Word to the Wise: Faking an Orgasm Isn't Worth It

Vogue

11-06-2025

The first time was during a heatwave. I was flushed and dizzy, the windows wide open, sweat pooling at the small of my back. As a train passed over his apartment, I let out a noise that, to my own ears, sounded like a sultry scream of ecstasy, but that he probably heard as something akin to a puffin being shot.
He paused. 'You good?'
'Yeah,' I panted. 'I just came really hard.'
He then looked into my eyes and said that one little word every woman wants to hear during sex: 'K.'
Maybe he believed me, maybe he didn't. Either way, he looked down at his dick and gave it a nod of approval. And, naturally, I did what generations of women before me have done in moments like these: I kept going. Loudly. With feeling. I said all the things you're supposed to say. I arched and sighed and went full method.
Unfortunately, Stella Adler doesn't teach a class on faking orgasms.
He and I met at a time when I was trying not to feel anything. He was the classic downtown transplant: part-time set designer-slash-skater (whatever that means), guitar in hand, covered in tattoos, with a deep commitment to not texting back. He used to remind me the world didn't revolve around me, then promise he was coming over—only to fall asleep before showing up.
He lived in a Chinatown walk-up wedged under the Manhattan Bridge, in that stretch of the city where the sky feels oddly low and the air smells of durian. The apartment was one of those long, narrow railroad layouts with bedrooms on either end; his one had a mattress on the floor, a single string of fairy lights that never turned off, and a few peeling posters on the wall. Every time a train went by, the building rattled like it might cave in.
We didn't have much in common besides our shared fear of intimacy; still, I saw him almost every day for three weeks. He had an incredibly large dick and the emotional range of a kitchen sponge, but he rolled joints with scientific precision and kissed like he was trying to erase you. I'd like to think that now, with a fully developed frontal lobe, I'd never tolerate that kind of man-child behavior again. But at the time, what little he had to give seemed fine. That's the thing about being young and trying to quiet your fear of aloneness with men—you're so afraid they'll leave that you convince yourself the bare minimum is enough. In hindsight, maybe faking it felt like less of a risk to me than asking for more and being denied.