Authors: Maxime Valette
F My Life (16 page)
Today I decided to tell my mom about my choice to wait to have sex until after marriage. Coming from a very Christian family, I thought she would be proud. Instead, she laughed and said, “Is that your excuse for not being able to get laid?” and walked out of the room. FML
Today I asked my parents whether the outfit I was wearing made me look fat. My mom looked at me and paused for a while. My dad said, “Honey, that outfit doesn’t make you look fat. Your fat makes you look fat.” FML
Today I turned twenty-two without anyone wishing me a happy birthday. In fact, the only phone call I received all day was from my brother. He wanted to borrow money. FML
Today my mother finally had her beloved Siamese cat cremated. The cat had been dead for over a week, and she had been keeping it on her bed, stroking its fur and saying, “She looks like she’s sleeping” and “She’s so cold.” To top it all off, she’s been calling me by the cat’s name for three years. FML
Today, as I was bagging groceries at the supermarket, I looked down to see a six-year-old urinating on my shoes and on the floor next to me. I told his mother that she should take her kid to the restroom, only to be told to “mind your own goddamned business.” I was later fired for arguing with a customer. FML
Today my Christian boyfriend of six months broke up with me. I had told him when we started dating that I was an atheist, and he just now decided to look up what that means. He gave me a Bible. FML
Today I had one of the worst panic attacks I’d had in years. I was worried that nobody cared about me and that I had completely messed up my life. I was hyperventilating and crying hysterically. My mom walked by my room, looked at me, and said, “If you’re going to make those noises, at least shut the door.” FML
Today my girlfriend dumped me for someone else. An hour earlier I had gotten permission from her dad to propose. FML
Today I was swimming in the ocean with my best friend, and a giant wave came and knocked off the bottom of my bikini. My friend told me that she would go get another pair of bottoms so I could walk onto the very crowded beach. She left me there for half an hour, laughing from the shore with her entire family. FML
Today, while I was lying in bed with my girlfriend, she was grabbing the fat on my stomach. I told to her to stop touching my fat. She replied, “So don’t touch you at all?” FML
Today I jokingly had a sexual conversation via text message with a good guy friend. He was pretending to be a stranger and was fishing for compliments and asked to have a foursome. It turned out that my friend had lost his phone and I had spent two hours talking to a random pervert about the lingerie I was wearing. FML
Our thanks go to:
Julien Azarian, Alan Holding, Frans van Schoor, Marielle Bonnard, Isabelle Abraldes, Camille Bourély, and Laura Cherfi, for their everyday involvement in the F My Life adventure.
M
AXIME
V
ALETTE
was born on April 30, 1988, in Reims, France, the area where champagne is produced. There has hardly been a time in his life when he hasn’t had a computer keyboard at his fingertips. He began programming when he was nine years old and creating websites at eleven. He started a business at fifteen and sold it at eighteen to found Beta&Cie, through which he created the VDM website (the French version of FML). Besides computers, his hobbies are music, TV, and wine.
G
UILLAUME
P
ASSAGLIA
was born on January 28, 1982, somewhere on the Côte d’Azur. He likes polar bears and enjoys vodka martinis (shaken, not stirred). He is an IT engineer, part-time photographer, and keen sportsman. He is also an unfaltering Internet games fanatic, but is now involved in another kind of game—directing several international companies. He is also in charge of the spotlessness of the studio apartment where the VDM and FML team meets to plot out the future. He likes perfection, and his ultimate goal is to one day beat Didier Guedj at tennis.
D
IDIER
G
UEDJ
was born in Paris many years ago. After studying international business and landing a job in marketing, he quickly realized that he’d be better off working as a full-time musician. He began by creating jingles for advertising campaigns. He then became creative director of several ad agencies, before finally founding his own agency. Overseeing brands such as Heineken and Dunlop, as well as several French perfume manufacturers and bestselling books, he has been the brains behind more than a hundred ad campaigns. He claims to be the devil.
M
ARIE
“M
ISSBEAN
” L
EVESQUE
was born on September 6, 1982, in Paris, France. After graduating from high school and spending three years training to become an architect, she is now a full-time illustrator. She lives and works in a small one-room apartment in Paris, but plans on moving soon into a castle in the south of France. Marie likes beer and chocolate, and she spends her spare time taking close-up photos of insects, as well as watching movies while asleep, which is the main reason that she can never remember the end of any of them.
A Villard Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2009 by Maxime Valette, Guillaume Passaglia, and Didier Guedj
Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Villard Books, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
V
ILLARD
B
OOKS
and V
ILLARD
& “V” C
IRCLED
Design are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Some material originally published in France by Michel Lafon in 2008.
This edition published through and by arrangement with Michel Lafon Publishings.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Valette, Maxime
F my life / Maxime Valette, Guillaume Passaglia & Didier Guedj; illustrations by
Marie “Missbean” Levesque.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52011-1
1. Conduct of life—Humor. 2. Embarrassment—Humor.
I. Passaglia, Guillaume, 1982–II. Guedj, Didier. III. Title.
PN6231.C6142V35 2009
818′.60208—dc22 2009015163
v3.0