• Responsibility for one’s own actions. A bottom who blames you when anything goes wrong... or the obverse, a bottom who expects you to control all aspects of your scene, without any input or feedback... is not taking the proper amount of responsibility for his or her own actions. We know one bottom who, during his pre-scene negotiations, tells his tops, “I want you to know that I’m doing this scene with you because I want to, and because I trust you to take good care of me. If anything goes wrong, we’ll work it out together; I won’t lay it all on you.” Not surprisingly, this bottom finds lots of play partners.
• Ability to give as well as take. Sometimes “do-me queens” don’t give energy back simply because they don’t know how to – that problem is easily fixed by telling them. But others feel entitled to simply lie back and get done, without any desire to make sure that your needs get met. If you feel that your bottom falls into the latter category, it’s time for some serious renegotiation before you burn out badly.
• Discretion. It’s always tempting to enjoy hearing gossip about your fellow players – but if you hear a bottom spreading bad rumors about his or her previous tops, you might want to ask yourself what she will say about you if the relationship ends. Watch out especially for the bottom who has nothing good to say about any of her former play partners.
• Self-control. A bottom with a reputation for bad-temperedness or intoxication is probably not a safe choice of play partner. Remember, sooner or later you have to untie ’em.
• Supportiveness. Most bottoms will support you enthusiastically while you’re acting like a top, especially if you’re acting like the kind of top they like. But a good bottom will also be supportive when you’re not acting like a top – when you’re feeling tired, vulnerable, confused, depressed or simply untoppy. Just as it’s not much fun to be someone’s “sex object” or “money object,” it’s hurtful to be thought of as a “pain object” or “domination object.” As Janet says, “a top is more than life support system for a whip.”
All of this – looking for and finding the right bottom – probably sounds like a lot of work. But we assure you, when she is looking up at you with that marvelous combination of fear, awe and love, all the work and struggle will recede into nothingness, and your bottom-finding time and energy will seem like the best investment you ever made.
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SPECIAL CASES
NOVICES. Do you want to bring out BDSM virgins? Topping a player who has little or no experience requires special care and commitment, and extra responsibility. The rewards are clear – a first-time fulfillment of years of fantasy can be incredibly exciting for both parties, hot stuff with heady feelings of conquest of the unthinkable. If the scene comes off well, your bottom will remember you with fond feelings forever, and you will feel like Santa Claus.
On the other hand, most often the first time we try anything, we don’t do it as well as we will when we’ve had some opportunities to practice – so the first scene is often anticlimactic. Novice bottoms often have extreme fantasies but find that the realities are much harder to deal with than they thought, so be prepared to stop much sooner than you’d anticipated. Remember that the first time is probably not the last time… there’s tons of stuff to learn to pull off your favorite fantasy, and you get all the tries you want to learn.
What knowledge do you need to top an inexperienced bottom? If you are a novice top, and your bottom is also a novice, then go very, very slowly. You will both make lots of mistakes, and if you can accept that, you will learn from them. If you are the more experienced player, then remember that virgin bottoms will not know much about their limits, and will not know the consequences of various types of play. Dossie recalls:
I once topped a novice bottom at a party, a sweet young thing all done up in white lace, eagerly waiting to be decimated. I started slow, but this bottom liked the feel of it and worked all the way up to a heavy caning by the end of the scene. Afterward, it became apparent that she did not know that she would have bruises from such a caning, and that she had a vanilla lover at home – I will never forget to ask about marks again! I took care to drive her home, and call the next day to make sure she was all right – she was, thank goodness.
So when you top a novice bottom, be sure to ask lots of questions, so you will have the opportunity to fill in the bottom’s information about what to expect. Many first scenes are, rightly, very lightweight – it is inappropriate to push limits hard when you are topping a novice. Rather, you should be prepared to be very supportive, and share in the excitement of doing something that is new for the bottom, even if you’ve done it before. After all, good play is not judged by how heavy it is, but rather by how wonderful it feels.
Other bottoms may go so far out in a first scene as to push the limits of experienced tops (never underestimate the power of endorphins). A friend of ours describes a scene in which he was asked to top a novice whose stated purpose was to satisfy her intellectual curiosity about S/M so she could write about it.
Our friend started out cautiously, but the bottom turned out to have an enormous pain tolerance, so soon she was wearing sixteen small but very intense clamps on her skin, and liking it a lot, and the top was starting to feel like his limits were being pushed. He removed the clamps, and spent half an hour doing various other things. Toward the end, she was kneeling at his feet and he saw a shadow pass over her face. He asked: “Is there something you want to tell me?” “Yes, Master,” she replied. “You may speak.” “Please, Sir, the clamp you left on my clit is beginning to hurt a little.”
New players need and deserve a supportive environment in which to explore their desires and to learn how to bottom. Good tops honor and value the trust and hard work a new bottom offers to us when he struggles with a new sensation, or fulfills a role he has never played before. We can help by presenting new events one at a time, by giving novices plenty of opportunities to feel their way into an unfamiliar sensation or command, and by letting them find out what they like and don’t like without fear of judgment or condemnation.
When we watch over our novice bottoms carefully, and treat them with responsibility and respect, we get to share in the great adventure of starting down the path of kinky exploration, and to witness the blossoming of many happy little sluts and slaves.
PROFESSIONAL DOMINATION
The world of professional domination is one of the highest accomplishments of the BDSM scene. A good professional dominant is a skilled and respected expert on many if not all forms of play. Many give their knowledge back to the community by teaching classes or workshops, as well as being available for actual play in negotiated sessions.
The professional dominant’s studio can be an amazing site to behold. Entire houses may be full of rooms decorated and furnished to satisfy every fantasy, with much of the furniture offering practical applications for play: racks for bondage, horses for bend-over beatings, overhead winches to support the standing bottom for a flogging, specially designed bondage tables for the most complete immobilization. Many professional studios include rooms for different fantasies: the dungeon, all black and chains… the nursery for big babies, with lots of flannel and extra-large teddy bears… transformation rooms, with costumes, wigs and makeup to turn the bottom into the creature of his or her fantasy… white rooms with examining tables for playing Doctor Doom or Nurse Nasty.
Paying for the opportunity to play with such an expert is considered completely acceptable by S/M community standards. A person may want to see a professional because he wants to learn from an expert – a top who is somewhat uncomfortable with bottoming but wants to learn from that experience can often arrange a scene with a professional that includes exactly what he wants in a confidential environment. A bottom may go to a professional dominant for elaborate scenes that he can’t get from his partner. A bottom who loves his wife and kids, their house in the suburbs and his standing in a straight community can visit a professional occasionally without giving up the rest of his lif
e. And money is a fair and clean exchange for fantasy play sculpted by an expert to the bottom’s needs, even when the bottom needs to serve. Some professionals also offer submissives, or switch themselves, for carefully negotiated and limited scenes with customers they trust (for obvious reasons of safety, there are few professional bottoms advertising in the open market).
A competent professional dominant is good at limits and boundaries. She will know which fantasies are workable in a professional relationship and which are not. It is traditional in professional scenes to include a lot of extremely wild S/M and to exclude actual sex, partly because that may fit better for the professional, and mostly because the exchange of sex for money is illegal in most states.
If you would like to know more about the world of professional domination, we recommend the excellent and hilarious English film “Personal Services,” very loosely based on the career of British dominatrix Cynthia Payne, which includes wonderful depictions of parties and Christmas dinner at this house of pain.
PUBLIC PLAY
The play party has become a basic institution in many BDSM communities, so basic that we have been asked if a person can explore kink at all if she doesn’t want to play in public. Of course you can play without going to play parties, and many do. But public play is very popular among S/M players, so if you have fantasies of large audiences applauding and cheering your amazing sexual feats, we have a party for you.
Play parties are usually held in a space designed for that purpose, possibly a dungeon in someone’s home, or the studio of a professional dominant. Other party play spaces are maintained by support groups as a volunteer endeavor, and some people make a profession of running a party house. Some clubs in major cities are set up for public S/M play, some on one night a week, some all the time. A play party space usually will have one or more dungeons equipped with furniture – one or more slings, a St. Andrew’s cross, medical examination tables, bondage tables, overhead hoists, cages, and the like… occasionally even beds. Conversation in the play area is discouraged because it intrudes on the consciousness of the people who are playing.
Normally there is also a social area, where food and beverages are available, where people can meet and cruise and negotiate, or come down after a scene. Most party houses have a set of rules or guidelines printed up for you, covering their expectations about everything from safe sex to responsible voyeurism, and most have dungeon monitors on duty throughout that party so there is always someone who can answer your questions. Safety is a prominent concern – what a nightmare to have to call an ambulance in the middle of an S/M orgy!
The play party provides a safe opportunity to meet people, watch how they play, explore new partners and play in a playful environment, with not so much personal commitment beyond the moment. Some monogamous couples come to watch others, socialize and to play special scenes for public display – we like to watch these scenes because couples who have played together for a long time are often very good at it, and you can see the intimacy and profound connection. People who like to watch are asked to be responsible, and keep at a non-intrusive distance. We enjoy voyeurism a lot – we get the chance to learn from what other people do, and tons of ideas and how-tos to take back to our own play. The encouragement of an eager audience helps many people push their limits – be careful not to let the crowd’s enthusiasm push you into doing something you’ll regret later.
Seeing others play can also help us feel more okay about ourselves. Dossie says: “When I see someone very turned on, stark naked and thrashing and looking real good, and that person is not necessarily young or thin, then I start to realize that maybe I look good when I play even if I’m not built like a centerfold. And when I see other tops, taking their time, dealing with the equipment and their bottoms, going through all the effort and technical work to get a scene off the ground, and then I see that scene flying into the stratosphere, that helps me not feel like an idiot when it takes me a little time to get a scene working.”
We believe that the deprivatization of sex is a radical political act. Hush-hush attitudes toward sex have generated a sick history of shame, embarrassment, guilt and self-loathing that have crippled many people – kept them from realizing their wonderful sexual selves and often decimated their entire sense of self-esteem. In BDSM in particular, coming out is often made difficult by feelings of shame and inadequacy, as well as the problem of acquiring the extensive technical information and experience that make a good top or bottom. All of these difficulties can be addressed at the play party, where the opportunity to share sex and S/M with others can be powerfully healing.
We also like the challenge of play parties. When we prepare a scene for a play party, we often put in extra effort to make something that will be powerful for us and attract an appreciative audience, and playing in public gives an edge to a scene that can help it go further, or higher, or wherever you want it to go.
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FULL-TIME D/S
Some players live in their scene roles all the time: Master or Mistress and slave, or Daddy and boy, Mommy and girl, Mistress and dog, houseboy or french maid. In some people’s eyes, living full-time is the ultimate expression of kink, complete immersion in the fantasy, making the fantasy their total reality.
Sometimes elaborate families are formed, where a senior top’s girl might have a slave of her own, and another human may be functioning as the dog. Players form these families according to their needs, and demonstrate a startling facility to adapt to changing conditions – there’s no rule that says you can’t make agreements to change roles in whatever way suits you. And for those who are successful, wonderfully fulfilling and creative lives can follow.
We would like to point out that living full-time in role is not the “gold standard” of BDSM. We see far too many players who feel that if they’re not “24/7,” they’re somehow wrong, or not “real” dominants. If this doesn’t sound like the way you want to live, if BDSM is a more comfortable fit in your life when you keep it in scene and drop roles the rest of the time, don’t let anybody tell you that you’re in any way inferior. However, if full-time BDSM does feel like a good fit for you, we encourage you to try it – starting slowly with one or two types of relatively easy power exchange, and adding new aspects of the power relationship as the old ones become habitual.
If people owning slaves or otherwise involved in relationships with a declared power inequity push your buttons, please remember that these lifestyles were consciously chosen, which may put them a step ahead of traditional marriages and the power dynamics of traditional sex roles that most people don’t even think about. And role-bound relationships work well for a lot of people. Many people are relieved to have a clear idea about who is empowered to do, say or decide what, and many bottoms are quite content to let their masters or mistresses run the show.
FLUIDITY. We’ve been friends with many people in full-time dominant/submissive relationships. Our observation is that when we spend time with such people as friends, we rarely see them behaving in ways much different than any other couple: the day-to-day demands of running a life remain the same, and must be addressed by someone or other. And almost nobody can be in full control of everything at every waking moment – or would like to be. While the dominants in novels (and sometimes chatrooms) express their dominance nonstop, in reality this approach doesn’t often work out very well.
However, what we do see in successful D/S couples is a very strong ability to read each other’s signals and a very fluid approach to moving in and out of their dominant or submissive mindsets – so the couple who at one moment is discussing someone’s problems at work may at the next moment be in full dominant/submissive mode, with the dominant in complete control and the submissive completely pliable to her will.
What kinds of signals do these people give each other to make such extraordinary transitions possible? Some might be consciously chosen, like using a particular name (“boy” or “girl,” for example) or a particular beh
avior (a submissive kneeling, a dominant placing her hand on the back of the submissive’s neck). Others are less conscious, more intuitive – a tone of voice, a shift in body language. Longtime D/S couples grow extremely skilled in reading such signals and responding to each other’s shifting needs and desires as the moment dictates.
ACTIVITIES AND BEHAVIORS. What kinds of things do full-time D/S couples do to manifest their way of being together? The list can vary from one couple to the next, of course. Some dominants like to control their submissive’s behaviors with a goal towards improving his life – making sure that he quits smoking or does the work he brought home for the night or gets his daily exercise. Others require that their submissive give them valuable service of some kind – maintaining the household, caring for the dominant’s body or possessions, or even managing or training other submissives. Still others enjoy training their submissives in postures, vocal mannerisms, forms of address or types of service that are particularly appealing to the dominant – for example, kneeling with the knees 14” apart, eyes down, back straight, while proffering a cup of coffee that’s exactly the right strength and temperature and contains the perfect amount of cream and sugar.
Lifestyle D/S-ers have generated many clever devices to keep the submissive enslaved when the dominant is not present. The submissive may wear a collar or other symbol. You can padlock a chain around her waist, or give him instructions to go into the bathroom at work at two o’clock every day and masturbate for five minutes without coming, and so on…
WHAT’S IN IT FOR THE SUBMISSIVE? One submissive we know, who drove twice a week from her work as a housewife and mother to take care of her master’s household, told us, “At home, I do the same things, and nobody notices. When I do them for my master, he notices them and appreciates them and gives me lots of positive feedback for doing them.” So for at least some submissives, part of their pleasure comes from being noticed and appreciated for what they have to offer. The owner of such a slave told us, “She is the most precious thing I could possibly own, and I never forget that.”
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