The New Topping Book (14 page)

G
ETTING
Y
OURSELF
T
URNED
O
N
. If you’re lucky, you’ll already be turned on and feeling like the King or Queen of Hell before you begin – but neither of us is usually that lucky; we usually have to
do
something to get turned on and into top space.

Is there something physical that you know turns you on, makes you feel toppy? Janet feels toppy when someone kneels in front of her and sucks her nipples. Do you like having your boots kissed? Your feet rubbed? Is there a name you like to be called? Tell your bottom how to do what you like; be specific. He’ll start to feel submissive and under your control, and you’ll start to get turned on.

Sometimes you can convince yourself that you’re a top simply by acting like one. Be bossy, be forceful – it’s okay if it doesn’t feel “natural” at first; imitate your favorite movie villain, or a top whose style you’ve admired at parties. As you start to act like a top, you’ll probably start to feel a little excited. And the more turned on you feel, the more natural the topping will seem, and the more turned on you’ll get, so you’ll do more, and get more turned on, and…

Your bottom will notice your arousal and your toppiness and start to get turned on, too, and will add his energy to the drama you’re building. And before you know it, there you’ll both be – nicely in role, wildly excited and having an absolutely wonderful time.

B
UILDING
. Once you’ve established scene space with a proper beginning, you can start building some momentum. For most scenes, you want to begin slowly and build gradually. (Interrogation, terror and punishment scenes can be exceptions.) If you’re playing with sensation, start with the gentlest – sensual stroking or erotic pinching, or some slow-building strokes from a nice soft thuddy flogger. If your scene is more about domination and control, you may want to start with some orders that you know the bottom will not find too intense (either too demanding or too rewarding) – some posture training, say, or an order for the bottom to lightly stimulate you to get you in the mood. Save the really difficult tasks for later when the bottom is “warmed up” and deeply into role, and the activities you know she really loves as a reward for doing the difficult ones.

Escalate slowly. If you’ve started with your softest mellowest flogger, step up to something a bit heavier. Add a bit more bondage to restrict your captive’s movement a little more. Start getting a bit pickier about how your commands are carried out. Challenge your bottom by requiring him to do something that requires concentration as he accepts increasing stimulation. (Janet once played with a top who required that she address him by obscene names, each one different, as he caned her: “One, thank you, dickhead! Two, thank you, fuckwad! Three, thank you, shitfor-brains!”)

You don’t have to continue to escalate; one of the arts of topping is to take the bottom right up to the edge where she thinks she can’t stand it any more, then back off for a while and do something nicer, then go up to that same place and perhaps a little beyond, then back off again…

I
MPULSE
T
OPPING
. Occasionally, while partway into a scene that you’ve planned carefully, you’ll be struck by a sudden inspiration. Following your instinct at such a moment can be risky, particularly if the bottom is expecting something different. But, if your inspiration isn’t a limit for the bottom, it may turn out to be your intuition guiding you toward something wonderful; some of our best moments in scene have been impromptu impulses of this kind.

On the other hand, sometimes you’ll come up totally dry – with a bad case of the “blank-paperitis” we mentioned earlier. A good strategy here is to do whatever worked last time, or, if you’re in the middle of a scene, you can backtrack to do some more of whatever was working well earlier: there’s no rule against more of a good thing.

One top we know taught us another excellent strategy for this moment: do nothing. Simply stop and re-center yourself. Take a deep breath or two. Look at yourself and your bottom. Wait. Inspiration will come. The bottom isn’t going anywhere. This can seem like a very long moment, but really, it’s usually only a minute or so… and many bottoms love suspense.

K
EEPING
I
T
G
OING

Good tops are full of all kinds of sneaky ways to keep a scene going without breaking its energy.

A lot of the ideas we’ll talk about in this section fall into two categories: ways to keep the energy going in a scene that is supportive and nurturing, and ways to accomplish the same goal in a scene that’s harsh and is built around a fantasy of nonconsent. In both cases, you’re trying to do the same things – to get support and information for yourself and to provide support and encouragement for your bottom – but the way that you accomplish those goals will depend on what role you’re playing.

T
AKING
C
ONTROL
. An important thing to remember is that your goal is to “turn off your bottom’s brain” – to enable her to melt into a malleable, will-less state of arousal and hypersensuality. The more control, verbal and physical, that you exert, the easier it will be for your bottom to relinquish control to you.

It’s a good idea to offer your bottom as few choices as possible. “Lie down on the bed” is not such a great order, because it leaves too many questions open in the bottom’s mind. “Lie down on the bed, face down, with your head facing the headboard, your legs together and your arms outspread” is better.

You may still want to offer your bottom choices as part of a head trip – “Six with the cane or 50 with the flogger? You choose.” But do so intentionally, and make it clear that you’re offering the choice not because you’re floundering but because you enjoy seeing the bottom struggle with the decision.

It can work very well to take control of a bottom in a physical way as well: pushing, grabbing, dragging, holding down. We did a scene that played with this sense of physical control:

Dossie was a recently captured slavegirl in a country where she didn’t speak the language; Janet was a new owner who wasn’t the talkative type. While Dossie begged, whined, offered bribes, fumed and refused, Janet simply physically forced her (with a little help from a few floggers and canes and paddles) to kneel, to dance, to suck Janet’s breasts, to masturbate, and other critical “slave skills.” For a couple of verbalists like us, it was a fabulously freeing scene – Dossie couldn’t talk her way out of it, and Janet found herself able to be physically rough, with hairpulling, shoving, armtwisting and so on, in a way that’s usually difficult for her
.

Giving clear, forceful directions can be difficult for many tops, perhaps especially women, who are culturally enjoined against being directive. An exercise Janet teaches in her workshops for novice female dominants is to have the bottoms rub their mistresses’ feet as the mistresses give specific directions about where to rub, how hard and in what rhythm. Although this exercise may sound simple, it is difficult for many attendees. If you have trouble giving orders, it might be a good way for you to practice this important skill.

A
SKING FOR
D
IRECTION
. While the fantasy of much BDSM is that the top is taking his or her pleasure without regard to what the bottom wants, the reality is that you’re doing this for mutual enjoyment – and you can’t attain mutual enjoyment without some guidance from your bottom about what he is enjoying. But most bottoms don’t like to feel like they’re running the scene: if they wanted to run scenes, they’d be tops. So you need to figure out ways to get the information you need without seeming to relinquish control.

The ritual of requiring the bottom to kiss the whip or other implement is really a script for consent. The threat builds anticipation while giving the bottom an opportunity to voice any concerns. Others enjoy having the bottom choose which toy he wants to experience; we know one who likes to lay out all his toys, then tell his bottom, “Bring me one item to give you pain and one to give you pleasure.”

Other ways of asking for direction are verbal – and in these, tone of voice and turn of phrase matter a lot. You know and we know that the sentences “I’d like to cane you now, would that be OK?” and “You’re about to get a caning you’ll never forget, you little slut” really mean pretty much the same thing, but they certainly don’t feel the same to your bottom.

The trick to asking for direction from top space is to phrase the request in such a way that it sounds like you’re demanding it for your own pleasure, not fumbling around trying to figure out what will please your bottom.

H
OW TO
B
E
S
UPPORTIVE
. Bottoms need a lot of support when they’re doing their thing, and, depending on the flavor of scene you’re doing, there are a lot of different ways you can offer it.

If a bottom is doing something intense and difficult to please you, she deserves and needs praise. If your scene has a nurturing tone, you simply may want to offer that praise: “I’m proud of you” or “You took that really well” or “You look so beautiful doing that.” On the other hand, very few interrogators compliment their victims on how well they take their torture. So if you’re role-playing a scene of nonconsent or harshness, you have to be more subtle – but a muttered comment about the stubbornness of this particular victim accomplishes the same goal without breaking role: “Ah, she has spirit, I like that! More to break.”

A particularly devious top trick is to use the lowered boundaries of scene space to “implant” messages of self-esteem. We’ve done a couple of scenes together in which Janet is a schoolmistressy authority figure and Dossie is a young girl; Janet enjoys telling Dossie that “a pretty little thing like you is going to be
very
popular with the big girls around here” – creating a nice sense of dread as she builds Dossie’s mental self-image.

It can also be very helpful to “coach” your bottom through the tough parts by reminding him or her to do things like breathe and relax, kind of like a labor coach in childbirth. If you’re being a supportive top, you can simply tell your bottom what you want her to do: “breathe along with me” or “relax your butt muscles” or “listen to the music.” If you’re being a mean top, you may have to get a little more creative. “I want to hear you scream” accomplishes the same goal as reminding your partner to breathe (it takes oxygen to scream), but sends shivers up the spine in a totally different way. You can also
order
your bottom to do something like relaxing her muscles, with appropriate penalties if she tenses up.

C
HECKING
I
N
. Since bottoms occasionally forget how to safeword for one reason or another, we think it’s a good idea for a top to have a mechanism she can use to “check in” to make sure that everything’s still basically OK.

Many people check in verbally. “Still with me?” or “Do you remember your safeword?” are easy and readily understandable. However, they can be inappropriate for some scenes (prison guards rarely ask their victims if they’re enjoying themselves), plus bottoms can sometimes get too nonverbal to respond properly.

In his book
SM 101: A Realistic Introduction,
Jay Wiseman suggests the “two squeezes” check-in: the top takes hold of some part of the bottom’s body (often the hand) and gives it two firm squeezes. The bottom lets the top know that she’s OK by taking hold of some part of the top’s body and giving it two squeezes back. If the top doesn’t get the two return squeezes, he tries once again; if the squeezes still aren’t forthcoming, he assumes that something’s wrong and that it’s time to break role and talk.

Other forms of check-in are physical: looking for welts to make sure the whip is landing in the right places, watching for changes in breathing or sound, feeling bound hands and feet to make sure they’re still warm and getting enough circulation. Such check-ins also get you close to your bottom’s body, which he usually doesn’t mind.

C
ALIBRATING
Y
OUR
B
OTTOM
. Many tops, when playing for the first time with a new bottom (or with a new toy on a long-time bottom), use some variant of a “one to ten” strategy. Usually, the top gives the bottom a very gentle stimulus and says, “That was a ‘one’ on a scale of one to ten. When you’re ready for another one, say a number that tells me how intense you want it.” The top spends several minutes letting the bottom “call the shots” in this way, learning about the bottom’s reactions as she goes. Eventually, when the bottom seems to be getting a little bored, the top says, “If you’re ready to stop calling numbers and let me decide force and timing on my own, let me know.” The bottom can go on one-to-tenning for as long as he needs to feel comfortable, and the top gets a good idea of how well the bottom can handle this particular sensation.

B
OTTOMLESS
P
ITS AND
“T
HE
F
OREVER
P
LACE
.” Sometimes, a bottom will get so endorphined out or go under so deeply that she feels like she just wants to go on doing this forever and ever and ever. A bottom who is in this condition will not be able to tell you if you are doing damage to her body or mind. She may go very still, no longer struggling or making noise – this can be scary if you’re not ready for it. Or she may still be moaning and crying, but be unable to respond to simple questions or orders. Or she may seem fine – Dossie grins and giggles, appearing deceptively on top of it all, while Janet chatters nonchalantly.