Travels With Naked Girls - CHAPTER 5 - 6

Chapter 5.

Roshelle.

The magic began. It was a long flight, 24 hours, so naturally she was tired. It was evening, and as we drove to the cottage it got dark. I talked to her about Connecticut and the towns we were driving through, but after awhile I realized Roshelle was asleep.

I found that very touching. She was completely relaxed with me, and trusted me. It was like when I used to tie her up, way out in some secluded forest for video. Trust is very appealing in a beautiful girl, even sexy in a way.

Painting the cottage was my project for the summer, and next day Roshelle set in to help. Garbed in one of my old painting shirts, which of course was miles too big for her, with her hair in a bun and a smudge of point on her cheek, she worked hard. She still looked great, like the sloe-eyed girl in an ad, only now it was an ad for home renovations.

We went to Salem the witch city, and visited the House of the Seven Gables and several witch houses, witnesses to a scary time. Roshelle posed with a witch mannequin outside a shop, and I bought a huge stuffed high hat with rabbit ears, and wore it all over town. We were a tourists' delight.

A lady was doing a survey for the tourist board, and she asked Roshelle to fill out a form about how well she liked Salem etc. At the end there was a personal details section, and in the space for her profession Roshelle wrote "nude model."

Roshelle gave the lady the form, and glanced back a couple of times to see if she would read it over and react. The lady did read it over, but she didn't even blink. After all, this was north of Boston.

Too soon our stay at my cottage was over. The flight to France lasted all night, so we arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport fagged and lagged. A rental car was ready for us, and we headed out into the Paris traffic, me driving, Roshelle reading a book of maps, the zonked leading the zonked.

Now let me digress on the subject of Charles de Gaulle airport. The French carelessly and with no foresight at all put it on the north side of Paris. Airports are for tourists, right? Tourists want to go to the south of France, right? Hellooooo . . . ! Bon joooouuur . . . !

So there we were, stuck on the north side of Paris, the city that's famous the world over for crazy traffic, trying to find our way south.

We drove straight into the whirlwind. We plunged and bucked through the traffic, mostly lost and always nervous. As a special treat for July, the French were mending all the roads.

The French, as everyone knows, are an elegant and creative people, and they carry this over to their highway signs. They do not put humdrum ordinary words like "north," "south," "east," and "west" on their signs. Instead, they put things like "direction Angiers," which is great if you know where Angiers is, but of course you don't.

To a Frenchman, France is the whole world, and in their defence I admit that to tourists, France is the whole world too, for France gets more tourists than any country in the world except the U. S., which is five times larger. A Frenchman would only look down his nose at anyone who didn't know where Angiers is, and who can blame him?

We certainly were too scared to blame anyone. We spent a good deal of time pursuing a town called Lille, which turned out to be somewhere near Belgium, not in Burgandy as I thought.

We were immersed in traffic on a circular road which the French laughingly call "Le Peripherique," as if it were any help to anybody getting around Paris. Le Peripherique is nothing but a huge circular traffic jam. With true Gallic pride, the French point out that it is the world's largest circular traffic jam.

After a few dizzy hours, we flipped out onto a side road, and there was a sign for a place I recognized. Versailles.

"What's Versailles?"

"It's the biggest palace in the world, I think. Want to see it?"

So we did. I got a few shots of Roshelle in the grand courtyard of the palace, and we wandered around relaxed and happy at last. I had already done a few shots of Roshelle at the airport, and even luckily got a shot of Concorde. It made a pleasant intro for the video, which is called Roshelle in France.

Now that I knew where we were, we headed for Chartes.

Chartes is a miracle. The cathedral is beautiful, and unlike most Medieval cathedrals, everything is intact -- the statues, the decorations, even the stained glass windows. Time has been gentle with Chartes, and we could feel the magic.

We found a hotel, and then had a great meal in a street cafe in a Medieval street. In our hotel room we were surprised, when we opened the shutters, to see a great view of the Cathedral standing proud and lovely on its high hill.

I'll remember that evening always. Roshelle and I chatted, and gradually she drifted off to sleep in the bed. I sat by the window, looking up at the cathedral, which was floodlighted in lights of many colours. There was even a full moon rising.

I did video shots of the whole scene, panning from the clear cold moon across to the beautiful glowing cathedral. I sat looking at it a long time in the quiet night. Beautiful Roshelle was sleeping in the bed, and I sat gazing at one view and then the other.

I felt that I had crossed a threshhold. Looking at Roshelle, I felt that I, the long-time nerd, had reached a new goal, a breakthrough into a new world. I felt I had achieved something, solved an ancient dilemma, broken down an old barricade.

Chapter 6.

La Sabliere.

In the morning we went to a street cafe in the town plaza, sipped coffee, ate croissants, and did more video.

I thought it was good to get lots of typical French experiences for Roshelle In France. We went inside Chartes Cathedral and did video. It was an amazing experience, as vivid inside as out, and Roshelle took lots of photos.

Then we headed south, and found a ruined castle, and Roshelle posed in front of that.

We went to Chambord, one of the chateux of the Loire, and had a picnic on the grass, savouring French bread, camembert, chocolate, and ham. More wonderful video.

We even did shots of Roshelle in the smallest tub I ever saw, in a hotel room in the small town of Mendes. The tub was so short she couldn't even lie down in it, unless she stuck her legs up into the air. She squirmed around and managed to wash herself, and even lathered her hair. That made great video.

La Sabliere is one of the finest French naturist resorts, occupying 1500 acres of a steep valley of the River Ceze. The terrain is wooded and natural, and the Ceze is a lovely clear river, ideal for swimming, canoeing, fishing, and even gold panning. You can camp or live in mobile homes or cabins on the site, and there are many activities to make for a perfect holiday.

The site was so pleasant that it was easy to forget we were there to work, but Roshelle was very practical. She had me make a list of various shots of her that I might need, and we planned carefully when and where we would shoot them.

Roshelle made friends with many people at La Sabliere, and soon we were shooting all sorts of good video, and having fun doing it too. We met a handsome young man named Daniel, an animateur who specialized in yoga and massage. His workshops provided some fine video shoots.

We were lucky. I met Leen, a lovely Flemish girl whom I had met and videoed at La Sabliere in 1995.   We went for a walk with her and her younger brother and muscular boyfriend up the far side of the valley to the limestone caves. There were wonderful views at the top, and I got many good shots of the young people climbing.

The man in the caravan next to us was named Alda, and he and his family went on a walk with us to the medieval castle. He had a son and daughter around 8 or 10, and the daughter had a beautiful friend of her own age along. I got shots of the family hiking, and the kids climbing the walls, and everyone posing in the castle rooms.

I wondered what it was like to live in such a place in those far-off dreadful days. It was a genuine castle, a Cathar stronghold from the terrible time of the Albigensian persecution in the 13th century.

It was horrible to think of how those religious stalwarts were hunted down and martyred by conventional Catholics, and strange to think how much the world had changed. The religious passions and zealotry that they cared so much about were now almost completely gone.

They were as obsolete and unvalued as the medieval pottery which we found in broken bits scattered all around the grounds. Gone like the animals whose fossils we found in the limestone blocks too, relics of a time far longer ago than those frantic religious passions.

We were all completely naked now, in their castle. They would have thought that was horrible. We thought their religious mania was horrible. And what would they have thought of my video camera, now placidly recording their castle and us nude?