Place: Lyon
Lyon is Steven’s metropolitan origin point. He grew up in Ain, in a rural setting near Bourg-en-Bresse, but Lyon was the city where his social life happened and where he later studied at Epitech.
Rural contrast
The record frames his childhood as rural and socially narrow. Lyon stands in contrast to that setting. In lycée, he took the train to the city on Friday evenings, stayed with friends through the weekend, and returned home on Sunday.
That rhythm made Lyon the first urban environment that felt socially open to him. It was also where being gay was less fraught than in the smaller place where he grew up.
Epitech
Epitech Lyon was the main institutional attachment of his early adult life. The move to Lyon is described as the point at which his life began to open. It is where he found social footing and began to learn the masking and performance skills he later named as learned behavior.
The California exchange semester also belongs to this Epitech period. See California 2018.
Return point
Lyon reappears in the record as a place he returns to when Paris stops working. After Arthur, after the ESN period, and after the Bastille studio, he lands back in Lyon or near his mother there. It is refuge, not destination.
Significance
Lyon functions as origin and fallback. It is less emotionally charged than Paris in his writing, but it remains the background against which the move to Paris and the later returns make sense.