Know that for this list, I will only be talking about the announced projects, and not the artists teasing new music (like Slayyyter’s Worst Man in America, which I am giddy like a middle school girl about).

Nothing But Thieves - Stray Dogs 25/09/26

Nothing But Thieves is my favorite band of all time; if you’ve read my articles, you would know how influential they have been for me, and my all-time most-streamed song is a song by them, so yeah, I am a fucking fan. I saw them once live in Berlin in 2021 during their Moral Panic tour, and I have tickets to see them live for this new record once more, this time in Milan (I travel around concerts, sue me).

So far, with two singles out and a post-punk/grunge album cover, we can say that this era is the one where there will be the most moshpits. Stray Dogs (the song) is a moshpit song, and according to Connor on his personal Instagram, their third single is the best they have, so gimme.

This album promises to be post-punk grunge, and I am all for it. While I loved their entrée into the mellow-pop à la Weeknd on DCC, they really thrive when they’re rocking it out.

Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Weekend 14/08/26

My first girlfriend got me into Phoebe Bridgers back when she only had one album out, and I fell in love, especially when the second album came out. That second album had no skip, and I know the end is the most streamed screaming your lungs out song I know that isn’t by Mitski.

Lost Boys gave us an entrée into this new world she’s building, and I thoroughly enjoyed it even though it wasn’t love at first sight. After such a long break, I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Only Fire - Hoe Weekend 21.08.26

Only Fire is one of my favorite ironic musicians. He’s a guy doing electro/hyperpop sounds with the automatic voice of Google Translate for his lyrics. I love it. It always makes me laugh; it always makes me smile, and while I know this isn’t going to be some transcendental songwriting that moves me to my core, it’s definitely going to end up on a lot of playlists that make me want to dance and party, which is a feeling I often need, considering how depressed I often am.

Adéla - Prima 4/09/26

I’ve loved Adéla’s singles since she started releasing stuff way back in 2024. This second album by hers is shaping to be her biggest to date thanks to Brat summer, which opened the door to a lot of Brat-adjacent musicians to go mainstream, and this girl is going mainstream right now. Adéla is on everyone’s lips thanks to The Dare-produced track KGB, and now everyone is talking about her, and so am I, because while I enjoyed her singles and enjoyed her first album, it seems like this project is a lot more creative than her first effort, which remained easy listening for the casual listener but didn’t turn me into a fan.

Carly Rae Jepsen - Day and Night 18/09/26

Neo Disco is all the rage thanks to precursors like Jessie Ware and imitators like Dua Lipa (who isn’t doing anything new in pop music; she’s just pretty). Carly has been releasing neo disco songs for a while now, with her latest album already leaning in that direction, but this one seems to go even deeper, with a breathier voice and sunshine instrumentals. Why this is being released in September and not in July, I have no clue, because so far the singles are giving summer.

Tove Lo - ESTRUS 18/09/26

I’ve never not been a fan of Tove Lo, however you pronounce her name; I’ve got no clue, but I’ve been there since the first album, and I remember streaming it on my way to high school every morning. Nothing has changed; well, yes, something has: her style. She leaned more into hyperpop sounds and hyper sexual music for a while (disco tits), which I fucking loved, and now she’s going back to basics with straight-up Swedish pop the way we love it. She even released a single with Belgian singer-songwriter Stromae, which was amazing, and her lead single is so fucking good it had me bouncing off my walls like a rabid dog once the bass hits. Needless to say, September 18th is going to be a big day for music.

Slow Pup - Melodie 18/09/26

You thought we were done with September 18th? THINK AGAIN. Slow Pup is an indie pop band that has been growing on me for a few years after I saw them live here in Marseille during a festival. I listened to a few of their songs, and I showed up to their set, unfamiliar with their game, and I loved the gig. It seems that with this release they’re going deeper into a rockier sound this time, which I can’t wait to explore with them. The singles have been a 10/10 for me, and if you’re a fan of Boygenius or Phoebe Bridgers, definitely give them a listen because they’re in the same indie folk angry girl vibe. Also, if you like Mitski, give this a listen. They know how to write a breakup song. Trust me.

Blondshell - Violins 25/09/26

Listen, I wasn’t a fan of the second album; I thought it was pretty much the same as the previous one, but I’m not about to ignore the woman who gave us Salad and Veronica Mars. I’m not that far gone. Besides, the second album had good songs like T&A and 23’s a Baby, so it wasn’t all that bad. It was just the same as the last one when we expect a change in style and in era, the way we’re used to now from our artists. This third album seems to show us that change, as from the lead single she’s going for a rockier sound (rock as a recession indicator, anyone?) and you know what, I’m sat. I know my heart is going to break over this new release as it did with the previous ones because she’s one of the best songwriters of her generation when it comes to breakup songs, and I will be ready to cry with my cat on my lap.

Julia Jacklin - The Gem 25/09/26

Another day packed with new releases. Julia Jacklin exists in the same space as Phoebe Bridgers and the other girls, and The Gem promises to give us some new indie music to have existential crises over, and you know what, I don’t think I’ve been traumatized enough by life yet, so sure. My ex-girlfriend got me onto her when her first album came out (she had amazing taste; what a wonderful woman she was and what a fumble I did), and this album seems perfect for fall. If you love Folklore and Evermore by TS, you’re going to love this. This is heavy with guitars instead of pianos, but it’s still pretty soft ballads so far; obviously I don’t know because I haven’t heard the entire record. But I can already see myself walking on leaves on my way to campus with my Patagonia fleece and Carhartt pants (I look like a lesbian, I know) listening to this with a lil swing in me steps ;)

Rebecca Black - Age of the Exhibitionist 04/09/26

I wanted to end on a happy note, and the only one I could find within myself to recommend to you with confidence is Rebbeca Black, who is doing Blackout Britney like nobody’s business. After the Salvation E.P, Rebecca is coming back with a full-length album that promises showwomanship and fun! If you liked Addison last year, give the two singles out a listen, and I’m sure you’ll find your new artist of the year. It’s also worth noting that Rebecca is also a famous DJ and has some amazing girlie pop sets on YouTube that you can listen to where she remixes Hannah Montana with Charli XCX. I’ll leave that information out there.

Also, I have a massive crush on her.

That about rounds up all the upcoming albums announced until the end of September for me. What about you? What albums are you looking forward to? So excited to hear all about them when they come out and see which ones end up on my end-of-the-year list.

From Marseille with Love,

*Vapes away*

Diana saw her family. Huddled together in black dresses covering them from neck to ankle over a mahogany coffin. She looked at her father from afar, sleeping like the dead with a cushion underneath his head, and thought, ‘Why does he need a pillow? He’s already dead.’

She wasn’t there; she seemed to stay in the back of her family’s whispering voices. She tried to get closer, but it seemed the closer she got, the farther she also got.

She started hyperventilating; she needed to see her father dead, to grieve with her sisters and mother, but she simply couldn’t get to them.

Then, suddenly, they turned to look at her, all pointing a finger, hissing like vampires in a bad teen movie, and screamed.

Diana screamed as she had never screamed before. It was guttural, more so than the scream she did when she found a massive cockroach on the shower wall while taking a shower, and she regained consciousness. A sanitized white crumpled space, a too-small seat, ears popping. A plane; she was on a plane.

She felt Spencer’s hand close around hers as she sat up in the dark, looking at the shadows of his face as he dreamt. She wondered what could ever be going on in that semi-perfect blonde head of his.

He dreamt of goats, in a small cottage near the hearth, knitting. A goat made noise with its hooves in the kitchen, and another one close to the entryway. This was the life he dreamt of.

Away from modern society, the stock market, product manufacture, and brand marketing. He dreamt of raising goats and making goat cheese, selling it at a random farmer’s market. No phone, no internet, nothing, just peace. Then he realized this was the same way he felt about Diana. No phone, no internet, no modern society, just her removed from time to tango in the universe with him.

Then the goat started speaking in Diana’s voice:

Are you ready for what’s to come? You haven’t even begun.

The funeral was a simple affair. Only the immediate family had made the trip to the small church in Diana’s hometown. It was quiet; no eulogies were made by Diana’s mother or sisters, and they all sat together in silence, not touching.

It felt weird for Spencer to see the way her family behaved. He remembers when he was sixteen, and his grandfather had passed; the whole family and congregation had made the trip, and eulogies seemed never-ending in their banalities of greatness. His mother was completely destroyed to see the man who raised her, who held her as she took her first breath, die.

His grandfather had been to war and raised his children to be strong-willed, independent humans who would take the world by storm, but showered them with love and gifts. He remembers being a child with his grandpa reading him bedtime stories, breaking fights between him and Lexi when they argued over Legos.

Diana’s family was colder and lonelier together than they were alone.

He sat a few rows behind them to give them the space to grieve as the priest finished his poem. He found it profoundly sad that no one had come. It was as if the man had barely existed. Barely touched the world he walked through for five decades.

Diana turned around, no tears in her eyes as she mouthed ‘thank you’ to him. He didn’t know if she meant thank you for coming with me, thank you for not leaving me alone in this grief, or thank you for paying the expensive last-minute tickets on Thanksgiving weekend to go to my father’s funeral. Maybe it was all of it.

Once the priest finished his impersonal speech, the entire family stood up, all women wearing long black dresses, covering them from head to toe.

He knew Diana’s family was conservative and Mormon, but still, it shocked him. He didn’t grow up religious or with strict parents, so he found the whole dynamic mysterious and cold.

Diana found him at the back of the church and sat next to him in silence. She took his hand, and they both sat in silence. He didn’t know what to say to her. He couldn’t say he was sorry because that didn’t begin to cover her feelings; he couldn’t say it would get better when that seemed so insensitive and invalidated the grief she had in her heart.

He knew grief to be a plague that took over your whole body until you lay in bed at 3 pm looking at the ceiling, mourning yourself and who you could’ve been.

So together they sat, her head against his shoulder until she broke the silence.

Diana: So what’s the deal with your dad? Any daddy issues I should know about?

Spencer (sighs): Sometimes the hardest thing to do with people is to accept them as they are and not as who they could be. I learned that the hard way.

Diana: Stop being a therapist for a second and tell me really what’s going on. I mean, you never talk about him; it’s like he never existed.

Spencer: Dad left and had another family. He never tried to get in contact with us once he met his new wife. I have two half-siblings I’ve never met.

Spencer stood up, extending a helping hand to Diana, and followed her family outside, their face painted bridal white.

Mother: We’re going to have a commemorative lunch at home if you want to join. You’re also welcome to join, mhm-

Diana: Spencer, his name is Spencer.

Mother: Right. Well, thank you for coming. I didn’t think you would.

Diana looked at the floor as if she wanted it to swallow her whole, and her grip on his hand tightened.

Diana: Thanks, Mom, but we have a plane to catch. Sorry.

Diana’s mother bit her lip, resolution settling in. Spencer realized that before she had lost her husband, she had lost a daughter. Spencer guessed Diana had left the family fold due to their Mormon ideologies, and this was the last-ditch effort of a grieving woman trying to reconnect with an estranged daughter.

Diana had lied too; their plane wasn’t until 7 pm that night, and it was barely noon. They could’ve easily gone to lunch with her family had she wanted.

She didn’t say goodbye to her mother or sisters, sisters who couldn’t look her in the eye when she talked to them, then led Spencer back to their rental car.

Spencer: Should I take us back to the hotel?

Diana shook her head but didn’t say anything for a few minutes as she looked at the casket being brought out of the church in front of them.

Diana: We have another stop to make before we leave.

Spencer lit up the car, the radio playing some ridiculously upbeat song from the early 2000s, and Diana laughed.

Spencer: What is it?

Diana: She loved this song.

Spencer: Who?

Diana: My nana. She used to sing it to me to sleep, thinking Britney would make a great lullaby. We’re going to the cemetery; I want to see her one last time. I don’t think I’m ever coming back here.

Spencer started driving, his hand still in Diana’s as they sat in silence, listening to the pop radio on their way to the cemetery. In one way, he had never felt closer to her; he truly understood everything that made her, her now. The fear of intimacy made a lot of sense in the light of her family’s lack of warmth.

He’d never felt closer to her, and yet she was so distant. Barely there. He wondered if it had to do with the Tercian he had given her on the plane to stop her from crying, but he suspected it had to do with the fact that she grieved differently. She hid her feelings until she was in the privacy of her bedroom, a recluse inside herself.

They walked hand in hand through the headstones, shaming the dead with their hesitant life, until they stopped in front of a somewhat recent headstone with no flowers on it. Even though Diana’s family lived in the same town as their dead, they didn’t bother to make the trip to the grave, clean the dead leaves, or deposit flowers.

Then Diana’s mouth closed against his. He had dreamt of kissing her sober, of the taste of her tongue moving against his in the most sensual of tangos, but he never thought it would happen in a cemetery, after her father’s funeral.

He grabbed her shoulder and lightly pushed her away.

Spencer: You don’t mean this. You’re grieving; we shouldn’t- I shouldn’t take advantage of you.

Diana laughed; it was bitter, and it cut Spencer open like an old wound.

Diana: Spencer, I want this, I want you. I was sitting there at my dad’s funeral, and no one showed up. It was just Mom, my sisters, me, and you; none of the aunts and uncles he told us so many stories about showed up. Even his priest, whom he saw every week, didn’t have anything to say about him. It made me realize that I didn’t want there to be anyone at my funeral. My father didn’t matter to his family or his community. He didn’t matter at all. I want to matter. I want to make people smile and laugh. I want to love people so much that it kills me. I want to kiss you every day that I get to. I want, oh Gods, I want.

And this time, he was the one to kiss her. His lips closed against hers, slowly massaging hers, his hand in her hair in a fury of passion, heartache, and pain. It was messy, it was necessary, it was inevitable.

She started to straddle him, and she could feel his erection against her dress, grinding against it. Between their fervent kisses, he let go of the softest of hiccups against her cheek, and she grinned.

Diana: I love it when you make that sound. You only do it when you’re turned on. It’s the cutest thing.

Spencer: Flattering. However, we’re not about to have sex for the first time in a cemetery next to your Nan’s grave, are we?

For the first time. Diana loved the sound of that, as if there would be many other times coming in the future. Gods, she hoped there would be. Because he was everything. He was luminous, the most luminous thing she’d ever seen. It felt like the sun shone through him.

Diana: I don’t think the rotting carcasses care about what we do in a cemetery.

Spencer: What a beautiful thought. There’s one tiny problem, though.

Diana (glaring): What is it? Honestly, we’re losing the mood here. It was hot and heavy, and now we’re talking when I’m straddling you with your pants unbuttoned, with your erection against my pelvis.

Spencer: I don’t have a condom.

Diana (hissing): What?

Spencer: Well, I didn’t think I’d need a condom at a funeral. So this isn’t going to work. However, he carried her until he was on top of her and kissed her before lowering himself to her core, raising her dress. Yes, I can carry you; I’m a strong, masculine man, meow. And I can do this.

And it is there, in a cemetery next to an uncelebrated grave, kneeling in silent prayer, moving her dress up her hips, that he is ready to eat at the altar, and he had never felt closer to god.

Diana: This was your first ‘meow’.

Spencer pleasured Diana over and over, kissing her core with all the love and longing he’d had for her for all these months. He pleasured the pain away, and he could feel her grief building into the most beautiful climaxes, and yes, she made the same sounds as when she tasted his scrambled eggs, only louder and softer.

It’s hard to write a romance book without succumbing to the urge to write sex scenes in every chapter, but I wanted every instant they got closer to feel measured and realistic considering who these characters are.

I know this isn’t a proper sex scene with penetration or details and shit, but I wanted to do something on the grave the way Mary Shelley would’ve wanted ;)

From Marseille with Love,

*Vapes away*

So my love for writing kicked in when I was about 9 years old, as I watched the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I did not like the ending because my ship wasn’t endgame, and I started writing Buffy fanfic about that ship, unbeknownst to me that that ship was actually endgame in the following comics, tracking seasons 8 onwards.

I hate Joss Whedon, obviously; he is a menace to society, but he is one hell of a writer, and also not the only writer on Buffy. Yes, he did create the concept for the show, and wrote the horrible script for the movie (yes, there is a movie with Donald Sutherland), co-wrote and directed multiple episodes of the show, but most of the people writing on Buffy were actually women, and a woman became the show’s showrunner through its last two seasons.

So while I don’t believe in Joss’s fake feminism and actually believe the predatory accusations being thrown his way, and am happy about him being blacklisted from Hollywood, he also gave us gems: Toy Story, The Avengers, Buffy.

Please feel free to like and reshare this piece as we’re all trying to fight against AI work, and this work is very obviously not written by AI but by your favorite weirdo, and no computer could come up with most of the shit I write. It would mean a lot if, instead of being a complacent, silent reader, you’d give this a second of your time and push a human-written piece up the algorithm.

Buffy holds a special place in my heart, and as I am rewatching it (on DVD, I’m not giving Joss any residual because yes, I am that petty), I realized the one thing that made it truly special to me: it was human, first.

The show was interested in telling human stories first and foremost and would influence all of TV going forward, because it told stories in a linear way, without giving us a clear, definite wrap by the end of the episodes because the characters grew by each episode and learned from their mistakes (or not, because once again, this is a show about humans, and humans sometimes don’t learn from their mistakes).

I’ve shied away from writing lately on this platform (my Google Docs have been very active), because I had run out of things to say (more on that at the end of the year because it is quite purposeful), but I could always talk about Buffy. Buffy and The Hunger Games are never-ending subjects for me.

I’ve read all the Buffy books and followed the Buffy studies, and let me tell you, there is a shit ton to get into, but to get you into the show and its harrowing, poorly lit, poorly budgeted first season, just know that season 2 is a slap in the face, mainly due to the addition of Spike and the discussions about souls for vampires, and discussions on humanity being linked to the soul.

In the mythos of the show, humans have souls, and vampires are naturally soulless unless they are cursed with one (like Angel) or seek one out (like Spike); they are stuck in a state of existence that is unable to change, always in a constant state of being and never evolving. But the show takes quite a nuanced approach to the soulless vampire thing with Spike and Drussila as a villain who cannot be killed, says they reeked of humanity and jealousy after spending some 150 years in love with one another. Therefore proving that vampires, even without a soul, can fall in love, which I always found interesting.

You see, Buffy is probably the most nuanced show on TV, on par with something more high-brow like the Sopranos and Succession, which are also two of my favorite shows (although I wish the Sopranos was funnier at times). But Buffy paved the way for shows like these two I just mentioned because they came after the Buffy boom that occurred in ' 96 and was also aimed at a teenage girl audience, which in my head makes it automatically better. Sue me.

But it’s not just about the vampires; humans on the shows are so fucking interesting. They all make mistakes; they all have breakdowns; they all lose their shit at one point or another. Willow starts out as the nerdy bestie to Buffy, before trying her hand at magic and becoming the most powerful Wiccan alive and entering a Wiccan rehab center of some sort after horribly using magic. Cordelia starts out as Buffy’s shadow self, a self she used to be before the Slayer power came upon her: she’s popular, she’s a cheerleader, she doesn’t seem that bright (but she is), she lives on her dad’s money, and ends up dating the deadbeat nerd that is Xander, having a love-hate relationship with one another.

But you see, it’s not just the main cast that gets a story; even tiny characters you barely notice on your first watch get full storylines like Amy or Harmony, and Johnattan. Johnattan starts out as a nerd in season 2 with no lines, only as a background actor for the high school to have more life, before getting his own episode called Superstar in Season 4, and becoming one of the main antagonists in season 6, and being a reminder of conscience in season 7.

Amy starts out as a helpless daughter of a witch in season 1, turns into a witch in season 2, then into a rat in season 3, then into a drug addict in season 6.

Harmony is a sheep in Cordelia’s popular atmosphere, before getting turned into a vampire, trying to fight Buffy but has a hilarious fight with Xander instead, only to have her own redeeming arc on Angel (the sequel show to Buffy).

These are not characters you notice much as you first watch the show; they’re just recurring characters, but their lives are still full, and things are still happening to them in the real world while the show focuses on Buffy and Co.

But you need to remember something about Buffy: this is a show where there is no God, no Jesus; the world is an uncarring, unforgivable, cold place and you have to fight to make your way through it. Whedon (I’m sorry I have to mention him again, but it’s relevant) is an existential absurdist (Angel is seen reading La Nausée by Sartre, my mortal enemy, on the show), and that means that whatever happens to our characters has consequences, and boy, the consequences are chilling.

You see, this is what I love about Buffy: it’s full of humanity, in a world devoid of nuance and humanity. Good characters commit bad deeds, villains become heroes, and Buffy becomes unrecognizable at the end of the show.

PTSD is also a real thing on the show that gets its own moments here and there. All characters suffer from that by the end of it, but at the beginning of season 2, as Buffy already suffers from PTSD due to the dramatic end of season 1, she has a full mental breakdown that she never really gets over.

I know this is already a long article, so I’m going to say this once, concisely: choices have consequences, and as Buffy herself put it in season 2 episode 7 called Lie to Me (yes, I can quote the show from memory): ‘You don’t have a good choice, but you have a choice’. We always have a choice. A choice to care or not, to act or not, and to be a caring human in an uncarring world is incredibly difficult, but it is a choice.

From Marseille with Love,

buy me a coffee

*vapes away*

When on mushrooms, Spencer saw God. A god with two faces on his head, one in front and the other behind making a grimace. He knew he was supposed to be afraid, but the fact that the dude had two faces was too funny (he was high). You could never talk behind that guy’s back simply because he didn’t have one!

Spencer didn’t believe in god. He was of Jewish descent, but his parents didn’t practice and never sent him or his sister to Torah school, nor did they teach him Hebrew. The closest he had ever felt to god was when he kissed Diana, and in boarding school, where they had mass every Tuesday morning.

But with his best friend being a vampire, learning he and his friends were meant to fuck in every lifetime, and that determinism was real definitely put something in a different perspective. However, he’d be damned if he stopped laughing in God’s face.

Spencer had gone to the airport to pick up his sister two hours before her plane was scheduled to land. He was positively nervous to see a sister he hadn’t seen in six months, a sister who had known him since he took his first breath, and knew that he had tried to kill himself in front of their mom.

A sister who knew the highest of highs (him high on the terrace, almost jumping to his death at 15) and the lowest of lows (him, with a letter opener in the open space after he had epically failed his work). He wondered if she accepted him and loved him still, even though he wasn’t what their mom had intended him to be.

And then, he felt her jump on his back, blonde hair spilling over his shoulders.

Lexi: Come on, Horsey, give me a ride home!

Spencer: Fuck Lex, you got heavy.

Lexi: I ate a lot of tteokbokki in Korea, sue me.

They spent the ride to the frat singing childhood favorites their mom would play on the ride to school, catching up on Lexi’s witchy progression, Spencer’s descent into madness, and ongoing rise to mental decency. He felt his blood pumping with his sister, the little girl he used to push on the playground, who forced him to wear makeup and her clothes, who knocked him down so hard on his ass he lost a tooth. But now, they were both adults, and it felt weird knowing they both had full lives outside of each other, people they considered family without them being real family.

He carried her tote bag to his bedroom, where they would do the reading. She ran up the stairs in her platform Buffalo boots, her striped knee socks covering most of her legs under her very revealing dress. Her dress was high even in the realms of sluts, but that was Lexi for you: always somehow naked. Spencer grew up with his sisters being in different states of undress; it never phased him.

He didn’t understand why modernity was so puritan in terms of bodies. Bodies didn’t always have to be sexualized, and seeing your immediate family naked was not weird at all, it had just become somehow taboo with time, and everybody started hiding themselves, but when Lexi took her dress off in front of him in favor of one of his sweat-shirts (one Diana hadn’t stolen from him yet) he didn’t even look at her, he didn’t even register his sister’s body.

Lexi: I’m leaving tonight. I gotta get to Mom’s for Thanksgiving, but I’m glad to see you, Spence.

Spencer: Right. Well, I’m not going, as you probably guessed.

Lexi: I know, take my tarot out.

Spencer: Which one? You have like four.

Lexi: Tarot de Marseille.

Spencer (sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing Lexi): So you got better at this?

Lexi: Yes, I’m really lucky; I get to travel the world, follow local shamans and esoteric forces, and I learn a lot.

Spencer: You know, I thought it was a hobby of yours until like, last month? I didn’t know it was real.

Lexi: It’s real, but not in the way that you think. I can’t make a bunny come out of a hat, for example, but I can read people and see the way of the Gods.

Spencer: Gods?

Lexi (rolling her eyes): Yes, gods exist, but they’re not what you think. (Smells the air) By the way, you got a succubus in your midst; be careful. (Making a mess of the cards in front of them) Pick three cards.

Spencer (pointing to the cards): So was Percy Jackson real?

Lexi: Not that I know of. It might be a makeshift prophecy; writers do that sometimes without their knowledge. What did you see when you took the shrooms?

Spencer: We’re all in a room, naked, having sex, with heavy drums playing from nowhere in particular; the rhythm gets more intense and so do we, and there’s a fire burning with a card in its center (takes the card out of his cargo pocket), this card. The card doesn’t burn until we finish; it feels like a ritual. There’s something else, a face or two; it feels like two faces into one.

Lexi (turning the cards over): It’s a ritual, alright. This card, the Lovers, from the Tarot de Marseille, is an existential card about choosing a path, the path of safety or risk. To stay conventional or to follow your heart.

Spencer: So I do have a choice in this ritual?

Lexi: Of course. Rituals are only this powerful because humanity cannot be predicted. The will to do something is what creates human magic. The power of a god can only be activated if a human wills it to be. Prophecies are only guides, but they’re often wrong and misplaced. Besides, from what you’ve told me, I don’t think this ritual happened during every one of your lifetimes. Maybe your friends’ and your path didn’t cross because you made other decisions for yourself.

Spencer: Two paths, convention, or love. Let me guess: if we all choose love, we do the ritual.

Lexi: I think so. (Turns the cards). The lovers, again. Death, which means a rebirth, and the hanged man, which means sacrifice.

Spencer: What does this mean?

Lexi: It means that, as I thought, you have a choice to complete the ritual or not. So far, you took the risky path, the path of passion, of your true self; all of you did, which is how you’ve found yourself here. Through this path, you will experience a rebirth, and you’ll have to make sacrifices to follow your true path; it will come through with blood and tears.

Spencer: Do we die?

Lexi: Gods no. This ritual isn’t one of death; it’s one of rebirth, societal rebirth. You saw it happen during the French Revolution, when Korea almost lost to Japan, and when the Americas fought against the reign of England. What you will do is create a switch in the current world, one mandated by a God.

Spencer: So, our orgy is a sacrifice to a God?

Lexi: A sacrifice, a celebration, it’s all the same. This ritual awakens the power of the God, and the pendulum swings another time.

Spencer: So which god is it?

Lexi: It could be a couple; every culture has a God of Genesis or renewal. But I think, since you saw a god of two faces, that you’re mandated by Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, duality, and endings.

Spencer: Do we have to complete the ritual?

Lexi (shrugging): You don’t have to do anything; every choice you’ve made has led you here, and every choice you make after today will lead you one way or the other. It’s all up to you.

Spencer (sighing in both relief and despair): So determinism isn’t real.

Lexi: Afraid not. Your thread isn’t woven by the fates or anything. Now, can you make me your famous basilico pasta before I go, please? I’m starving.

Spencer was surprised at the relief he felt that his choice mattered. That he was a being thrown into this mess of a world and somehow made his own way through the mining field. As he made his pasta, his sister told him wild stories of shamanistic rituals in the mountains of South Korea, of reading the translated Classic of Mutations and Cleromancy. She told him about a dream she’d had about a girl who constantly recreated herself through time and space.

He felt at home, but like he had introduced a new part of the home into his home, and somehow, even though he and the girl of his dreams weren’t on speaking terms (she wasn’t replying to his apology text), he felt at peace with himself.

That night, when he arrived at his silent house after dropping his sister off at the airport, sat a lonely burger on a couch, in the company of a once-upon-a-time blonde, blue mascara running down her face.

When he entered the living room, she stood up silently and confessed.

Diana: I’m still really fucking mad at you right now, but my father’s dead, and I can’t bear to go to the funeral by myself. I-I just can’t.

And then, like every existential being has done for centuries before him, Spencer made a choice.

Spencer: You made a choice. We always have a choice. Not necessarily a good one, but we always have a choice. You chose to text me at night, to sleep in my clothes, and to the sound of my voice. You chose to confess your insecurities to me, and you chose to make drunk food with me. You chose to come here today when you needed company the most. It’s all a choice. And I made mine. I choose you.

Diana (smiled through tears): It was a choice all along?

Spencer: We don’t have to be together. But I think we both desperately want to.

Diana (biting her lips): I’m really fucking dying to kiss you and slap you in the face right now.

Spencer: Make a choice.

Diana closed the space separating them, kissing him softly, with the reverence of someone’s thread being tied to someone else, and somewhere up above, the fates laughed.

Diana: I think I just did.

Spencer (laughing between kisses): Isn’t it funny, us? The opposites falling in love? It’s a good story.

Diana: What’s wrong with a good story?

Please feel free to like and reshare this piece as we’re all trying to fight against AI work, and this work is very obviously not written by AI but by your favorite weirdo, and no computer could come up with most of the shit I write. It would mean a lot if, instead of being a complacent, silent reader, you’d give this a second of your time and push a human-written piece up the algorithm.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that hot girls cry on their birthdays. While it was no longer Diana’s birthday due to the technicality of time passing and whatnot, Diana was still crying from the panic attack that ensued from a sex vision she had gotten at a rave.

Diana: I want answers. (Beat) now. What’s going on? What did I see? Is it real? Is it a dream? Why did you drug us?

Marley: I didn’t drug you; you always wanted to try Molly, so technically, you drugged yourself.

Diana: You decided to give it to us for an ulterior motive.

Spencer (jumping in): We wanted to force the vision to us, to know what’s going on.

Diana: I am not talking to you right now.

Vanessa: Diana, it’s not that deep. We all knew something was going on; at least Marley pushed it to the forefront.

Diana: So I’m the only one who didn’t know?

Marley: Yes. You’re quite self-centered.

Diana: Fuck you, Marley. You lied to me. You all lied to me. I can’t believe this.

Marley: Grow up, Diana. The world doesn’t revolve around you. We did what we thought was best, and it worked out.

Spencer: Am I the only one who’s terrified right now?

Marley: What did you see?

Spencer: Paris, burning. I think we did that.

Vanessa (to Connor): What’s that? Is that the card?

Connor (handing the card to Vanessa): It’s the lovers, from the tarot de Marseille. I don’t know what it means.

Diana rummaged through her coat’s pocket for the very same card, the card she had found last week on the frat’s footsteps, not thinking much of it at the time, but intrigued nonetheless. She took it out and brought it to her friends.

Marley (grabbing Diana’s card): When I was in the woods, doing the vision quest, I saw drawings on the walls, drawings of us. If we come back to the apartment, I can show you; I drew them again. It was all of us, through time, performing a ritual, a sex ritual.

Diana (yelling): What is going on?

Daphne (quiet until now): We’ve all been connected through time. Our group was always meant to happen, somehow. We saw each other, from ancient Greece to medieval Korea and revolutionary France, performing an orgy, and when we did, the world changed.

Marley: I’m guessing you and Daphne had a lot of sex to see all of that.

Daphne: Hehehe.

Diana: Are you telling me that we haven’t made a single choice in our lives? That everything was determined. Like, us getting into the same college, meeting through classes and dorm affiliation, becoming friends (looking at Spencer), and more- everything was planned? We didn’t make a single decision?

Marley: I think everything’s been predetermined.

Connor: That’s gonna send us into an existential crisis.

Diana (to Spencer): You knew. That night I showed up at your place high and drunk when Marley and Connor were in your bedroom. When I told you, I didn’t know what choice to make, that I was lost, that life held too many paths for me, you knew there was only one. I opened up to you about being lost, and you didn’t have the fucking decency to tell me there had never been a choice, to begin with!

Spencer: Diana, I-

Diana: Save it. I can’t trust you. I can’t trust any of you.

Vanessa: Does anyone know what this card means? What even is the Tarot de Marseille?

Marley: It’s for me.

Diana: Wow, and I’m self-centered.

Marley: I’m from Marseille, you dumb bitch.

Vanessa: No, you’re not.

Marley: I’m French.

Connor: Why do you have a Valley Girl accent?

Marley (with a strong French accent): I don’t know, dude, maybe it’s because it’s easier to understand.

Daphne: Holy shit, they’re French. None of you knew this?

Vanessa: Marley never talks about themselves.

Connor: Quick question, are you still Asian? Because I just assumed you were an american asian, but now everything’s confusing.

Marley: Fuck no, I’m not Asian.

Everyone: What?!

What the fuck indeed.

Marley: I’m Kabyle. What for three and a half years, you all thought I was Asian?

Vanessa: In my defense, you make amazing Kimchi.

Marley: Anyway, that tarot card, it’s from my hometown; the tarot de Marseille is a famous tarot from like the 17th century or something. I think Spencer’s sister will be able to tell us more.

Diana: Spencer’s sister?

Spencer: My sister’s a witch; she’s coming in a few days to do a reading. I just need to do some shrooms first.

Diana: Does any of this have anything to do with Connor being a vampire?

Connor: No.

Vanessa: Actually, Con, were you alive during those other times?

Connor: I’m twenty-one, same as you, so I’m guessing I’m just some reincarnation of a previous me, like the rest of you.

Diana: Okay, so let me get this straight: determinism is real, we don’t have choices, magic is real, and we’re all going to do an orgy for some unknown power that will change the fate of modern society.

Marley: Exactly.

Diana: Great. You know what, I’m going to go kill myself in the bathtub, nothing major, I can’t take this.

Spencer: Diana, please, I’m-

Diana: I don’t wanna talk to you right now. I just want to go home. Thanks for the birthday party.

Daphne: I’ll walk you home.

Diana: No, I want to be alone right now.

Diana didn’t talk to her roommates as they quietly went away on Thanksgiving break. She didn’t text Spencer, Connor, or Daphné. She just sat alone, in her bedroom, writing and drawing.

She thought her taking a liking to Spencer was the first genuine choice she had made in her life. Not a choice dictated by what she aspired to be, but a choice she felt deep in her bones that he was good for her. She thought she had chosen her friends, that she had chosen her new family, a family that loved and understood her.

The campus was empty, with leaves crunching under the weight of her Crocs as she made her way to work. She knew that Spencer was still here, somehow evicted from his own family during Thanksgiving, and while she wore her loneliness like a heavy cloak on her shoulders, she couldn’t reach out. She felt betrayed; she had come to him in a time of need when she was in an existential crisis about what liking him meant, and all this time, he knew that they were meant to be and didn’t tell her.

All of her choices were void. She thought she had chosen to work hard in high school to get into a good college, that she had chosen to be who she was. But as she looked at herself in the mirror, with blue eyes, pink eyeliner, a silky nightgown, and red tights, she knew now that she hadn’t chosen anything at all. She fought to be someone she was always meant to be, and that killed her.

Like a shot in the dark, she noticed her phone had rang 8 times, from her mom, and then the other shoe dropped.

You need to come home; your father has passed.

She looked at the discarded and opened birthday gifts she had received: an engraved butt plug from Spencer, an edible thong from Marley, and red tights from Vanessa and Daphné, and she thought, damn, if only I could be with people at a moment like this.

So she took her crochet pouch, cigarettes, a flask of Vodka, and a nug of weed, and left to find the one person who was still here, swallowing her pride like unrequested cum.

SURPRISE CUNTS, MARLEY ISN’T ASIAN! I know, I know, it’s a bit on the nose and self-insert here, but I had to make that joke at some point. A writer I love and admire once said that writing a book makes you a sort of god, and I totally agree with her. With my Godhood, I have decided to give the Arabs some real representation with a Kabile character because I almost never see Arabs in books unless the plot is about them being arab (mhm Martyr?) and I wanted Marley to be given a full personality outside of their Arabness and writing them is probably the most fun I’ve ever had writing a character tbh (Spencer is a close second in my heart).

We’re getting close to the end (only 10 chapters left), but now the vision of the book is getting clearer, isn’t it? What do you think? I’m starving for some feedback.

From Marseille with Love,

*Vapes away*

Please feel free to like and reshare this piece as we’re all trying to fight against AI work, and this work is very obviously not written by AI but by your favorite weirdo, and no computer could come up with most of the shit I write. It would mean a lot if, instead of being a complacent, silent reader, you’d give this a second of your time and push a human-written piece up the algorithm.

Connor’s favorite artists included Ren and Eminem. He couldn’t say they were the kings of rap because that would be wrong and racist, but he remembered cold nights at 11 years old, once his parents had allowed a desktop in his room, watching Slim Shady and 8 Mile over and over, thinking, ‘one day, that’s gonna be me.’ Now, instead of dreaming of becoming a rapper, Connor dreamt of being in love.

Picture this: all of our characters are in an illegal chicha and karaoke bar beneath a kebab shop, belting the lyrics to “Treat Me Like a Slut” by Kim Petras while hosting their very own twerking competition that Connor was winning while drinking his daily blood bag mixed with tequila.

Our king of love was the king of twerk.

Diana: How is the neck-crophiliac winning?

Connor: Twerking is so mouse ballet!

He thought back to the conversation he had with Marley on Halloween, questioning his sexuality as he felt a desire for someone who was neither man nor woman for the first time. Marley was a secret third thing: a threat, an omen.

He thought of how Marley had shut his monologue up by simply kissing him and unzipping his pants, then later bent him over his bed, their giant fake cock strapped onto them. It made him feel so many things he had never felt. Oh gods, he wanted to be their boytoy so bad.

But he was a prisoner of his own lucidity; like the burger once said, he was but a coward incapable of acknowledging the risk of an illusion, an illusion that would burst soon enough.

Diana had one thing on her mind: where and when would they take the molly? It was already past midnight, her birthday long gone, but the night only seemed to amplify in intensity.

Diana thought that she was only going to live once and wanted to experience as much of youth as she could.

Going to clubs, drinking, smoking weed, fucking strangers, whatever she felt like doing, she did it.

They were spinning an empty bottle of vodka to decide who would do the lap-dancing to whom, and it was finally Diana’s turn to spin the bottle. She’d gotten a lap dance from both Daphné and Connor so far, and she had to say, she didn’t think Connor had that great of an ass until now, and found herself very jealous of his juicy peach.

She spun the bottle, all of her friends cheering excitedly like middle schoolers during a fight, and it landed on none other than Spencer, of course, because the universe was funny like that, bless the stars and the whore who made them.

She laughed, looked at him from across the couch in their smoke-infested heaven with the chicha between them, and found him laughing as well, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. She knew this was going to be good.

Diana stood up, stretched her neck, and said:

I’m picking the song, and it’s going to be quite a change from this.

She picked up the iPad from the wall, a smirk playing on her lips. The mood was about to change drastically, sure, but if she was doing a lap dance, she was giving it her everything. She’d never done one before; the men she slept with were too busy getting her clothes off for her to do it herself in a choreographed fashion, but she couldn’t help but think it would be fun, especially with Spencer, for whom she was developing more feelings every day.

If everyone agreed that Chase Status was amazing, they would also agree that the following song was made for a striptease, and she was nothing but a woman, firm of breasts, weak of mind, or whatever.

The violin started playing, and her friends laughed at her dramatic personality. Of course, she’d pick Glory Box by Portishead to do a striptease. To her, it was the ultimate sex song.

She pointed to the empty chair in the middle of the room to Spencer, and he sat in it without a word, but a small hiccup of anticipation got out of his throat as he passed her without looking at her. Oh, she couldn’t wait to get more hiccups from him tonight.

They’d played it shy tonight with their friends, light touches, glances that couldn’t lie, kisses on the cheek, but nothing more. It was time to dial it up to 100.

Spencer sat, and Diana started her show, sashaying her way to him to the beat of the drums. She didn’t remember the drums were this strong on this song, but she kept going, touching his buzzcut to the beat of the violin as she twirled around him, teasing him with her proximity without committing to it, a big smirk plastered on her face, showing off her dimples.

Give me a reason to love you,

Give me a reason to be a woman.

Spencer knew he was in deep shit and wouldn’t be able to hide his VIPenis from his friends by the end of the lap dance. He was mesmerized by the blonde beauty standing in front of him, barely taller than he was, while sitting in a chair. She twirled around him, her finger grazing his neck, his collarbone, his hair, the smell of her intoxicating to the point where he only wanted to breathe in her metallic mint and spice perfume.

When the electric guitar joined the song, she bit his ear, and he couldn’t stop the moan from escaping his throat. The next thing he knew, there she was, straddling him, a devious glint in her eyes as she started to grind against him while licking the side of his face, her underwear grazing against his shaft, almost turning his penis blue with desire. No one had ever licked his face before,

Until,

He was transported to that apartment with heavy drums, with a curvy blonde girl licking the side of his face, naked in his arms, her pointy teeth armed against his flesh as she bit him.

Her hands went south from his chest, twisting one of his nipples, then south until she reached his erection. She didn’t seem to mind that he was so visibly turned on by her dance, and she touched him through his jeans, in front of everyone. Then the song ended, and he was brought back to the karaoke parlor.

Everybody cheered, and Diana laughed, taking a bow, looking at Spencer with a Cheshire smile. He was so red in the face that she couldn’t help but mock him. Poor boy, with her, he was in big trouble, and they both knew it.

At the end of their hour of Karaoke, the group got their takeout kebab, and out they went to an empty parking lot Spencer recognized all too well for being the one next to his therapist’s office, right next to the Burger King parking lot he cried in. Twice.

Vanessa (hissing in cold): Are you sure this is the place?

Marley: Trust me, it is. (She took the plastic bag out of her purse) Okay, everyone, take one and eat.

Everyone circled Marley and took their pill with a swing of Vodka before going back to their kebab. Marley went to the trash to get rid of their cigarette butt, quickly followed by Spencer.

Spencer: I don’t like this. We should tell them.

Marley: Not until we know what’s going on.

Spencer: I don’t think our friends are going to look too kindly on us tricking them into doing drugs.

Marley: We didn’t trick them into doing anything.

Connor (joining the group): You think this is going to work?

Marley: We’ll see. If they ask, don’t tell them anything. We’ll have a sit-down with them once we know, or else they’ll freak out.

Connor: Your tit is out.

Spencer: I’ll do shrooms next week before my sister comes anyway; I don’t think this is necessary.

Marley: Spencer, you’re cute, but you’re a main character. The main character never knows what’s going on and never takes it upon themselves to learn the truth; they just stumble on it at some point when the story judges it pertinent. I am not a main character. I’m doing this.

The three conspirators returned to the group sitting on the pavement, eating their kebabs as the bass of far-away music pumped through their veins while the drugs slowly dissolved in their already fucked-up system.

Diana was starting to feel the effects of the Molly right when the group was gearing up to go to their third location of the night. The street lamp’s light seemed brighter than before, the lights of the cars seemed like stars on the horizon, and her limbs, god her limbs, she felt like she was on fire but in a wondrous way, her skin felt flushed and alight with a novel kind of energy, and her eyes, gods her eyes, she could see every single star twirling in the sky.

She could feel the silky fabric of her dress underneath her leather jacket against her naked legs; the softness of it was not unlike Spencer’s fingers, which she was desperately longing for. She wanted to be touched, to fuck right there on the pavement of the parking lot for everyone to see. She felt ignited, and she never wanted this trip to end.

Marley led the group with their phone’s light behind the Burger King to a bunch of abandoned warehouses, and Diana felt a rush of adrenaline as she realized they were going to a rave.

Diana loved raves; it’s something that united her, Marley, and Vanessa since they first met. They’ve had their first rave experiences together, huddling in the dark to queue for half an hour to the only toilet and seeing way too many penises in the sink, which served as a urinal.

Diana longed for the freedom she felt at raves. No one was looking at each other; you could dance however you wanted to. Sometimes she’d find herself in a moshpit; other times she’d linger in the back and oscillate between tai-chi and dance as she felt the full force of the music in her blood and heart.

After showing their tickets on Marley’s phone, they arrived in a giant warehouse with heavy bass hitting her like a vibrator on her clitoris. They all grabbed each other’s hands as they made their way through the crowd to the middle of it, and started dancing to the D&B set in front of them, where two DJs seemed to be competing and riffing off each other, and one of them was in a clown costume, an omen to Marley.. This was bound to be an insane night.

She noticed Spencer a bit in the back of the group, looking around with his big goggly eyes, and laughed.

Diana (yelling): Are you okay?

Spencer (holding Diana’s hand): I’m fine, I’ve just never been to one of those!

He put her hand above her head, and she did a little twirl, as obligated, and the pair started dancing the night away.

Spencer was positively high as a kite and wondered where the expression high as a kite came from. Kites didn’t fly high; he felt as high as the airplane that hit the Twin Towers, much more like it. Unbeknownst to him, amidst his problematic thoughts, drama was afoot.

But all he felt was Diana’s hand in his, clammy, but gods, he was incandescent. The light show hypnotized his eyes as the white beam flared in beat to the music, turning from darkness to a smoky white halo in the blur of a second, enough to see the sweaty bodies pushed together in the same narcotic danse.

The red lights of the rave seemed to be pulsing with something unseen, the music crashing over him like wave after wave, the beat stuck to his bones as he let go of everything and danced, danced, danced. This was pure, unbridled fun. He felt hot, horny, and emotional, and he felt like he had just discovered the meaning of life.

Of course, life was not about getting high and raving, but gods, did it feel good after a long week of exams to let it go and have fun without a care in the world. The world could burn tomorrow; at least he had tonight, dalé.

They were all pressed to each other; he felt Daphné’s hips swaying next to his, and Diana’s hand lingered on his shoulder from time to time as they let the vibe of the music rage through them. This was a night he would always remember. The good boy who always did what everybody expected of him was finally out of his cage.

Then, out of the blue, Daphné grabbed his face between her hands, her pupils dilated like saucers, and yelled:

I love you, you’re my brother in everything but blood, and I cherish every moment I get to spend with you before college is over. I know it’s going to be difficult to stay close once we’re no longer in the same city or even country, but you are my family, Spence. You’re the best man I’ve ever met.

Spencer gave her a thumbs-up.

She replied by hugging him tightly to her chest.

And then the vision started.

The music, heavy drum and bass, turned into something more demonic, more ritualistic to his ear; the lights turned from bright red to golden candlelit, and he was transported to that room with all of his friends.

They all sat around a fire in a fireplace, naked, discarded 18th-century gowns all around the boudoir. No one talked, and they looked somewhat different. Vanessa’s hair was in a braid, Connor’s hair was longer, and he could feel his own curls against his neck.

Something was burning in the fire, a picture, a tarot card maybe, and as the card burned, the music grew louder and louder, more insistent.

Jigsaws falling into place.

Past Marley: It’s done.

Past Vanessa: What do we do now?

Past Connor: Entropy will take care of the rest.

He felt himself speak, but it wasn’t him. His voice was deeper, as if he’d spent a life smoking from a pipe; he was stuck inside his head, but he was not connected to his mouth.

Past Spencer: Paris is burning.

And then he was brought back to the rave, to his modern-looking friends, as they danced in trance to the music. They were lost to the beat, sweat budding on their forehead, mascara running down their faces, eyes closed. He wondered if he looked like them when he was lost in the vision, if they were there right this instant. He reached for Diana’s hand, who danced next to him and-

Diana could feel sparkling brown eyes on her, devouring her from below, ravishing her. She knew this man, with a different haircut and a scar on his eyelid, but it was Spencer. Somebody reached for her navel and planted a passionate kiss on her lips. She opened her eyes and looked at Connor, his ass sparkling like a pink diamond in the dark.

Diana wanted to talk to tell everyone to stop this nonsense. She knew Molly could give hallucinations, but this was different; she talked, her voice was too muffled for her to hear, but her mouth was not connected to her head. She recognized this place, its golden embroideries, the candles; she’d seen this before when she kissed Spencer and when she pleasured herself while Spencer was getting a blowjob in the library. She thought it was nothing but a flash in her mind, but there she was again, Spencer eating her out, women’s moans coming from behind her, Connor kissing her, Marley sucking Spencer’s dick behind her. What was going on?

The music seemed to come from everywhere but nowhere, and she looked at the fire burning in front of her, burning brighter with each passing second, animated by something other.

She looked into Spencer’s eyes, and then she was transported back to the present, looking into the same eyes, dancing with him. She felt her chest heave, her heart accelerating to the beat of the drums, and she couldn’t breathe. She pushed through the crowd, Spencer in tow, and dropped to the floor.

Diana (through heavy breaths): What the fuck is going on?

Vanessa kissed Daphné with all the love and passion she could muster, hands in her underwear, Daphné’s hand on her ass, kissing, dancing, moaning, almost fucking right there on the dance floor.

Then suddenly, the underwear was off, and she was looking at the most delicate, swollen cunt she had ever seen. She kissed her way up Daphné’s sweaty body, licking and biting her nipples before she made her way back down south and nibbled her clit.

The drums were heavy, almost covering the sound of the moans emanating from the room. Vanessa had seen the vision before, but she was not scared. She knew that whenever she had sex with Daphné, she was transported to other places in time where she did just that and more. She recognized this room; this was the first room she saw when they had their first kiss.

But there were more rooms just like this, sometimes caves, sometimes huts, sometimes rich apartments. She figured that this group always happened. That they were all connected. She’d discussed it with Daphné to know she wasn’t crazy and imagining things, but turns out they had the same visions every time she reached climax, and she saw every single one of her friends.

But there was also a card, burning in the fire for hours until it was done, and the card vanished.

In Daphné’s vision, she held the card between her hands; it changed from tarot to tarot, from culture to culture, and from a different time to a different place. Every culture had divination, and she’d guessed that the card represented a divination from the culture they experienced.

The one she recognized was the tarot card: The Lovers.

Every time, it was the only fuel for the fire and the music, and it was only once they had all climaxed that the card would dissipate into nothingness.

And every time, when they talked, the puzzle pieces became clearer.

Connor: England will lose The Americas.

Marley: Japan will lose Korea.

Their ritualistic orgy was the beginning of the fall of dominoes: the dominoes of civilisation.

Connor and Marley were in the toilets when their vision came. Connor had taken it upon himself to pee in the sink while Marley freshened up in a cubicle, when they hit their head against the cubicle door, transporting them to another time, another body.

They looked outside to Paris, a city burning with a desire for democracy as the people marched with torches, burning and burning. This was their doing; Marley was certain of that. Paris was falling to the masses; a wrong had been righted.

Marley looked at their friends, sitting by the fire, looking at the card dissipating.

Vanessa: Did we start the Apocalypse?

Connor was cleaning his hand when he found a card stuck to his Converse. His vision hadn’t shown him anything he didn’t already know thanks to Marley. He was in an apartment in Paris; they fucked, big fucking deal.

But still, he recognized the card stuck ot his shoe; it was sticky and faded, but it was The Lovers from the Tarot de Marseille.

He smiled, grabbing the dirty card between his fingers as Marley grabbed him by the arm.

They looked at the card, a sense of dread distorting their face. Connor had never seen Marley scared. Marley was focused, smart, and adventurous. They sought answers no matter the cost, but as he looked at their pale face lined with fear, he didn’t question it as they pushed him outside to his friends in the empty Burger King parking lot.

Diana (slapping Marley in the face): You fucking drugged us for a vision!

Yes, I disappeared. Deal with it. I don’t know if I’ll ever write another article on this platform because it’s turning more and more like Twitter every day, but nonetheless, the nonsense of this story continues. I wrote it to be read, and since no agent is willing to pick up an anti-capitalistic queer novel, I’m going to make it everyone’s problem and post it here. Deal.

From Marseille with Love,

*vapes away*

So my friends like to make fun of me because whenever I’m around, I bring music and I’m always saying, ‘Isn’t it the best song ever?’ at every single song. Yeah, I know, I’m that annoying music nerd. But I’m a positive music nerd, I don’t rant about the things I hate. If I review an album on here (which I do, btw), it’s to talk positively about the way it has impacted me, what the songwriting meant, what the identity of the record is.

So yeah, I say that every song is the best song, Kris, because I genuinely am amazed every day by music, and I can’t live without it.

I have something to prove it, so you know how I died because of a cavity and spent two weeks in a coma, attached to a machine that breathed for me during COVID? Well, when I woke up from said coma, I couldn’t put on my headphones just yet because my mouth was still swollen, and I would not listen to music unless it was quality sound. So I lasted 3 days and 2 nights, awake, in the ICU, sleepless, unable to move, until I caved, and when I listened to music, after 2 and a half weeks without music, all of the trauma I was going through sat down on my chest like a tiny bird, and took its first flight through my tears. I was sobbing so hard that the nurse in the hallway heard me even though my door was closed.

I will reveal that song, and many other songs that have defined me, my music taste, and more.

A first taste

For context, my mom had me at 20 in the grand old year of 2000, so she was mostly listening to Nirvana, Massive Attack, Bjork, Moby, Portishead, and the Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah, my mom smoked a lot of weed.

My mom collected CDs, and since I could walk, I would walk over to the stack of CDs and rearrange them based on colors and make a rainbow out of them.

And we even had vinyls because my grandpa had passed away and he left them to his children, so we had The Beatles' first print of Sergent Pepper, some first print of Led Zeppelin, and the Sex Pistols.

So the first song that altered my brain chemistry, as a wee lil child, was Babe I’m gonna leave you, from Led Zeppelin. I heard it on vinyl when I was 3 or 4, and I remember being like, I don’t understand what you’re saying because you’re not speaking French, but I feel what you’re saying with every inch of my body.

I remember distinctly standing in my orange living room, with my mom and her friends, they were having a cigarette, drinking some beers, and throwing my head along to the song, and wanting the speaker to be in my heart because that’s how much I felt it and needed it.

Objectively, it’s a solid Led Zepp song from one of the greatest bands of all time, and it has a slow-motion adaptation on One Tree Hill that is to die for and feels very much in line with how chaotic and desperate the song is.

My first CD

So my first CD was a gift from my mom’s best friend, Sylvie, and it was the Weezer’s Green album, and my mom loathed it because that is when I became the DJ and decided what we would listen to in the car or at home, and it was usually Weezer.

I remember seeing Say It Ain’t so on the TV before the Green Album came out (I know Say It Ain’t So is on the Blue Album) and saying that I liked it, and then a couple of days later, I had their latest release. I was blessed by the Gods of good taste.

Obviously gonna stan Island in the Sun, it always uplifts my spirits, and I think the music video is perfect for kids, and it’s a pretty easy song to play and sing along to, and have a good time.

The first time I became a Stan

The first fandom I was actively a part of, online, on Facebook groups filled with pedos, was Fall Out Boy.

Have they been flopping lately? Yeah, kinda. But I mean, Thnks fr the Mmrs? Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown On a Bad Bet? Bangers. Pete Wentz made me a bassist and a lyricist, and while I’m not nearly as talented, he has transformed the way I view writing in general and has made me much more creative with metaphors and twisted knives.

My all-time favorite song by them is actually not a song by them, but the remix of The 100 gecs’ song: Hand Crushed By a Mallet. That song is insane to me because it mixes the best of Fall Out Boy and the Best of the 100 Gecs, and it breaks my brain every time. This is cocaine to me, actually. I listen to it, and I see God.

Techno

So when I was 11, someone dropped a bomb on the internet, and it happened upon my ready, listening hear one fatefull monday evening when I was cleaning my room. In order to clean anything, I need to listen to music to make the experience a little bit pleasant. I’m a fucking slob who looks neat because they’re always listening to music. And as I was listening to Techno.FM, a local radio station that would play current techno tracks, Skrillex happened.

Oh, you know the effect. If you’ve ever stumbled upon his music, you know how dirty he gets. So I heard Bangarang, and it introduced me to the world of electronic music my mother loathes. She listened to the occasional Daft Punk, but that was it. This is truly when I discovered my own personal music taste.

Because, while I was a stan of FOB before, it was still pretty in line with what my mom listened to, it’s a less grungy, prettier Nirvana. But Skrillex? Nope, that came on its own.

I’m listening to Bangarang as I’m writing this (taking myself down memory lane with you), and I truly think it raised a generation. It was late millennials and early Gen-Z. You had to be there, and you can’t fake it.

I listen to this song almost every day, and it hasn’t aged. Skrillex is hot now; he looks like a European fuck boy with a side part, and his music is even better now than before. Like, point blank period, that’s a good ass career. And if you haven’t seen his live performances in Chile or Barcelona recently, please do yourself a favor and do so because they’re amazing, sometimes the crowd is as loud as Skrillex, and it’s amazing.

Swiftie? What the fuck.

So I’ve always been aware of Taylor Swift and liked her music since I was 6, when Love Story came out, then her switch to pop during the Red era has made me even more aware of her, and then 1989 came out.

1989 is far from my favorite TS album; it’s in the Top 10, but that’s it. But I lived through my first Taylor Swift Era with this album, and it was so special. Say whatever you wanna say about TS, I’ll probably agree, but she knows how to build an era.

The memory I’m going to tie Taylor Swift to is the moment I could listen to music again, after my coma in the ICU, and listening to 1989 because I wanted something comfortable, and Folklore was too sad for how terrified I was. I remember distinctly listening to Clean and crying my heart out over all the terrible events that had transpired, which led me to this hospital bed with a tube down my throat for two weeks.

Taylor, I lowkey hate you because you’re a capitalist, you’re a billionaire, and you extort your fans in exchange for some sick parasocial game, but you know how to write.

I don’t think that Clean is her best song; my most listened to song by her is actually Right Where You Left Me, and I was crying along to Champaigne Problems when I had to break up with my ex-girlfriend because of my PTSD. She’s been there for me, and it’s important to acknowledge it.

First Love

Yeah, you heard it here, folks, I have been in love before. While I’ve never talked about it out of respect for her and her privacy, I was in love once, during COVID, and she was amazing. She was as passionate about music and books as I was, she had a Hunger Games phase, and loved Ocean Vuong; it was a match made in heaven. We would FaceTime to read and watch TV together, and we had the best time. And she was so awesome that she made me listen to a bunch of new artists I had never heard of before, for example, all the girls from Boygenius.

And for her, I would like to pull out a memory from Tours, which is a town made of castles and wineries, 2 hours South of Paris, where I was visiting my mom. I remember coming home from spending the day with a book friend I had made on insta and had the chance of finally meeting, and as I was coming home, I connected my Bose headphones and listened to I Know The End, as my ex was freaking out over the album right when it was released.

I listened to it and came back a different person. The music video? The scream? The lyrics? The production? Everything is perfect, I love it so much. This is why music exists.

I finna be in the pit

So I was finally in the pit at my first rock show. Let me set the scene: it’s Berlin, March 2021, and I hadn’t yet dropped out of uni but was about to. But before then, I would go to Berlin with my Mom, and go to ColumbiaHalle, to see Nothing But Thieves.

The beer was affordable, we were smoking weed inside with a group of Berliners who spoke English before the show, we moshed, and then at the end of the show, just as they had left the stage and I thought I wouldn’t hear my song sang live, they came back to sing it. I cried. I bought a signed poster, two t-shirts, and a tote bag. I became their cash mule.

The song Impossible is about how you didn’t think it would ever be possible to fall in love so deeply with someone, and honestly, I have been in love twice, and every time I’m falling for someone, I listen to this song and have a little montage of us in my head. I’m going to get it tattooed somewhere. Connor’s voice is incredible, even more so live. He carries so much emotion, he grabs me by the titties, and he’s saying, " Okay, here’s how we feel about this now.” And I listen.

Can’t wait for the new album, and I already bought my tickets to see them in Milan.

The time I decided to write a novel based on a song

So one day, in the summer of 21, I was listening to some music as I was making pasta and drinking Bojolais, and this song struck me, because of a conversation I was having with my best friend. So if you don’t know, I have a best friend who went to live in the US with her American wife, and she’s fat, and she has been reading a lot lately. So naturally, she came to me for advice on romance books involving plus-size women. I had 2. She came back to me with criticism about how the woman is never comfortable in her body and always ashamed of being fat, when my friend is very proud to be fat, and she wanted to read that. Enters the song, Your Type by Carly Rae Jepsen, a song about not being the type of someone you fancy, and always being the friend.

Now I had material for a book, to write about a confident plus-size woman and make her fall in love with the opposite of her, and what is her opposite but a frat/gym bro. And thus, the novel you’ve been reading weekly on this platform was born.

So Charli is cool now?

So picture this, a wee lil teen like me finds Superlove on Tumblr.com, and finds out the one who did that song also did Break the Rules and Boom Clap? Oh, listen, you should’ve seen the way I was sitting in that theater with the cancerous kids kissing in the Anne Frank house. I ate it up. Popcorn. All because of that song. I love John and Hank Green, but this is far from their best work.

Nonetheless, an interest in me grew to listen to more Charli XCX, as she called herself, and it was right during the Sucker era, so I remember eating that album up when I was 14; it was a disease, actually. But listening to Charli wasn’t cool until Brat pretty much. Let’s just say people didn’t have the vision.

I saw the vision right around Vroom Vroom. Thank you, Sophie. And I was locked in. But the Charli song I want to talk about today isn’t necessarily famous because it’s her best, because no, I’m not pulling out the Track 10 card, but I’m going with Guess featuring Billie Eilish, produced by The Dare. You know I love Charli, if you’ve been paying attention for a while now, you should know I also love The Dare, but did you know that I’ve been listening to Billie Eilish since Ocean Eyes?

Billie has famously refused to collaborate with artists until she heard this song. This is the only Billie feat. On The Dare production. With Charli XCX. This is basically heaven to me.

And to finish this article

In April of last year, Lorde reappeared online to the shock of absolutely everyone. I’ve been there for every single Lorde drop, it’s not that hard, there are only 4 albums, and while the 3rd one isn’t my thing, I respect the vision. The first two were perfect. But when she came back for the fourth time, she came swinging, and I wasn’t ready.

What was that made me think of all my situationships? I lived an entire summer listening to this album and to this song especially. It is my second most listened to song of all time, with 576 listens IN ONE FUCKING YEAR.

This article was partially inspired by this song because I’m going to see Lorde in Nîmes in a month, right after my birthday, with my bestie, and it’s going to be amazing; we’re going to smoke so much weed.

What was that? Absolute banger in my house, I felt this song like a Hammer (get it? It’s the name of the first track on the album), it made me want to reach out to people I definitely should stay away from. This song is dangerous for me, but in a good way, because it makes me so fucking introspective. Gotta respect the Lorde.

Buy me a coffee

From Marseille with Love,

*Vapes away*

Please feel free to like and reshare this piece as we’re all trying to fight against AI work, and this work is very obviously not written by AI but by your favorite weirdo, and no computer could come up with most of the shit I write. It would mean a lot if, instead of being a complacent, silent reader, you’d give this a second of your time and push a human-written piece up the algorithm.

Spencer was a fool, an utter Buffon. He knew that even in that weird state between asleep and awake, in which you’re bitchslapped with the mistakes you made the night before. The mistake was not kissing Diana, of course, that was wonderful. The mistake was the thing that made his lungs burn and his legs numb: running.

He started working out again, which he hadn’t done since his suicide attempt, and he felt reinvigorated. Now, his days started at 6 am with an hour-long run, watering his plants, and eating a bowl of fruit before going to every single class.

Life was not perfect, no. It hurt being a full-fledged member of society. It was hard not to be lazy and say ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ to half the things he did on a daily basis. But he did it nonetheless, every single day. He shared meals with his friends, passed his midterms, kissed the girl he liked, and spent nights on the phone whispering sweet nothings after watching reality TV together.

Diana: Today, you looked like a Fortnight Twitch streamer.

Spencer: The sun is like the Prozac of nature.

Every evening, the Lovers united in the living room of the frat, crowding the couches to watch the last week of their reality TV with only five contestants left for the finale. The brothers were sitting on the floor, bringing mattresses down to make a night of it, with alcohol and weed to boot. Sure, it was midterm week, but this was still college.

He’d also been included in the secret group chat to prepare for Diana’s birthday party, and in the more selective group chat made up of Connor, Marley, and himself to discover the reason for their shared vision.

Vanessa: Have you guys ever realized that you’re in a cult? With Spencer as the leader? No offense, Spence, but you’re not exactly cult-leader material

Spencer (laughing): Ouch. Are you saying I’m not charismatic?

Diana (cackling like a hyena): You have plenty of charm, I’m sure. Although you did disgust your ex enough that she swore off an entire gender.

Marley had shared a vision of theirs regarding frats, which had Spencer spiraling. According to them, all boys looked the same. The same skinny blue jeans, the same polo shirts, and sleeveless puffer jackets, the same buzzed and faded haircut. The same homoerotic way of saying hello, using every excuse to hug each other without asking for an actual hug, forgoing any kind of masculinity.

Right when you think you’ve seen them all because there can’t possibly be more than twenty boys who look like each other, they were proven wrong, and more boys would come around, all somehow named Jason or Tyler (as if that was a prerequisite to being in a frat). They all had the same tribal tattoo sleeve. Marley was bemused and thought that they probably did hairdresser outings together, hand in hand, because their lack of individuality was mind-boggling.

Marley had read about the straight male species in books, but still, they were dumbfounded by what they saw. To them, it felt like they were seeing 8 iPhone evolutions. They also couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if a sociological experiment took place, separating them all into individual rooms. Would they develop a personality and not be determined by the mob? Would they sit down and be no one?

And now, Spencer couldn’t look at the brothers he’d shared a house with for four years, the same. He saw carbon copy after carbon copy, and he thought, ‘I used to be like them.’

He talked about that with his therapist. Now he told that middle-aged woman with a notebook and pink octagonal glasses everything, which usually came with a set of ‘mhm and ‘why’, but he didn’t mind the incessant nonsensical questions anymore. It felt like a mind-numbing exam he had to take every week to rate his mental health on a scale of 0 to 10; everything was in binary anyway.

But there was something still missing from Spencer’s life as he watched the contestants of Secret Story reunite with their families at the end of the show, on the prime: family. Sure, he talked to Lexi, who was due to visit in the upcoming week, right before Thanksgiving, but no words from his mother.

His oldest sister, Kim, had done him a solid for Diana’s birthday, gifting her with something she’ll forever treasure, but there was no further conversation between the long-lost siblings.

And thus, after a week of midterms well spent, the friend group found themselves in the Delirium, the seedy college town bar that didn’t card, drinking poorly mixed rum and Coke for Diana’s 22nd birthday celebration, dancing on the sticky floor to Abba’s Gimme Gimme after their favorite show had officially ended.

Lorena had won Secret Story, sending the frat into a frenzy of cheers, and had everyone excited for next season, which was already being teased by the voice of the show.

Diana was having the time of her life. She was a little bit drunk, high to the point where she could feel her core desire ringing all throughout her body (weed always made her horny), and she forgot every single one of her problems, including the period-stained underwear she was wearing underneath her provocative corset dress.

She talked to her mother earlier today, feeling that she ought to answer the phone from the woman who gave birth to her on the day she was born. While the conversation quickly shifted from casual life updates about her classes and friends (who her mother loathed) to her father’s health, she felt somewhat happy to have picked up the phone.

Contrary to popular belief, Diana didn’t hate her mother. She resented her, yes, for being complacent to her father’s behavior and for enabling him all these years, for cowering in misery and shame, and for supporting her daughter for trying to make something of herself. But still, she loved her mother, no matter how difficult their relationship was. However, her father could get run over by a truck for all she cared. She’d piss on his grave.

And oh, did she love her dress tonight. It was a forest green silky corset dress that hugged all of her curves perfectly, showing off her boobs (her pride, but if anyone asked, she’d say her favorite part of her body was her blue steel).

She was dancing her nightmares away with her friends, like a sorrow-filled dernière danse screaming Abba lyrics at the top of her lungs, when she felt a hand at the small of her back. The hand of someone she didn’t recognize.

Of course, when you go to bars dressed up with your friends, men are going to think you’re dressed up for them and that your body is theirs to touch.

Diana was used to this, and while she didn’t need a white knight to save her, she did make eye contact with Spencer, who was dancing with Daphné and Marley a few feet away, silently asking if she needed help. She shook her head and stepped on the guy’s foot with the heel of her fake DocMartens.

She shared a few laughs before realizing she had never been happier. College was ending right when she was getting used to it, and getting to know what could possibly be life-long friends, oh well, malevolence is structural and kindness erratic, and she was filled with girlish whimsy.

She loved how insanely crafty Marley and Connor were. How sensitive Daphné was. How level-headed Vanessa was. But mostly, she loved Spencer for being the best dancing partner she’d ever had. If there were only two people on the dancefloor sweating all the alcohol out of their vodka-ridden bodies, it would be them having a random and ironic dance-off to a poorly mixed DJ set.

She loved the fact that he didn’t take himself too seriously and got her out of her own head, and she couldn’t help but think that she had the same effect on him. He seemed lighter since Halloween, happier, more grown.

Marley, dressed in their clownish fineries, grabbed her by the waist to push her to the side of the dancefloor. Diana was covered in sweat and certain her makeup had run down her face, but she didn’t care; she needed more, more of everything, right now.

Marley: Time to go, people, we have a schedule for the birthday girl.

Diana (lying): I’m so surprised about this birthday party, thank you, everyone.

Vanessa: Oh, it’s just starting, Lady D. You have a full night and morning of fun waiting for you.

Marley grinned and got a tiny plastic bag out of their banana bag.

Diana: Is that?

Marley (grinning like a madman): Yes, it is.

Molly.

This is not exactly a list of the worst books I’ve ever read, but more of a list of books that disappointed me the most because the hype was there, and I didn’t get it.

War and Peace - Tolstoy

When I tell you that my only memory of this book was of reading the passage where Napoleon is half insane in the middle or end of a battle and meeting with one of our main characters (too many main characters in this book), and spouting some half-ass war philosophy that I don’t believe in, it’s true. I think this book was a fever dream for me. I read it during the first lockdown of Covid way back in March 2020, and when I finished it, it left me with an indelible huh.

Hear me out before I take a dump on one of the treasures of classic literature; I think this book needed 500 pages tops. It would’ve been a banger, but instead, we got a lot of boring moments with people standing in rooms and ignoring their big Russian feelings because Russians don’t show their feelings, and I hated it. I still finished, though.

I read it in English, and parts of it were in French because Russians loved French because it was considered a dignified language. The translation was done by a couple who also translated Crime & Punishment (which I love), and while I think they’re very talented translators, I think even they didn’t know what they were doing half the time, and translating word-for-word because Tolstoy was that obscure.

Also, I fucking hate Tolstoy for what he did to his wife. That didn’t help.

But at least I can say that I read War & Peace at 20.

We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is a case of never meet your heroes, but even without that, when I read this little essay, I was shocked at what modern feminism was being packaged as. Adichie openly refers to a woman as someone with a womb who can give birth. Not all those with a womb are women, and not all women have a womb, which left me confused.

Then I had the displeasure of meeting her at a conference, and I asked her about the prevalence of ‘giving birth’ as the ultimate power for a woman, and how she felt about the fact that some women couldn’t give birth, or about the fact that some people with that power chose another gender. You get the picture, she’s a TERF, but I phrased my question in a kind way, which is so not me. She refused to answer my question, closed off all so suddenly when I was the first eloquent English speaker in the room, and she was all too ready to answer a softball question when I asked THAT.

If this is modern feminism, count me out. I’d rather read Angela Davis and Toni Morisson. Those are real feminists as far as I’ve read them (maybe they’re Terfs and I’ve just never come across their transphobia in their text).

Credence - Penelope Douglas

Listen, I’ve read a lot. Like a shit ton. And I read from every genre, sci-fi, graphic novel, manga, fantasy, romance, essays, classics, I’m a voracious reader. And when it comes to romance, I usually feel like it’s not for me because I don’t want the perfect straight husband and children and a white picket fence, and straight romance doesn’t have a lot of room for anything outside of that.

But I think Credence takes the cake. It is horrifying. I was clutching my imaginary pearls. If memory serves me right, because I read this before tiktok did its thing and made this book insanely popular amongst young impressionable women, this is a reverse Harem situation with white trash people.

I remember a scene where the main character, who’s like a 17-year-old girl, goes into the garage, I think, and she’s assaulted by one of the guys who’s nonverbal, and he hits her? And he’s a romantic interest? Oh, and her uncle is also a romantic interest, obviously; let’s not forget the incest of it all. Basically, this book sucks, and if you like it, yikes.

Any of the Harry Potter books - JKR

I loved the Harry Potter movies as they were coming out, but as a 00 baby, I was a bit too young to get into the books, as they were already getting to the 600 page mark by 05, which was when I started my reading journey.

Now, obviously, I’ve stopped watching the movies for obvious reasons, the author is a fucking terf and a racist and homophobic and basically everything that’s wrong with the world.

But I had a teenage phase where I was really into YA, thanks to the Hunger Games and reading everything labelled as YA. I was so disappointed by HP, you guys. Not gonna lie, I did not see the hype then, and I certainly don’t see it now.

You’re supposed to tell me that this rich straight boy who’s the best wizard in the world has a difficult life? Fuck off. In the last Harry Potter movie, I expected JKR to pull a Percy Jackson and have the real hero be Neville (who was born with the same circumstances as Harry, so the prophecy could’ve been about either of them), instead of Harry, just like Percy was not the hero of the prophecy in the original series.

I loved that about Percy Jackson. I expected the same in HP, but no, it’s Harry porn all over, and I was bored.

I did not enjoy the books. I thought the humor felt forced and contrived, and too childish for a 12-year-old audience. I never finished the series. I stopped once the books had more than 500 pages, which is like book 4, I think.

Don’t quote me on that.

House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

Why did we normalize books over 500 pages? I don’t want to read that. It’s already pretty long to read a book; I don’t want to spend 30 hours a week reading the same book. Fuck that.

One of my old friends said this was the most terrifying book she had ever read. Clearly, she had never read Dostoevsky and felt the heartbreak of never being known, which is way more terrifying than some dumb crew going to explore a magic house that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. That’s just Hermione’s bag, or like, a house in the Magicians. No big deal.

I fell asleep reading this book. I understood it, sure, but what was the point? Bore me to death? I get it, we’re reading three different perspectives, and we don’t know who the author of the novel is because it’s so fucking quirky and drives everyone mad and to suicide because it’s so quirky, haha, kill me now.

Bref, fuck this, I’m out.

From Marseille with love,

Buy me a coffee

*vapes away*

But some people, including me, can take offence when we’re called a bitch or a dude because we don’t fit the perfect mould of man or woman. I’ve been pretty lowkey when it comes to my gender on this app, even letting go of some offhand comments about calling me a ‘she’ in restacks and such, but please, not during Pride month.

It irks me to no avail to be called a she/her at any time. My mom does it sometimes, but she’s my mom, so I let it slide. My pronouns in English are they/them, and in French, il. I will not accept being called anything else, point-blank, period.

It does not matter that I wear pink (yes, even my vape is pink), that I wear dresses, that I shave my legs because I still have issues with hairy legs on myself, I am not a woman.

I’ve made my coming out as non binary when I was 18, which was 8 years ago (I feel old), and since then, my friends have largely respected my pronouns, exept for the little slip here and there, my friends and family have been most accomodating, even going as far as buying me men’s underwear when I was 15, thank you grandma, you’re the bestest.

If my 73-year-old grandma can get on the nonbinary train, why can’t you? Why do you insist on calling me a she? On reducing me to the woman’s experience? I am non binary, I am trans, I have been trans for a long ass time now, it’s time to drop the ego and get on with the program.

It’s not like I changed pronouns while doing this Substack journey with ya’ll, I’ve been non-binary and open about it from the start. I have my pronouns in my fucking name, and yet, ya’ll still call me a she? Get a check-up for your eyesight because something just ain’t clicking.

I’m at a point where I’m even wondering if there are other nonbinary creators on this app, because I feel pretty alone. I’ve encountered one trans woman, and that’s it. I feel like this app is full of lesbians and bisexuals, but not a lot of trans people. I wonder why that is? Maybe it’s because lesbians struggle with the idea of being with a trans person and don’t see them as sexual beings? Oops.

But that is not the point of this article. The point of this article is to answer a long-standing debate over the existence of non-binary people within the trans community. You see, back on Tumblr.com, back when it was relevant to public discourse and the term non-binary was making its rounds, people were having the debate of whether we had our place in the trans community because we did not choose a gender that was not the one we weren’t assigned at birth, which is the definition of being trans, right? Well, you see, we didn’t choose the opposite gender from the one we were born with, but we did choose another gender, a third gender to some, a non-gender to others; the definition of non-binary changes from person to person. And because of this, we belong in the trans community. We had gone through various degrees of body dysmorphia, tapped our boobs to our chests, stopped shaving certain parts of our bodies, if not all parts altogether.

So, do non-binary people belong in the trans community? Well, it depends on how you define a trans person. If you think being trans means transitioning from one side to the opposite side, which is a very limited view of what it’s like to be trans, then no, but if you think going through body dysmorphia, changing pronouns (I did that), changing names (I did that), and being seen as attractive both by lesbians and by gay men, then yes, we belong.

The word trans is in constant evolution; we’ve not stopped growing yet. It’s so fucking new and barely being normalised, we’ve barely scratched the surface of all the genders possible, and all the genders presented on the surface. Gender expression is still very new and is being explored to this very day.

Yes, I like to wear flowery dresses, wear pink shoes, and have my pink vape. That doesn’t make me a girl, that makes me fem. But I don’t take care of my nails, I have hair underneath my armpits, and a full bush if you’d like to know. I’m not very feminine, and it shows. I have a very assertive personality, I swear a fuck ton, I love insulting people, I love getting rowdy the way a guy does, I enjoy football (European), and I don’t sit with my legs crossed.

There is very little that is actually feminine about me. I put on my femininity like it’s a costume for the day, and most days, I’m not even performing that femininity, so stop referring to me as a she, thank you.

This will be the one and only time I address this issue.

From Marseille with Love,

*Vapes away*

It’s beautiful because the party takes a more human dimension. You talk to people waiting for their Uber, those who linger for one last beer, and form a big group just getting to know one another.

You talk about music obviously, but you also talk about drugs, those who do and those who don’t, you talk about your job and how boring it is compared to the beauty of the music you’ve just witnessed.

But we don’t know when the party is actually over.

Last Sunday, there was a big protest in Marseille for Free Parties, and I couldn’t be there because I was halfway between Paris and Marseille, on an obnoxiously long train. But when I was halfway there, I saw the insta story of one of my friends who was there, who was wondering where the after was and who was ready to come with him. Naturally, as someone who was experiencing severe FOMO at the free party being thrown not one minute away from my house, I shot him a text telling him I was down to go to an after-party with him. I texted another friend who always knows everything about parties, and she told me the after-party was at the Catalans beach.

We went there. It was lowkey dead. Just people sitting in circles talking, trance and tribe music being played from a speaker a bit far away. There were maybe 40 people. Not what I was expecting. Nonetheless, I was happy to reunite with my friends and acquaintances and share this moment with them. But my friends and I? We don’t know when the party is over, and here, the party was clearly over at 10 pm (to be fair, it started at 1 pm).

We hung out for about two hours with this guy who had just done a line of cocaine and was totally tunelling about shakras and auras (he could see them apparently), I took a pee on the side of the beach, I went on the rocks to try to climb something, I drank my Redbull, I laughed, I had a good time.

But at midnight, my friend was getting ready to leave, while the friend who had told us about the after, who is usually the one lingering after a good party to talk and hang out with me, was staying for one last hooray. I was conflicted, should I stay or should I go, as the song said.

I ended up leaving, half-heartedly, and made my way home with my other friend, because I was exhausted from spending 6 hours on a train, and a whole morning walking around the Grand Palais in Paris, and getting Korean food near the Champs Elysées. It was a tiring weekend where I slept very little and walked almost 15km a day.

But for once, I wasn’t the last one at the party, and I felt a bit cool. Because it’s not cool not to want the party to end. It’s not cool to want to be there after all the glitter has littered the floor with half-pints and other sticky materials.

It’s not cool to linger at a party. When, honestly, the coolest part of the party happens when you’re outside having a fag, or a joint, with your friends and end up joining a bigger group of strangers, and somehow you’ve befriended the entire smoking section within an hour of talking, and that’s why I love to linger when the party is over when everyone is trying to figure out their uber situation.

I think Charli XCX said something about this before, about being the last one at the party and it not being cool but how she loved it nonetheless, and I couldn’t agree more. I love the long walk home without my headphones, my head still buzzing with the loud sounds I had just heard hours before, and the good conversations I just had.

When the party is over, I stay there. Because the party stays with me, it lives in me, for hours, sometimes even days on end. I end up smiling at strangers down the street, I end up giving more money to homeless people, giving bigger tips at restaurants and cafés, and I talk to everyone.

When the party is over, it’s never really over. It lives within you, and I think that’s beautiful.

Buy me a coffee

From Marseille with love,

*Vapes away*

Cooking was Spencer’s answer for every wrong in his life. Since he was a little kid, with his parents arguing in the dining room, he sat on the counter as his grandma told him about recipes her own mother had smuggled into the USA during their immigration. She told him stories of sunny Sicily, summers spent by the sea, of Vespa rides like on Roman Holiday.

Cooking had always separated him from the rest of the world. It was a tampon, a moment of peace in the furnace of the world to spend time with another kind of furnace (an oven).

This is why he stood drunk in his kitchen, still drinking vodka from the bottle at 6 am, with Diana, who was breathing through a cigarette, teaching her the basics no one had bothered to teach her.

Spencer, who had finally made it onto the group chat, had texted everyone to stop by the house this morning to enjoy a homemade breakfast and sparkling conversation. He could feel his brothers start to rise from the dead above him, with the sound of gurgling pipes of the morning shower, and knew his friends would arrive in less than two hours to destroy the food and the remaining vodka.

Spencer: So, we’re going to make Cinnamon Rolls, pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. Are you ready?

Diana: So this is what you do to be at peace? You stress over an oven? Isn’t that a bit counterproductive?

Spencer (smiling after a shot): Cooking teaches me to take things one at a time. Every morning, I wake up, and it’s difficult not to feel the weight of everything crashing onto me, to know that I’ll wake up every day, purposeless, lost, for the rest of my life. So I do this. It brings me focus, it brings me a peace of mind I haven’t known in months, and it makes others happy.

Diana: I don’t think this is going to be for me. I grew up with canned meals, and the homemade meals my mom ever made were pasta with some canned tomato sauce.

Spencer: Maybe it won’t work for you, but at least you can try. I see you writing your thoughts down in a diary. I think it’ll do you good.

Diana: And what’s next? I move to New York, sell my intimate thoughts to a newspaper, and turn into Carrie Bradshaw? That’s so cliché.

Spencer (taking the pan of milk and butter off the stove): You’re going to mix all your dry ingredients, then add the warm milk and butter. Your problem is that you see everything into categories, clichés, stereotypes, and aesthetics. Life isn’t to be seen through the lens of microtrends and aesthetics. Get out of that box of angry girlboss feminism, and discover who you are, what you like, and who you like.

Diana (stirring the mix): It’s easier to live inside that box, though, you have guidelines. You know what you’re gonna wear in the morning, you’re going to recognize people with the same vibe and beliefs as you in the wild. These guidelines tell you what to wear, what to think, who to hang out with, and what to vote for.

Spencer (adding the egg and yeast to the bowl): Life isn’t an algorithm. Look at us, we’re so different visually, we come from very different walks of life, and yet we connect. I’ve seen the guys you date, and you don’t usually go for the blond guy in Ralph Lauren polos.

Diana (mixing): Vanessa once told me I dated those guys because I aspire to the democratic middle class, and since then, I haven’t been able to go through one date with those guys without her voice nagging at me.

Spencer (kneading the dough): We both know I’m not upper middle class.

Diana: You backpacked to Europe with your boarding school friends at 18, that says a lot.

Spencer: I agree, but I slept in Hostels.

Diana: Still. I’ve made my passport this year because I’m thinking of doing my master’s in Europe, but we’re not cut from the same cloth.

Spencer: It doesn’t bother me.

Diana: Of course, it doesn’t bother you. But what happens if we want to go to a good restaurant? I don’t have the means to pay for like, anything, and you’ll pay for both of us because you don’t care about money and you want to make me happy, but I think it’ll just make me uncomfortable.

Spencer: Now we’re gonna do the filling, give me the butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and vodka por favor. (Beat.) Honestly, money doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t matter if you want us to go to places you can afford; then we’ll do that.

Spencer (adding the cinnamon): I know, and it sucks that you haven’t been given a chance to prove yourself. I know you’ll do amazing work, but honestly, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. You work insane hours, you can’t leave until your boss leaves, and if anything goes wrong, everybody blames it on you because you’re the intern. Mental health-wise, it’s a nightmare.

Diana (rolling up the dough): See, that’s another thing. You get to walk away from a life of privilege with a nice parachute, knowing it’s not for you. I don’t have that luxury.

And then, two half-naked clowns leaning against doorways make themselves known with a not-so-subtle cough.

Connor (pecs out): Well, well, well, Mommy and Daddy are making us breakfast, how lucky are we?

Marley (tits out): Didn’t think I’d ever see Diana do anything more than reheat a burrito in the microwave. I feel like I’m hallucinating (giving a knowing look to Connor) again.

Diana: Marley, not to body-shame you, but you are aware that you’re in a frat house with 99% straight men who will eye your boobs like the parting of the Red Sea, right?

Connor: Gotta free the nipples.

Marley: Those nipples deserve to be free.

Then, the giant burger announced itself with the shuffling of plastics.

Giant Burger: What’s up, everyone? (His eyes fell on Marley) Hi Marley, nice nipples.

Marley (glaring at Spencer): Thanks. Hey, I wanted to talk to you. Let’s take a walk.

Spencer (at the burger): Come back for cinnamon rolls!

Marley showed their teeth at the burger in an attempted smile as they led him to the back door of the patio, to the garden. Now, to onlookers, it looks like Marley is washing down the burger with the garden hose; in reality, it’s a high-tech waterboarding technique.

Diana looked at Spencer and Connor, both busying themselves in the kitchen as if Marley’s blatant fakeness and following torture weren’t terrifying to see. She wondered what was wrong with them, but she mostly wondered why Marley had come down from the stairs, topless, instead of coming from the front door, dressed. Time to put the detective cigarette between her lips and investigate.

Diana: So, Connor, did you sleep well?

Connor (uncaringly picking up the toast): Sure, I mean, I don’t really sleep, but it was a good night.

Diana: Mhm. Did you have enough space in your bed? I know a big guy like you needs his space.

Spencer snorted, giving Diana a sly look as he put the cinnamon in the oven, as Connor still didn’t dare to raise his eyes to meet Diana’s accusatory DUI glare.

Connor (suddenly smiling): Diana, are you hitting on me? Do you wanna see my bed? It’s very comfortable, I assure you, especially with me under you.

Diana: Your pecs are deflated tea bags.

Connor: You have Schopenhauer’s hair.

Spencer: Guys, bacon. Flirt later.

Diana let out a loud puff of her cigarette in Connor’s face as she burned holes in his head. Connor responded by flicking her forehead, and she thought back to the time Spencer did just that months prior, and she wondered if this was how the boys fought when she wasn’t looking. She didn’t think that half-naked cretin had good insults in him, and yet, here she was trying to figure out if Marley and Connor slept together, and he held strong like a CIA agent during the Cold War.

She would have to do her worst, ergo, she texted Vanessa.

Daphne (strolling in on Vanessa’s arm, ten minutes later): You guys wouldn’t happen to have a vegan option?

Everyone: Fuck you.

Vanessa (tasting the bacon): Connor, did you sleep with Marley?

Connor: Yep.

Diana (outraged): I grilled you, and you wouldn’t say it to me, but when Vanessa arrives, you blurt out your confession?

Connor (laughing): You could’ve just fucking asked me.

Marley (barging in through the back door, hair messier than Diana’s, dirt on their torso): It’s cold outside. I’m pointing.

Marley (energized, with a leaf in their hair): So, breakfast?

Spencer (removing the leaf): Yeah, let’s eat.

Diana looked at her friends, then at the five of them. She didn’t think at the beginning of the year that she would meet anyone worthy of her time, and yet, there they all were, eating the breakfast she and Spencer had drunkenly made, riffing off each other with private jokes and pop culture references about their reality TV show.

Marley: If Diana’s Schopenhauer, then Spencer is Camus.

Connor: He’s the Sisyphus of weed; he always has to roll, and roll, and roll.

Vanessa: Marley’s Nietzsche, they’re halfway to the madhouse.

Daphné (to Vanessa): And you’re the voice from Secret Story, always knowing what’s going on and making fun of everyone.

And then Diana realized something: they were all somehow sleeping together, like a big, incestuous friend group.

Diana: Don’t you guys think it’s weird that we’re all somehow sleeping with each other?

A long silence followed as everyone looked at each other, waiting for the first one who would break. Of course, it was Marley who, after chewing their bacon-only plate

Marley: Nope. Not weird at all. It happens all the time with friends.

Vanessa: It happens all the time on Secret Story.

Connor: Talking about Secret Story, we’re getting close to the end. Who do you think is going to win?

Spencer: Lou, definitely, she’s the one who found out the most secrets, and she’s always been saved by the public.

Daphné: My heart is with Gabi. Sorry, everyone.

Diana (rolling her eyes): You’re such a hopeless romantic.

Vanessa (kissing Daphné): And I love it.

Diana looked at all her friends once again, at the mess in becoming. This was her last year of college, and for the first time in her life, she had found a group of people to whom she belonged. The first group of people who didn’t judge her, well, they did, but it was all in good fun. She felt safe in this kitchen with her friends, all eating breakfast together like one big happy family. She wondered how long they had. Will they last until the end of college? Or will they break up?

Giant Burger (inexplicably wet): Hey, I’m here for the cinnamon rolls!

Spencer got ready behind the oven to let out the steaming cinnamon rolls and gave one to the burger on a burger-themed plate. Nobody laughed at the joke.

The burger sat at their makeshift table on the island of the kitchen, congratulating Spencer and Diana on their cooking before spewing some more philosophical nonsense.

Giant Burger: Aren’t you guys afraid of being prisoners of your own lucidity?

Spencer (pointing a finger at the burger, mouth full): See, this is what I mean! He’s always coming at me with those questions.

Everybody laughed at Spencer’s torment. Diana couldn’t help it; this burger was so random she had to find it funny. But another voice inside her head made her question what the burger had said; was she a prisoner of her own lucidity? Earlier that night, when she was spiraling, chain-smoking, and drinking heavily, it sure did seem like it, but now, after she had cooked and sat with those she loved, it seemed like all the puzzle pieces had come into place.

From Marseille with Love,

*vapes away*

I know it seems cliché to adore one’s mom, but I think having a good relationship with one’s mom is rather underrated. My friends around me aren’t necessarily close to their moms; actually, they have rather conflictual relationships with their moms. But not me.

We didn’t use to be this close. I remember a moment where I was a teen and crying over something stupid (I can’t even remember what), and my mom laughed at me, and I shoved her. Not necessarily child of the year behavior, not exactly mom of the year award from her either.

But you see, we both decided to go to therapy, separately, and we came back stronger than a 90s trend.

To paint you the picture, I am exactly like my mother when she was in her twenties, apart from the fact that I don’t have a baby to take care of. I’ve mentioned this before, but my mom had me at 20, and I am 25 and have yet to know what it feels like to be loved (oops), so that’s the clear distinction between us.

But just like me, she fights with her friends over trivial things, gets over them, talks to them again, smokes weed with them, has drinks with them (I no longer drink alcohol), works hard, is very disciplined, and is sincerely honest to the point people believe she’s autistic (like me). We are one and the same. We look a lot alike, being both tall and slim, with long legs and full lips and a fat ass, although I get my tan from my dad’s Kabyle side, considering my mom is blonde with green eyes.

I remember being 15, doing my first internship at her workplace for school, and one of her colleagues was walking behind me in the parking lot. We didn’t know each other then, but she said, ‘I knew you were her child because you have the same walk.’ The point is, we are very much alike.

I know she will never read this because she doesn’t speak English and doesn’t understand the point of Substack, or any social media, she’s yet to even have Facebook or Instagram. So I’m not afraid to be honest.

I got my single-mindedness from my mother, and I get my trendsetter mind from her, too, always changing the vibe of any room she’s in, and I get most of my humor from her. So if you’ve ever laughed at one of my jokes through my articles, I’ve probably worked on them with my mom first because she’s my first audience for anything I’ve written.

I remember telling her last year about this article I’ve been commissioned to write for a company’s blog, and she laughed her ass off when she learned about the subject (it was about straight men liking things up the ass, maybe I should re-work it and post it? idk if I have the right to do that even though I didn’t get paid for it once it got canned).

I see a lot of people say ‘my mom is my best friend’, but is she truly? Can you talk about men liking things up the ass with her while passing a blunt? Or do you just go to brunch once a week and talk about each other’s work life, and that’s it? Because I deeply believe that my mom is my soulmate. She understands me better than anyone else I’ve ever met, she knows when I’m anxious before I even know it myself, and I know the same about her. I know when she’s angry, when she’s sad, when her boss makes her mad, when she’s mad at me, which happens like once every two years at this point, even though we live together.

My mom is truly my best friend, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I could drink alcohol with her if I wanted to, but I no longer drink, and I smoke weed with her. I can bring all and every subject with her, and we go shopping, and sometimes we even dress the same in our separate rooms without even trying to dress the same, even though we didn’t see each other’s outfits, and we get a good laugh out of it, and eventually one of us has to change. It’s usually me.

I’m really lucky to have a mom with whom I can share every intimate thought going through my brain, who will not shame me, who will not blame me. I know how fortunate I am, as my closest friend is going through the opposite with her own mother.

All this to say thank you, Mom, you’re a fucking warrior. You’ve raised me alone, on your own feminist terms, while going to university, and then while juggling multiple jobs, and I couldn’t be prouder to be in your life.

I hope one day I’ll be able to show you this and you’ll understand what I’m saying.

Buy me a coffee

From Marseille with Love,

*vapes away*

I make around 10$ from writing in a month. And yet, I still call myself a writer. Does that make me delusional? Writing is what I do best, apart from rapping; it’s the way I do to make sense of the world, and what is within myself, so naturally, I must be a writer.

I’m not necessarily Substack Famous, but I’m certainly known as the one calling the entire app a cunt, so that has to c(o)unt for something, doesn’t it? So I have no stake in the matter in telling you this little secret. All of those people who have made it on Substack who have reached thousands upon thousands of likes on multiple posts? Yeah, you know who I’m talking about. Well, you see, they’re caged, and maybe they like it, but I don’t.

Since early last year, I’ve been approached by 5 publications, both on Substack and off Substack, to write for them on specific topics. I have always declined. Not that I didn’t need the money, because as someone who is unemployed and going to university, I could definitely use it. But because they either wanted me to write about my outrageous sex life (I haven’t had sex in a year) or be meta about Substack once again. So let’s ring it back to being Meta on Substack, shall we?

Since the boom of this app, there’s been a tendency to cage writers in specific categories. You have the intellectual, in-depth cultural takedown, the sentimental ones who always make you feel like you’re reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower for the first time, and those who enrage you and live in impossible contradictions, like me.

To be fair, I’ve tried to be all of those types, and I like to believe that I can be either of those on any day. But I’ve been caged. It’s over for me, and yet, I’m not done performing.

You see, as a writer, an artist, I am a people pleaser at heart. I want to please audiences, make them think I’m funny, that I’m down to earth, that I’m approachable. I am catering to an audience, and sometimes, that means being the clown, and gods, I have felt like a clown here for the past 6 months, so I just stopped performing.

For the past 4 months, you see, I’ve been conducting an experiment. I wondered how many subscribers I would gain per month if I hit publish, then disappeared. What would happen if I stopped begging for attention on notes, stopped writing the clickbait articles that enrage you, the pieces everyone wants to hear from me, and just wrote what I wanted to read. And nobody moved, nobody clapped, nobody cheered, and some booing was even witnessed in the audience. I felt like a stand-up comedian completely bombing a crowd work set.

Because what we do on this app feels a lot like stand-up comedy. You have to grab the attention of the reader quickly; in fact, you only have the title, maybe a note of a sentence, or even less, and then at the beginning of your post, you have to be even more engaging, somehow revealing all the gory details of your life, in the most vile details, and it gets tiring.

Maybe I don’t have in me another disgusting sex story to tell you, or another Substack is a social media you cunt, maybe this is it for me. I don’t want to keep sharing all my intimate details online for clicks and likes, and most of the time I’m not a hateful cunt. I’m actually a rather nice person who helps the woman with the stroller down the stairs of the metro.

Substack, like every social media, is a performance stage where we put on a different play for you every week, and it’s exhausting as a writer on this app. It’s exhausting to come up with new stories, new ideas, new concepts, and not rehash what’s already been done. Thankfully, we’re all smoking weed, so coming up with new concepts isn’t that hard.

But pretending that this app is any different from TikTok or a curated Instagram feed makes no sense to me. It’s all the same in a different font. You can watch academic content on Tiktok, Sidney Sweeney drama on Tiktok, it’s all the same. So to everyone putting on their clown cap when they’re sitting at their desk to write another post that barely clears 10 likes, I wanna clap for you, because the grind is insane, and there’s little to no reward.

The clown cap is a hard one to bear, and the makeup itches on your skin and smears all over your hands whenever you touch your face, but you still wake up and do it, every single day, working on your craft. So, congrats on being a clown at an amusement park with children’s vomit all over your massive shoes.

Personally, I pulled back the clown costume, and do whatever the fuck I want now, to the pleasure of absolutely no one. I don’t even know what’s best, to be liked as a clown or ignored as a human?

Buy me a coffee

From Marseille with Love

*vapes away*

Now that we are halfway through our protagonist’s story, one of them has made tremendous progress while the other is still pacing their dirty room, high on redbull, reading, writing, working, preparing for midterms, as well as burying their head in the sand because the air smelled like a New York garbage can.

Diana’s birthday was in a week, and just like every one of her birthdays since she got into college, she intended to spend it on the couch with her roommates, smoking weed and eating store-bought cake with too much sugar.

Marley had vanished the day after Halloween, and Vanessa spent her time in romance land with her new girlfriend, leaving Diana alone in their shared apartment to go insane over how orange everything was in this place. Orange tiles, orange wallpaper, orange toilet. Why was everything fucking orange?

So she wrote her thoughts out for the first time. She wouldn’t exactly call it a diary because she wasn’t a teenage girl writing in invisible ink about how her parents asked her to do the dishes when it was her sister’s turn, but still. She scribbled notes in the corner of her class notes, trying to make sense of the mess in her head, as her phone rang and rang with phone calls from her mom; she couldn’t find the strength to answer.

She was not scared to die, but she was scared of what came after. Would she push through, or fall apart? What did it mean to be straight in the 21st century? To start a relationship with a man? What was her role in the relationship? Was she the giver? The caretaker? Was she supposed to let go of her ambitions for his? Sure, they were modern, Spencer cooked, listened, and reassured, but he also paid for her coffee, and she was sure coffee was just the beginning of a long list of gifts, and she was not a call girl, just an ongoing call girl.

He came from money; she didn’t. And she knew he’d want to pay for every single one of their outings as a couple, which she knew she’d feel insulted by. She would feel like a prostitute, and she was only willing to do for free the things a prostitute did.

But on another note, could she be emotionally vulnerable with him? Let him in like she had let in no other before? Would he stay once he saw the little girl hiding inside? Or was he only attracted to the strong front she put up for everyone? After two days, she couldn’t take it.

Weed hadn’t calmed her; she had smoked 30 cigarettes (not including re-smoking the lit-off cigarette butts), drunk Vodka straight from the bottle at 9 am, and taken valium to sleep, but nothing worked; she was spiraling.

At first, when she grabbed her fur coat and her keys, she thought she was only going to the drug store to get cigarettes and vodka, like a classy European lady living in wartime, but her feet took her down the sleepy Frat Row, the street lined with empty alcohol bottles and half-destroyed Halloween decorations, the floor littered with forgotten glitter-like sperm.

It was the middle of the night, and she was sure Spencer was asleep by now; she shouldn’t bother him. No, she shouldn’t bother Spencer, not after she had run away from him after a mere kiss. He probably thought she was insane then, and probably would be even more distraught when she showed up drunk and high on his doorstep, oozing off vodka and cigarettes. That was not an attractive sight or smell.

She looked at that front door, the huge white door of the colonial home she had crossed three months ago and changed her life forever. She didn’t think the guy she had almost assaulted with a dildo would become such a fixture in her life, someone she would fall asleep with every night over the phone, to whom she talked about her money problems, how suffocated she felt by life, money, and ambition.

She was about to open the door when she noticed a tarot card discarded on the floor, in the middle of the glitter and toilet paper, and picked it up. The Lovers. It was the exact same card that was left on her door months ago, the same one she had taped to her dorm in the hopes that the person who lost it would pick it up, but never did.

She put it in her coat and shrugged, too drunk to think clearly. She opened the front door and walked up the steps she had gotten to know as a second home and made her way to the second floor, to the room at the end of the hallway, with light showing underneath and voices she recognized inside.

Connor and Marley at 4 am?

Connor, she could understand, but Marley? They seemed to hate Spencer, and hardly said a word to him, so what were they doing in his room in the dead of the night?

Diana knocked, and the voices stopped.

Spencer opened the door, a groggy smile on his recently shaved head.

Diana: You shaved your head.

Spencer: You dyed your hair.

The silence grew between them like the parting of the Red Sea (her legs during her periods).

Diana: What’s going on?

Spencer didn’t say anything, seeming to look for a plausible reason for the covert reunion, when Marley interrupted his train of thought.

Marley: It’s a surprise for your birthday.

Diana (shocked): You’re planning my birthday? I thought we were gonna do the usual. Also, why is Connor more naked than usual?

Marley: Oh, you know Connor, always pushing new boundaries. Get prepared for a night you’ll never forget. (Standing up) Well, Connor and I will do the rest of the planning, and we’ll let you two talk.

Diana: Thanks, Marley.

Marley and Connor left without saying anything. It was unusual for Connor to be quiet; he always had a snarky remark to say, but he stood with his shoulders slumped, and Diana felt that something was wrong. Something in the air smelled of rotten eggs, and she couldn’t figure out why. These guys weren’t planning her birthday party, which she was sure of, but what they were up to, she couldn’t figure out. Oh well, maybe they were planning a trip to a sex club for her birthday, and Connor suddenly got shy about his naked body.

Spencer sat on his unmade bed as Diana paced the room. For two days, she had driven herself insane. Orange, Orange. Peeled orange in the corners of the wallpaper.

Diana: Why is everything in my apartment orange?

Spencer: The building designer must have loved orange.

Diana (still pacing, trembling): It’s driving me insane. Everything is fucking orange.

Spencer stood up and took her shaky hands between his, making her stop running. She had to stop running. Running from her family, from who she once was, from who she was now. She was rushing towards the perfect vision of herself she would never attain. She was exhausted from running, for she couldn’t run without her ventolin.

Diana: I’m Mormon.

Spencer (shocked beyond belief): Come on, we’re gonna have a smoke.

Spencer didn’t let go of her hands as he led her down the stairs to the back porch, overlooking his plants in the dead of the night. She looked up at the clear sky, looking at the stars being swallowed by the enormity of the universe and her own insignificance. She was falling into emptiness, thoughts swallowing her, and she felt her chest tighten as Spencer lit a joint, Radiohead in her mind.

Spencer: You know, an orangutan produces, in ten minutes, more energy than all the nuclear weapons in the world.

This made Diana pause. Spencer passed her the joint.

Diana: Nice one.

Spencer: Polar bears are all lefties.

Diana: That’s insane.

Spencer: Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.

Diana (smoking): What are you doing?

Spencer: Helping you through it.

Diana: What is going on with me?

Spencer (still holding her hand): You’re realizing that everything you thought to be true, all of your standards of living, all of your beliefs, mean nothing.

Diana: It’s like, jigsaws falling out of place, all of them suddenly don’t fit, and I’m standing there with all the pieces starting over.

She was confused and lost, but thanks to Spencer having graduated in Depression and Anxiety disorder, she felt like there was light at the end of her erectile dysfunction.

He looked different today. He used to be slumped, with a shadow over his face and dark circles complementing his eyes, but tonight, in the darkness of the 4 am November morning, he sat straight, solid in melting snow.

Spencer: The puzzle changed, but it’s still yours to make.

Diana sighed, finishing the joint, her fingers no longer trembling. She put her head between her legs and felt Spencer’s fingers brush her dyed hair reassuringly. She knew somehow that even though she didn’t know anything about life anymore, she knew him, and he would guide her through it.

Spencer: Life isn’t a premade puzzle you have to assemble. There’s no full picture to gain. (Beat). Your hair looks nice, by the way.

Diana (smiling): Yours too.

Spencer: Someone told me recently that life isn’t a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

Diana: I think that’s Kierkegaard.

Diana laughed a hoarse laugh, filled with vodka and smoke, that of a 90-year-old Camus, if he had lived that long. If life were a reality to be experienced, she wanted to be shot dead, because the life she had right now was not one worth living, was not one worth experiencing. It was the dream of more, the ambition that guided her steps and gave her momentum. If she didn’t have that momentum and sat with herself, she would crumble.

Spencer: Maybe, a giant burger told me.

Diana: What’s up with that, by the way? Is he ever out of that costume?

Diana sat up and looked at him. He looked radiant in a cropped faded t-shirt. He looked disheveled, and she wondered if that was what he looked like when he was on the phone with her.

Diana: You’re wearing a T-shirt.

Spencer: Yeah, about that (he handed her his arm, palm up, so she could see his scar). That’s why I was wearing long-sleeved polos in August.

Diana couldn’t believe the fresh pink scar that ran up his forearm. It was determined, ferocious, confident. He had tried to kill himself. That explained so many things: the way he was slumping constantly, the lack of shine in his eyes when he looked empty, lost in his head, wearing long-sleeved polos in the sweltering summer.

Diana: What happened? If I can ask.

She didn’t notice she was caressing the scar and his arm until he took it back. She missed the touch, and it was cold tonight, so she closed the coat around herself like a makeshift tortilla.

Spencer: I didn’t do too well at my internship last summer and had a breakdown. I was in a psych ward for a bit before school picked up again.

Diana: And you’re feeling better now?

Spencer: Much. I hid it for so long, but after our kiss, I opened up to Connor and Daph about it. It was the first time I told someone who wasn’t my therapist.

Diana: And now you’re telling me, why?

Spencer: Because what I went through, questioning everything your life rests on, I went through it too, although in a much more chaotic way. I felt very dramatic in the moment, but you’re doing much better.

Diana: Yeah, well, I smoked a shit ton, so I’m killing myself in the slow, aesthetically pleasing way.

Spencer: You’re such an indie sleaze.

Diana: Hey, it’s making a comeback.

Spencer (fighting a chill): Next are the low-rise skinny jeans.

Diana gave him a side glance, and both of them erupted in laughter. Yeah, she thought, she liked him. This was someone she wanted to stand beside when she felt like the world was falling out of sync, when it was burning all around them. He could ground her, take care of her like one of his flowers, soothe her, and not be destroyed by Connor and Marley fighting in its mist.

Diana: So what now, Professor?

Spencer: First, tell me what’s on your mind.

Diana: Everything I’ve held to be true is crumbling. My sense of self is gone. I don’t know myself anymore. The only thing I know for certain is that I like you, and it’s driving me insane because I don’t know if I should.

Spencer: Well, I like you, too, if that makes any difference.

Diana: I don’t think it does. I never saw myself with someone like you. I never thought someone could make me feel the way you do. I always thought the peace and the lightness I feel when I’m with you should come from within, not from a man.

Spencer: So you’re having a feminist existential crisis.

Diana: I grew up Mormon. My entire family always told me that getting married and having kids was the end goal, but it didn’t feel like it was for me. I don’t like kids. I made the boys angry because I was constantly smarter than they were, which didn’t help their ego, so I swore off boys when I was growing up. I discovered feminism online, read a lot, and realized there was a life outside of the culture I was raised in. There was a beautiful independent life waiting for me, a life free of marriage, of kids, of a sense of self, given by men. When I decided to go away for college, my dad said that if I left, I shouldn’t ever come back; I was no longer welcome home, so I left and never came back. I spend my summers here working in a café, and my mom calls me constantly (shows the missed calls on her phone), and I don’t know what to do, what to think, who to be. I never thought a man could make me happy. I always focused on work, and if I wanted sex, I’d get it, and even though I found myself in situationships with men who’d hold the relationship carrot over my head, I never felt satiated, so it never mattered. But with you, I realize I don’t need anything else, and it’s terrifying.

Spencer: And that’s bad?

Diana: Yes, because even though I don’t need more, a small part of me wants more, and it’s tearing me apart.

Spencer: Why can’t you have both?

Diana: A woman always has to choose between love and ambition.

Spencer: That’s because men can’t stand being with a woman who makes more than them, who calls the shots.

Diana (shaking her head): I think it’s because I’ll always want more. I’m so hungry, and that hunger will drive you away, that hunger will make me miserable, and I don’t know how to stop it.

Spencer took Diana’s head between his fingers as the first snow of the year fell quietly around our lovers, and a single snow tear fell on Diana’s face. He thought of that first night he saw her cry, of how beautifully devastating she looked, and even now, when she was beaten down on the floor, her eyes revealed a will to live, a will to fight like no other had before.

He knew he should tell her about Marley’s awakening in the woods, the three of them should tell everyone, and that was the plan, but she had come to the realization that nothing mattered, that her choices didn’t matter, that life was random no matter what she did, and he couldn’t tell her the truth. It would destroy her.

Instead, he held her as she cried, and the sun rose slowly, and they smoked weed. At some point, Spencer grabbed vodka from the kitchen, and they drank it straight from the bottle, their legs dangling from the porch hand in hand.

Spencer looked at the sunrise with a new kind of appreciation. He had learned last summer that nothing mattered, that every sunrise was the same, that it would happen every day until the day he died, that his choices were random, and that he could be anyone he wanted to be. And now, he looked at the sunrise with a new kind of peacefulness.

His face was at rest, eyes sparkling with an awakened sense of purpose, a shy smile on his lips because now he knew.

If nothing matters,

Then everything does.

He kissed Diana; it was slow, tired, and lazy, but comfortable. A kiss between long-time lovers that warmed the soul but didn’t indicate anything more than affection and respect.

Spencer: Let me make you happy, for however long I can.

Diana smiled through her tears as she gazed up at him, the one man who had burst through her high walls, who had consoled her when she was down. He was her lifeline, her light in the dark. She needed him to make sense of the world, to make sense of herself. She hated herself for needing a man to discover who she was, but she couldn’t cut him out any longer.

She caressed his cheek, a sad smile on her face.

Diana: And I will make you laugh, for however long I can.

And thus, they began, with a secret looming over them, and the jigsaws, falling into place.

Sorry for the delay, I was dealing with the wonders of finals week, and got a massive sunburn all over my body after a 5-hour hike yesterday, once finals were officially over. Needless to say, all is not well, French ouin ouin.

We’re officially halfway through the story!!! Tell me how you guys feel about this so far? I’m so curious because those chapters get a lot of readers but not a lot of comments, so I feel like I’m shooting blanks in the dark like a man after a vasectomy.

Buy me a coffee

From Marseille with Love,

*vapes away*

So I’ve been on this God-forsaken app for almost two years, calling it a haven for my every single thought, yes, even the intrusive ones, and I have some things to say.

First of all, people will always have opinions about your writing, even on your most vulnerable, personal pieces, which serve more as a way of saying ‘hey, I hope I’m not alone feeling this way’. It lowkey sucks. I remember last year I wrote a piece called I want someone to fuck my brains out (respectfully), a piece in which I delved into the fact that not a single one of my sexual partners has brought me an orgasm because they’ve all been one-night stands or seldom repeat partners I saw for 5/6 times tops. In the comments of this piece, you’ll see people calling me an asexual, or saying that my satysfier (my sex toy) has changed the way I view clitorial sensation, and nothing can match it. I did not ask for your opinion. This is a clear case of my intrusive thoughts winning in my writing, and wanting to share something deeply personal with my audience because I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Another one I get is, ‘Hey, aren’t you the person who constantly writes about Substack?’ and no. I wrote like three articles on the way Substack pisses me off, and sadly, they all went viral. Like, extremely viral, to the point that I think they’re kinda introduction posts that everyone sees the first time they create an account on the platform, because these posts still gain a lot of traction today, a year and a half after I first started this series.

What Substack has taught me about writing is simple: write click-bait titles, provocative titles like Substack is a social media you cunt, with even more provocative content and one-liners everyone likes to restack to be cool. And honestly, as Taylor Swift said in TTPD, I hate it here.

Substack has changed a lot since I first started this series, but some things stay the same. Notes are still being promoted as the main form of gaining engagement on the platform (I joined right before notes became a thing), and now they’re filled with fake-deep ‘I love books because there are no ads in them’, or other one-liners people find on Twitter first, then repost here. I hate the aesthetic posts filled with AI photos, I hate the semi-political notes about being pro-Palestine and being pro-Ukraine because that’s a big DUH moment for me. If you want to write about these issues, write a fucking article, not a fucking note to gain clout and subscribers who will never read your work.

I think the landscape of this app has changed a lot, but it is quite the same as when I wrote Fuck notes, over a year ago. Notes have become the main thing people engage with, doomscrolling on this app thinking it’s smarter than TikTok, when it’s not. At least the NYT is on TikTok. Here, you just get screenshots of random tweets by American semi-leftist groups, saying the most bland shit I’ve ever heard as a French person who knows what the left truly is. Americans think Democrats are the left, when they’re centrists. I was pro-Bernie Sanders; he was a social democrat.

Here we have presidential candidates saying they’re willing to be paid minimum wage for the job of President because that’s what most of the country is being paid, and they’re as common as we are. We’re not in the same ball of leftism, love.

The point is, I’m tired of seeing semi-feminist quotes all centered around America, or quotes about politics that are centered on the American point of view, when most people I follow are not even American. I fucking hate Americans. The food is shite, your politics make no sense, you’re willing to have a reality TV star as a president, you say you hate Bezos and Musk, and yet you still have Twitter and use Amazon Prime. Riddle me that. I hate the semi-hot nachos of American movies; the rest of the world is being forced to eat when it’s McDonald’s, compared to Korean cinema or European cinema.

So what did Substack teach me about writing? Write for Americans, pro-American everywhere, but not to pro american to the point where you become a patriot, no. You have to be woke, but not too woke; you have to be fake, but not AI fake. But I’m not about that. I’m going to keep it real, even if it doesn’t bring me any new subscribers. Because I like to sleep at night, proud of myself because I took a massive shit and covered it over a canvas and called it art.

buy me a coffee

From Marseille with Love

*Vapes away*

Marley looked at themselves in the rearview mirror of the rental car, making sure their bug-like sunglasses covered their face fully. They put their boobs in place in their jiggling corset, rented a car from their phone without an American license, and skipped their last class on Friday to go on a searching trip. Searching for answers.

Marley wasn’t a main character. They weren’t the kind of person who waited for the answers to come to them in the form of a gift-wrapped super-villain revealing their devious plan in the most torturous monologue known to man. No, Marley wanted answers, and they would get them at whatever cost they could afford with their toilet paper money. They did buy a baseball bat to fight if it came down to a fight.

The facts were these:

• The friend group was tied together by an invisible link.

• They’ve shared a collective vision.

• Connor was a vampire.

• Marley was strong enough to fight and win against said vampire.

And for some reason, Marley did not yet know about the philosophical burger that magically appeared at inconvenient times to place the most unreliable person in their group back on its course. That will come later, after they barges into the frat uninvited, a whirlwind of tangled hair and faded eyeliner.

Marley: Let me get this clear: you forgot to mention that a giant burger has been pursuing you with philosophical questions? Didn’t you think that was relevant to our investigation?

Spencer: You didn’t say anything about my haircut.

Connor: You didn’t say anything about my second nipple piercing either.

Marley slammed the door of the car shut, grabbed their bat, steadying it in their palm, and moved into the woods in search of the secretive meeting point. Marley had sent their coordinates to the only reliable relative they had left, but none of their friends knew where they had gone, if they had even noticed they had disappeared in the wake of the Halloween Party, which they seriously doubted. Vanessa was in Pussy Wonderland with Daphné, and they guessed that Diana was busy masturbating the day away before finals took her will to live away.

They walked between trees, no paths to be discovered until they found something covering the trees, a piece of paper, a WANTED SIGN.

WANTED

LEILA EL HARRACHI

Marley knew they were going in the right direction and grabbed every piece of paper they could find on the way to what they discovered to be a firelit cave, with one shadow.

Marley: Nice trail you left for me. It would’ve taken me a while to find that cave without it.

The shadow turned, an ageless woman who could be between the ages of 35 and 60, faced them, and Marley wondered if there was any way to get in on her skincare routine. She was native American, with long, black hair and a flowy dress covered by a colored fleece, which Marley thought was stereotypical, but whatever, they hadn’t been in this country long enough to study all of its cultures, but still, when it came to secrets of the universe, Marley knew to come to the oldest source of mythology, wherever they were.

Woman (shaking Marley’s hand): Welcome, God Slayer, we’ve been waiting for you.

Marley dropped the bat on the floor and raised a brow in surprise. They had never been called God Slayer before, and it felt weirdly complimentary, even though they didn’t believe in gods.

Woman: Did you bring your offering?

Marley twisted their hand in their cargo pocket, looking for the engraved charm their father had given them at birth. A father who was long gone, but who had left skeletons of memorabilia behind him in the form of expensive clothes and stamps.

Woman: Sit.

Marley: Not that I mind being called God Slayer, but I didn’t kill any gods, that I’m aware of.

Woman: You’ve been marked, Leila El Harrachi. Your time will come.

Marley: Let me guess, you saw my name in the stars or something?

Woman: It was on the wire transfer you sent us. (Handing Marley a bottle of crimson water) Are you ready for your vision quest?

Marley (suspicious): What’s in that? I’m trying to be sober for the week before midterms.

Woman: Drink.

Marley: Fair enough. (Drinks the unknown drugs). Listen, I’ve been wondering how you got into this career. Do you pass interviews? What’s the hierarchy like? Is there a CEO or board or something? Do you pay taxes? If not, how do you stay clear of the IRS? But most importantly, do you have a manager I can sue if I get severe diarrhea from this?

Marley sat cross-legged in the cave, as the woman drew a 10-foot circle around them, dropping water bottles from her bag unceremoniously. Marley thought about everything that had brought them deep into the woods in the first place. The vision they had when they fucked Connor (which they’d rather forget, what a mistake that was), the electricity they had felt when they were all united for the first time in their dorm living room. Maybe they had gone too far by googling native american tribe that does rituals. Maybe they were about to be kidnapped and sold in the sex trafficking trade. Oh well, they were expensive, and they were sure their dad would somehow interrupt their death anyway; he always had his eye on them, even though they were no longer on speaking terms.

Woman: The sight is a calling. My mother trained me and her mother before her.

Marley: That sounds like nepotism with a jest of withholding natural resources.

Marley wondered what the charm was about now. It didn’t seem the ritual would require a sacrifice of any kind, and Marley thought it might have been a tip, not a beloved heirloom. Bitch.

Woman: You stay here, in this circle, you drink this entire bottle. I will come and get you in two days.

Marley: Don’t I get blankets with the 300$ fee? Netflix? This whole thing isn’t very comfy for two days.

Woman (leaving the cave): No. That’s the 500$ tier.

Marley (as the woman disappears): Great Marley, yeah, let’s sign the waiver from a random native american tribe from Instagram to do a ritual in the woods 200 miles away from home, where you can be eaten by wolves, or die of cold, great fucking idea as always. I’ll never fucking learn, will I?

Marley sat in their circle, the fire lighting the cave for Marley guessed, a few more hours drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid, waiting and waiting for a vision to appear. But instead, they started to notice drawings in the cave.

They didn’t seem that old, maybe a hundred years. Marley touched the paint-covered rock with their finger to memorize the smooth drawings and 6 recognizable silhouettes, when suddenly they dropped on the floor, their stomach in infinite pain, much like a period cramp but worse, oh, way worse, like needles in the haystack that was their stomach, pocking and prodding, with no anesthesia. Oh, that woman was such a fucking bitch. Why did they pay to be in pain? That sounds like the American hospital experience, fucking Americans.

And then the world turned black.

We find Spencer in his bed, scratching his recently shaved head, his phone in his hand. He wanted to reach out to Diana, to ask what happened last night, but he couldn’t. He would give her space, and then, when she felt it was time for her to talk, she would reach out, like a fart in the dark.

He knew she hadn’t been doing that well mentally, even though she hid it behind those big walls of hers, but just like him, she had to make the first step, to open up. He wouldn’t just barge in to resolve the problems she had in her head. No, he would wait, and instead, looked at his sister’s caller ID for a good 15 minutes, biting his cuticles before he eventually called her.

He hadn’t talked to his sister in months, which was not very discotheque Romeo teenage dream of him. He used to text Lexi constantly, updates about his dating life, his lunch, or, God forbid, his classes. But since his suicide attempt, he hadn’t been able to reply to her texts about her travels to East Asia; he hadn’t been able to bridge the gap between the man he was now and the romanticized pink-colored jockstrap boy he used to be.

Lexi: Well, well, well, if it isn’t the prodigal son.

Spencer (heartwarming at the sound of his sister’s voice): Hey, Lex.

Lexi: What’s it been? Three months?

Spencer: Something like that. I’m sorry, I needed time by myself.

Lexi: I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.

Spencer: I have something to ask you, which is going to sound really weird.

Lexi: Shoot.

Spencer: My friends and I have been getting visions, visions of all of us, reunited, in Paris, in another time. Maybe the past, maybe the future, I don’t know. Wouldn’t you know anything about that?

Lexi: Spence, are you telling me you finally believe in magic?

Spencer: I wouldn’t go that far, but shit’s been getting weird recently.

Lexi: I can give a reading to you and your friends. But I’ve never heard of something like this. Tell me, what happens in this vision?

Spencer (suddenly uncomfortable): We all have sex.

Lexi: And this vision is triggered by desire, I’m guessing.

Spencer: Yes.

Lexi: What’s her name?

Spencer: Diana.

Lexi: Diana and Spencer? That’s funny, I hope Lady D is proud wherever she’s resting.

Spencer: It’s an unfortunate coincidence.

Lexi: Right. Well, I’m finishing training in Seoul right now, but I can be here in about two weeks. Does that work?

Spencer: Sure, I don’t think the vision is going anywhere.

Lexi: You want my advice?

Spencer: I’m not sure that I do. You have a tendency towards violence and burning shit down.

Lexi: You’re gonna get it anyway. Get all of your sex friends together, and do shrooms. Sometimes it helps.

Spencer: Shrooms, got it.

Lexi: I’m serious, shrooms open your psyche to your most inner desires, your most inner thoughts. You start to discover patterns your subconscious has buried far up your ass.

Spencer: I’ll do shrooms, but I can’t force the others to take them too.

Lexi: It might work. All I need is one of you to be awake by the time I get here to do the reading. If all you guys care about is grad school, an unpaid internship, and being beaten down by your negative thoughts, I’m not gonna get anywhere. The reading will be all over the place, like you are.

Spencer: I’ll get shrooms. I’ll do them after midterms and text you after.

Lexi: Great, see you in two weeks.

Spencer: Thanks, Lex.

Lexi: And Spencer, don’t let the girl go.

Spencer didn’t reply to that, saying goodbye to his sister instead. He had done his most with Diana, opening himself up to her in a way he had only done with his closest friends; he had kissed her, shown her his interest, and she had walked away. Now was her time to grovel her way back into his heart; he was not Romeo, and she was not Juliette; they wouldn’t die for each other, but she should show him she cared for him nonetheless in the form of a boombox outside of his window playing his favorite Gesaffelstein tracks.

That day, Spencer went for a run, studied, cooked, and spent time with his brothers like he used to before he tried to kill himself. Midterms were next week, and while he was fucked, he felt at peace. Like he had found his ground again instead of falling into emptiness. He was grounded in his lack of a future.

He didn’t know what was next for him; he knew he wouldn’t work for his mom, he knew he didn’t want to work in finance anymore; hell, he thought he’d go back to New York to spend his twenties, but now, he didn’t know. And for some reason, he found comfort in the unknown. He could be anyone he wanted to be, and he wanted to discover who that was with his friends, and that included the little blonde in red tights and skin-wrapped corset.

He was making bouillabaisse in the kitchen the next morning, poring over his Naomi Klein environmental diplomacy book, when the burger slurped its way into the kitchen.

Giant Burger: Smells good, Spence.

Spencer (unbothered by his presence): Thanks. (Beat). You wouldn’t know where I can get shrooms?

Giant Burger: What kind?

Spencer: The mind-bending kind.

Giant Burger (shrugged): I’ll drop them off at your door later tonight.

Spencer: Thanks. (Holding a spoon to the burger) Try this.

Giant Burger: Mhm, it’s delicious. Have you ever thought about doing this professionally? I mean, you’re always in the kitchen, and you seem to love it.

Spencer (sighs): I always thought I’d work a corporate job in New York, following in my mom and sister’s footsteps. My grandma taught me how to cook when I was younger, and when she passed, it became my only way of connecting to her, and it- I don’t know why I’m telling you this, you probably don’t care.

Giant Burger (about to make his exit into the void): You know, Spence, Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to experience.

Spencer (smiling): I’m starting to get that.

Even the philosophical burger didn’t phase him. Spencer truly was on a good victory path toward beating his depression. He thought about what he had said, that life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to experience, and yes, exactly, he couldn’t form thoughts as comprehensive as his, but that was exactly what he was starting to think.

It was a new dawn, as he slipped under his covers, smiling at the photos of Daph and him on his wall, gods, he wanted to text Diana, get her to open that Aphrodite shell of hers, but he knew he couldn’t force it, he knew she had to take the elevator down her high walls and communicate in simlish, a language they could both understand.

That night, Spencer went to bed smiling. Not because of a good grade, not because of a compliment from his mom, or a text from the girl he liked, but because he had done well, for himself, and nothing brought him more pride than discovering himself, free of the shackles of modernity.

He’d feel good for about two days, until the worry of losing the girl he was falling in love with crippled him, and a tiny human barged into his bedroom at 2 in the morning, in dirty cargo pants, half carrying a naked Connor onto his bed.

Marley: We need to talk.

This chapter feels very Percy Jackson to me because of Marley, and Marley always brings out a Percy Jackson vibe to everything they’re a part of. They’re a joy to write about because they’re kind of a self-insert because I’ve never seen people like me represented in stories of any kind, and I have the power to bring those characters to life as a creative, so why tf not!

Hope you had fun. This is far from the last time you’ll hear from Marley’s perspective.

Buy me a coffee

From Marseille with Love,

*Vapes away*

Yes, Marilyn Manson did say that he and Trent raped a woman in the '90s, but Trent said that was bullshit (that’s what they all say, I know). He also said that Manson’s behavior was one of the reasons why he stopped working with him. And frankly, I believe him. This is the only case of him being alleged to have done that; the victim never came forward (it was put in Manson’s 98’s memoir, that’s how we know about it), and Manson probably was still feeling salty over his shitty career when Trent was an A-Lister from the 80s and well into the 2020s now.

But you might be wondering, isn’t Nine Inch Nails dead now? Well, they did the soundtrack to Challengers (banger movie, even better soundtrack that became iconic and had a life of its own?), they also did Tron Ares (bad movie, killer soundtrack) and now they just released a live album with Boys Noise, from their joint world tour I was supposed to go see on July 8th (my birthday) in Paris but they only had noisebleeds left and I finna be in the pit, you feel? Oh, and they played Coachella this year. So nope, not dead.

This live album with Boys Noise is nothing new; they’re revisiting old songs and making them more techno, techno that could be on the soundtrack of Cyberbunk, and I fucking love it. Not only has Trent Voice not changed, even though he’s 61, but the whole production is insane; it’s respectful of the original craft that went behind making those tracks, but instead of being introspective and crying over the songs (don’t mind me, I’m listening to Hurt), you’re dancing. Solid combo.

Nine Inch Nails has always been about reinventing oneself. After their climb to superstardom with The Downward Spiral, which invented so many new ways of making music, and a famous cover of Hurt by Johnny Cash months before his passing, giving the song new meaning and no way Trent could ever sing it again without thinking of him and his reinterpretation of the song, Nine Inch Nails wanted a change.

So you know what Trent did? Drugs, lots of them. Again. But he also did the soundtrack for Lost Highway from David Lynch, and I can totally see Lynch listening to NIN, not gonna lie, this is totally his style of music. Because NIN is not only a band, it’s a production machine orchestrated by Trent himself, and later joined by Atticus Ross.

They did the soundtrack for the Social Network (also iconic), and basically did every instrumental that was sort of out of the norm in terms of sound for a movie. Then Trent received a letter from Tumblr Queen Halsey to produce a whole album of hers, a whole concept album that she wanted Rock, and he was like, you know what, fuck it, I’ll do it. And he gave us I am not a woman, I’m a God, and Nightmare, so fuck yeah.

Trent is so connected to what’s going on now. He’s in the known peeps, he’s in the tiny papers, even in his grand old age of 61, he knows what’s cool, what’s trendy, and how to make it his. His success with Challengers just proves how connected he is to the youth of now.

I’m writing this because I think we’re the last generation to grow up with his music and see him evolve sonically. I don’t think Gen Alpha is gonna get it. All they do is vape and buy from Israel supported coorporation (Starbucks). Not to play the ‘I’m older than you ’ card, but I didn’t even have ChatGPT the first time I went to university. We had to go through books or long Wikipedia pages. So yeah, I don’t think they’re ever going to listen to the Downward Spiral (which was written in the house Sharon Tate was murdered in, thank you), they might watch Challengers and the Social Network and find the music cool, but they’ll never connect the dots.

I grew up with Nirvana, not NIN. My mom thought NIN was too dark for me (but Nirvana was okay?? I knew all the lyrics to Rape Me at 5, even though English was a foreign language at the time), but when I was 13 and got Spotify, because yes, I was 13 when Spotify happened, and 15 when Apple Music joined the game, I was intrigued by this album that kept showing up on my recommended listen. I listened to it all the way through with the lyrics on Genius (Spotify didn’t have lyrics back then, it was the streets, y’all), and I came back a changed person. Now I have a patchwork of them on my favorite jeans, and I plan to get a tattoo of it soon.

Nine Inch Nails, you’ve always had my back, so don’t disappoint me. Thank you. If you come out as a sexual predator, this article and any tattoo I get will be deleted.

From Marseille with Love,

*Vapes away*

TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF SUICIDE.

It is sitting pretty in decay, in his bedroom still covered with pictures of himself and Daphné, that we find Spencer, still blue, sitting at the edge of his bed, shoulders slumped as he’s been scolded like a toddler by other toddlers. The hypocrisy was outstanding.

The facts were these: on the one hand, we had Daphné, whose tear-jerking orgasm echoed through the entire house, and had people amassed behind the bathroom door where she and Vanessa were pleasuring each other, being applauded on their way out.

On the other hand, we had Connor, who didn’t do much better himself since he ruined Spencer’s flowers whilst fighting, and mysteriously lost against Marley. He also managed to kill the stereo at 3 am by falling drunk on top of it, therefore ending everyone’s dreams of partying until it was time for a breakfast burrito.

But still, Spencer was the biggest fuck-up of the night for the simple reason that he kissed the girl he liked. A girl, who, he thought, until they kissed, liked him back.

Connor (pacing): I can’t believe you kissed her. I mean, we were all waiting for it, but now? In public? At a party? That doesn’t seem like you. The old you would have waited for a romantic moment just the two of you, you don’t go kissing girls in kitchens at parties, you’re the flowers and restaurant kind of guy. Was it good, though? You’ve changed a lot since last summer. I hardly recognize my friend. How soft were her lips? I’m worried, Spence, really worried. You hardly get out of bed, you’re always sulking, and you hardly talk. I hope you didn’t use your tongue on the first kiss. We’re here for you. You can talk to us about what happened last summer. We want to help you.

Spencer only had one remaining weapon: denial.

Spencer: How do you even know we kissed?

Daphne (scoffs): She blued herself, what did she do, a facemask with your paint?

Spencer hid his face behind his hands in shame. He wondered if Diana felt ashamed, if she regretted it, for shame had made a home inside him like Goldilocks. Sure, he would never take that moment between them away; it felt special, like the stars had aligned and life finally had meaning. They had kissed more than once, Spencer lost count, but she seemed to have enjoyed it with her whole body flushed against him like clothes on an ironing table, held his face between her ringed fingers, caressed his cheek with her manicured thumb, a sad look over her face, shaking her head softly before walking away without saying a word, leaving Spencer in the dust, and blue.

He replayed that moment in his head repeatedly, wondering what had gone wrong, what he had done wrong, because she had to feel what he felt the moment their lips connected. That transcendental connection, the thread snapping into place.

Spencer (muffled): I’m sorry.

Connor sat on the floor, opposite Spencer, and touched his friend’s knee, trying to be compassionate.

Connor: Don’t be sorry, Spence, just talk to us, tell us what’s going on because you’re clearly hurting, and we don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t keep on getting you out of bed with the promise of cooking; I can’t force you to study for classes you don’t even attend. I don’t know what to do anymore to keep you afloat.

This was it, the breaking point. He knew it was coming since he came out of the hospital three months ago. He knew he would fuck up, and fuck up again, and it would snowball into something too big for him and everyone around him to ignore, and he’d have to address it, or leave. This was the defining moment. Would he hide in his shell of flesh and become an even worse version of himself? Or will he take his fate into his own hands, talk to those who matter to him the most, and ask for help?

Spencer (between sobs): I tried to kill myself.

Connor dropped his head on Spencer’s knee. Daphné sat next to Spencer, putting her head on his shoulder as he heaved with tears. He could feel Daphné’s tears on his shoulders, and he hated himself for putting his friends through this.

He wanted to hit his head against the wall, bleed out, or bleed in; it didn’t matter. He wanted this suffering to end, to stop this constant ache in his heart from growing every day. But he didn’t know how.

But he made his decision; it was either death or talking about death, and somehow, talking about it seemed easier now than it did three months ago. He could no longer go through life as a ghost, refusing to acknowledge what was wrong as if it was going to vanish into thin air like smoke. It’ll never go away, he had to make peace with himself, to move past it, and not look back.

Spencer: You know the internship was difficult. I’ve never had the best relationship with mom. I was never enough. (Beat). ‘A try-hard who should’ve tried harder,’ she called me. But I really thought I could show her I was good for it. That I was smart, cut from the same cloth as her, that I was her son. But I fumbled, and made mistake after mistake, the product I was supervising through manufacture had tremendous defects that would delay its launch and cost the company a lot of money.

Connor (visibly angry): Spence, you’re a college student, you shouldn’t supervise a product launch on your own, that’s fucked up.

Spencer: I know that she never wanted me. She had me to save her marriage and resented me from the moment I took my first breath, but I tried so hard to make her proud of me, and I broke. July 8th. We argued in her office, the biggest argument we’ve ever had. She said that I’ll never amount to anything… That I was just like my dad, a deadbeat cockroach who’d suck her dry.

Daphné took Spencer’s hand in hers, trying to squeeze the pain away and bring him back to life with makeshift CPR. But the truth was, talking about it lifted a weight off his shoulders that he didn’t know could go away. He felt like he did in his dreams when he’d hover in his room like a feather. He expected to feel ashamed of himself, for his failures, and his meltdown. He didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with his therapist, a professional, so he didn’t think of telling his friends, fearing judgment. But it did help tremendously. He was crying his boulder of shame away.

Spencer: So I went back to my desk in the open space, and was about to take my things and go when I saw everybody looking at me. I felt disgusting. The nepo baby. The dumb son who only got there because mommy built the company. (Breath). And then I saw the letter opener.

Nobody talked. They sat there, Daphné’s face on Spencer’s shoulder, her hand in his, Connor’s face on Spencer’s knee, both hidden in Spencer’s body, looking inward, like maggots eating away the dead flesh.

Then suddenly, Connor took a deep breath, jumped to his feet, his boobs jiggling, and announced with a big smile on his face

Let’s get fucking drunk and talk about girls.

Spencer: Actually, can we get drunk and talk while we shave my head? I need a change, I can’t stand to look at that same face every morning.

Spencer felt deeply alone in this world, and in a way, he was. Only he would hold himself accountable, but he had people who cared about him and supported him through the good and the bad times. He didn’t have to be alone. Maybe he was Sisyphus, pushing his boulder up the hill, but everybody was pushing their own boulder while giving a hand to each other’s boulders.

So the three of them got drunk and giggled about girls to the sound of the clipper. None of them were mental health professionals and didn’t see the point in giving each other advice they could find in a fortune cookie. So they talked about their feelings and drank.

Connor talked about his fear of letting go of the clutches of college, to become a grown, functioning adult, and his fear of not finding a job that fulfilled him in an uncaring economy.

Daphné shared her growing feelings for Vanessa, the first woman she had been with, how peaceful but passionate it was, and she wondered how long it would take to break, for the other shoe to drop, because gods know there was always another shoe. Daphné was lost like everyone was at 21, but also in her own specific way. She shared her fear of not getting into med school when her entire sense of self-worth was dependent on how good a doctor she’d become.

So together they sat, hugged each other’s fears as the night grew colder, and drank until they no longer spoke to each other. But most importantly, they sat. Sitting with someone, simply being there, is sometimes the best you can do. Just sit, and be there.

Diana was sitting as well, in a mess of her own making, a sadness that had no name, sobbing uncontrollably in a pool of her own feelings. She had blued herself, first of all, and she couldn’t take the blue out of her cheeks and hair. But that was nothing. Her soul was dripping from her eyes; it was all too much. She always does this and sabotages herself. She can’t allow herself to be happy. She didn’t even know how to be happy when her happiness meant contentment, a lack of improvement in all aspects of life.

She had a nice guy in front of her. A guy who gave her his clothes, a guy who listened to her insufferable whining and brought a smile to her face, a guy whose touch made her see stars, but she couldn’t help but think she could do better. And that killed her. She liked him. She genuinely did. When they kissed, her skin felt alive for the first time, and every single atom in her body was aware of the physical contact. But… And that was exactly it; there was always a ‘but’ with Diana.

She could never be satiated. The little girl who grew up in the middle of nowhere, the eldest of 7 who had nothing growing up, who was always too fat, too mean, too bold, could never be content. She made a home out of herself on a high rise and looked down from the penthouse at everyone who didn’t do the same and reach the impossibly high standards she had set for herself and others.

She stood up and snapped open the bathroom door. Sitting on the floor, she uncovered Vanessa’s hair products from the cabinet, trying to find something else: hair dye. She didn’t think twice when she saw the blue tube, covering her head with the oily pigment.

She didn’t accept herself as she was, so she had to change. She faked confidence, faked arrogance, faked boldness when she cuddled herself in a man’s clothes to sleep in the cold night. She had to be strong, had to be smart, and bold. She had to be these things to get a shot at life. Weakness was never an option for her.

She resented those who didn’t live up to the same standards as her, those who allowed themselves to fail, to sit with their feelings and take a breath because she never had the chance to do just that. She never had anyone to console her. To tell her she’ll be fine, she’ll get past this. She never even allowed herself to trip on life and had to pick herself up. Let alone anyone else.

So how could she like Spencer? He had qualities she appreciated, but he was lazy and had an inexplicable sadness in him. He lived for others, not for himself. He didn’t hold himself to the standards she does, and she would resent him for that in the long run.

Diana couldn’t stand imperfection; that’s why she picked at her own skin until she bled. She could barely stand her own mortality when she looked in the mirror and saw the worry line digging itself above her brow. She couldn’t stand that she didn’t know everything she’d ever know, that she hadn’t experienced everything she would experience, that she was yet to grow so much was terrifying to someone who already felt so anchored.

She didn’t understand that mortality was a catalyst for happiness.

And so, she cried, alone in the bathroom while her friends were at a party, her sobs echoing against the tiles, unable to go to others in a time of need.

This was the most difficult chapter I had to write in the entire book. I hope I did the suicide part justice, as someone who has been through it many times. Getting to that dark place creatively was something new and quite painful to do, and I had to do that MANY times.

Buy me a coffee

From Marseille with Love,

*vapes away*

I was raised in social housing and on food stamps by a single mom who had me at 20. Let’s just say that wanting and desire were never part of the cards for me, not that it’s a contest.

When I was a child, I wanted so many things; I wanted a dad, then I wanted a Nintendo DS, then a Wii. I got the latter two. I never saw my mother in a relationship growing up, because she was too focused on making ends meet and on raising me to have anyone else in her life.

So when I’m faced with desire or want, I’m at a loss, especially since I became a broke-ass adult. I’m a 25-year-old university student (still finishing undergrad), who doesn’t have a job or a stable source of income. The truth is that when you are that broke, you don’t even want things anymore.

Yesterday, my mom took me to Vans for a shopping spree, and she went insane. She was like, ‘go into the triple digits,’ and she kept on telling me to try things on when I only wanted one thing out of the entire store: a black mini skirt. I’m not used to getting things. I’m not used to wanting anymore.

It’s true, in the face of desire, I flinch. I remember clearly a situation where a guy was totally into me for a good year and a half, and invited me to his family compound for a weekend with my bestie at the time. He was rich, he was handsome with the bluest eyes I had ever seen, and he was a microbiology doctoral student, and seeing the desire on his face or even when he confessed it to me, I flinched. Now, I’m neither asexual nor a lesbian, so why couldn’t I let him fly me off to Japan on a private jet?

Or when I was crushing hard on one of my best friends, to whom I had confessed my feelings, was suddenly into me and open to the possibility of a US, I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t let him. I slept with him in his bed, and he wanted to bring me croissants in bed from the bakery in front of his house in Paris, and I had to fucking come with him because I don’t know how to accept a gift, accept kindness, accept love.

To me, love always comes with a receipt, a debt I have to pay, because that’s the way I was raised.

This is usually something I’d discuss with my therapist, but she’s on holiday, so YOLO, I’m freeballing here.

I didn’t think I’d finish high school. I didn’t think I’d get accepted into the very selective university program I asked for. I didn’t think I’d graduate from college (I’m yet to do that), and I didn’t think I would get accepted into an even more selective Master’s program (I got it). I go for things, academically, creatively, and I take risks, but not out of desire. I don’t think I’ve truly ever wanted something, or someone, in my entire life. And that’s fucking depressing, isn’t it?

I feel like I’m letting life fly by, letting others and algorithms make decisions for me, fuck, I don’t even know if I want to grow out my hair back into a mullet or shave my head again for this summer. Don’t ask me to make a decision, okay, I’m a Libra moon. My mom wanted to go to Rome, so we went to Rome. My mom wanted me to graduate from uni, so off I went to finish my degree. My friends like me chill and ready to listen, so here I am, ignoring my problems and ready to listen to theirs. I’m always so fucking accommodating because I don’t fucking care.

Sure, let’s leave the party early or not go at all. I don’t give a fuck.

But this year, I decided things would change; I would no longer be a dancing monkey at the circus, I would do things I love, the way I want to do them. I’m no longer waiting for approval. I’m sick of waiting for approval, of not wanting.

So you know what I did when my mom handed me her credit card at Vans? I got myself that mini skirt, I got myself a tee-shirt and a polo too, and some shoes for good measure. For the first time, when I went into a store, the sky was the limit, and I wanted, and it felt like jumping off a cliff (been there, done that).

You know that lyric by Boygenious? Always an angel, never a God? Well, watch me, I’m ascending to Godhood.

From Marseille with Love,

Buy me a coffee

*Vapes away*