Bramhall Square Just shoot me BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

This is a public service announcement: Never choose a photographer as your boyfriend — especially one whose artist statement uses anything even remotely resembling the word "honest."

Okay, I admit, the egoist actor in me liked the idea at first. Actors always need headshots, and we love to see ourselves worth 1000 words (when else are we worth that much?) . . . until the photoshoot. It’s important to note that people who shoot glamour headshots for a living never use "honest" in their promises.

The pictures in question were staged on my orange couch. I bought it from the Salvation Army when I first moved to Portland because I felt sorry for it. They told me it had been there longer than any other and no one wanted it. It reminded me of being picked last in a class full of boys for every team in grade school. The Orange Couch (this is his name) is very cushy, sort of ugly, and sucks you in. All this is good when you want to read the New Yorker in peace while smoking a J or sipping a cool glass of Gewurtztraminer.

But the orange couch is not particularly flattering. If celluloid can be trusted, it ruins my posture, sinking my butt too low, and makes my shoulders and back "hunchy" at best.

Though I can’t blame it all on the couch.

I was wearing a criss-cross cowgirl shirt which has more cross than criss and therefore the horizontal lines seem to take forever to get around my body. Instead of that silly shirt, I probably would have fared better if I had gone with Cowboy’s first idea, which would have been staged in the bathtub.

Tips for those who might encounter my fate: Your regular splash of lip gloss and mascara will not suffice if your photographer/arteest/boyfriend shoots in color and if you want to approximate okay skin and eyes that are not sunken like craters. Wet hair never looks as sleek on film as in your bathroom mirror. Yoga pants might not be too flattering in a photo unless you’re standing.

Here’s what I did know, but chose to ignore: I have a huge Helen Hunt–like forehead (indeed I was once picked out of a mound of headshots and called in to read for her daughter), which needs dry wispy things framing it. I had PMS during the photo shoot. Yes, PMS, the great catch-all complaint. A friend swears she gains exactly seven. I suggest my own watery encasement hovers well over 10.

I was tired. It was morning. I was on my way to Boston, so we were rushed. He really wanted to capture the blooming Amaryllis and the light. My cat was willing. In fact she somehow managed to look hot in the photos and is also in better focus than I am.

But none of this can account for the images that resulted, which truly make me look like Marlon Brando, post-gorgeous phase — more like air-lifted-onto-the-movie-sets phase.

I have begged my artist boyfriend to destroy the negatives. He vacillates between finding this very funny (threatening to put them in slide shows) and getting very defensive. When he’s on the defensive tack (usually late at night when he’s tired and would love some nooky to make him feel like the world is all A-okay) he becomes all sincere-visual-artist-y and waxes poetic into the wee hours about things like purity of the moment, how looks are not what his work is about, how I made him tense because I was tense and therefore he couldn’t get the angle right, how an honest moment is worth, I don’t know, lots, or something.

Whatever.

My boyfriend is an amazing photographer. Of other places. Other people. You name it. But not of me. I can tell you that. He says he wants another shot. Of course, he’ll get it . . . what are we as the partners of artists other than guinea pigs?

The Bramhall Square column runs every other week, and Caitlin Shetterly can be reached at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com