An AG in the Forest

So, I had a shoot recently with a handsome AG who's a dandy. A "prissy boi," she calls herself—"dandy" is my descriptor; I just think it's nicer.

She lives in Brooklyn or the Bronx; I forget which. Says she wants to come here for a photo shoot, because she has enough urban images of herself.

I send her a note to remind her to bring insect repellent. There are biting gnats ("May flies," my lover calls them) and mosquitoes, out here in the forest. For liability reasons, I can't provide things like insect repellent, in case my models have allergies.

The AG writes back, and asks me to just please promise her there won't be any spiders. She can't even look at spiders, she tells me. They make her scream.

I laugh, even while responding:

You want me to tell you there are no spiders in the forest?

Um.

Okay.

There are no spiders in the forest. They all moved to the cities, in 19 and 95.

There might be some things that resemble spiders, but we'll just call them leaves moving in the breeze.

How's that?

She laughs and apologizes for being so "prissy."

Then she writes to ask me whether it's really a nearly three-hour drive from her girlfriend's house to my house. I'm terrible with maps, so refer her question to my partner, who says the answer is yeah, pretty much, but don't follow the map directions you sent; follow these other ones, instead. I'm typing for my partner, because she's walking around, up and down the stairs, doing stuff around the house, while I'm answering email.

"Tell her don't stop around here to ask for directions," my partner calls from downstairs. "And tell her not to look for street signs." She says she's sorry about the lack of street signs, and to warn the AG that, if you ask directions in the back woods up here, people will say things like, "You know Johnny Major's place? Not the old one, but the new one. You know, the one he got after the divorce. The second divorce, not the one from Thelma. That would be Thelma with the two good eyes, not the one with the glass eye. What? You don't know Johnny? Well, how'm I supposed to tell you directions?"

Living in the woods is just a riot.

Around the expected hour, we hear a car in the drive. It's relatively soundless out here, so we're never uncertain when we have visitors. My partner bounds down the stairs to greet our guests. At that precise moment, the AG and her partner are gaining the exterior steps. The pretty femme gasps.

They're embarrassed and apologizing to one another for the startle response, as I slowly descend the staircase. "Don't scare the Black people," I tell my partner, patting her arm in faux sociability.

Everyone laughs. We all stand in the living room for a few minutes, while the guests take in our odd décor. Everyone who visits here is momentarily taken aback by the large artwork and other strange items about the place.

The AG has brought several changes of clothes, and decides first on linen slacks and a dress shirt. Part of the reason she's doing this shoot is to show that all Aggressives aren't hip-hop thugs. She walks cautiously out onto the back deck. Asks whether I want her to go down the steps, onto the land. Lifts one foot slightly and says, "Black suede shoes don't go in dirt."

"You do recognize you're in the forest, right?" I tease her. "And you wanted nature shots?"

"Well, maybe just a little bit of nature in the background," she smiles, ducking her head a bit.

I take photos of her shoes. Then she changes into soft, maple-brown, Italian leather loafers. Those apparently fare better in "dirt."

We walk out onto the land a few steps. She's nervously eyeing the neighbor's house. I tell her no one's over there; they were here the previous weekend, and rarely come up two weeks in a row.

"They're city people," I continue. "You can see how hard they work to manicure their 'lawn,' as if this is a house in suburbia."

"Still looks like the woods, to me," the AG murmurs, not really paying attention.

The nervousness in her body hasn't ceased. I ask her why her shoulders are hunched up around her ears.

Her entire face brightens with a combination of excitement and amused disbelief, as she tells how she and her girlfriend got lost on the way up here, and had to stop at the run-down shack of a local bar down the road.

My partner and I both stare in amazement.

"I've lived here six years, and even I've never been into that bar," my partner laughs.

"I was told that was a bad place for a woman, so I've never even considered it," I smile.

"Well, we were lost," the AG says, in exasperation.

"Neither one of us could get a signal on our cells," her lovely girlfriend adds.

I'm trying to picture the tall, commanding AG nervously approaching that dive with her sumptuous, orange-clad femme partner. It's already a joke waiting for a punch line.

Then they're both talking at once, telling about how they saw all the trucks parked outside, so they figured it had to be some kind of public place but, when they got closer, the AG couldn't hear any sound, and thought it was either closed, or maybe it was a house.

"She made me go up to that door and knock!" her girlfriend laughs.

"Well, I wasn't sure!" the AG offers, in mock alarm.

"Then she tells me, 'Okay, this is the signal: if I tap my foot on the floor, that means we got to get the hell up outta there,'" the girlfriend says, still laughing.

"And we go in," the AG continues, "and do you know there's a beaver on the wall? I'm serious. A dead beaver. And a big ol' deer head. With antlers" she says, spreading out her hands to show the size. "Just hanging on the wall! I said, 'Where the rest of that deer?' And oh, those people lookin' at us in a big hush. I mean: everything just got quiet all at once, and they all just stared."

The femme partner rolls her beautiful eyes. "There were only about seven people in that place, and only half of them even looked at us. The rest were drunk," she says.

"They were staring," the AG insists.

"That when a saloon door opened at the back of the room?" I joke.

"I'm sayin'! I was waiting for some shit like that! Never know what kinda beaver they gonna wanna hang on they wall next!"

We all giggle and shake our heads.

"We told them we were looking for the country club," the AG continues. "You know they were peekin' outside to make sure we didn't have no U-Haul, before they gave us directions."

"Don't let the sun set on your ass around these parts," I agree.

We shake our heads.

The AG looks at my partner, and asks, "They use real guns up here for hunting, huh."

"No," my partner answers, without cracking a smile. "They hunt with sticks."

"You know that hurts," I say, trying not to laugh.

"I used to go camping all the time," the girlfriend says, waving her hand dismissively. "What you really gotta watch out for are the coons. They get into everything."

"Your people aren't from the South, are they?" I ask.

"Did you say you people?" she answers, feigning insult.

"Your people, Mr. Perot," I smile.

"Nope. All East Coast."

"Black girls from the South rarely use the word 'coon' the way you just did," I laugh.

"True," the AG smiles.

My partner, slightly out of sorts whenever she's surrounded entirely by women of color, tosses two crackers from the table over the side of the deck.

The AG watches, and says, "Some bird's gonna be happy tomorrow about that cracker."

"I think she just called you a cracker," I deadpan to my partner.

"I keep tellin' you about puttin' in the pauses for the white people!" the girlfriend gasps.

We all laugh so long and loud there are tears streaming.

"Girl," the AG summarizes, "you know this ain't no place for a big, Black, AG. What kind of people want a dead beaver on a wall?"

Mm hmm.

A week or so later, I write to give the boi this summation of our session.

She replies to say she loves the beaver, and plans to return to the bar to host a queer-straight roundtable discussion on the thing.

Fine, I answer. Just bear three things in mind.

1.) Define what you mean by "beaver." Point to the thing on the wall, for reference.

2.) Define what you mean by "roundtable." Drunks have a tendency to walk and talk in circles, and may become disoriented, if they think you want them to sit spinning.

3.) Define what you mean by "discussion." People around here often speak aimlessly, and may be surprised to learn they're not actually responding to what you asked.

Those caveats in place, it should be fine.

I'll keep the car running outside *s


~Emmanuela