Catholic Girl Encounters With Jewish Men
UR-JEW
Freshman year of high school I was just getting off Accutane and my skin was clear but I was crazy. I joined the fencing team and started starving myself. I was on woman’s sabre and the Ur-Jew was on men’s sabre. I was just starting to be sexually attracted to men. The Ur-Jew was the first guy I wanted to fuck, even though he didn’t wash his hair. My fencing friend also had a crush on him and we’d talk about what sexual things we wanted to do to him. I had never seen a penis.
My fencing friend and I left a note on his gigantic house’s door one night imitating the note from Ghost World. His parents found it. He told me to fuck off through Instant Messanger. I tried to kill myself with Extra Strength Tylenol.
CITY JEW
Senior year of high school my friend fell for this guy who played piano. The City Jew was the pianist’s best friend. I read his Xanga obsessively. We talked a lot about philosophy on Instant Messenger. I was going through my Read Nietzsche in High School phase. He was out of my league but he had been fat growing up so he didn’t realize it. He told me he thought he loved me over Instant Messenger. I signed off, went into the bathroom and ran the water for a shower.
About a year later I went to the City Jew’s house. His weed was potent. I fell asleep while standing up at a show and knocked someone over. We are still Facebook friends.
PARIS JEW
The Paris Jew was the first man I was completely naked in front of. This was my fall semester sophomore year abroad. The summer before I worked at an adult novelty store and had only gone to second base with my then-boyfriend because he never made a move. In Paris I pretended to be really sexually experienced even though I was a virgin.
I met the Paris Jew at one of the welcome day assemblies. I brushed him off because his eyebrows were like tire treads. Then I don’t remember what happened, I got really into him. My friends and I met him at this international student’s bridge in Paris. My friends disappeared as planned and the Paris Jew and I went back to his apartment which was an eight-flight walk-up and crashed. I woke up and opened the windows the next day. His view looked like a high-budget travel film. He bought dates and bread and we spent the day hungover and smoking rolled cigarettes. When we were about to nap midday he kissed me sudden and hard. All of my clothes came off but he still had his pants on. I told him I didn’t want to sleep with him because I liked him too much. He told me about how he once choked his father against a wall. His favorite book was Ham on Rye.
The next day I stood naked in the mirror. His bite marks were ochre-colored. I got really into Pavement because that was his favorite band. I listened to Wowee Zowee on repeat. He was in love with an Asian girl who dressed well but had busted teeth. I only went to his apartment one time after that. I touched his leg and he said we were just friends. We crashed on the bed together. I couldn’t sleep because all I could hear was his heartbeat. I wanted to listen to his heartbeat forever, and falling asleep meant missing a few extra seconds of that experience.
ART JEW
My junior year I moved to Bushwick with this girl who I had met at a party. We had an instant connection and as soon as we moved in together we started hanging out constantly. She brought me to the Art Jew’s house which was four blocks away. I was a lot like my roommate and he had a crush on my roommate. One time we were on the McKibbin roof and the Art Jew broke open a glow stick and painted our skin. Then we got really afraid the goo was toxic.
I told my roommate he looked like Woody Allen. She said he hated that comparison. He had the same mannerisms, and glasses, and balding pattern, and masturbation fixation. He was an inch shorter than me. His grandmother bought him these huge shoes that made him two inches taller that my roommate called the Frankenstein shoes. Once I gave him a handjob before school and thought how much it was like milking a cow, how you have to kind of massage the teat instead of just pulling it. He came like a sprinkler system with low water pressure.
UPPER EAST SIDE JEW
I met the Upper East Side Jew after I graduated, when I went over to a good friend’s house. My good friend was obsessed with him. He spoke French to his mother over the phone. He started kissing me when my friend left the room. He was one of the few guys I’ve kissed who knew what to do with his tongue. My friend found out and she sequestered me and suggested a threesome. I said no. She asked me not to sleep with him. I said I wouldn’t. Then my friend and I crashed on her bed. He came in later and started having sex with my friend. I clung to my Lady of Guadalupe brooch and said some Hail Mary’s.
He was really into the fact I was Catholic. He texted me a lot. It was hard to keep up because I still had a flip phone, and had to press 7 four times if I wanted a V. He came to a few of my band’s shows. I really liked kissing him but was not passionate about it. We went sledding in Prospect Park. We didn’t have a sled so we had to use the broken pieces of plastic on the hill. While he was kissing me I looked over his shoulder and watched a plane. It was a movie-perfect date but not passionate. We went to a diner and I got a Reuben sandwich. I was thinking about how I had never dated a guy this wealthy. He asked if I wanted a relationship and I said no. He paid for my lunch.
After that he stopped texting me. I thought it was because it was obvious I wasn’t going to put out/wasn’t interested. Recently we started talking again and he told me the reason he had stopped texting me was because one time we had met by accident at a bar. I had been black-out drunk and punched him in the face.
QUEENS JEW
I was graduated for over a year and I was at a bar because my good friend was turning twenty-three. I started talking to the Queens Jew because he looked like my first-grade crush only not seven years old. I told my friend that I had never had a crush so fast and it was true. My good friend told me he was the Upper East Side Jew’s best friend.
He was bad at texting. I stopped caring because I was used to bogus shit by this point. Then after the holidays I made plans to hang out with my good friend. She overslept. I sent her text message that was passive-aggressive and only used “I” statements. She invited me over to eat Papa John’s alone but there were people there watching football. I was dressed in dirty pants and a dirty sweater. The Queens Jew arrived. I had forgotten he existed because I thought I was going to lose my virginity to my old boyfriend when I went home for Christmas, but hadn’t. I wanted the Queens Jew more than ever. Our eyes kept meeting then not. We went to smoke cigarettes and he let me borrow his coat which I Googled later. It was $2,000. I kept doing whiskey shots because I wanted to kiss him. We set up the pull out bed and I kind of reached for his hand like it was a school dance in 1870. We started kissing. I got on top of him but I was too tired to give him a blowjob. The next day the cat with thumbs was sleeping in the crook of my arm. I had “All of the Lights” stuck in my head.
I didn’t hear from him because he was bad at texting or just not interested. Then the Upper East Side Jew set us up and we went over to my house. My roommates looked surprised because this was the first boy I had brought home in two years. We smoked. I sat on his stomach and thought about how I had never kissed someone I was this attracted to. I told him I wanted to give him a blowjob but wasn’t going to. He choked me and pulled my hair. I was really into it but didn’t take my clothes off. His back was covered in acne because he had taken Accutane, too, and it had all gone from his face onto his back.
The next morning I thought I was having a heart attack but it was a bruise that went from my collarbone to my sternum. I caught him smoking my weed without asking. I was mad because he was wearing a different expensive jacket from last time, and my apartment barely had heat. But I didn’t say anything because I was worried if I did he wouldn’t come over again and hold me and choke me.