It’s tough to go wrong by starting light, and some of the best floggings and canings start out as sensual scenes. Some may stay sensual, enjoying the dominance and control and the sensation without a need for intense pain. But however far you are going to go, starting any sensation at the lightest possible level allows the bottom to work his or her way into it as it allows you to get accustomed to the implement, work into a rhythm and get your aim adjusted so that if and when the scene escalates to a more intense level you will have, essentially, practiced.
Same goes for scenes that are more about control than sensation. A scene can go badly awry if the dominant starts right off the bat giving orders that she knows are going to be emotionally very challenging to the submissive. We recommend starting with the easy stuff. Of course, what feels easy is going to vary from one submissive to the next – you need to find out about such things during negotiation – but many dominants start scenes by having the submissive remove her clothes or assume a certain position like kneeling. As the submissive begins to relax and become a little entranced, you can add more challenging forms of control.
Helpful hint number two: take your time. A fantasy top may dash in and tie up his or her victim in three seconds, but that’s fantasy. What is actually very sexy is to put someone in restraints very slowly, in a ritual pace, so you can savor the entire process, and have enough time to get the knots right without fumbling. Take your time approaching your bottom’s body – just because he is all tied up doesn’t mean you should leap on his or her genitals with little glad cries and no foreplay. Spend some time touching skin; it will bring you into synch with your bottom and take him further down into bottom space. And when you do get to the erogenous zones, take a lot of time. Enjoy yourself. After all, your bottom can’t stop you, right?
Another hint: get comfortable. If you are going to spend a nice long time doing something exquisite to another person’s body, you don’t want to have to stop because your back hurts, so be aware of the position you are in when you start up and make sure it’s going to be comfortable for a while. Some tops wear weight-lifting belts to protect their backs when they play, others recommend shoulder-stretching exercises before doing a flogging.
And don’t forget to make the room comfortable. You might be wearing more clothes than your bottom, and you might also be moving around more, so remember that naked people who can’t move get cold, and turn the heat up. Floggers create a wind chill factor, so turn the heat up even further – you don’t want your bottom distracted by the wrong kinds of discomfort. Check to make sure lights are not in your or your bottom’s eyes (unless you’re doing an interrogation scene), and make sure candles are safely placed where you aren’t going to knock them over. Have towels, rubber gloves, condoms, lube and whatever toys you may be using laid out where you can reach them without losing contact.
A final suggestion: when it starts getting good, when you start getting response, when your bottom starts breathing hard or maybe writhing a little, that means that you are doing something very right and you should keep on doing it. Many people make the mistake of speeding up at this point, or hitting harder, or otherwise upping the intensity, which can immediately take the bottom beyond the place where she was having such a good time. You’ll develop a feel for when it’s time to turn the volume up another notch – and stay with that another while – and this is how you can get to spend a very long time having lots of fun while you work your way to Nirvana.
And if you only get partway to heaven this time, please remember that there is always the future. You can choose to worry about what didn’t happen in a scene, and if you wish, you can feel like a failure if the scene you play today doesn’t get as far as you wanted it to. But those two leathermen we described earlier had almost certainly played before and not gotten anywhere near that far. So value the pleasure you had today, and have confidence that you have also gained knowledge and expertise that will take you further down the road the next time you play.
As you can see, there is a lot to learn, but be reassured that most of the details will become second nature to you very quickly. The examples listed here are not a complete list, but a few ideas to get you started. And once you get started, we hope you will have a very good time learning new and wonderful ways to play for the rest of your life.
interlude 2
A scene at a party, played by our friend Bill and a stranger.
We don’t say a word. We’ve never met before. We’re just two horny guys at a sex party. He wanders into an empty room, giving me that “Come hither” look recognized by queer men everywhere. In the room, he is seated on the couch, legs spread, touching himself through the one-piece latex suit covering his trunk. It has short sleeves and legs.
This is a rubber fetish party, my first. I feel a bit inadequate in my standard-issue leather vest and Levi’s. I lower my face to his. My intuition is working tonight. I correctly guess that he likes being nibbled on the neck – prefers it to sloppy, wet kisses. He writhes beneath me. I press one hand firmly into his pectorals, pinning him as I nip into him more intensely, lips covering teeth. His breathing deepens. My fingers massage the hot latex suit. There’s a zipper down the front. I pull it down to the spot between his broad pecs, exposing a splay of scattered brown hairs. He looks up at me – large brown eyes. I kiss him dryly on the mouth. We begin dry-kissing. Our breath is hot.
I reach inside the zipper, kneading and pinching his exposed pectoral flesh. It feels like I’m invading him, molesting him. This makes my dick jump. I notice through his jumpsuit that I’m having the same effect on his. I slide my knee up to his balls and press as I pinch his nipples through the latex. I start slapping his inner thighs. They’re also warm from the latex, and it feels so good.
I remove my vest and pull the front of my black T-shirt over my neck, exposing my chest. I place his hands over my largish nipples, and we begin tugging each other’s nipples, his still covered in latex. I begin slapping them with my hands. It feels so satisfying to slap this boy through his hot, tight rubber skin. I take my dick out, fully hard now, and slap it against his thighs, which makes it even harder – it almost hurts.
I pull a small bottle of lube out of a pocket and squeeze some onto my dick. I jack it off in front of him, slapping it against my outstretched palm. I open up a rubber and squeeze some lube into it, wiping off my sticky hand and rolling the affair down my swollen shaft. I put it up to his lips, and he hungrily gobbles it down. My knee slides to his groin again, and I stroke his fine brown hair. Usually I don’t much like condoms for sucking dick, but in this scene, it’s become one more piece of latex to fetishize. I pull out another one and try to place it around my nuts. This provides us with some comic relief as I, then he, try to trap the stubborn balls unsuccessfully. Finally I shrug and we laugh a bit.
He looks so fucking hot in that fucking suit that I start squeezing him all over as if he’s the last guy I’ll ever get to touch and I’m trying to carve the experience into the deepest corner of my brain. I want to rip him out of his kinky rubber armor, and yet I want to keep him trapped inside it forever, all tantalizingly displayed and hot to the touch.
I squeeze his well-developed biceps and broad, fleshy shoulders; run my fingers through his beautiful hair; squeeze his pointy nipples and his love-handles, and finally his hot, hard dick. I begin slapping it with the backs of my fingers, gently at first, worried that I’ll slap too hard and take him out of the scene. But he obviously likes it, so I slap harder and harder, squeezing his ample balls. I hold his balls and gaze intently into his eyes. His nostrils flare.
Out of nowhere come the backs of my fingers, slapping him lightly across one cheek. The eyes widen. I kiss him dryly on the mouth. Then again. Slap. Kiss. Slap. Kiss. I feel surges of blood through his clenched balls. “Take it out,” I hiss. It’s the first time either of us has spoken in ten minutes of anonymous sex. He scrambles to comply, sitting up and beginning to unzip. “Slowly,” I say. “Turn me on.”
&nb
sp; I grab my rubberized dick and jack off, pinching my nipples, both of us now showing off for each other. He slides his fingers down his stomach slowly, pulling the zipper to its end. He gingerly pries his moist cockflesh loose from the clutching rubber sheath, then the balls. He raises his eyebrows, gesturing toward my lube. I hold up the bottle and squeeze some onto his fingers. He works it onto his expanding dick. I draw closer and slip my hands under the open suit and really work his nipples now. His dick gets enormous
– this kid has a dick that I can’t get both my hands to cover.
I hand him a condom. He takes it out and I squirt a bit of the lube into it. He rolls it down his sticky dick, where it barely reaches bottom. Then I kneel between his knees and take it in my mouth, biting the head between my teeth and tickling his balls. He’s working my nipples just the way I like, and soon the whole hot tube is throbbing down my throat and I’m biting him on just the other side of the condom, near his nuts. I can tell he’s amazed, like not too many guys can do this to him. And I’m certainly not one of those tops who thinks that cocksucking is the station of the bottom. Quite the contrary – I use my dominant, forceful attitude to get boys like this one all hot and bothered, and then show them what a champion dick-chomper I am once their dicks are really stiff.
So I milk this groaning boy for maybe three minutes with my well-trained throat muscles, and then I begin jacking him off with both hands. He wants some lube, so I give him the bottle again, and he starts jacking off my condom-clad cock with his sticky hand. I grab his dick near its base and start slapping it into my palm. I feel a new tension building in his thighs, and as I slap and jerk his dick, I mutter, “Yeah, fucker. That dick’s gonna shoot. Gonna fill up this rubber with hot cream. Gonna dump your fat load into this tube. Gonna slap it around till you fuckin’ come, rubberboy. Gonna tickle your fat balls till you squirt –” And then he’s doing it, twisting and gasping, that big boner of his making that little nipple on the condom tip very full indeed. I tickle him under the ridge until he can’t take any more. I stand, stretching my cramped legs, figuring that will be all, but he reaches out and grasps my still-hard dick, jacking me off.
Now normally, I could never get off by being jacked, much less through a condom, but I’m so turned on that in two minutes I’m bellowing and spurting my load into that rubber, amazed, my entire body trembling. We catch our breath, staring at each other and grinning like idiots.
Soon we will get up from this couch, shed our jizz-filled condoms, wash up and quickly become separated by increasing numbers of people, miles, hours, days – but right now we’re just two blissed-out guys, happy to be in this room together, no longer horny.
6
SOARING HIGHER
“All the things you can talk about in anyone’s work are the things that are least important…. You can describe all the externals of a performance –everything, in fact, but what really constitutes its core. Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what’s important is what’s left over after you’ve explained everything else.” – Edward Gorey
If you’ve been topping long enough – and if you’re very fortunate – you’ll sooner or later have a scene in which you and your bottom seem in perfect synch, sharing an experience that feels like your hearts are wide open and blending their heat to create a white-hot conflagration of intensity, intimacy and transcendence.
And if you’re like us, the first thing you’re going to think after the scene is over and you and your bottom are collapsed together in a panting sweating sated heap is “Oh my god, that was phenomenal, how can I get more of that?!?”
Well, we can’t promise to teach you the magic trick that will turn all your scenes into life-altering, soul-merging epiphanies. But both of us – lucky us! – have had enough such scenes, both as tops and as bottoms, that we feel able to share with you some of the factors and concepts that can help lead you in this direction.
GETTING TECHNIQUE OUT OF THE WAY. When you first learned to drive, you had to think about every move before you made it. You had to remember consciously to check your mirrors, work the clutch and the stick, set the handbrake and do a million other little tasks – it made your head spin. But now that you’re an experienced driver, you do all those things without consciously thinking about them – it’s not that you’re driving less well, it’s that the “driving” part of your mind has gotten so much into its groove that it’s moved into a part of your brain where it doesn’t need constant attention.
Technique in BDSM – how to swing a flogger, where to place the knots, how to phrase a command to sound firm instead of whiny or harsh – is a bit like that. When you first start topping, you’ll often feel like there are a million things to remember at once (and you’ll be right: there are). The need to concentrate on all the myriad things you’ve learned about technique and safety, plus the limits and desires you’ve negotiated with this particular bottom, will fill your head so completely that there won’t be room for too much else.
But as you grow more experienced, the details of technique become like the details of driving: you still know how to do them, and you’re doing them well, but they’re not occupying much of your conscious mind. It’s at this point that you may find yourself able to open up to the less intellectual, more visceral joys of BDSM… and you may find yourself having experiences of “just knowing” what to do next, or being able to anticipate your bottom’s desire or fantasy without being told, or automatically falling into the exact rhythm and force needed to send you and your bottom both to heaven.
So let’s say you’re experienced enough that you don’t have to spend a lot of your conscious effort fussing with technique. What are some of the ways that you can use to rocket yourself and your partner(s) to another planet?
STAYING OPEN. This is the biggest and most important tip we can give you. A lot of tops have the idea that their job is to remain cool, withdrawn and withholding, to share no emotion and to show no turn-on. If this is your topping style, go for it – many folks prefer this kind of scene, in which the top is the heartless administrator of control or sensation and the bottom’s job is simply to receive.
But we’ve found that the experiences we’ve been describing here are fundamentally collaborative – which requires that the top and the bottom remain emotionally as open as possible. A contradiction in terms? No, not really.
As you top, pay attention to what’s happening in your own body and heart. Do you feel savage and merciless? Giggly and playful? Wildly turned on? Deeply moved? Do you feel like grunting or laughing or crying or coming? None of these feelings or actions are “inappropriate” for a top; we’ve both felt them many times, separately and in combination. And when we share those feelings with our bottoms, when we let them know how happy or fierce or turned-on they make us feel, our bottoms can join with us, and our feelings can synergistically multiply to a crescendo of sensation and emotion.
And when we stay open to what’s going on inside us, we can also stay open to what’s going on outside us – in the environment around us, within the boundaries of the scene, and in the hearts, minds and bodies of our bottoms.
PAYING ATTENTION. Even the most stoical of bottoms sends a constant stream of cues – signals that let you know whether she’s floating along happily or struggling to keep up, eagerly awaiting her next command or on the verge of rebellion, wanting more or white-knuckling it to tolerate what she’s already receiving, wishing you’d hit her here instead of there.
Here’s a list of the cues we like to look for to tell us what we need to know about our bottoms’ state of mind:
• Muscle tension. Someone who’s having a good time is generally relaxed and loose; someone who’s struggling is probably tense and stiff. Watch your bottom’s muscles, especially those in the places where people tend to store tension – neck, shoulders, belly. Is his face relaxed and serene, or squinched up in a grimace? Are his hands clenched into fists? If you see muscles that are tight, quivering or bulging, your bott
om is probably struggling to keep up with you and may have to safeword if you push too much harder without a break.
One big caveat: Impending orgasm often looks a lot like intense pain, and if you don’t know this particular bottom well, it can be hard to tell the difference. You could try just asking, but that might spoil the moment. Or you could try a bit of sexual touching – if that’s part of your agreements – and see what kind of response you get.
• Breathing. Relaxed people breathe deeply and slowly, from their diaphragms. If they’re making noise, the sounds tend to be deep moans or growls. Tense people breathe tightly and rapidly, high up in their chests, and their sounds are often high-pitched screams or whimpers. If you’ve ever hurt yourself, you know how you breathed during the pain – you probably were using a lot of short little high breaths. But this kind of breathing is not what you want for your bottom; a bottom who’s breathing like that will hyperventilate (getting too little oxygen and throwing off too little carbon dioxide) and might panic.
The New Topping Book Page 6
