The New Topping Book (4 page)

Fear can be arousing… the subjective experience of bondage can be so sensual as to approach a trance state… the chance to devote yourself to another’s pleasure can soothe away your own cares… the controlled experience of pain in a safe and consensual scene can be tremendously rewarding.

Many of our activities enable us to use our bodies’ ability to produce naturally occurring morphine-like neurotransmitters called “endorphins” in response to intense stimuli. In
The New Bottoming Book
we described in detail how sensations can be processed through the body to create an endorphin high, and how ecstatic experiences of intensity and openness transmute strong physical and emotional sensation into an altered state of consciousness that we experience as extreme pleasure.

Other rewards of bottoming include getting lots of attention, as well as acting out fantasies of helplessness and other forbidden emotions (needy, pathetic, dependent, guilt-ridden) that, like their toppish counterparts, would cause lots of trouble in the real world.

H
OW
A
RE
T
OPS AND
B
OTTOMS
I
NTERRELATED
?

So tops and bottoms are interdependent – we need each other to play out our fantasy roles as well as to perform the physical acts that make us so happy. Bottoms need tops to push them off cliffs so they can fly, and tops need bottoms so they can ride the same winds, and that’s how both can have their dreams come true. This is obvious… but the fantasies we play with are not necessarily obvious.

The nature of the dance of BDSM tends to polarize our roles to a greater extent than might be possible or healthy in the rest of our lives. Play pushes both top and bottom out to the far ends of the spectrum. Each player, in traveling further out, supports the other in going yet further. Thus as a wonderful scene progresses, the bottoms get smaller, the tops get bigger, and the larger the territory we encompass: we move to the outer ends of the spectrum, generating something like centrifugal force, spinning further and further out while holding each other safe and tight.

W
HOSE
F
ANTASY
?

We want to mention here that not all scenes are based on fantasies, and especially not on fantasies that have detailed scripts or stories. Often the scene is based on an image, a feeling, an emotion, or a specific activity like bondage or flogging or anal sex.

One question that comes up when we actually sit down to negotiate a scene is whose fantasy are we playing, the top’s or the bottom’s? The answer is either, or both, or whatever the two of you together decide will work the best. Some bottoms are not comfortable talking about their fantasies for fear of seeming too directive, but we believe that it is a requirement for a skilled and supportive bottom to be able to tell you about her desires – as a top, you need some information to figure out what will make this scene work.

Good tops learn to support bottoms through the embarrassment of revealing their fantasies – and isn’t embarrassment one of those hot forbidden emotions we love to play with?
Force
that shy little thing to tell you what she wants!

Similarly, tops need to learn to speak comfortably about their fantasies and desires. As we’ll see when we talk about negotiation, tops don’t just walk up to bottoms and do whatever comes to mind. Scenes are negotiated, and constructed to satisfy both bodies and imaginations while remaining within the limits of both top and bottom. And to find out if your fantasy is within your bottom’s limits, you have to discuss it at least enough to establish those limits (everybody enjoys a surprise, but it’s not kosher to tattoo “Kilroy Was Here!” on your friend’s ass without permission).

Some tops feel they lose authority as a top when they agree to play all or part of a bottom’s fantasy, and are offended by the idea that they may be “servicing” the bottom. We think it’s inappropriate to get your ego invested in your bottom’s having no desire but to please you, or no ideas of his own. We would be equally critical of a bottom who didn’t want to hear about the top’s desires and needs, or was not interested in trying out his fantasy.

New players often start out with one fantasy they have desired and elaborated on for years, while more seasoned tops and bottoms may enjoy many roles in many scenarios. So when we play out a bottom’s fantasy we have little to lose and lots to gain. When we stretch to realize someone else’s story, we get to enlarge our repertoire, learn new skills, and perhaps discover yet more ways to get turned on. Sounds like a win-win situation to us.

So we see no need to compete over whose game we are playing – we’d rather play your wonderful ideas tonight and mine tomorrow, regardless of who’s in charge. Once again, we see this as a collaborative endeavor, in which we play with power that is shared, for the pleasure and benefit of all parties in the game.

S
YMBOLISM AND
S
TRUCTURE

As Sir Stephen remarked in
The Story of O,
we are indeed fond of rituals. BDSM is often characterized by a certain formality or ritual quality that reminds us of opera gowns, dress uniforms, nuns’ habits and other formal signifiers.

That’s because play is to a very real degree about symbolism. The “kidnapping” we do for erotic pleasure reflects an arousing fantasy (since in our fantasy, the kidnappers do exactly what we want), and when we play we make sure the “kidnappers” are actually doing exactly what we want, a ritual of helplessness in the face of overwhelming stimulas. An actual kidnapping, with no concern for the feelings of the victim, would be a life-shattering reality. The symbol enables us to confront our simultaneous fear of, and attraction to, the genuine horrors of the world. But we need form and structure to clarify the distinction between the symbol and the thing itself.

The structure we build around our play creates a “firewall,” a boundary that enables us to take vague and abstract ideas, emotions, roles and dynamics and pull them upwards into reality, where we can explore them and get turned on by them. We learn a lot about what the limits are, and where the boundaries are between scene space and the rest of our lives.

Wise players study the play of those who have gone before us, just as art students study the Old Masters (interesting choice of name, don’t you think?). By building on the foundations that others have developed, we can build taller and stronger fireplaces for our flames so they can leap higher, hotter and safer.

Sometimes costumes help define our structure, telling us what role we’re playing – both from the archetypes expressed (cop, pirate, doctor) and by the function of the garments (the daddy’s belt, the vampire’s fangs, the goddess’s sky-high heels). These symbols are also a reminder that the top has made a commitment to remain aware, contained, in control of both partners – that she has agreed not to fall down on the floor and thrash in ecstasy until it is safe and consonant to do so. The bottom may not dress at all, indicating vulnerability and availability, or may have his essential nakedness accentuated by symbols like collars or corsets, or by clothes which can be removed by the top as part of a spiritual and physical stripping away of defenses.

Bondage, even symbolic bondage such as a loop of thread holding thumbs together, creates a structure which controls the bottom’s behavior and defines roles. So are the names which we call one another – “sir” and “boy,” “mistress” and “slave,” “milady” and “sirrah,” “Spot” and “woof woof!”

Sometimes our structure is defined by logistics: time, physical abilities, environments. We enter the dungeon and become our “other selves,” then leave it and become our day-to-day selves again. Our time agreements may be our form: we’ll play until 3:00, then go get something to eat. Or we may agree to play until one or the other or both of us has had an orgasm, or has reached some mutually agreed upon level of stimulation.

All these structures are there to help you get as big as you can, and your bottom as small as he can, while ensuring your safe return to your normal size when you need to go back. Like Alice’s looking glass, they enable you to wander safely through the topsy-turvy dreamscapes of fantasy, where pain is pleasure and cruelty is love.

3

W
HAT
D
O
T
OPS
D
O
?

F
INDING
Y
OUR
T
OP
P
ERSONA
.
As a top, you might be a sadistically vicious interrogator, or a sweetly sorrowful parent who’s only spanking this naughty boy for his own good. You could be a mad scientist out of a horror film, an eight-year-old girl blackmailing her babysitter, Simon Legree, the Phantom of the Opera, or the evil caliph keeping his harem in order. You could be Captain Bligh, Captain Picard, Captain Hook, Captain America or even Captain Kangaroo, because the ways to be a top are limited only by your imagination.

Most of our fantasies come from very deep places inside us – Janet blushes to admit that she still has toppy fantasies about the villains on the old campy “Batman” TV show that aired in her impressionable adolescence. We draw our fantasies from the powerful archetypes found in popular culture, like movies and TV shows; from the real-world torture and rape that simultaneously fascinate and horrify us; from well-thumbed reminiscences of our own childhoods – in short, from almost any place our monkey curiosity carries us.

Fantasies are seldom sophisticated, ambiguous or even very pretty. They almost never contain negotiation or safewords (these are “safety nets” that get built into our real-world play to help make our fantasies safer to enact). For these reasons, and because we know that wanting to hurt, control or humiliate people is not OK, we may feel very ashamed or embarrassed about our fantasies. But once we overcome that embarrassment, and discover how many other people have similar feelings, our fantasy world becomes a hot and happy playground.

During one of our play dates, we originally had no particular scenario in mind. But during the one-hour drive between our houses, Janet was idly fantasizing about being the matron in a Victorian workhouse full of girl orphans. With no small embarrassment, she shared that fantasy with Dossie over lunch. Dossie happened to be wearing a sundress that made her look about fourteen, and the roles and scenario fell easily into place from there: Dossie became the new little orphan recently brought into the workhouse, and “Miss Janet, ma’am” spent a happy couple of hours showing her “how things is done around ’ere,” and demonstrating the dreadful canings she would get if she ever misbehaved.

Advertising people refer to radio as “theater of the mind,” because a few well-chosen words and sound effects are all it takes to create an entire scenario inside the head of the listener. We think S/M is theater of the mind, too. It’s a rare treat when you can set up a scene with full props and costumes and dialogue; more often, a couple of items – a dashing hat, say, or a flogger that looks like something Basil Rathbone might have used on Errol Flynn – is all it takes to create and maintain an illusion. And, as the top, you get to be playwright, set designer, costume designer, director and audience.

D
O
Y
OU
A
LWAYS
H
AVE TO
H
AVE A
R
OLE?
A lot of our best S/M scenes have been done without recourse to any particular role – we’re not Harriet Marwood or Ming the Merciless, we’re simply us.

Still, any given scene has a “flavor” that can often be described by describing a role. A harsh scene in which limits get pushed, in which the top acts as though she really doesn’t care what happens to the bottom, may have the flavor of a torture or interrogation scene. A very nurturing scene, in which the top is giving the bottom a lot of “there, there, you can take just a
little
more” messages, may have more of a nice-mommy or nice-daddy flavor.

A lot of people are bashful about overt role-playing, and others simply aren’t turned on by it – it seems false to them. But, just as a role-playing scene where the bottom wants to be a horsie and the top wants to be Superman is likely to run into problems, a scene where one partner wants to humiliate and the other wants to be nurtured is probably not going to work too well. So even if you’re not into playing your roles overtly, it’s important to be clear about what flavor of scene you want. And when we talk in this book about a “daddy scene” or an “interrogation scene,” we may be talking about a scene with overt roles, props and dialogue, or we may be describing the overall flavor of the scene.

W
HERE
A
RE
T
HE
B
OUNDARIES
?

As you can see, many of the roles in this book reflect real-world power relationships of various intensities. Because we are eroticized to power, we may begin to feel that we want our play to be more and more “real” – to creep closer to the edge where the realities of consent and power begin to blur.