-obscuring gloomy eyes follow a lost choreography, sulking like a greyhound on a muddy race-track after the rain-cancellation. Apollo, Apollo. Never existed such a perfect pout, so kissable, so delectable. Only drinks served at this party. No catering. Dim lighting. The crystals of the unlit chandelier sparkling, rather, under force of our Apollo. Poor, pouting baby. Let me cheer you up. Allow me, please, within your vicinity. Catch you, tickle you. Turn that frown… Some time alone my one aching desire. Bidding for attention, serial failure. He’s distracted and not in love. I’m dejected but not hopeless. I persist. Plainly before the crowds, I take my seat beside him on the Eames sofa, a harmonious combination of rich walnut, soft leather, and polished aluminum. I cannot raise my eyes, so much my heart races and limbs tingle at the mere proximity. At least, I hear none of the whispering expected, catch not a single peeved look. I realize I’ve sat next to the wrong tall guy, oops! At long last, Apollo finds me himself, catches me at the doorway between one lounge-space and another. We leave together as three, unfortunately flanked by another distant acquaintance who swung unfavorably, distastefully, into orbit at the last moment.










































05 The classroom of a sort of private school, a big industrial building in a deserted wasteland. Professor Misha, who leans into conversations in a conspiratorial fashion with a thinning but attractive head, is composing a Christmas-special musical-dance-theater spectacle and casts me in all the numbers. The second number is a duet. He directs me to sing this peculiar phrase with just one line, each word 2 notes sort of high-pitched. I’m sure I don’t have it right but we’ve only just begun, assures Misha, so it’s fine. Don’t worry, darling. He’s choosing me for everything, why? I wonder if this means he’ll invite me at last for blini and caviar.























In the pool, someone finds a mangled baby with a dirty face. Horrifying. It’s been found killed by thrown stones. Flashbacks to a hospital scene. They are horrified, questioning how it happened as they gape at mangled limbs. Someone faints and, before a neighbor can catch her, drops her glass into the pool beside the premature, floating corpse. Poor, little baby, someone whispers with an audible slur.























We enter the elevator. The doors shut immediately before giving any other guest a chance to enter. We descend to the bottom floor where I do not exit into the lobby but linger back until the doors shut once again with the same unnerving rapidity. I’m left alone thinking: how inconvenient, wanting to go grocery-shopping while staying in a dorm whose elevator continually slams shut without offering the chance to be held open for others. Imagine if your party gets split and you have to wait for the rest. Beyond irritating. Both inconvenient and inefficient.





















07 My sister keeps reaching grabby-hands for my backpack of snacks. I’m waiting in the cafeteria line, unable to make a decision over the menu. Having run out of money on my account, I’m worrying over whether to top up with my own funds or ask mom when another resident snaps a group selfie. Back in the dormitory, I’m starting to think my bunkmate above got the better deal. It’s tricky to make a conclusive appraisal between the convenience of having the bath so near the bottom bunk or, on the other hand, the privacy of elevation. What’s more, there’s no walls between the bunks which fill the floor. My footsteps grow soggy as the bath, really a pool, begins to flood. Too many eager, bikini-clad girls, jostling about for the best seats, have displaced a wave of hot, chlorified water like a tsunami in miniature over the carpet. I make haste stripping down to take advantage of their foolish oversight of the empty jacuzzi.



































08 FOMO-ridden, I alchemize a double of myself in order to join the others in Tokyo. I arrive at the airport to follow my man. At customs, I show my palm and a spell to convince them I’ve got a passport. Upon landing, I ride a taxi to a massive dorm building where the reception offers me a complementary miniature figurine which I’m allowed to select from a diverse array. A difficult decision. Later, I discover the lunch buffet includes oversized, boiled lobsters and fish eggs (supposedly). Arriving late, little remains. Anyway, I’m mildly disgusted. The spread appears to be undercooked and vulgar, like raw monster tentacles in hentai. At sunset, I escape the dormitory under a spell intending to exercise my freedom in the open night. Snapping my fingers and rubbing my palms, I lift into the sky flying away. I twist and twirl through the city, wind chapping my cheeks, to explore this foreign land and maybe get a better meal.



































21 Tiny, precious kittens everywhere mewling. Both hands outspread, fingers wiggling to maximize on the infinite and absolute cuteness, I’m petting the flock with my sister in a messy dorm room, utterly slovenly, neither mine nor hers. Slovenly but without soil, rather a potential hoarding case, adorable collector’s objects and geek-material accumulated without rhyme or reason, neither basket nor filing cabinet, nameless plushies strewn about, all coated in ribbon and pastel lace. Our task: keep the cats inside so they become indoor cats. One cat of exceptional length attracts my attention. Despite the perfectly-proper ears, appropriately kitten-shaped and perched on the head, I cannot help but suspect hidden oddities alluded to by the cat’s abnormally long, worm-like form. Curled into a tight roly-poly-esque ball, I envision a half-dozen bug legs concealed beneath the calico fur. When I approach and oh-so gingerly pet the cat-erpillar for a closer inspection, the little mongrel bites me. Holding the injured hand, I pass a moment wondering whether the bite felt more like dainty, kitten teeth or massive, caterpillar mandibles which would’ve been pretty gross.








I’m at the airport again, all packed and ready for Tokyo but at the tiny terminal I can’t find my ticket. I have none, only for a bus from NYC. I need a ticket from London, ack! I beg the counter, isn’t there anything flying today to book instead of returning home or worse (shudder, horror of horrors) passing the night in a hotel? I use binoculars to peep at the landing pad, pixelated like a video game. Nothing. The air guards scurry about giving the effect of haste without direction like drugged ants. One large woman crossing the snow–an employee–pees herself and cries on the ground??? The others are a bit in shock, still others amused. I’m not in the worst mood considering I am stuck in this random place with no ticket.





























































22 Finally meeting up with Apollo. He’s made a special effort for my birthday. I’m in a good mood when someone comments,wait until you meet his girlfriend. My stomach sinks, not daring to believe she’s real but even more petrified to ask. Still, I can’t avoid popping the question. Black cherry. Before he’s arrived, Apollo is gone, saying something about guarding himself because it’s not real. We’re not real? If only I could believe in myself more than the figmentary girlfriend. In the end, I’m feeling pretty off to put it mildly. Sugar rush. Saccharine speed. I try to reassure myself in a candy store. No luck. If only I were back in Paris, I could’ve planned to catch up with my best girlfriend for a concert in Châtelet instead of moping alone around another foreign city where figments hold more water than the faith of my own minor god in me. How to turn down the mocking lights of Shibuya. Billboards blaring so that I want to clap both hands over my ears. My cutesy ear-muffs with patchwork petals and peach-fuzz lining aren’t doing the trick. Hey, you! Lift up that quivering chin and look around! Discover all forms of entertainment refined and consumable, all available directly in the here and now! Who cares that it is shining. Who cares what it does.




































23 All the models together, gathered by some enigmatic promoter for an exclusive VIP ryokan package: a traditional Japanese inn that typically features tatami floors, futon bedding, communal baths, and often serves multi-course Japanese meals for a unique, cultural experience, the unspoken assumption being that us, the foreign models just recently introduced and mixed in with the local staff beauties, constitute a key aspect of this “cultural experience” for the paying male clients, fostering a sense of luxury and not to mention sensuality. Naomi says it’s nice to be able to share pants that fit. She’s got a sweet smile that takes up most of her miniscule, ballerina face. We’ve wandered far from the village inn into some misty, forest location for an indie film festival hosted around a reddish barn, reddish like rust, on a commune. This one micro-celebrity has been after my sister, in attendance as a presenting director for her nominated debut short. Magnetized by her rustic, auburn beauty and artistic integrity, he chases her through the farmstead stadium. The pursuit leaps bullfrog creeks and the wood-fences dividing pastures of sheep from hens. She’s as nimble as any bushy-tailed woodland rodent, but he is relentless. Super aggressive. I extend a well-timed shin and trip that guy. Splat! He plants his face flat in a pile of hot cow dung. Apparently, someone has been neglecting their chores as tends to occur within a farming collective established upon the NAP (non-aggression principle). No sweat off my back. I’m grateful for the slip. Meanwhile, a rural doctor, a homeopath and midwife, exhibits his birthing skills. He asks for a volunteer (doesn’t need to be pregnant). Wow, works so well!





















26 Back home, Apollo has been waiting for me, hiding out at the old cottage farmhouse where my stepdad lurks, unsubtly stalking under the thin guise of tending beehives all around the perimeter of the property, desperate for any excuse to peep in on my family, mainly my mom, obviously. But my stepdad’s not concerned with me and my man, my minor god, my golden sunshine boy with the bad posture. At long last, we’ve found a moment together in peace, long uninterrupted hours turn into days until I lose track. I love my door. But we can’t stay locked inside for infinity, even immortal gods need to pee and make a run to the corner store for a snack. I tell him about the local landscape, how we don’t have convenience stores like in the city/suburbs but general stores like historic relics or hallmark cards, ornamented by antique signage, filled with farm-fresh produce and locally-sourced goods like thistle cheddar, licorice twists, blackberry soft-serve and maple donuts from the Red Hen bakery. Our tummies grumble in sync. Why do I sneak him anyway? My sister keeps a partner in her bedroom at home. We should be fine.
































27 Engaging in intercourse with a twink in a big, dark room. Or rather, an androgynous figure who identifies as a man. I’m confused. Maybe it’s the swollen member that’s disorienting me. Fear rises from my empty gut, the overwhelming emotion. I’m scared of it. I try to avoid it. It fills me with disgust. If I could fly, I’d be back in my treehouse. I’m only a squirrel. I can’t see anything in the dark, only shifting forms. As forewarned, the medication has significantly deteriorated my night-vision. Squinting like a blind mole, a blind squirrel, I brace myself with two open palms as if for impact.