Chronicles of the White Van Brigade : Froffeee Carpentry

For a week before burning man and since I’ve returned after it, I have been working as a carpenter’s assistant doing demolition.

In the hierarchy of manual labor I am slightly above those who hop into pick up beds in Home Depot parking lots and slightly below a skilled laborer’s apprentice.

The carpenter I work with is a 45 year old –fat- baldi-ng bug eyed

-coke still in the bottle tinted sort of rapist glasses-

 uneducated- sexually repressed-

 loud -gregarious –alcoholic

 with a lisp and a stutter and an inability to pronounce his R’s and he lives in total fear and absolute anxiety with zero self confidence. He is twitchy - his body movements mimicking his stammer erratic and all over the place. 

He is married with a child he loves and a wife afflicted with MS and has a heart of gold.

Obviously, this guy is my best friend.

There’s a whole story here and I am working on it called

 “Chronicles of the White Van Brigade”  

and in the meantime I am going to share some anecdotes, stories and wisdom that came from this experience.

The first is how I gave him his nickname –


“FROFFEEE”

So it’s my first day of work and its been heavy –

I’m cool because I’m cool –

and he is a fucking handful – non stop blabber –

telling me what to do then saying its wrong and telling me to do one thing and just as I get to doing the task he is asking me to hand him a tool that is two feet behind him and remember –

he isn’t just asking me he is hooting and stuttering and whoopin like buffoon baboon and im cool – but it’s heavy and I am fortunate that I am well trained in patience.

Day ends but not before lunchtime – I am on a Purium green juice cleanse so its lunch and I got the green drink and raw organic Turkish apricots and raw unpasteurized organic Spanish almonds and an avocado and he has gassed four mountain dews before lunch and has half a fucking bag of Doritos and two sandwiches with the most processed bread, most processed cheese and most processed meat and now a cherry pepsi and he’s looking at me like all silent and curious- like I grew ears where my eyes are supposed to be and then he peers down at my  lunch likes it is clan of Taliban fighters  and asks earnestly :

Wha wha wha what-are-you gay orsumpeen? (something)

I die laughing because that’s fucking hilarious and tell him that food is medicine and I am cleaning out toxins right now– losing weight and getting extra energy for work.

He just looks at me all bug eyed and chews his sandwich.  

Fast Forward to the end of the day :

It’s Friday and we are way out in the burbs and we pack up the white van and leave and hit a stretch of road for ten minutes and he gasses 3 pbr’s and pulls off into a liquor store to get red bull and jager – which he pronounces “laker”.

He fills a cup with ice and ‘laker’ and red bull and starts gassing it and hitting one-ees of some decent cannabis and he’s driving his white van not paying attention just running his mouth so excited that it is the weekend and he's stammering about total inane drivel when we see a woman on the sidewalk – African-american- maybe 19 – fat as can be and wearing black tights to prove it to everybody – and he starts honking like a retarded circus seal saying “FROFFFEEE – FROFFEEEEE”

and wacking me across the van with his big stubby arms –

“seedat?!! –seedatt!?!?!?!?!? FROFFFFFFFFEEEE!”

And I just don’t understand what he is saying as I don’t speak stutter that well and then it dawns on me

“Frothy? – like a cup of coffee?”

and he exalts

YEAAAAHHHH!

And I ask:

But………..

……………..Why?

And he looks at me like I am stupid again and says

“Everlybody knows dat~ when chicks wearl dem tights it rubs against der pussy and it gets all hot and schwolen.  FROFFEEE! “

And I lose my shit laughing as I live for the absurd and I cant catch my breath when he sees a more attractive African American woman on the street and gets back to barking like a dog that got kicked in the head :

“Loogadat schit loogadat schit I bet that schit is pink inschide !”

And he is not even looking near the road and I wonder if he can see through those glasses when he isn’t loaded and frothing but Im cool because I am cool and I know there is no threat here. 

I am crying laughing and it's not funny at all because this person is pretty fucking stupid and I still don’t stop laughing- I begin to cough-  I cant catch my breath-  until I do.

He gasses another two beers and now we are on what is “main street” in an affluent suburb where my parents live 10 minutes down the road and I know tons of people and have family that reside there and we are at a red light in his white van and the windows are down and he’s babbling and I am sort of ready to just be home and there is this coffee shop right out my door and it is nice out so people are on the sidewalk having drinks and there is an attractive mid 40s woman, well dressed with her 15-16 year old daughter at table 6 feet from my open window in this white van and she catches Froffee’s eye and he starts stammering away

“L-L-L-Loogahdem tittieesh loogadem tittieesh—ahhhhdem are nicesh ID SUCK DOUGHS”

and this woman can clearly hear it and she cant see him so instead she just looks at me like I am a freak and there is a only a 90% chance that someone I am related to knows this woman and her daughter and I am laugh because - fuck me this is out there and I dont think it is funny anymore I just want to go home.

Stay tuned for more White Van Chronicles with Froffeeee---- one of the most powerful teachers in my life.