Lauren Stroh
Jeremy Dufrene
Jeremy Dufrene feeding an alligator on his airboat tour
It’s not hard to see the appeal.
I am in Des Allemands, a quaint Louisiana town whose Cajun French name translates to “The Germans” after its original community of European settlers. I’m at Airboat Tours by Arthur, right down the road from Frank’s Lounge, a world-famous bar renowned for its Bloody Marys. And I am about to embark on a tour of a leased lake called Dufrene Ponds, led by a man who bears the same name, drives airboats for a living, and keeps alligators named Alice, Boudreaux, and Pierre as pets he feeds raw poultry.
Jeremy Dufrene has made international news over the past month after he was photographed sharing a meal with the American soft-rock crooner Lana Del Rey in London, at Leeds Festival holding hands, and again leaving Karen Elson and Lee Foster’s nuptials during Fashion Week in New York.
The exact nature of the pair’s relationship has since become a source of intense public scrutiny and far-flung speculation, reaching readers of People, Billboard, The Cut, and the Daily Mail through a series of ambiguous headlines—bluntly, NOLA.com asks, “Is Lana Del Rey dating a Louisiana airboat tour guide?”
Photo by Lauren Stroh
In photographs, and in person, Dufrene comes across as sincere and unassuming. When he enters the welcome center for the tour, a modest one-room gift shop that vends wares such as decorative alligator heads and back scratchers made from their claws, the attendant remarks that he is unusually quiet. It is 10:30 am midweek and overcast—so much so that our tour has to be delayed over half an hour to accommodate a series of scattered showers and thunderstorms passing over the area. In response, Dufrene remarks that he had a long night, and I joke that we may need to pull over the boat so he can purge himself of whatever he had to drink the evening before, assuming a hangover (this is South Louisiana). But the attendant insists that won’t be necessary—Dufrene doesn’t drink; something else must have kept him away from a good night’s sleep. He says that the pit stop might still be necessary in any case, joking that this will be his very first boat ride.
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It's not hard to imagine why Dufrene might have a bad case of nerves. Beyond the sudden media interest, legions of Del Rey’s fans have combed the Internet for information pertaining to him since rumors about their relationship began in late August. In the weeks since, X users have cosplayed as his daughter, fictitiously surprised to learn of her father’s new relationship via the pop culture news circuit (Lana Del Rey herself exposed these posts as a hoax), and his political and moral beliefs have turned into the subject of cultural criticism; memes lifted from his social media accounts have become fodder for a relentless stream of critical posts on Del Rey’s fan subreddits.
Back at the bayou, away from the maelstrom, Arthur Matherne, Jr., the namesake and proprietor of the business, stands in front of the TV to watch the weather report. Once the storm lifts, Dufrene is quick to load us up before more bad weather disrupts our plans. The tour group (which includes three Germans driving across the American South; fitting that they land here, of all places, in Des Allemands) promptly fills the boat and we set off into the marsh via Bayou des Allemands. Right away, I feel physical relief; being out on the water is literally a breath of fresh air—a refuge from the pollution of nearby chemical plants and refineries congesting the towns in this southern stretch of Louisiana. Still, even here, we can’t escape evidence of the industry: signs quickly populate the pond, warning us not to anchor or dredge, giving notice of gas pipelines that run just beneath the water’s surface.
Along the way, I learn that the body of water we’re floating in is a leveed-off section of fresh water, home to a medley of species—including swamp lilies and water hyacinths. We get up close and personal with a handful of alligators that live and breed nearby. Dufrene mentions that the low ratio of males to females necessitates flexible dating arrangements; poor Alice must share her boyfriend with the other female alligators who live close enough to her section in the pond, he remarks with a smirk and a nod.
Lauren Stroh
Airboat
Aboard the airboat during Jeremy Dufrene's tour
We also spot blue herons, cattle egrets, a great egret, a bald eagle’s nest, and a number of duck blinds, empty in this transition into fall, when waterfowl hunting season begins. Jeremy points out a fallen bald cypress whose branches have become trees and estimates that the process of their regeneration has taken place over the last one hundred years. Spanish moss decorates their branches, and Dufrene handles a bunch, explaining to the tour group that the plant matter is durable enough to stitch up a wound if one of us should become injured on the tour, though he hopes that won’t be necessary. He is a benign flirt—handing me and the German woman swamp lilies and a bundle of moss to handle and observe up close before he invites us to pass them both around to the other tourists.
As we travel deeper into the swamp, dark clouds begin to gather overhead. We are at least thirty minutes away from shore. Jeremy gets a call from back at the welcome center, answering, “Captain speaking.” He's gotten word that the storm we’d been avoiding has finally caught up to us. Lightning strikes straight ahead and on the other side of the marsh, so we begin to make our way back to the launch ahead of schedule; we are seated on what Jeremy astutely calls “a frying pan” and the odds that lichen can mend our impending electrocution are nary.
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He speeds, drives rough, and cuts edges quick. His demeanor is informal, joking, and sometimes sarcastic; if we were to draft Del Rey’s romantic future with Dufrene via stereotypical mating scripts, it wouldn’t be a challenge to imagine them settled in a double-wide trailer down the road in a couple of years with 2.5 kids to boot.
We arrive back to shore, dock the airboat, and proceed back into the gift shop to settle up. As I leave, Jeremy Dufrene is tying his boat back up at the launch as the rainstorm begins to get heavy. I sympathize with all that he’s going through, so I choose not to let my curiosity get the best of me and decide not to bring his relationship up. As in all great romances, I try to leave a little bit to the imagination; sometimes the mystery is the very best part.
