“Authorities in Paris’s historic Pere Lachaise cemetery have sealed off one of its most-visited tombs to prevent the perpetration of lewd acts on the prostrate bronze form of a murdered 19th-century journalist. The funerary relic of Victor Noir, shot dead in 1870 at the age of 22, has long been held as an aid to love or fertility by women, whose attentions have rubbed a protuberance in the statue’s genital area to a smooth shine. But alarmed by the growing frequency of the caresses — which they say are also increasingly intimate and no longer confined to women — officials have erected metal barriers around the grave along with a sign reading: ‘Any damage caused by graffiti or indecent rubbing will be prosecuted…’ The statue by Amedee-Jule Dalou shows Noir in a frock coat and trousers lying flat on his back, with a distinct enlargement in the groin. According to the story, he was due to get married the day after he was killed — which accounts for both the lump and the cult.” —Mail and Guardian (New Zealand)

To Americans, Pere Lachaise cemetery is best known not as the burial place of Marcel Proust or Sarah Bernhardt but as the resting place of Jim Morrison, singer of the Doors. His grave has become a kind of hangout for young people, who often leave candles, record albums, and various other memorabilia at the site. Usually it comes to resemble a goth teenager’s bedroom transplanted to a graveyard — which makes it rather strange that the authorities at Pere Lachaise should tolerate the absolute mess at Morrison’s grave site and not the “indecent rubbing” at Victor Noir’s tomb. Perhaps it evinces a bit of French snobism, as though they don’t care what happens to the American’s grave. Or for that matter, you’d think most French men — with their reputation for being suave romantics — would appreciate the prospect of women rubbing the dicks on their graves. Perhaps it’s only the fact that other men have started rubbing the “protuberance” that bothers them?

In any event, you know that old saw about how if you put up a red rope, people will inevitably stand behind it? Maybe it’s the same when you put a bulge on a tomb sculpture. Make a genital protuberance, and people will inevitably want to rub it. Make a lump and get a cult. No doubt the makers of gravestones should offer this as an option, since it doesn’t sound like the worst fate. It certainly makes death seem a little less lonely.

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