For straight couples, there is one key difference between sex for the male and for the female: a woman gets a penis inserted into her while a man gets to insert his penis into someone else. That’s all nice and good. Sex is pleasurable for both genders. But from what I’ve discovered, only one gender has to save room in her body if a penis is to go into it — meaning that sometimes, if you’ve eaten a hearty meal, there isn’t enough room for a penis.
Sure, women can eat and then have sex. But they really can’t eat a lot. You know the saying “You can always make room for dessert”? Well, you can’t always make room for a dick. Especially if you’ve eaten dessert.
Sometimes I’m just too full to have sex. I don’t know for sure if this is something other girls experience or just me, because I’ve never heard any of them discuss it. Maybe it’s supposed to be kept secret among us girls, information so sensitive that we cannot risk releasing it in conversation. Or maybe I’m actually the only one who gets too full to be able to have sex, and if that’s the case, then pretend this never happened.
I love to eat (ever since I got over my fear of eating). I tend to eat until I feel sick. Similar to how people test their alcohol consumption to see how much they can drink without puking, I’ve tested how much food I can eat and still fuck. On nights I know I’m going to be having sex, of course I eat less, which is annoying but in the end it’s worth it, because you get to have sex and feel good and not bloated while having it. This — and the fact that you shaved for no reason — is why being flaked on sucks, especially for girls, because in anticipation of hanging out, we ate just one piece of pizza instead of the regular four, and now it’s late and we’re hungry and we didn’t even get laid. Although not eating and then getting flaked on is still preferable to the times where we eat a shit load and then randomly get asked to hang out. This is most distressing because there is almost nothing in the world we wouldn’t drop to spend time with our crush. The only reason we will say no to a spontaneous hang is because it’s after dinner and we don’t feel hot. It will pain us to say no for this reason, but trust me, we will.
I suspect there are women everywhere who don’t want to have sex with their significant others for the sole reason of being full. However, no one is comfortable with using the excuse of being full. We’re all perfectly fine using our periods as excuses, but when it comes to being full, we find other justifications, perhaps because our instinct when it comes to rejecting men is to blame something we have no control over whatsoever, like sexual orientation or religion. It’d be cool if there was some involuntary signal like our eyes turn light blue when we’re uninterested. Anything to avoid hurting a person, and the scene that invariably follows.
I’m also someone who came of age during the height of the blue-balls myth. In high school we were taught (I don’t know by who, but that person should be arrested) that it was morally wrong to not finish off a boy that you were hooking up with. The person who taught us (again, WHO AND WHERE ARE YOU?!) made it very clear that it doesn’t matter how you get there, just make sure they don’t leave having not shot their load. If you couldn’t commit from kissing to finishing, you really shouldn’t kiss at all, and if you couldn’t kiss at all, you would have to think of an excuse that wouldn’t hurt their feelings, like “I have a boyfriend” or our most sacred “I’m on my period,” which sadly doesn’t go the extra mile to protect against blowjobs. From my personal research, every other generation seems not to have been as burdened by the “Don’t tease a guy or they will be writhing in pain” sentiment. Even in old movies, the woman is constantly leading the guy on. They share one small kiss, and it’s not even until the last scene. Fortunately, before we subjected ourselves to even more horror, we were informed by some hero (I don’t know who this was either but thank you) that it was all, in fact, a myth, and guys are, in fact, pieces of shit. Still, the excuses and fear of disappointing someone had lasting psychological impacts. Like the inability to admit to others that we are too full to fuck.
When an ex-boyfriend and I would go out for dinner, we’d order the same amount that four people would. I know that because one time after we finished our meal I overheard the waiter recommend our exact order as a feast for the double date next to us. After eating an entire meal sized for two pregnant women, my then-boyfriend asked if we could go get ice cream. Obviously this is something I love to do, but it would have been nice to be told in advance so I could have rationed my courses to accommodate how much my stomach would be able to load. I had begun to find myself in this situation a lot in this relationship, as we were constantly eating and fucking. I was sick of the secrets and lies, so after many dinners and many ice creams, I told him about being too full to fuck. I didn’t have much of a choice, as being touched by your boyfriend when you’re full is one of the most irritating sensations there is. When you’re full, even him putting a hand on your side can be upsetting. I had to come clean after my boyfriend rolled on top of me in bed to kiss me after a big dinner and I accidentally screamed, “GET THE FUCK OFF ME! PLEASE DON’T TOUCH ME!”
It was nice to have everything out in the open.
“If I eat ice cream, I won’t be able to have sex later,” I declared after our meal. There’s no debate that it’s a super-weird and unsexy thing to admit. It’s also a super-weird and unsexy thing for me to have to decide which I would rather do, eat ice cream or have sex. They’re pretty on par. They definitely both fill you up, emotionally and physically. It was too hard for me to pick, so I asked him to. “Would you rather eat ice cream with me or have sex with me?” For him not to choose having sex with me would be mildly insulting. But he would never want to deprive me of ice cream, and depriving me of ice cream for sex feels kind of problematic.
Like most people would, he wondered, “Why can’t we do both?”
Well, both cannot occur because I do not have room in my stomach for a full dinner, two handfuls of cream, and a penis.
I chose sex so no one would be displeased. That psychological impact, man. We sat right outside the ice cream shop, close enough that I could smell the fresh waffle cones being pressed in the iron. I stared at him as he took every lick, jeal ous that straight men can do both sex and ice cream, since they ultimately have everything.
I watched as a drip of mint chip slowly melted down the cone and onto his hand.
“You dropped some,” I said somberly.
“Just get ice cream, and we won’t have sex tonight,” he said.
“No, no, it’s fine. I don’t want it.”
He licked the melted mint chip off his hand and chomped off a bite of the cone . “No, do it. I want you to do it,” he said. And of course, despite him saying this out of kindness, I thought he didn’t want to have sex with me, because he was telling me to get ice cream. And he thought I didn’t want to have sex with him because I was salivating at the ice cream. And at that point, no matter which one I chose, neither would be as good as it was supposed to be, because something great had to be sacrificed in the process.
Excerpted from NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS: Essays by Cazzie David. Copyright © 2020 by Cazzie David. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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