Dedicated to the men that couldn’t make me come

Illustration by Indigo Jade

Being a very sexual person that doesn’t often come during sex is confusing. 

I at least want them to ask, though. Last night he finished three times in three different places over the course of just a couple hours. He didn’t even bring up my orgasm as a possibility or concept. Sometimes you can just tell when a man has never witnessed a woman’s orgasm, and it makes me so sad that the pity almost outweighs my disappointment that I don’t get off and he doesn’t seem to give a fuck. I have this fantasy that he is actually thinking about it, that it’s actually all he’s focused on, but he’s too humiliated by his own incompetence to bring it up; maybe he thinks that I’ll just forget about pursuing my own orgasm if he just doesn’t bring attention to it, and then he won’t have to face what he’s lacking. This overcomplicated fantasy is my own naive delusion. In reality, it slips his mind entirely. 

You can tell when a man has never seen a sex toy before. When he’s surprised that I have condoms and lube in the drawer of my bedside table; when he says,: “So I just have to ask, who’s better in bed, men or women?” with a smile on his face. I wish I’d told him the truth: that I’ve been fucked with strap-ons bigger than his dick, that fingers have more skillfully hit the right spots, that in reality it’s more about actually giving a fuck than it is about gender. 

But I tell him women are better at kissing. He doesn’t take any pointers. My experience is amusing until it’s time to find a girlfriend, apparently. And they always assume that I’m looking to be a girlfriend! Their girlfriend! As if I can’t be just as sexually distracted and detached as any man, just with clearer communication skills and scheduling priorities. 

The sweetest men are always the most harmful in their obliviousness; I protect his ego because he was nice to me. He complimented my handwriting once in high school. He speaks fondly of his exes. He asks me about my relationship with my family and expresses minor interest in my tattoos. He asks if he can slap my face and I laugh and I say yes. He does it so softly that I don’t see the point; I think he thought it was for me. It does nothing for me. It’s not really that funny that he asked either. I’m not really sure why I laughed.

I get off to sucking his dick. I can tell that’s not reciprocated, as he’s not particularly enthusiastic. He might be one of those men that think eating pussy is a different type of intimacy reserved for committed relationships while simultaneously begging every third girl to suck his dick. Poor guy. I need to shut up.

I’ve discovered recently that I get off on withholding orgasm from the men I sleep with. They think it’s hot to be dominated, and I find it powerful to tell a man when he can and can’t come. Sometimes I’m tempted to stop before they get there at all, just to let them hear themselves whine until they realize who they are, how they leave me just as starving every single time. I never do. 

I tell him I like to jack off when I’m high. He tells me he does too but feels differently about it, then describes scrolling through PornHub stoned, “desensitized to everything.” He’s laughing it off, but we’re pressed against each other and it’s like I can feel the shame being emitted off of his body with its heat, from his chest onto mine on top of it, and it sinks in that maybe I should be ashamed of myself. But I don’t watch porn. And he doesn’t make me come. It’s only fair that I do it myself. Suddenly I’m a sex toy. I hug him tighter and check the time.

As he’s getting dressed he paces around the room a few times and tells me that finishing inside of me has just changed everything, and he’s worried that nothing will compare now that he’s felt that. I think of the girls he’ll talk into going raw in the future, and how it is now on my conscience that he may convince a future girlfriend to get on birth control so he can spill wherever and whenever he wants. He complains that he might not get hard for the women he plans to fuck during his trip to Europe, and I think to myself cruelly that they’ve been spared the disappointment. Maybe he meant to flatter me.  

He panics momentarily and asks if I have any reason to lie about my IUD, wondering if I want his kids or something. This is insulting. I answer two years when he asks how long I’ve had it, and he says, “Damn Jackie. You were getting after it your freshman year?” I wouldn’t have used the phrase “getting after it” back then, but maybe I just need to grow the fuck up. I’m a sex toy. My own sex toys are just meant to satisfy me until I have a job to do. 

He doesn’t care if he makes me come. I don’t want to be the person whocriticizes him into caring, because he just doesn’t. It’s more energy to explain to him why my pleasure should mean something than it is to wait until he leaves to take care of myself.