The French Connection

I was the center of the french party in New York.

Illustration by Nathan Place

When I was in my early twenties I fell in with a group of French Catholic expatriates. They were an agreeable bunch, carefree in the way people on short-term stays in New York can be. I met them through Bruno, an Asterix-loving, Nutella-slurping Frenchman who was living in my building. I couldn’t understand a word he said, but Bruno was exactly what I had been waiting for. Growing up in a place where most girls dream of owning ponies, I had asked my parents for a foreign exchange student instead. They declined. Bruno, generous and eager to experience New York, was the exchange student I had always wanted. I introduced him to my friends. In return, he introduced me to his.

Bruno was a Catholic and, I came to learn, part of a specific French subculture–landed, conservative, and (sometimes literally) entitled. Critics call them “bge-bge” which stands for “bon gouts, bon gens” and suggests these people believe that good taste implies good people. In New York the…