RB Father of Sadism

Red Bikes (Won a month in France), Day 18

There is a problem with vacationing when your main hobby and recreational activity is eating: after a while, the clothes you packed start to feel a little tight around the middle. And so it was that after several days of pure food activity, Rooster and I hopped on our trusty red bicyclettes and took off through the countryside.

Here’s something interesting about the French countryside: it’s full of massive hills. Hard to notice when cruising around in a car, but once we hit the roads with only our feet as cylinders, it became clear that Lance Armstrong is no casual biker and that Rooster and I weren’t going to get very far on our own little version of the tour de France.

After peddling to a forest picnic area shamefully close to La Baronette, we realized that a picnic area with no picnic is just a waste. Once we had gone up our one hill, we felt we ought to be rewarded—perhaps with a nice lunch somewhere interesting. That “somewhere interesting” turned out to be Lacoste (accessible via car), where the infamous Marquis de Sade retreated in 1771 after his erotic writing became too scandalous for Parisian society. The Marquis de Sade, who spent 27 years in prison, is the man who gave us the term sadism and all the graphic definitions that go along it. His hometown is notorious for these titillating tidbits and also for the American art school that exists just beneath his ruined chateau.

One of my favorite parts of Lacoste was the cobblestone walk up to the Marquis’ lair. It was quaint and old and steep and peppered with art students. Rooster and I happened across a cluster, sketch pads clutched immobile at their sides. “Oh my god,” said a girl with spikey black hair. “I was so drunk last night. Did I do anything stupid?” Her three friends denied violently that this was possible. “I think my roommate hates me,” persisted Spiky. Silence from the cronies. “Oh my god, do you think she hates me?”

It struck me then that these American kids would return home from their semester long art school experience with tremendous stories of their time in France—the culture they absorbed, how they were living right along side the father of sadism, wasn’t that cool? But that their conversation right now wasn’t that different from a conversation that any group of nervous, novice young adults might have after an experimental night of drinking anywhere in the States.

Were French teens like this too? All the ones we’ve seen so far seemed only to exist during the two hour lunch break that dominates the French school day. They leave their “ecoles” in mass exodus, walking in clumps of twos and threes to find food and lounging ground. They park their butts along the rims of four hundred year old fountains and in plazas to eat massive baguette sandwiches in their super cool scarves and clingy t-shirts.

Our Lacoste Americans did not display the same casual, confident attitude as their French contemporaries. Still they looked up at us cheerily as we moved past them and one even said hello (were we that obvious?) as we continued up the hill to find some French culture of our own. And okay, maybe a wee pastry too.