My Three Jessicas

Jessica S.
It was shortly after Jessica G. and I stopped seeing each other that Kate and I began to truly unravel. The arguing escalated, the nights apart multiplied, yet still we did not split. She went away for two months to her family’s summer place, where she and I had had some of our greatest times, without inviting me even to visit. I was hurt and angry, especially because she did not even let me know until the day before she left. I suppose I should not have been surprised: I had been going off on trips I was keeping secret from her, even if they were just nights in the city.

I don’t remember whether I called Jessica S. or whether she called me. She had been at that same Jewy liberal arts college, in the same class with Kate a year behind me. She lived in Brooklyn, where she grew up.

Jessie S. and I even had a brief encounter in college: We hung out with the same crowd – what one non-Jewish male friend of mine called “Those New York girls with long hair and all the problems.” One winter, we were walking together across campus, and she is telling me about this guy she has a crush on, how hard it is to tell him how she feels, and asking what advice I can give her. Women often come to me for advice, especially about relationships. You can talk to him, he listens: that is my reputation on campus, one of them, anyway. I encourage her to tell the guy, that if he is interested it will be a turn on to have a girl be forward like that, and if he isn’t interested, being forward might bring him around. “I know, I know,” she says, yet she clearly is not convinced.

It is a lazy afternoon, and neither of us has any commitments, so we just keep walking and talking, until we are eventually off campus and tromping through the college arboretum, with its meadows, woods and streams covered in fresh snow. I had my Nikon F3 with me and I take photos of her leaving long trails of footprints, trying to capture the feel of bright sun and bare trees and crisp cold in black-and-white. Jessie, in her vintage wool coat and two long scarves, is a trouper, posing whenever I ask her to – now smiling, now pensive, now with her back to me. She even agrees to lie face down in the snow for a shot. When she gets up, her cheeks are like mammoth strawberries, and she is giggle-laughing loudly even as she squeals about how much her face hurts.

We turn back to campus, to get hot chocolate so we both can warm up. As we near the snack bar, she very casually says, “That guy I had the crush on, that we were talking about? It’s you.”

I admit, there are times when I am slow to pick up on signals, and that afternoon was one of them. I had no idea up till that very moment, despite how much we hung out, despite that walk, that she wanted me in any way at all. Some evidence of my confusion may be that I do not remember at all what I said in return, or indeed what was said at all. We do get hot chocolate; we don’t stay in the snack bar. We head to her dorm room.

It seems the fitting concluding activity to that afternoon: a junior and a sophomore making out on a bed on a dorm floor, as the long January shadows crawl away from the window. Soon, though, Jessica is uncharacteristically nervous. Her shirt and bra are off, and she stops to ask me why her nipples aren’t hard.

“I really like what you are doing, so why aren’t they erect? They’re supposed to be, aren’t they?”

I try to reassure her, tell her maybe they will get erect in a while, maybe the best thing is not to think about it, maybe don’t worry about what you think your body should be doing and just keep doing what feels good. All the right, sensitive things to say. It doesn’t help. Soon our hands move below our waists, and she wants to know, Is what she’s doing okay? Should she try doing this? Does that feel the way it’s supposed to?

“Yes, yes, and yes. You are doing fine.”

It continues off and on like that, all the way through the awkward intercourse. I offer to stop, before I am even inside her, saying we can talk or just fool around instead. No, she wants to keep going, wants to do it. We finish, or I finish anyway. Although she tells me how good it is, I don’t get the feeling she was relaxed enough to have an actual orgasm. If she did, it was a mild one.

That one long afternoon is the extent of our college affair. We still hang around in the same circles, drift into and out of each other’s lives, become friends.

After I graduate, I move to Manhattan, and a year later Jessie S. graduates and moves to Brooklyn. We had remained friends, there had been no anger or pain between us, so we were in touch; we’d see each other at parties, at alumni mixers, with many of the same people we hung out with back at college, and she and Kate and I even had dinner together a few times. (I had vague notions of a threesome with them, which remained vague probably because I picked up on the negative vibes from both of them. Or maybe we just didn’t get drunk enough.)

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Now, however, Kate is away in the Berkshires, and Jessica S. invites me to dinner at the house of a mentor of hers, after which there is a dance performance she wants to catch. It sounds like it might be a casual friendly thing, yet also like it might be a date, a date with possibilities. I am not altogether sure. I am producing a documentary film shoot that day, out of the city, and I have a rental car that does not need to be returned till the following morning. Even though parking can be a bitch, having a car on a date with multiple activities is a boon in New York. You can be free and easy, go anywhere quickly and cheaply.

After the shoot, I drive to her friend’s townhouse, and find a parking space right out front. I try not to read that as a good omen. Of course I am the last one there because shoots always run long, and the five other people there have already started eating. Jessie S. gets up to greet me, and gives me a kiss hello that is more than just a kiss hello. It is just wet and open enough to be both a wish and a promise. I now know exactly where this night is headed, and what a wonderful piece of knowledge that is.

Dinner is delightful. Her mentor, Barbara, is in her late fifties, a particular kind of New York woman who has not had the hard-driving career, but has had a number of interesting jobs over the years, who knows and loves the city and how to thrive in it, and who goes to all sorts of cultural events, from the opera to hole-in-the-wall theater.

The dance concert the three of us are going to is downtown, on the Lower East Side (another part of the shtetl), at an old gas station that has been turned into an indoor-outdoor performance space. Folding chairs are set up on the pavement, and dancers use the old pumps and light poles. It is very site specific, and good if unmemorable. I enjoy it mostly because, after Jessie’s kiss, this whole concert is foreplay.

The performance ends, and we politely critique it as we walk back toward the car. We get there, and Barbara says, “Don’t drive me all the way back uptown, you guys still have a night ahead of you.” We protest, but she insists, and hails a cab. Jessie and I share a look that says, what a perceptive woman.

So we have a car and it is a late summer Saturday night, and the city is our oyster. We decide to ride the Ferry, which goes from the tip of lower Manhattan, past the Statue of Liberty, to Staten Island. Then ride it back. Many people do that, it is a cheap and fun date. Takes an hour or so, round trip, and you are out on the water and the lights of the city are breathtaking. Jessie and I talk, gaze, wrap our arms around each other a bit, but do not kiss.

Then we hit a casual restaurant, one with outside tables, have a drink and a late bite. Talk about college and art and what the hell to do with our lives. Jessie S. still has that great laugh, full and expressive, and it is fun to set it off. Soon, it is 3 a.m. We are the only people left, and the staff is sweeping up.

“Looks like it’s time to go,” I say.

“Then let’s go,” she says.

Even though we had not talked about it, there was no question where we were going: Her place in Brooklyn, a nice two-bedroom apartment on the entire third floor of a four-story brownstone. I had been there before for a small party she had given, so I knew it. We walked in, dropped whatever stuff we were carrying at the door, and easily and without ceremony headed to her bedroom, in the back, as if we had already been there many times before.

Her room was neat and tidy, and nicely decorated in 1980s post-college chic.

“Nice bedroom,” I say.

“I cleaned up because I knew you would be back here,” Jessie says.

Hearing that had the same effect as if she had reached down my pants to feel my ass. She really had been planning this, done everything to make it possible, and even prepared for later. This was a perfect bookend to the kiss she gave me at the beginning of the evening. (Later, when I relate this to a friend of mine, he observes, “You didn’t fuck her; she fucked you.”)

So at close to four in the morning, after a wonderfully long and full date, we begin what becomes the most intense sex affair I ever had.

That night, we are hot and hungry, the long, delicious delay of the night only swelling our desire. We start standing, and she is quick to reach down my pants, even with my hands still around her back. We undress while standing, without taking our mouths off each other, and are quickly naked and on the bed, those neatly-made covers pulled aside.

As we intertwine, we are like two old lovers reuniting and reigniting, and at the same time it is like the first time with someone new, fumbling in thrilling urgency to know this unfamiliar body. Jessie S. is a different woman than those two times in college: she is confident and playful and intent. Her nipples are very definitely erect, and when I remark on that and remind her of the January afternoon in her dorm, of her discomfort and inexperience, she claims to remember nothing of it.

The sex that night, that early morning, is wonderful and loud, and goes on a long time, with themes and variations and pleasant detours, so that by the time we finally finish and collapse into sleep it is turning light outside.

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