The New Topping Book (12 page)

So how do you find a more constructive way to deal with neediness in scene space? First, you get to have limits. So as a top, if you really hate a particular kind of play that makes your partner seem uncomfortably needy, you can choose not to play that kind of scene.

If you feel pressured by indirect hints, you can insist that the bottom ask directly for what she wants. This can actually be healing: a person who uses neediness and manipulation may have grown up in a family where there was no straightforward way to get his or her needs met (she learned this behavior somewhere, right?), so getting positive strokes for asking for what she wants can be a wonderful revelation.

Or you can negotiate a scene that includes neediness or dependency by making an agreement that the bottom will bring in the independent self when asked: “I want to talk with the grown-up now.” It may take a few moments for the bottom to switch states of consciousness, but the ability to switch from roles to reality is worth developing – practice makes perfect.

B
LACK
H
OLES
.
“Black hole” is a terribly rude name for bottoms who do not put out enough visible response for you to feel confident that you have any idea what is going on with them. They may or may not be having a good time, but their demeanor is so impassive that you can’t tell. And if you can’t tell what does or does not work for this bottom, without feedback, how can you know when it is safe to proceed? Response is the top’s safety information, and it is also the top’s reward. This is our theater, and the bottom’s response is our applause.

It’stempting to deal with unresponsive bottoms by judging – this person is a lousy bottom, and I won’t play with him or her again. But what if you like this bottom? What if he is your friend? Your lover?

Is there anything you can do to make this bottom responsive? Remember that nobody is born knowing how to do this stuff, and anybody can learn. In
The New Bottoming Book
, we discussed the process of getting a scene off the ground and of finding your turn-on as a bottom, and we recommended acting “as if.” If a bottom breathes hard and works his body, he will actually get more turned on, and provide feedback for you to play against. It doesn’t hurt for the top to model turn-on and interest too – think of all that wonderful gay male porn where the top is always saying “Oooooh, yeah!” in throaty tones. You can breathe hard and grind your groin against your bottom, for example, to get you both turned on and set a good example. Snarl a little.

And you can always ask for the response you want. Janet says that her bottoms tend to respond with enthusiasm when she leans in close and purrs in their ear, “You know, it would really turn me on to hear you scream…”

Back when you were negotiating what you were going to do in this scene, perhaps you remembered to ask some questions about how this bottom gets turned on. Suck on the neck? Blow in the ear? Spit in the face? It’s always reassuring when you know what to do.

You can tell a bottom, even without leaving role, that you need more response, that you can’t tell if the scene is working or not. Dossie remembers:

The first time I topped at a party I was flogging a woman I didn’t know very well, and wasn’t sure if it was okay to hit harder. I didn’t want to interrupt the scene to ask, especially because there were people watching, and then I got a great idea. In my best mean voice I growled, “If you want me to hit you harder you better get that ass up there where I can get at it!” And she did, and I did, and it was great.

So this bottom knew how to get what she wanted – and, for that matter, that she could reduce the intensity by pulling away. Thus you can instruct your bottom in exactly what kind of body language you want to hear.

A
CTIVITIES THAT
R
EQUIRE
S
PECIAL
C
ONSENT

Disagreements and hard feelings sometimes arise between players when one player takes for granted that it is okay to do something that the other player assumes should not be done without ascertaining consent prior to the scene. This happens in the vanilla world too: a good example might be anal penetration, for which an unspoken etiquette dictates that you find out how your partner feels about his or her asshole before you plunge in and yell “Surprise!”

BDSM opens up the potential for an enormous range of activity, and what is bread-and-butter ordinary for one player might be something the other person has never heard of. A difference of opinion in this area may get discovered in an atmosphere of extreme adrenaline rush, which can make it difficult to maintain emotional equilibrium. So allow a moment to come down, and please remember that these are not occasions for fault and blame, but for understanding differences in customs and desires.

We will present here a list of things that some people might think would require specific consent – with the proviso that just about nobody would agree with every single item on our list. Still, we think that if you’re not certain about consent, you have to ask.

•  
Sex.
Some people take for granted that a scene will include something resembling genital sex or orgasm-producing activity, and will be very disappointed if they play with someone who does not have that as a given. Others see their play as something distinct from sex. So you have to ask.

Even if you and your partner have agreed to be sexual, you need to agree on what kinds of sexual behaviors are OK – assplay, as we mentioned earlier, is one common limit. People also make assumptions about safer sex that are better to negotiate: for instance, there is wide difference of opinion about the relative safety of oral sex, and a lot of disagreement in some heterosexual and lesbian communities about whether safer sex is important at all. (Just in case you couldn’t guess, we think it is.)

•  
Marks.
Temporary marks, like bruises or welts that last a few days, are common occurrences in S/M. However, some people – such as those with vanilla partners at home – might have problems with them, so it’s probably a good idea to ask about marks before you haul out the cast-iron cane. (A gynecologist once asked Dossie if she got those bruises riding a horse – Dossie responded, “No.”) We strongly recommend that you never promise a new bottom you won’t leave marks, because different skins react very differently to the same stimulus and you can never know for sure how
this
bottom’s body will react.

Cuttings or piercings intended to be temporary can sometimes leave marks that last a lot longer than intended, so even if someone gives you permission to open their skin it’s not a good idea to carve your initials on their ass, or indulge a taste for silly graffiti. The skin should probably not be opened at all without consent, and deliberate permanent marks must always be negotiated.

•  
Pain.
It’s easy to assume that any bottom enjoys pain, so we will remind you that Dossie did not play with pain for her first several years in S/M: pain is an acquired taste for a lot of folk. We are both very happy that we’ve acquired it, but would still look askance at someone who would inflict intense pain on us without some reason to believe that we would enjoy it.

•  
Humiliation.
For some bottoms, feeling embarrassed, humiliated or even degraded is a pungent erotic thrill, and for others it’s an infuriating insult. And to make things even more complicated, different people feel humiliated by different things: for one man, crossdressing is acute humiliation, while for another it’s fun costumery. So if your bottom tells you that he loves or hates humiliation, be sure to find out what kinds of humiliation he loves or hates.

•  
Phobias and turnoffs.
Many of us have one or more psychological phobias, images or associations – rape, slavery, prostitution, child abuse and Nazis are common ones – that make us so unhappy or frightened in the real world that we do not wish to play with them in S/M. Some people have serious phobias about needles, fire, electricity or blood, and may not be sophisticated enough to know that these can be S/M activities: we do play with fear, but we do so consensually. Few people assume an easy comfort level with shit, and piss is more accepted in some communities than others.

•  
High-risk play.
Some forms of play have much higher risks of injury or death than others. Breath control and electricity can stop hearts, sometimes permanently. Firearms play, no matter how careful you think you’re being with an “unloaded” gun, can go tragically wrong, as can playing with real-world danger like speeding cars and skyscraper balconies. And then there’s play with serious social risks, like getting caught by your mother. Play involving drugs or alcohol impairs bottoms’ perception of damage being done to their bodies, and reduces tops’ judgment and inhibitions. There’s room for difference of opinion about the thin line between “very risky” and “too dangerous to do at all” – but if you’re playing anywhere close to that line, we think your play requires both partners’ explicit consent, and a lot of planning for safety.

•  
Limits of scene space.
Scenes that expand the agreed-upon limits of scene space require special consent – for instance, inviting other people to join a scene should be checked with your bottom, because if you get your bottom all tied up and hot and bothered and then introduce your three friends who just arrived, she might get a little outraged. You also include additional, nonconsensual participants if you play visibly in public, like if you chain your bottom to a parking meter and go inside for a cappuccino. It is very important to have explicit consent if you want to record a scene in photos or on video or audiotape: many people have strong and valid limits about pictures of themselves in extremely embarrassing positions possibly being seen by other people.

•  
Emotional limits.
Scenes likely to evoke profound emotional conflict require special consent, both from the bottom and from the top. Such scenes may involve abandonment, betrayal, extreme humiliation, regression to child or baby states, and real-world emotions, especially anger. These are all “button-pushers,” and can evoke much more extreme responses than you bargained for. We find it particularly important to agree that we will not take anger we have about real conflict into a scene – even if you and your bottom are in a relationship in which you have the right to punish him, it’s generally not a good idea to punish in anger.

L
IMITS FOR
T
OPS

As tops, we have the same responsibility as bottoms to know our own limits. We can start by being honest about what we want and what we don’t want. A good exercise to clarify this is called “Yes, No and Maybe.” Make a list of all the sexual and BDSM activities you can think of, and then divide them into three categories –
yes
,
no
and
maybe
.
Yes
is what you know you like,
no
is what you know you don’t like, and
maybe
is all those things that might be hot if the time were right, or you were really turned on, or you could get someone who already knows how to teach you. This exercise can be fun to do with your partner or in a group – but if you feel that to be a real stud top you ought to be ready for anything, maybe you should try it alone the first time so you can be honest with yourself. On your
yes
list you will probably find plenty of things you like, and the
maybe
list promises plenty of hot stuff to explore. Respect your own
no
list as you would your bottom’s.

It is particularly important to know and honor the limits of your knowledge and skill. It can be embarrassing if a bottom approaches you with a new eight-foot bullwhip and wants you and only you to crack it over his or her ass, forcing you to admit that you have no idea how to operate that thing. But remember, it would be a lot more embarrassing if you tried to do it and failed, and even worse if you wound up injuring the bottom – a very real possibility, as throwing a bullwhip is dangerous and requires a tremendous amount of training and practice.

If your fantasy of being a top requires you to be all-knowing, that’s a fine fantasy, and you still have to know your limits. Good bottoms will respect your honesty – at least, if we said we’d never done something before and were feeling uncertain about it, and a bottom said “Aw, c’mon,” we would wonder a lot about that bottom’s respect for safety.

M
AKING
R
OOM FOR
Y
OUR
O
WN
N
EEDS
.
Where do sex and physical stimulation for the top fit into your scene agenda? Many of us have some difficulty feeling like a big bad top when we are on our backs with our legs in the air squealing in ecstasy. Some tops like to focus on what they are doing to the bottom during the scene, and arrange for their own orgasm afterwards. Some of us top first, then switch to the bottom role to get stimulated. Some of us order our bottoms not to touch us at all during a scene because it is distracting.