If you ask a Frenchman about Bastille Day, he will at best think you are referring to Place de la Bastille, the big cobblestone plaza where the infamous prison and subsequent guillotine used to be. It was storming that very prison, a symbol of aristocratic power, on July 14, 1789 that marks the official start of the French Revolution (the one about equality, not Nouvelle Cuisine). Of course storming a prison there today would be impossible, particularly on a Thursday (market day). There are just far too many traffic jams.

The French celebrate Bastille Day, which they refer to as la fête nationale, with enthusiasm, vigour, and a lot of firecrackers. The city of Paris generally lays on a few free concerts with well-known singers. Perhaps as a tribute to France’s diverse population groups, the air is thick with the smell of grilled merguez, those spicy North African sausages.

The real fun starts, however, after midnight the night before—and in the most unlikely of places. Throughout Paris, fire stations host a ball—and the word is decidedly ambiguous. Not the kind of ball where you wear a ballgown and tux, but rather the kind where you remove said articles as things heat up. Firemen in Paris, often young men from the provinces, have always been a symbol of desire—they are, after all, the last of our species to have short hair and washboard abs. People queue round the block to get in, and it’s certainly not for the music—usually a band or two and some distorted collection of old hits played through a mediocre sound system. The ambience is hot hot hot. The dancing, uninhibited. Parisians mingle freely, intoxicated by beer and testosterone. The firemen, in their infamous blue butt-hugging uniforms, revel in the attention, rubbing shoulders and occasionally other body parts with the assembled crowd.

Last year in the early hours of morning, a trio of inebriated fire fighters, under the watchful eyes of their superiors, performed what could politely be described as an erotic dance on the table that served as a bar. One young lady stripped and threw herself upon them. She was booed by the crowd for blocking the view.

Best of all, on the morning of the 14th, rather than the pesky shrill of your alarm clock waking you, it’s the thunderous roar of fighter planes loop-the-looping whilst spewing red, white, and blue smoke at the military parade on the Champs Elysées that drags you from deep sleep to hangover hell.