The New Topping Book

by Dossie Easton

  On the other hand, that very anonymity enables some people to feel less accountable for what they say or do. They can pretend to be someone they’re not, since you’ll have no way to find out otherwise. They can insult (“flame”) you, spread rumors about you, cyber-stalk you, or promise things they have no intention of delivering.

  Some people feel that the ’Net is a safer way to interact than real life (or “meat life,” as ’Netfolk call it). In some ways it is – it’s rare to come away from a chatroom with bruises or sprains. But the emotions generated by Internet debates and by fantasy play in chatrooms can be quite real and powerful; we’ve both known people badly hurt by virtual interactions gone wrong.

  So consider this section a caveat emptor regarding the Internet. Use it, explore it, learn from it – but always remember that you have no way of knowing whether the person you’re talking to has your best interests at heart. We love the ’Net – well, one of us does, anyway – but we see it as a supplement to, not a substitute for, real-world interaction.

  MUNCHES. Munches were developed as a venue in which people who had met on the ’Net could get together to meet one another face-to-face; since then, they’ve grown into one of the most widespread phenomena in the kink community. A munch is an event in which kinkyfolk can meet in a non-kink space – typically a restaurant, food court or bar – to socialize, flirt, cruise and generally hang out. They’re usually less threatening for newcomers than parties or support groups, since most people wear street clothes and no serious play takes place. Here in the Bay Area, it’s possible to go to a munch almost every night of the week, and even the smallest towns these days usually have at least a monthly munch. And where do you learn about them? On the Internet, of course.

  LEATHER BARS. For many decades, the primary venue for kinky gay men to form community and to look for partners has been the leather bar. These venerable institutions usually feature a fairly conventional bar space in front, and often have some sort of small play space in back.

  More recently, lesbians, bisexuals and heterosexuals are finding increasing welcomes in leather bars (but check with your gay men friends about the vibe in any particular bar if you’re not positive that you’re welcome there). Many leather bars also help form community by sponsoring fund-raising events such as leather competitions and beer bashes to raise money for local charities.

  SUPPORT GROUPS. If you can, we strongly recommend that you join your local BDSM club. Many large urban communities have several clubs of different orientations (gay, lesbian, het, bi, male-top, female-top, pansexual and so on); pick one or several that suit your orientation. If the only one you can find doesn’t fit you, get in touch with them and ask them what else is out there. If you’re feeling shy and having a hard time making connections, offer to do some volunteer work: get out a mailing or work the door at an event. You’ll meet lots of people, and help build support for people who are newer and scareder than you.

  If you don’t have a local club, join one of the big urban ones (at least that way you’ll get to read the newsletter, and perhaps to attend an event or two during vacation time), or start your own.

  If you think you are too shy to go to a support group, allow us to reassure you. Such meetings are nowhere near as threatening as you may imagine. The first Society of Janus meetings Dossie attended were held in the basement of a church: how wholesome. People at support group meetings are generally friendly and straightforward, not likely to come on with a lot of attitude or deeply in role, and what cruising there is is customarily civilized and respectful. Confidentiality is paramount – nobody is going to call up your boss or spouse and reveal your secret life, and if you run into someone from the office at the meeting... well, what is he doing there? And if your fantasy embarrasses you so much that you cannot imagine getting together in a room with other people who also have fantasies, remember that none of them can read your mind – so your privacy is ensured anyway.

  THE KINK COMMUNITIES AND PEOPLE OF COLOR. Our communities are places of refuge, often the only place in our lives where we can be ourselves without shocking or enraging the people around us. We need that sense of safety, and we rely on cultural recognition signals – shared concepts, language, body language – to feel secure that we are at home among our tribe. Our community is our wildlife sanctuary where we are safe to live our wildness.

  Similarly, many people – who for a variety of reasons constitute oppressed minorities within the predominant culture – have too often experienced being misread, misjudged and mistreated for being different. They rely on their own communities for a place of refuge, where it is okay to be who they are. This is particularly important for people of color, whose “difference” is inexorably visible. Several people of color told us that their first impression of the BDSM community was: “There’s nobody here who looks like me.”

  Sadly, since most cultures are not accepting of our sexual lifestyles, people of color often enter the kink community at the expense of their membership in their original place of refuge, the community of people-who-look-like-me.

  So how can we make our wildlife sanctuary a place of refuge for everybody? Most BDSM communities are predominantly white, middle-class, relatively well educated. This poses a problem for anyone else who wants to join.

  It’s not enough for white people to say “Hey, I’m not a racist, you can trust me.” It’s going to take a much more interactive process to truly integrate our communities. Just recently, we have been hearing from people of color who have come together to open up the discussion of race and community. This is an extremely sensitive topic, and conversations tend to get heated, so perhaps the first thing to understand about doing this work is that we all have to be willing to feel uncomfortable. We are, after all, attempting to connect in an intimate environment under the weight of centuries of brutal oppression.

  What people of color tell us is that white people need to raise their awareness of the racism that permeates our society. It is not enough to simply assume that people of color will automatically think themselves privileged to be allowed into eurocentrist environments. We all need to make room for cultural difference in our communities, for different ways of communicating, of making connection, of dealing with feelings, of generating family. That’s what cultural difference is, a huge repertoire of ways of doing everything, and that is the richness that cultural diversity can bring to all of us. People of European ancestry need to be willing to get changed a little, to expand their vision, to allow difference to have an impact on them.

  In preparing to write this, we spoke with a number of people of color who are creating this dialogue, and this is what they wish white people would not do. Watch out for being excessively polite: overwhelming welcome tends to be accompanied with nervous laughter, and nobody feels comfortable. Don’t talk down, don’t assume that just because a person is not white he is illiterate.

  Hate words are not good jokes. White people may feel safe enough to laugh at ethnic slurs, but living as a racial minority in a white culture is far more dangerous.

  Beware stereotyping… especially stereotypes that turn you on. Approaching someone because you have always wanted to play with, for instance, a submissive Asian woman or a hypersexual black man, is objectifying and objectionable to the person being stereotyped. Being welcomed as an exotic is not the same as being welcomed as a person.

  As marginalized outsiders, we kinksters have experience and knowledge that is unknown to those who are not sexual adventurers. Similarly, people who are marginalized, made outsiders, for reasons of racial or ethnic difference, have special and valuable wisdom. White people, in learning to listen to an outsider’s perspective, gain opportunities to see themselves in new mirrors. The reflection may be difficult to look at, perhaps not flattering, and often colored with the justified anger of the oppressed. And when we hold still and listen to the wisdom of people whose experience is different from ours, then we can start to change things.

  And then we all w
in.

  OK, BUT WHERE ARE ALL THE BOTTOMS?

  If you ask a bunch of bottoms, you will hear heartfelt and often bitter complaints about the scarcity of tops in the kink community. The good news (if you’re a top) is that this is often true – particularly in heterosexual communities or those in smaller cities and rural environments. The other good news is that it’s changing: both of us have noticed that more and more of the new young players coming into the scene are top-identified.

  However, for the time being, there are more bottoms than tops – often many more. Dossie remembers learning to top because in the women’s community in which she came of age as a player, there essentially were no tops, so bottoms politely took turns topping one another so that everybody got to get played with. What that means to you, particularly if you’re a heterosexual female, a lesbian or a gay man, is that you as a top are in something of a buyer’s market.

  That certainly doesn’t mean, however, that all you have to do is lean back and casually choose from a parade of eager bottoms who are all dying to throw themselves at your feet. Quality tops get quality bottoms – it’s up to you, not only to be a quality top, but to make sure your potential bottoms know it. This goal is not accomplished by boasting about your true master- or mistress-hood, or by acting pushy and bossy outside scene space in order to demonstrate your natural gift for domination, or by hauling around a bunch of toys that you had to take out a second mortgage to buy. The best tops we know are quite modest, often soft-spoken, and always scrupulously polite – until they’ve finished their negotiations and the scene begins... then, watch out!

  So, you ask, how do I let the world know of my wonderful toppiness without coming off like a cross between P.T. Barnum and Attila the Hun? The first suggestion we can make is that you learn as much as you possibly can, and never stop learning. Take classes. Read everything you can get your hands on (remembering, of course, to distinguish between fantasy/fiction and reality). Practice, practice, practice – if not on an eager subject, then on an inanimate object like a pillow or teddy bear, or on yourself.

  IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE. When you’re searching for play partners or life partners, what you are doing is marketing – and if you think it’s beneath your toppish dignity to market yourself, we hope you and your dignity have many happy nights together.

  The first step in marketing a product is, of course, to make sure that the product is marketable. Are you technically skilled? Are you responsible? Are you flexible? Are you empathetic? Do you take good care of your physical and emotional health? If you didn’t answer all of these questions with an emphatic “yes,” we suggest you do some close self-examination and self-improvement: all the marketing in the world won’t move a product that people don’t want.

  Next, take a look at your packaging. While it’s not necessary to wrap yourself in custom leather from head to toe, a little toppish accessorizing helps catch bottoms’ attention. Gay men and lesbians can use hanky and key codes as shorthand to communicate their orientations and interests, which is convenient; unfortunately, these signifiers haven’t worked their way very far into the het community just yet. Since many male bottoms are also fetishists, the wearing of fetish apparel – tall boots, tight corsets, leather or rubber or PVC – is convenient code by which het female tops can communicate their interests. Heterosexual male tops can run into problems – if they look too fetish-y, women may assume they are gay and discount them as possible play partners. Still, a leather vest over a handsome silk shirt or turtleneck sweater, possibly paired with leather pants, a “significant-looking” leather belt or a small whip worn on the left side, and/or a handsome pair of shiny boots, will get your message across. Various kinds of drag – schoolmaster or -mistress, pirate, cowboy, cop – will, of course, get attention from devotees of all genders and orientations.

  GET THE WORD OUT. Techniques used by vanilla people for partner-finding – personal ads in print media, voice mail, or on the Internet or computer bulletin boards – can also be used to good advantage by kinky folk. Some of these venues may not allow overtly kinky ads, but a little clever indirectness can usually get your point across: words like “take-charge,” “stern,” “bossy” and so on, or references to favorite works of literature, are common routes. Some newspapers, deplorably, charge more for kinky ads than for vanilla ones. We suggest that you protest these policies when you find them, but if they’re the only game in town, well, it’s better to get the word out via a discriminatory newspaper than not to get the word out at all.

  The trick to writing a good personal ad is to be as clear and specific as possible about your toppy interests while still communicating a good sense of what you’re like as a person. This is true whether you’re placing your own ad or responding to someone else’s. We recommend that you do both.

  One friend of ours says “The ideal personal ad gets exactly one response – the right one.”

  TO CRUISE OR NOT TO CRUISE? We think singles-bar-type cruising – walking up to total strangers and asking “So, wanna get whipped?” – is probably not an optimal strategy for you, unless you’re very gorgeous or very self-assured. (However, neither of us has ever been bold enough to try it, so we don’t know for sure.)

  If you try thinking of an S/M event as more like a cocktail party than a singles bar, though, your chances will go up. One of the more successful cruisers we know says he has a seldom-fail opening line: “Hi, I’m Mike.”

  While some bottoms choose tops who are bossy, pushy and overbearing, we believe that such bottoms are likely to have trouble separating their fantasies from their realities – not a good formula for a future of safe, life-enhancing play together. The bottoms we suggest you play with are the ones you connect with at a personal level – the folks with whom you “click” in terms of personality, intelligence and chemistry. And the best way to find out if that “click” is going to happen is to simply be yourself – personable, honest and interesting to talk to. If you do this right, there will be plenty of time to be mean, harsh and overbearing later, after the scene has begun.

  The art of cruising comes at the moment when this friendly get-acquainted chatter turns to matters more personal. If you’re at a kink event, this isn’t too difficult: simply ask “So, what kinds of play do you enjoy?” and begin discovering whether the two of you have enough in common for further discussion. We suggest, that you not set your heart on play that very evening. If you can get your potential bottom’s phone number, or a date for coffee or a meal at some other time, that will give you more opportunity to get to know her, and will probably lead to better play later. On the other hand, if you’re both interested in playing right then and there, and your negotiations show no deal-breakers, then why not?

  If you’re at an event that is sexual but not specifically S/M in nature, we suggest you stay specific about the kinds of activities that interest you – “I’m into S/M” is a turnoff to a lot of people who have mistaken ideas about what that means, but “I enjoy bondage” or “I’ve had fun spanking some of my partners” might pique someone’s interest.

  If you’re at a nonsexual event, you have to be even more indirect. A mild, flirtatious joke about “Oooh, you naughty boy” or “How come there’s never a slave around when you want one?” or “She was all tied up that day... and I couldn’t find the time to untie her” will give you some information about your potential partner’s interests. If she flirts back, you can take the conversation onto a slightly more direct level, although we still suggest you avoid words like “BDSM,” “dominance,” “submission” and “pain” until communication is established.

  INTRODUCING BDSM INTO AN EXISTING RELATIONSHIP

  These tips are all very well for all those single tops out there, you say. But what if you’re already happily coupled, and hoping to introduce your partner to the delights that lie within your delightfully toppish hands?

  “So, honey, whaddaya say tonight I tie you up and flog you within an inch of your life?” is probably not a go
od start. Keep in mind that most people have a very inaccurate view of what BDSM and its practitioners are all about. Thus, you might do better to open the discussion by talking about a specific and not-too-scary activity that interests you – a little light bondage, some mild role-playing or a bit of sensuous spanking are often good places to start. Some couples enjoy reading erotica aloud to one another as a way to get turned on, and explore actual play later as it starts to feel safe.

  He may surprise you by greeting your proposal with enthusiasm. Or he may have some concerns, which it’s important that you talk through. Often, first-timers are more comfortable topping, not bottoming. You should probably go along with this plan if at all possible. Once he sees that what you have in mind is safe, exciting and fun, he may be more open to being on the receiving end.

  Our book, When Someone You Love Is Kinky, was designed to be read by people who don’t see themselves as being into kink, and might be useful for the two of you to read together. Or maybe you could go together to a program put on by your local BDSM club.

  If he says “Absolutely not!” you’re kind of stuck. Let’s face it, some people are just vanilla. If your partner turns out to be one of these, there’s not much point in nagging: you will have to choose between opening up your relationship (which we encourage you to do honestly and consensually), giving up your interest in kink, or giving up your partner. One of us has had to do the latter, and it is a sad and difficult decision which we hope you never have to make.

  CHOOSING THE RIGHT BOTTOM

  We know tops who have found lifelong joy, connection and pleasure with the right bottom – and tops who have been plunged into nightmares of guilt, self-doubt and depression by the wrong one. We want you to be in the first group. So what characteristics should you look for in a bottom? We think these are important: