The Ultimate Guide to Kink (36 page)

I hope it won’t completely confuse the issue to say that not all pain trips require a top and a bottom. Some people who create ordeals view themselves as spiritual guides or assistants; they don’t want a romantic relationship. I’ve heard hot stories of two competitive bottoms who got together to see who would use their safeword first. And, during those periods of drought when the bars and parties and clubs seem populated by toads and trolls, the self-infliction of sexy pain is a very nice adjunct to masturbation. Who could you trust more than yourself?

SET AND SETTING

The terms
set
and
setting
were coined by Timothy Leary to describe factors that determine the experience of ingesting psychedelic drugs. It is useful to consider these factors because they influence the emotional content of an event, whether it is theater, long-distance running, or therapy.
Set
has to do with the participants’ mind-set, the internal processes that can either enhance or destroy pleasure.
Setting
refers to the location where the event takes place—what you see, smell, touch, hear, and feel around you.

These factors are highly individual. If the steps I suggest don’t sound effective for you, you are the best judge of that. But at least I can give you some specific ideas that have proven their worth for me and other players. This can help you pin down your own experimental parameters. And after every session, it’s a good idea to discuss what did and didn’t work, with an eye to brainstorming new possibilities for erotic play. If you must give your partner negative feedback, express it with tenderness, and surround your misgivings with praise for what did work. Both top and bottom make themselves equally vulnerable in a session. If the only thing you can come up with is a barrage of criticism or inflated demands, the two of you are probably incompatible.

Take a look at the space where the scene is going to happen. Do enough preparation so that the two of you can be spontaneous. Everything you are going to need should be in the room. Leave the room if you must, but be aware you are opening the oven and letting some of the heat out. When you return, you’ll need to back up a little and build up to the point you reached when the two of you broke connection.

The room needs to be clean—well, for most fetishes. Toys ought to be organized, in good repair, and accessible. Lube and safe-sex barriers should be in clear view. Rope ought to be untangled, clean, inspected for weaknesses, and laid out so it won’t turn into a snarl the minute the top touches it. If you are going to play with locking devices, make sure there are extra keys, and that both of you know where they are.

Think of this as foreplay. You can start getting excited by your own sexiness, and by anticipating your partner’s presence. Touching your toys and disinfecting a play surface is like caressing your own body. Your energy, sense of purpose, or consciousness starts gathering into a focus on Eros.

Before you play, ask yourself what makes you feel alluring and powerful. (I am including bottoms here because you need your own strength. The session comes from you as much as, if not more than, from the top.) Take the time and trouble to dress up, even if you are only wearing a beautiful collar or a badass pair of boots. Get enough rest and eat a healthy meal a couple of hours before you play.

I’m going to assume that you’ve already been educated about how to negotiate a scene, get any needed consent, choose a safeword, etc. I’m also going to assume that you know your way around the toys or equipment you will use. This is an article about pain play in general; describing every single technique is beyond my scope.
Never
pretend to have experience that you lack. There is honor only in being honest about this and making sure you get trained to an expert level.

Unless you are the Ice Queen escorting your latest paramour to your frigid palace, I recommend taking the bottom into a warm room. Loose, relaxed muscles are going to accept building sensations more easily. I also suggest taking away one of your bottom’s senses, if only for a little while. Using a blindfold or gag is your first demand for control over their body. Can they let go and graciously accede to allowing you to orchestrate their experience?

Take the time to verbally or visually remind the two of you (or your birthday party guests) who it is you are manifesting in this fantasy. In what time or place are you encountering each other? You can do a simple breathing exercise to get grounded in the present. Or perhaps you’ve constructed an elaborate story with chapters and verses. This provides a meaningful context for pain.

During some sessions, the reason for the infliction of pain is elicited from the bottom while they are under duress (“You’re hurting me because I’m a dirty pig!” or “You are giving me pain to push me out of my body, so I can fly free.”) In the past, I have said that it is the top’s responsibility to determine what each action means and share that significance with the bottom. But I have come to see that finding this underlying meaning is really a joint project. It may be a conspiracy that can be verified by silently meeting each other’s eyes, or it may be a sudden revelation that has to be shouted or whispered aloud. You may find the answer in your own heart or see it emerging in the shape of your partner’s face. It can be an old friend, an enemy, or a complete surprise.

Arousing the bottom is an important first step, unless you are playing with a rare and wonderful creature who needs pain to get aroused. Give your partner a brief massage. Highlight the genitals but don’t give them too much attention. You want to create anticipation by teasing. If the bottom has a favorite toy that already gets them going, why not begin with that. Proceed from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Bondage can be very helpful. It allows the bottom to feel contained and secure, and gives them something to pull on when things get exciting.

I dearly love to mix sexual stimulation with gradually increasing levels of pain. I also want to keep the bottom awake and responsive, so I won’t use the same implement for too long. If I am whipping someone, I switch between implements that go “thud” and skinny, flexible tools that sting. As blood rises to the surface of the skin, it becomes more sensitive; sometimes running your fingertips or a piece of fur over the skin is exquisite, almost too much so. I also like to vary dry skin versus wet during a whipping or spanking. Generally, wet skin is more sensitive.

Alternating with the bad behavior, I am kissing the bottom, stroking their body, locating various erogenous zones, and titillating them. I want them to need my touch. Winning pleasure is a reward for enduring or enjoying a low level of pain. Be patient with this type of training. It can take several sessions before you begin to see the bottom opening up and allowing you to do more and more. Trust can’t always be built in one session.

A bottom who needs safety before they can take down their walls will appreciate being asked how they are doing and reminded that this is all within their control. (It is a common joke among tops who enjoy electrical play that if you give the bottom a control box, they will smartly turn up the dial to levels that were not allowed when the control rested in the top’s hand.) You might think that safety is a universal requirement for all masochists, but I have found instead that a certain amount of realism may be necessary to unlock an erotic response to higher levels of pain. If you really are a captive, you know you will have to take more than the person who is playing at being a captive.

Fear is the most powerful obstacle to building up a tolerance for and erotic response to pain. It may sound corny, but I love to recite the Bene Gesserit rite about pain from the
Dune
novels. Get the bottom to pay attention to what is really going on, right now, rather than their exaggerated and panicky image of what might happen to them. I find that if I can get a bottom to stick with me for the first 20 minutes or so, a whip or a fistful of clothespins suddenly gets a whole lot easier to take. That’s because naturally occurring chemicals are beginning to hit the bloodstream, turning “pain” into “wheeee”!

If you are able to feel energy around yourself and your partner, remind them that you want to link the two of you together. I have found that it often works to create a vocal circuit between me and my partner. When I hurt them, they can open their mouth and by panting or making a noise pass the pain on to me. I take the pain, turn it into pleasure, and push it back into them. (I may be pushing other things into them as well, dirty lowlife that I am.) It’s amazing how often people will experience exactly what you tell them to feel. If you have a certain destination in mind, take the bottom there, one blow or pinch or slap at a time.

If you are playing with a submissive rather than a pure masochist, you can use service-oriented psychology to build tolerance for pain. As I said earlier, the submissive wants to be possessed and yield to another person; they want to be of service. They will take pain if you make it their job to take it. The pain becomes one item on a menu of conduct or sacrifices that you, the master or mistress, demand because it pleases you. Pain becomes a way to demonstrate your control over him or her. But this may not occur to your submissive unless you spell it out. People tend to get confused during play—they are in an altered state. So speak slowly and use simple words if you feel you are not getting through.

CONSENSUAL NONCONSENT

For some bottoms, the object of painful techniques is to be out of control. They do not want a cooperative, mutually negotiated scenario, but rather a nonconsensual fantasy and a fair amount of force. Restraints will have to be strong and escape-proof. They need to struggle and suffer until they reach a phase of liberation or release. They may want to be “broken.” I urge newer players especially to proceed carefully. The emotional consequences of a session can last long after the toys have been put away. So be cautious of a scene this heavy—do you want to take care of a bottom who has lost their will to you? And if you are a bottom seeking a scene of this nature, please take responsibility for your own feelings and needs. It is unethical to expect a top to take on a larger role in your life than they wish to take. Do not engage in harassment or stalking! If you know you will be vulnerable after a heavy scene, arrange care for yourself before you play, so you don’t crash when you are all alone and have no resources to keep you connected to the human race. As sweet as those endorphins are, losing them is a wicked crash.

Many of us associate pain with punishment, and fantasy punishment scenarios abound in BDSM play. There are lots of teachers who paddle unruly students, daddies who have to put little girls (age 32) in the corner, guards who flog convicts who tried to escape, etc. Punishment can put the top and bottom in an adversarial dynamic. If this disturbs you, you may want to require the bottom to admit that they deserve the punishment, and aim the scene toward getting them to feel more attached to you. By beating them, you are driving them toward the safe cage of your possessiveness. Or you may find, as a top, that when you are in a certain wicked mood, you don’t want to make nice, you just want to kick the shit out of somebody who knows they belong on the floor.

In most scenes that include significant levels of discomfort, the bottom will reach a plateau. There are a number of ways to deal with a bottom who says they can’t take any more. One possibility is to take them at their word and end the scene, praising them for what they were able to do. If you feel that they are capable of more and may be disappointed later if they give up, you may want to simply take a break and see if some comfort and protein can screw up their courage once more. If the bottom told you there were certain things they wanted to experience, and the two of you haven’t made that happen yet, they may be motivated to dig a little deeper if you remind them of what their masochistic ambitions were prior to play.

Sometimes people cannot willingly go where they need to go—they have to be taken there. This is a controversial observation, and most people will want to steer clear of it.

Sometimes people cannot willingly go where they need to go—they have to be taken there. This is a controversial observation, and most people will want to steer clear of it. For most of us, it is safest to stick with the zone of play where we have clear, uncomplicated consent. It’s a dicey proposition for a top to ignore a bottom’s pleas and continue to hurt them until they yield. You wind up manifesting a great deal of the Shadow, and you’ll feel quite a backlash from that.

Once upon a time, play without limits or safewords was very common in the gay men’s leather community. A bottom was expected to do some research on a master before approaching him. Did you really want it, or not? If you made a bid for his attention and he took you home, you were supposed to make yourself available for whatever he liked to do. He was God, and you were dirt. Whining later was seen as sissy bullshit. If you whined, no top would touch you—you were an unreliable coward who might make secret and sacred things public to the authorities.

I appreciate the modern, pansexual kinky community’s desire to keep BDSM safe, sane, and consensual (as the old slogan goes). But I sometimes think we have allowed the pendulum to swing too far in the direction of predictable scenes in which the top functions as an extra pair of hands for the bottom. While it can be a great deal of fun to help your bottom masturbate to their favorite things, is there not some way to make equal space for what the top wants? It is a double bind, being expected to exercise a dark and wonderful power while obsessing with the intricacies of the bottom’s sensitivities, perpetually second-guessing them. A lot of the bottoms I meet nowadays seem terribly spoiled to me, and very unhappy, because they don’t really want to be running things. More than a few good bottoms in our little world seem lost under the current mores. They long for the thrill of encountering the harsh will of an Other who is severe and powerful. Here’s a story about this impasse.