My Memories of Frenchie: A Matt Mills Memoir

I’ve known Frenchie for years. And I can personally say that I’ve watched him grow, prosper, and mature into the emotionally wrecked, paranoid, powdered sugar snorting son of a bitch he’s become. I’ve watched this from spending many a night sleeping next to him in his bed without him knowing or by breaking into his house and standing at the foot of his bed as he slept. The most glaring aspect of Frenchie’s personality that you first notice upon meeting him is how confrontational he is. I once watched him stop one of the special education teachers in high school as she was wheeling one of the “special” kids down the hallway. He put his hand up as if to say, “Halt!” He didn’t even say a word. She stopped and gave him this strange look. Frenchie pointed directly in the special kid’s face and said, “I saw the way you were looking at me as you ate your oatmeal this morning in the cafeteria! You think you can eat oatmeal faster than me, you crippled shit?”

The tard giggled incessantly. I mean, what the fuck did it know? It was blind, deaf, mentally retarded, and paralyzed. It had no idea Frenchie even existed, but Frenchie took it upon himself to enforce his will on this poor kid.

“Even with my hands tied behind my back and a gag ball shoved in my mouth, I could still eat oatmeal faster than you. I would ingest it anally—”

The teacher began to move toward Frenchie and Frenchie just punched her right in the face. The tard began rocking back and forth and clapping, which was remarkable because he was paralyzed. It took seven teachers to grab Frenchie and hold him to the ground. Frenchie just kept screaming, “ANALLY! I WOULD TAKE IT ANALLY! ANALLY!”

Little did we know that Frenchie was being sexually abused by his bus driver and that he really was taking it anally. But at that time, we thought Frenchie had just lost his mind. I remember standing there, completely confused. I thought to myself, “Is my friend going to be alright?” A couple of tears ran down my face. I wrote a poem about it later that night:

My dear, dear friend, how I wish I could be inside of you
And look around to see what is wrong so that I could fix it with my tongue.
My tongue would soothe you with gentle words and I slowly insert myself into your
Mind, so that you could think about me whenever you get in the mood
To hurt yourself or someone else. I love you. I love you, dearly.

This part of his personality is just too big to ignore. More recently, I asked him who he was going to vote for: Barack Obama or John McCain. He told me, “I’m not going to vote. Voting is for pussies! What are you going to do about that?!” He said this in a Brooklyn accent. I have no idea why. I guess he thought that I wouldn’t realize that he was faking an accent to sound more intimidating. So I kneed him in the nuts.

Probably the worst thing Frenchie has ever done (not counting the time he had ribs removed so that he could “practice yoga more comfortably”) was when after a huge argument with his parents, he allowed himself to be abducted into sex slavery ring to “show his parents who really ruled his life.”

You see, Frenchie has a habit of going off the deep-end and vowing vengeance by doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with what he’s mad about. In this particular situation, he had gotten into an argument with his parents over Frenchie’s strange powdered sugar habit. Years ago, Frenchie wanted to be accepted and he wanted people to look at him and think, “Wow, he’s a BAD ASS!” So he started snorting this white powder through a straw and telling everyone who would listen that it was cocaine. But, one day, I walked into his bedroom and I caught him with a box of white powdered donuts and he was rubbing all of the powdered sugar off all of the donuts. He had a whole Zip-Loc bag full of it. “I knew it wasn’t cocaine! Because you were snorting so much of it that you would have had to have a $10,000 a day habit!” His face turned bright red with embarrassment. “N-no! It is cocaine! See!” He shoved his face in the bag and began breathing all of it in. His face started to turn blue and I said, “Stop it! Now you’re faking overdoses, too?!” But it wasn’t an overdose. He was choking on the powdered sugar. It looked like a genuine overdose. He was blue, white stuff was bubbling out of his mouth, he was shaking, and he was making weird noises. So I just left him. Come to find out, he was in a coma for two or three days. All because of his need to be accepted.

Frenchie had been sitting at the dinner table when he pulled out a bag of powdered sugar, put it into a line, and snorted it in front of his parents. His parents were dumbfounded. “What are you doing?” his mother asked. “I’m medicating myself!” Frenchie spoke in a monotoned voice. “This is ridiculous!” his father screamed. “It’s powdered sugar! It’s powdered fucking sugar! It’s not habit forming! It’s not addicting! It does NOTHING!”

“SHUT UP! YOU JUST SHUT UP RIGHT NOW!” Frenchie yelled. “YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I AM DAMAGED! I HAVE AN ADDICTION AND I CANT CONTROOOOOLLLLL MYSELF! AAARRGGHHHHHH!” Frenchie tried to flip over the dinner table, but he wasn’t strong enough. “I’LL SHOW YOU!” Then he ran out of the house. Two weeks later, Frenchie was found in Malaysia wearing a German milk-maid outfit and speaking about how he was his own man.

My guess is that Frenchie had seen more dick than any person I know in that two week period. Frenchie didn’t come back changed. The whole ordeal didn’t phase him. It was as if Frenchie had really wanted to go to Malaysia, get fucked by men under the false pretenses of being an underaged girl, and then return home.

In conclusion, I believe that Frenchie is just simply misunderstood. I love him deeply and with my whole heart.

Frenchie, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that I will always be with you. So shine on you crazy diamond.

Shine on…

*cue Freebird guitar solo*