The story of Suzanne Valadon and Erik Satie:  It’s like The Notebook...

...except Allie realizes that Noah, who threatens to jump off a ferris wheel to pressure her into dating him and sends her a letter everyday for a year, is actually an emotionally unstable stalker and gets the hell out of the relationship!

Suzanne Valadon was a devastatingly sexy ex-acrobat who, after a fall from the trapeze, became a famous model and self-taught artist, with a bastard child by either Renoir, Pierre Puvis de Chavennes or really anyone else with a penis.  They didn’t have the Maury show in those days, and Valadon didn’t particularly care who the father was.  Erik Satie was a music school dropout, who would later compose the longest piece of music of all time; so long it took 10 pianists taking turns over 18 hours to perform the aptly titled “Vexation.”

They met in a cabaret where he was playing piano and she was on a date with another man.  He fell in love with her in minutes, and proposed that very night.  She accepted, but it was 3:00 in the morning and they couldn’t find anyone to perform the marriage.  “After that” said Satie, “It was always too late.”  They moved into adjoining apartments where he wrote songs for her while she painted his portrait (reportedly her first oil painting) in between having lots of sex.  

This first couple of the bohemian underworld were like something out of Zooey Deschanel’s quirky wet dream.  He ate only white foods and had a collection of over 100 umbrellas. And that mustache! She fed her bad drawings to a pet goat, and gave her cats caviar on Fridays because they were devout Catholics, and apparently too good for fishsticks.  Satie gave her necklaces made of sausages. This was before Lady Gaga made wearing meat a thing, and most women probably would have preferred diamonds, or at least a ring pop.  But Valadon liked to wear corsages made of carrots, so she must have had a thing for edible accessories.

They settled into a married life of sorts, with Valadon cooking, cleaning, darning his socks and sitting at his feet as he worked.  The fiercely independent Valadon must have been sick of playing housewife, and Satie’s violent obsession was suffocating for a woman used to living by her own rules.  After six months of questionable marital bliss, she pulled a Katie Holmes and abandoned him without warning or explanation.

Satie obsessed over her for the rest of his life, writing her letter after letter for 30 years, and slowly drinking himself to death.  He composed the song Bonjour Biqui, Bonjour as a present for her, possibly hoping to win her back, but she probably never heard it.  It was found among his personal papers after his death, with a sketch of Valadon.  She is thought to be the only person Satie ever had sex with. 

Take note, gentlemen. Give a girl some space.