Molly and Jack

By Molly McMann

I moved to this city right out of college, because I wanted to live near my sister, Mona, who had recently bought a bunch of land on the outskirts of town. Unfortunately, I moved out here with my then boyfriend Scott, whom I already knew deep inside that I wanted to break up with. I only took Scott to Mona's place one time and it was awkward. Everybody but him could tell that I was going to dump him.

So after a few weeks, I did break up with him, but that meant I had to find a place to live. I could've stayed at my sister's, but it's kind of a long drive and I had a really crappy car that I didn't trust to make that trip every day. Fortunately, that's also when I met Shelly and, through her, Bea and Dee.

So I moved into Bea and Dee's house and got to hang out every evening with six hard-partying lesbian roommates and whatever assortment of their million friends happened to show up for drinks that night. Meanwhile, I started going down to Mona's house about every other weekend.

These two things happened at roughly the same time and I was absolutely off-the-charts ecstatic with my new life. And the reason it was so fabulous (not counting all the wonderful people involved) was that BOTH of those places gave me lots of opportunity to do my favorite thing -- go naked.

PLUS, these two settings each offered me a different kind of nude experience. With the Roommates, I could hang out casually naked in front of lots of different people, mostly women but some men -- a slightly different crowd every night. However, there was only a tiny bit of backyard where I would not be seen by half of downtown. By contrast, at my sister's house there were fewer people, but an amazingly vast amount of private land where I could frolic naked in all kinds of weather.

And unlike at the Roommates' house, where I am nearly always the only one nude, at my sister's I had someone to frolic with. And no, I don't mean Mona, who gets no particular thrill out of being naked herself but loves it when other girls do.

Mona had by this point settled down with Libby, the sweetest, most adorable little ballerina blonde in the universe (and everyone who meets her would agree with that description). And she just happens to love being naked just as much as I do. Mona says that's one of the reasons she fell for Libby -- because Mona had gotten such a kick out of me wanting to go naked so much all through our childhood (and especially after puberty kicked in). It's probably best not to psychoanalyze this too much, but Mona and I have always been really close, and in adulthood, we tend to pick romantic partners who remind us of each other.

They had been together two or three years by this point so I knew Libby pretty well, and we had hung out naked several times before -- but just indoors or on a small deck. The breathtaking new aspect was having all this land -- literally thousands of acres of woods and prairie and hills and wetlands. It was just mind-blowing to me to have that much freedom to run around naked in the sunshine and in the rain and even in the snow! So whenever I would visit them for the weekend, I would be naked most of the time. And regardless of the weather, Libby and I would take hikes around the property wearing only our shoes.

And that is how I first met Jack. Mona and Libby had told me about him before. I knew he had been Libby's college boyfriend before she quite figured out her orientation, and I knew they had asked him to be their sperm donor to get Libby pregnant. I also knew, because Libby can't keep a secret, that she wanted to match the two of us up. However, I dismissed that idea before I even met him. Being bisexual, I tend to alternate genders in my romantic relationships. I had just broken up with one dude and had no interest in being with another dude for a while. Plus, I figured my relationship with my sister and her nudist girlfriend was already soap opera-like enough without me also having sex with their sperm donor. Libby has actually written quite a bit about Jack on her own blog, which you can read here.

On their property -- "The Estate" as they call it -- there were three houses. Their own house was built in the 1940s, but down by the road was a big Victorian house from the 1890s that Mona had sold to another female couple that whom they were close friends with. In the opposite direction, up the hill among the pine trees, there was a ramshackle little A-frame that was weather-beaten and run down from decades of sitting empty. This, they told me, was where Jack was staying on his occasional weekend visits. He lived and worked in another city, but was fixing up the A-frame as his place when visiting.

So, one snowy winter weekend when Libby and I were setting off on a chilly naked walk, she reminded me that Jack was visiting that weekend and that we could avoid going near his place if I preferred. But I waved off that concern. Plenty of random dudes had seen me naked in college, and I sure as heck wasn't going to limit my newfound freedom just because of one guy -- especially since the specific guy in question was someone they knew well and trusted. So I said, heck if he's home now, let's drop by and, as Bea and Dee would say to me, "get y'all met up."

We hiked up the hill for about 20 minutes as the snow came down in fat flakes that melted on our skin, all the way to the top where you can look down at the highway 40 or 50 feet below. Then, we hiked back down the hill on a different trail that Libby said would take us past Jack's house. By this point, it had warmed up, and the snow was turning to rain. That actually made it feel colder because now we were completely wet, but another thing Libby and I have in common is a high tolerance for cold when we are motivated.

Anyone who knows me well is aware that, to me, the sexiest thing to experience -- better than sex itself sometimes -- is to be introduced to someone brand new when I am naked. That is always a giddy, erotic thrill. Usually this happens indoors, and more often than not it is other women I'm meeting. I'm more cautious about meeting guys this way, but I love it if there is just one dude . . . and it's a secure environment . . . and one of my friends has vouched for said dude. That was the case here -- plus, I'd seen his picture and knew he was lumberjack hot.

So, as we walked down the trail and saw Jack's house -- with him on the porch shoveling snow! -- I was really into the moment. There he was, pausing in his work to watch us approach. Just then the sun came out, though I could still feel raindrops on my skin, and I knew that I was glowing. When your skin is very pale, and your hair is bright orange-red -- and you are naked -- you tend to glow in the sunlight. It's one of my superpowers.

I saw how he looked at me as I walked towards him, and that moment was like a drug to me.

Yes, I admit, I have always been an attention junkie. I was the youngest of four children and impossibly cute. As a result of this burden, I became addicted to people finding me adorable.

As I got older, naturally I wanted to be considered sexy as well as adorable. But not sexy in a way that gives you (a mere mortal) any meaningful aspiration of ever actually having sex with me, for I am, after all, a goddess -- but you think there is a chance, just a chance, that perhaps through your self-deprecating rakish charm that I might deign to choose you on a whim, undeserving though you are . . . and so you have hope.

That is the sweet spot -- what my addiction wants to see in someone's eyes, especially a guy, and not just any run-of-the-mill dude, but the kind of guy I could imagine potentially being with (after prolonged wooing involving wine and witty banter, of course).

And I have to say, in the few seconds he had to work with, Jack really nailed that expression. His eyes confessed to me with abject honesty that I was more than just adorable and sexy -- I was enchantment itself.

Sadly, this all happened during a quite brief encounter. Libby introduced us and he invited us to come in out of the weather but Libby made some excuse and we just waved goodbye and continued down the trail. She told me later she thought that's what I wanted her to do, which it hadn't been But I decided it was better that way -- short first impressions are the best -- and if I wanted to see him again (or have him see me) it would be easy to make happen.

That was all I saw of him that weekend, but I the next time I visited, Mona and Libby were having several friends over for dinner -- including Jack. The other guests were two female couples that Mona and Libby are particularly tight with. So it was to be those four, plus me and Jack.

I was wrestling a little with the question of whether to be naked. I always want to, of course, but I sometimes fret about pushing myself on people who might not want to see that much flesh right there at the dinner table. But in this case, all of them were already accustomed to seeing Libby naked at the dinner table so that made it much easier to decide.

Libby, of course, was unabashedly trying to match the two of us up, and I was trying to get her to dial that part down. I didn't want to get in a relationship with him; I just wanted to go naked in front of him and do a little noncommittal flirting.

And that's all that happened. Everybody came over, Libby and I were naked, and it was a fun evening. I had previously met the couple that lived in the house down by the road, Jane and Margo, and I had met Andrea a few years ago when she and Mona were basketball teammates in college. The only one I had never met was Andrea's girlfriend, Dana, who is an adorable little thing with a great smile. When I met Andrea before, it had been in a big group, so it was intriguing to observe her again in a smaller setting. Truth be told, if she had been unattached at that moment I probably would have been more drawn to her than to Jack. She is tall, muscular and athletic, but still beautifully feminine.

I was having a positively fabulous time pretending to be just a teeny bit shy about my nakedness in front of these new people -- all of us standing around in my sister's kitchen holding our wine glasses as Libby finished her cooking and chattered away.

When it was time to sit at their round dining room table, I knew Libby would try to put me next to Jack, but I pretended to be oblivious and deftly put her between us. So, Mona was to my right, Libby was to my left, and then Jack was to her left -- and I liked it that way.

Although there was plenty of overlapping conversation going in all directions, Mona was mostly engaged to her right with the two couples (one of which was planning a wedding), while Jack, Libby and I mostly chatted among ourselves. This was a lovely dynamic because I was, after all, naked at a dinner party talking with an attractive man I barely knew, who looked at me just the right way.

I liked having Libby in between us as a buffer, in part because she is never at a loss for words and can keep a lively conversation going all by herself if necessary. And yet, like a good matchmaker, she was only interjecting as needed because she wanted me and Jack to do most of the talking.

We had a great time, and I did like him. He was quite nice to look at, but didn't seem to make any effort beyond being clean and having his hair combed. I like that in a man. He had nice eyes, nice teeth -- and a fabulous jaw line beneath his short beard.

I liked watching how he and Libby interacted because I knew they had a long history together and were, of course, planning to combine their genes together to produce another human being.

Part of Libby's appeal is that she's a bit fragile. She's a wonderful human being, positively effervescent in the most natural, genuine way. Everyone at that table loved her in a special way that was fundamentally protective in nature. She's bipolar and swings back and forth between being the life of any party to spending all day in bed with the shades drawn. I feel fiercely protective of her too, and would not hesitate to personally put to death anyone who threatened or hurt her -- but I probably wouldn't actually have to do that because Mona would have killed him first.

I knew, intellectually, that Jack undoubtedly had even stronger such feelings. He had known her since she was 18, and had once been her lover. And then I saw it. One of them made some little joke, which was funny to me as well, but which I could tell held some additional nuance from their shared past. And I saw it in his eyes -- he still loved her. Not just the protective love we all shared, but something more. And I thought, of course, he's still in love with her. If I'd had the same backstory with her, I would be too.

This realization helped crystallize my own feelings. He was off limits. I could flirt with him and enjoy his occasional deft glances down my body, but nothing physical or romantic would happen between us. And I was glad to have come to that decision because back in the city I had my eye on a girl I'd met at the gym. I didn't need the complication of another dude in my life.

Libby had by this point gotten up from the table to clear plates and bring dessert -- refusing any offers of assistance, and leaving Jack and me to keep things going on our own. I picked that moment to scoot my chair in a little because I knew that doing so would make my boobs wobble, and I watched his eyes as they flitted downward for a split second before coming back up to my own. He gave a little smile of polite admission that yes, he had looked, and yes, he would do so again if a similar wobble should take place -- for how could any man not look at so beautiful a woman at such a moment. That is what his eyes said, and I allowed myself to bask in his unapologetic admiration. I decided I was going to enjoy being around this guy . . . but I would not get involved with him.

And that is how things went most of that year. I would go down there about twice a month, usually arriving by noon Saturday and leaving Sunday before dinner. Sometimes Jack was there that weekend, and sometimes he wasn't. After that dinner party, it occurred to me that I had now met him twice, but both times I had been naked. So, naturally I decided it would be fun to see how long I could go without him ever seeing me dressed -- and this was pretty easily accomplished since I only wore clothes when first arriving and when getting ready to leave.

It was not until our third or fourth such encounter that he and I first talked about what we both knew -- that Libby was trying to match us up. We had always laughed off her sometimes obvious efforts -- the most recent of which had just taken place. She and I went for one of our naked walks and again we stopped by his place. It was morning and he invited us in for coffee. This time, she accepted, but as soon as we were settled at his rustic kitchen table, Libby pretended to have just remembered something important and dashed out the door. Jack and I got a good laugh over her terrible acting performance, but it broke the ice on the subject.

He just grinned and said, "personally, I think it's a fine idea." I wasn't sure what to say and after a pause he added, "or we could just let her keep trying. Because that's fun too."

I let another awkward moment tick by and then blurted, "do you love her?"

"Libby? Yes, I do."

"I mean . . . are you in love with her?"

"I used to be."

"And now?"

"Well, I do still . . . love her, but I've had several years to adjust to the fact that we could never have that kind of relationship again because she's gay. And with your sister. Who would kill me."

I laughed. "You're not entirely convincing."

Now, he laughed. "You can be unconvinced if you want, but I'm honestly not in love with her. I used to be -- very much -- but I got over that. We became friends, but then for a couple years we fell out of touch and I thought perhaps that was it, that we would never see each other again. And then suddenly a few months ago, she leaped back into my life asking me to help her get pregnant. I agreed to do so on the condition that I would be in the child's life and the child would know I'm their father. I didn't ask for any legal paternal rights; just that."

"She told me about that," I said.

"And we've already tried it once with the turkey baster."

"She told me about that too."

"So I do have a lot of complicated emotions going on lately."

"And Libby is so lovable."

He laughed. "Yes, she is that."

That made me laugh too, and I said, "hell, I'm in love with her too."

Another time when I was driving down, Libby sent me a text warning me that Jack was already there, and suggesting I might want to undress in my car before walking around the house to their deck where everyone had gathered.

Her saying "everyone" reminded me that there was a big game on TV (I don't remember which one), but that meant Mona's buddies from her various sports teams were over to watch it on their big-ass television, which Mona would wheel out to the deck under the shade of the awning.

This was confirmed when I pulled in their driveway, which they share with Margo and Jane. The drive goes past their house and up the hill to Mona and Libby's house. Cars were parked along the driveway going halfway down the hill.

It was summer and all I wore was a little cotton dress and sandals. I parked at the end and pulled off my dress in the car just in case he could see from wherever he was at that moment. Best not to take any chances. I decided to leave my sandals and purse behind too, tucking both under the seat. Now I was down to a bit of jewelry, which felt just right. I don't know if my heart was literally racing, but it felt that way, as I climbed the hill barefoot on the cool grass along the driveway. I could hear the game and the party as I reached the patio that wraps around their house.

When I made the last turn, I was suddenly in the middle of the party. I knew a few of the people, but not most of them. Most were women, but not all. I grinned my way through the crowd, eating it up as I headed towards the grill where I'd spotted Mona and Libby with a couple chicks I didn't recognize. On the other side of the patio, I saw Jack talking to Dana, and they both waved as I went by.

This was so great -- a perfect moment. I turned back towards Mona and she gave me a sly smile that I recognized from growing up. The expression meant: I am playing a trick on you, but you don't know it yet. Uh-oh. Fortunately, I knew that expression also meant "trust me," and I always did.

The only thing I could think of was that whatever her little game was, it must have to do with Jack, but he was 20 yards away looking innocent. Then I noticed the faces of the two other women, and now I recognized them.

"JB and Robbie!" I squealed and threw hugs around them. These were Mona's best buddies in high school. The three of them had been on all the sports teams, and because they were all lesbians, they bonded as drinking and weed-smoking companions in between games.

These two sweet butch chicks were also the first people other than Mona that I went casually nude around. Mona tricked me into that too, and I was quickly addicted.

So now, seeing them again in this setting -- and them having just watched me walking into the party naked -- all of those teenage feelings rushed back through me. I felt myself blushing, and I am a lavish blusher so it was obvious. Everyone laughed, and that made me blush more.

By this point, Mona had waved Jack and Dana over and suddenly there he was next to me watching me blush. Then Mona, JB and Robbie alternated telling him embarrassing stories about me.

And of course, I loved all of it, even when some of their little stories made me cringe. I loved it because, well, as I may have mentioned I am an attention junkie. And not just any old kind of attention. Sure, I suppose it might be gratifying to get attention for curing cancer or winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but that's not the kind of attention I crave. THIS was what I wanted -- to be the center of attention in an adoring crowd of half strangers . . . while I am naked.

And then Mona was leading me around the party introducing me to new people, and of course I loved every nanosecond of that as well. There were only about 25 or 30 people, but it felt like a lot more in that moment. I looked back to see Jack laughing with JB and Robbie. God knew what they were telling him now, but I was glad of it, and glad to be meeting Mona's current teammates -- who all found me adorable, sexy and enchanting.

All of this happened within the first 12 minutes of my arrival and I did not have a drop of liquor in me yet. This was soon rectified when my sister disappeared briefly and returned to hand me a tall vodka tonic, and when that one was gone she gave me another. I got a little hammered by the end of that evening, but not so hammered to not remember throwing myself at Jack. He knew I was drunk so he did not take advantage of my whispered suggestion that we sneak off and go to his place. Instead, he slow-danced me across the brick patio towards the house and handed me off to Libby, who slow-danced me into the house and put me to bed. The next time I saw Jack, he acted like it never happened. I wanted to say something, to acknowledge it at least or maybe joke about it, but I still didn't know what I wanted so I avoided that conversation.

So that's how it went most of that year -- during which I had my brief fling with Jaye back in the city. And, well, there was Annie, but that one hardly counts as a relationship because she was basically straight and just sort of experimenting, and I was, you know, just helping her do that when we had sex all those times.

But both of those little relationships were over by the end of summer and I was still going to my sister's and exchanging occasional flirty bon mots with Jack. Summer turned to fall and as the weeks went on, I found myself thinking about him a lot at random moments, remembering little things about him, and I decided I was going to do something about it -- I was going to throw myself at him while sober!

But then, the next weekend that I went down there, Libby pulled me aside and whispered that Jack had a girlfriend back in the city where he lived most of the time. I was ticked at myself for not acting earlier, but I was more worried about Libby. She acted like she was happy he'd found someone, but I wasn't so sure. Then, later that week, she called me all distraught because she had met the girlfriend -- Leslie -- at some charity event they both were involved with, and the introduction hadn't gone well. Libby said she just got the feeling that Leslie didn't like her and considered her a threat. Which, to be fair, is a reasonable thing for someone in Leslie's position to be concerned about.

I should mention that Libby had by this point also become really disheartened by their baby making efforts. They had tried the semi-natural turkey baster method for about six months without success. They had not yet tried fertility drugs because both Libby and Mona were concerned about adding any drugs into the situation. She had already worked with her psychiatrist to back off the drugs she'd been taking for bipolar, and there was no way to know if she was going to suddenly have a bad episode just because of that. Injecting hormones into her body seemed like a bad idea. They could keep trying with the turkey baster, but now that Jack was with someone -- someone who didn't like her -- Libby told me she was starting to think they would have to just give up. She didn't want to be in the way of Jack finding his true love.

And then, the next weekend that she was expecting him to visit, Jack told her he had a work-related conflict -- which he probably did, but she was convinced it was an excuse and the first step in distancing himself from her.

Supposedly he was coming the following weekend, so I made sure I did too. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I had a powerful urge to make him forget Leslie's name. I knew he usually came Friday afternoons so I didn't wait until Saturday and left right after work Friday, getting there about 5:00. As it turned out, Libby and Mona weren't home. I hadn't told them I was coming early, and apparently they'd gone out to dinner or something.

It was October and gloriously sunny, the leaves at their peak. The temperature was in the 50s, but that's plenty warm for me. I left my clothes, jacket and purse in my car and started hiking up the hill to Jack's house wearing just my shoes. But then I started to worry that it was a mistake to just show up on his doorstep naked. What if Leslie was there? She probably wasn't, but I had no way to be sure -- unless I did the obvious, polite thing and asked him first.

So I turned around and went back to my car to get my phone and as I started back up the hill again, I sent him a message just saying "hi."

"Hi yourself," he replied a few seconds later. "Are you coming down this weekend?"

"Actually, I'm here now. Just arrived. Mona and Libby aren't home. Could I come up and see you? Or is it a bad time?"

"It's a good time. Come on up."

"On my way. Is anyone else up there?"

"Just the mice. Who were you expecting?"

"I thought . . . maybe Leslie might be there."

"No."

"Good because that would be awkward since I'm naked."

"I know." he said. "You always are. Plus, I can see you."

I had been so focused on my phone while walking that I didn't realize how close I was. I looked up and there he was on the deck looking back at me. And oh my god, he was shirtless.

The early evening sun was shining on me and I knew I was glowing again. I am not one of those wimpy insecure chicks, always fixated on their catalog of flaws. I feel pretty good about how I look even on ordinary days, and when I have a glow going I have enough self-esteem to power street lights.

He was standing on the deck with his hands on his hips, a black t-shirt draped on the deck railing. Either he had been about to put it on when he got my message or he took it off when he realized I was on my way. It didn't matter to me which was true, but I was kinda rooting for the second. I walked right up to him and kissed him. And it wasn't some ambiguous kiss that could mean different things. I grabbed him by the head and gave him a magnificent, purposeful kiss -- the kind of kiss meant to be written about in a diary and remembered in old age.

"Wow," he whispered when I let go of him. "What was that for?"

"I meant to do that earlier," I said, "before you had a girlfriend." We were no longer touching, but our faces were still only inches apart.

He grinned that crooked grin I love and said, "I don't have a girlfriend."

"Isn't Leslie . . ?"

"We dated a few times, but then we stopped."

"You did?"

He nodded.

"So you're not . . ."

He shook his head. "I hope this doesn't mean you want to take that kiss back," he said, "because I was thinking maybe we could do more of that."

So, I kissed him again, and it went on a long time as I felt his hands now on my bare waist. I pulled my head back enough to look him in the eye. "You really should tell Libby. She's freaked out thinking Leslie doesn't like her and that she's going to influence you to be . . . less close with her . . . with Libby."

"I didn't know she was thinking like that," Jack said. "But I have to say I did get a similar vibe from Leslie when I started telling her about Libby -- which does take a bit of telling. I didn't even get to the naked part. But I knew then that Leslie wasn't right for me."

I didn't want him to see how glad I was of this news for my own reasons, so I teasingly said, "and you chose Libby . . . because you're still in love with her?"

"No," he said, laughing at my persistence on that topic, "and yes. I mean, of course I chose Libby, but not in a romantic way. My current and future friendship with her -- whatever exactly that turns out to be -- is just a non-negotiable part of me. Comes standard with the package."

"That's sweet."

"But I had other reasons to break that off," he said, his hands still on my ribs but gliding up and down a little. "I wanted to make sure I was single just in case one day you decided to walk up here and kiss me."

"That was . . . foresighted of you," I said, giving him another kiss, and this time I leaned in close enough to let my hardened nipples lightly caress his bare chest. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to have sex with him right that minute or force us both to spend the next day or week anticipating and longing for that now-inevitable experience, but just then my phone started ringing. It was Libby.

"We just got home with take-out and saw your car!" Libby said. "Where are you?"

"I just . . . walked up to see Jack . . . since you weren't home."

"Oh, well, um, come on down and . . . and bring him too," she said, trying to sound cheerful "We've got, you know, plenty of food."

Her voice sounded so fragile that I blurted out, "Libby, you don't have to worry about Leslie anymore. He stopped seeing her."

"He told you that?"

"Yes," I said, my eyes filling with tears. "And, honey, you also don't have to worry about ever losing him if he gets some other girlfriend." Jack nodded to let me know it was okay to say more, so I added, "he told me you are a non-negotiable part of his life."

"He did?"

"Those were his exact words," I said, looking Jack in the eye. "Too bad he was too thick-headed to tell you himself, but any chick that wants to be his girlfriend is going to have to fully embrace YOU as part of the package."

I could hear Libby sob and try to catch her breath. When she could speak again, she cried out loud enough for him to hear, "well I wonder where he's gonna find a girl like THAT."