I Don’t Want Your Compliments: A Chef (Woman) Who Wants More Than That

Often, when I think of my partner and I, I note our differences. He grew up moving from place to place with a military family. His parents divorced when he was in his childhood years and he settled in California and eventually Nevada (yes, in Las Vegas) to settle. As he grew up, he told me started off as the sensitive nerd, similar to myself. We both know the nerd doesn’t see much action and unlike me he worked hard to change that; by changing the sensitive attitude and treating girls differently. In essence, they became less like people and more like status markers that solidified his step away from “sensitive”. He made sure to relate to them that everything was temporary and that their time together was strictly for enjoyment purposes only.

Solidified by decades of televised programming and advertisements we have been training girls to like the bad boy. They like the boy that disrespects them but offhandedly thinks about them. In high school, girls often alter their looks, intelligence, interests, personality and more in order to adjust to these boys' desires. They work out, pick out all their clothing, hair and nails to be a draw on the male gaze. It’s at that age, we begin to realize that being a girl has little to do with how we perceive ourselves and everything to do with other people’s perceptions of us. What my partner did back then was learn the insecurities of women (being alone and unwanted) and exploited that for sexual favors. I often remind him that this was not his finest hour but you can’t tell all men this. Others are too busy focusing on how good their actions felt. Eventually, my partner took his actions too far and hurt someone irreparably. It was a wake-up call to his behaviors and he slowly became the considerate brooder I know today. For my partner, learning to hold back came by learning how he hurt others. Jumping from nerd to someone “cool” meant switching lenses, switching back to nerd meant throwing those lenses away.

In school, I was the undesirable one. I stayed myself and didn’t change for anyone, I didn’t know how. Being myself was the only way to live and even my mismatched clothes were wholly my decision. I never downplayed my intelligence, didn’t lose weight or join a team to make myself more appealing. God help me, I figured personality was important and I lived by that. See, mothers tell their daughters to see the good in people but know your worth. They tell you how to sit, how to dress, eat, do your hair, nails, makeup-I think with my male siblings they were praised into adulthood. Their life lessons were about making money, having a car and being successful. To this day, I still don’t see how being able to wear stockings with dresses helped me do better in life. To this day a lot of men don’t truly see women because they were taught to perceive women as physical beings and nothing more. Warnings of ‘don’t get that girl pregnant' supersede conversations of, ‘don’t belittle or lead on women that you find attractive’ or ‘date girls whom are emotionally able to handle rejection' or ‘don’t be opportunistic, some girls are only seeking sex because they are insecure and want lasting meaningful friendships’. We don’t have these discussions with men because the emotional labor is assumed to be on the woman’s part. She’s the one that walks the walk of shame, not the boy.

-------

I’ve got brain fog so I’m not certain but my partner, I know for sure, has had sexual partners starting from high school into adulthood. He recounts his escapades with a chuckle and smile, I can’t help but think his partners probably won’t do the same just because they’re women. If you’re in a threesome, have a same-sex relationship, have multiple partners, were in the sex industry, heck if you’re a virgin, it as counts as a negative for a woman. Slowly, over time these stereotypes have lessened but is sex work legalized nationwide yet? No, and even now, they stand to lose a lot more because of the lack of protections in their environment. There is no protection for a woman’s sexuality in this world. Expressing ourselves as autonomous sexual beings frightens people. The female orgasm is a mystique, a legend, a braggadocio male youth’s dream and a grown man’s admirable goal. So why is experiencing it not only expressed in media and art from the male perspective but shamed when women speak on the nature of it?

Thanks to the (insert ridiculous dollar amount here) porn industry, the female orgasm has been seen as filthy, mewling and not safe for work. Not everyone has seen porn but those who have know precisely what porn sites are like, what those ads on illegal pirating websites are like. It gives countless people around the world a false impression of sex and layers real sex with expectations that won’t happen. It gives men and women of all ages goals that are both dangerous (physically and mentally) and self-serving. There are women focused porn sites out there but sadly if numbers on Pornhub are anything to go by, most men aren’t watching those.

(A video link of comedian Michael Che’s skit, “Every Young Dude in Here Has a Trick to Not Finish Fast”.)

There’s a skit by Michael Che on how to have sex as an older man. He goes into how most men, to prolong sex, will imagine awful things so they won’t complete. He laughs as he comments on how women can take as long as they want to orgasm (never once wondering why it takes so long) before commenting on how if he could write a book for men, he would tell men that they have the freedom to orgasm when they want. He never once imagines a world where a man can’t orgasm at all the way some women can’t. He says if men ejaculate early, they can give compliments to the chef. Funny that he says chef, the servitor role in this scenario, for the woman. What is she serving but herself to him? He implies he is only there to pay, eat and leave just by analogy alone and that she will have to serve herself once his meal is over. Society sees all women that way, from the filtered images on magazines to the skimpy outfits on sports teams. From the unequal pay in the workplace to the accused hysteria in hospitals, women have to fight for attention, recognition and space beyond their physical form. Sex is no different, the orgasm the highlight of the sexual experience more often than not is experienced wholly by men.

-------

I know there is a scientific term and explanation for the orgasm. Yet, for some women emotions play a big part. There are a lucky some that can orgasm without emotional deadlifting but then there are those like me, that need to feel a connection in order to have a rewarding sexual experience. Prior to my now fiance, all of my experiences were with boys or men seeking self-gratification. Who can blame them? For most men, the orgasm isn’t personal. You can “knock one out" with ease. Not all men are like this but it is built into the fabric of our society. Male gratification is at the click of a fingertip, for women it means purchasing equipment, gel, being at peace (being angry or pissed off), it might mean being seen or in a group, it might mean with another woman, might mean damnation or ostracism.

I know what you’re thinking. Has this woman orgasmed before? Answer, is yes, plenty, just not the orgasm I’ve been seeking. There are layers and intricacies to the female orgasm and I’m still trying to figure out how to scratch mine. This isn’t to do with my partner but rather the emotions I have attached to my sexual experiences. I’ve been assaulted, been abused and bullied, this all became a part of my sexual being. Feeling an orgasm no matter how good it feels, as an abused Christian woman, still comes mired in my guilt, especially when considering what I enjoy. As I try to orgasm, I struggle with identity, as to whom I’m pleasing, rather than enjoying the act itself. I seek an orgasm free of that.

I know my orgasms are stunted by the mind barriers I’ve placed on myself. My constant need to be in control, to not yield comes from how often I yielded control over my own body in the past. I was men’s experiment, plaything and fond (or embarrassing) memory. In my head, no matter whom I’m with, my thoughts race. I keep thinking on whether or not my pleasure matters, whether or not my partner enjoys pleasuring me. My orgasm rides the wave of my insecurities and as I count minutes in my head, I feel pressure to come fast lest my partner get bored. It’s nothing my partner has done himself, just something I’ve sensed from partners in the past. I’m sure that’s why it’s made me an attentive lover and an attention-seeking partner. I think it also explains my body dysmorphia.

I’ve always felt like someone inside a shell. Ever since I was a kid, I just felt as if a body were a suit and mine was the wrong fit. I have learned to love it but certain inadequacies make me wish I were a man. The presence of power, selfless orgasms, the ability to walk around shirtless, the lack of fear that is embedded in men, makes me hate the feminine shape of mine. As I see my smaller hands, curve hands around my hips, feel my cheeks and breasts, I feel empty. Men will always see this shape first before they realize I am a person. Before I have opened my mouth I have been sexualized and found pleasing or displeasing to the male gaze. My clothing becomes markers and what I wear allows men to have a say in my body’s right to move unhindered. My mind rails against this. I begin to hate me because the me that wants to be seen is never looked at. If I were a man, my attractiveness, would not denote whether I should be touched, followed, catcalled or slut-shamed. I am simply an attractive man.

What I want as a woman is to give and receive pleasure without a multitude of expectations built-in. I want the time to understand the emotions my body feels as I experience them, rather than the small space of when I’m interacting with my partner. I want to feel right and not ashamed for having breasts. I want men to understand the power they have in not having to explain their sexual appetite to anyone. Even a chef gets stars and accolades for their work, they get praise and petted for their ideas. What better way to compliment a chef than to see them for their whole body of work, for the knowledge and skill they possess, rather than only the taste on your tongue? A woman is more than what she serves of herself, in fact, she is more of what she doesn’t serve than what she sets on a plate. That plate is edited, cleaned up and a made to please version of the woman she wants to be, the woman she is inside. I want to orgasm a whole feast, feed the entire world with the humanity I feel inside of myself. I want to dance naked and without shame. I want to live in the moment and serve absolutely no one but myself for once. I want to feel as if my existence is more than a complement to the men around me. This body is tired of serving others. This body wants to orgasm without a definition of what is too long and not long enough and be satisfied by it. This woman is the whole dang meal.