Sometimes you will hear from a bottom who is unhappy or distressed about part of the scene, or some of the things you did. When this happens, it is important, and difficult, that you not get lost in your ego. That ego may be screaming “But you writhed and squealed, I was sure you liked it, I felt like God Almighty, whaddaya mean you didn’t like it!” And you need to put your ego aside and listen.
If your bottom is a good communicator, with any luck she will offer negative feedback without a lot of blaming, in a supportive and nonjudgmental manner. But everybody is not well-versed in communication skills, and when something goes wrong in a scene bottoms are often genuinely frightened or even a little freaked – so you may wind up with complaints coming at you like arrows, from a person who is seriously upset with you.
We do play with scary imagery, and it sometimes happens that a bottom is so frightened by a scene that she feels unable to communicate directly with the top – so you may find out through a third party, or, worse yet, a public accusation. Most of us have a hard time not getting defensive when someone is angry with us, and we may be justified in that we can blame the bottom for blaming us, or for failing to talk to us directly, or for gossiping. And even when you are right, defensiveness and counterattack will still only make the problem worse.
We feel the best thing for you to do in this situation is to listen to the bottom who is upset with you, and hear her out thoroughly whether you agree or not. Be aware that this is happening because the bottom feels bad – hurt or scared or whatever. By being willing to listen to that person’s feelings, you validate them – and that might solve the problem right there.
If you feel you did something wrong, the best thing to do is own it. Remember that apologizing won’t make you less of a top. And if you don’t feel you were wrong, you can still say you’re sorry that someone feels bad, or that something you did left them feeling bad. Apologizing won’t make you wrong either: you are sorry that they feel bad.
Most often these conflicts arise from misunderstandings rather than malice. When you listen, and when you express your regrets about a play partner’s unpleasant experience, then that person may become willing to listen to you, and the two of you are in a good position to clear up misunderstandings, and stay friends.
RESPECTING PERSONS
Tops and bottoms both have identities beyond the roles they play in scene. We understand that tops and bottoms are both complete human beings of equal stature and importance, deserving of respect. Their needs are equally important, their wisdom is to be regarded, their opinions worth hearing. When bottoms play at being degraded, do they truly become less than their tops? We think not.
BDSM works best when bottoms honor and value the gift the tops bring to them, with respect for the hard work and personal vulnerability that is involved. And it works best when tops honor and value the gift the bottom brings: the bottom power that fuels the trust and belief which transform us into tops.
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ON YOUR MARK… GET SET…
COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR TOPS. To get ready to do a scene, you first need to share some information with your bottom, negotiating the specific details of what you are and are not going to do. Ideally, when you’re done, you will know what your bottom’s limits are and your bottom will know what your limits are. You will have also exchanged some information about what turns each of you on and some ideas about what you both might like to try – knowledge gleaned from fantasies or scenes you have played in the past. You should each have a clear idea of each other’s needs – those parts of play that are so essential to you that without them the scene would not be worth doing. Everybody’s needs are valid, everybody’s needs are important. Including yours.
During a good negotiation, you will also share some wants – things that you and the bottom know that you like or would like to try. Think of the wants as the ingredients from which you will construct a fabulous dinner: how much easier it is to cook when you have lots of ingredients to choose from! Obviously, you’ll want to collect all the wants you can get from both of you. But that’s not always easy to do.
GETTING THE INFORMATION YOU NEED. When a bottom tells a top what she likes, it can feel like ordering the top around, which doesn’t fit with many players’ fantasy roles. Furthermore, many bottoms are embarrassed by their fantasies, and plagued with the belief that whatever it is that they want, it must be too much to ask for. A professional dominatrix of our acquaintance once got so frustrated with a client who would say only “I only want to please you, Mistress,” that she told him facetiously, “Then give me the money and leave; I’ll go to a movie.”
So how do you get that information without getting out the rubber hose (yet)? There are many ways to support a bottom in expressing his or her desires. Just knowing that you want this information gives your bottom permission to share it. Sometimes it is easier to deal with this information outside scene space, so many tops instruct their bottoms to write a letter expressing their desires and stating limits. In person, but not in scene space, sharing fantasies and ideas can be fun once you both get into it; you can always start by sharing some interest of your own and then inviting your bottom to contribute.
In scene space, you can order your bottom to communicate and make it part of the play. So your bottom is embarrassed? Goody. You can tie him up and wait until he speaks – and you can wait a long time, if that’s what it takes. You can offer positive feedback: “That’s hot, I like that, what a good idea, mmmmmm nasty!”
If you and your bottom are in an ongoing D/S relationship, you may need to make special arrangements so that you both can feel free to discuss your desires and fantasies outside your usual roles. E-mail or other written communications might work for this. Or you can establish a special code word to mean “I want to talk to you person-to-person for a while.” Or pick a set time every week for such discussions. Whatever fits for you will probably work, but we think it’s a good idea to make some kind of arrangement in order to support both dominants and submissives in being able to freely and honestly express their wants.
Bottoms generally like it when tops say what they want: “I want your ass right now, I want to bend you over that table, I really want to see you on your knees in front of me, what a sweet sight.”
If this is your first time with this partner, do remember to inquire about limits, pain tolerance, safer sex, physical limits like asthma, history of abuse or trauma, contact lenses, muscle and joint problems that might make some positions uncomfortable. Experienced bottoms should know enough to tell you their limits without prompting, but not all bottoms know enough to figure out all their limits without ever having tested them. Regardless of your bottom’s experience level, if you ask it makes it easier – the bottom doesn’t feel so much like she is sitting there with a long list of “don’t do this and don’t do that,” in danger of falling into terminal negativity.
I-MESSAGES. We have talked before about the damage done to hot play by blaming. Here we would like to introduce an alternative borrowed from the couples-counseling literature: the I-message. Communications experts note that we often speak in you-messages, like “You are making me angry, you should be different, you always give me a hard time when I want to have fun, you never want to do what I want.” The you-message almost always sounds like an accusation or an attack, and the person to whom it is addressed most commonly becomes defensive and tries to explain themselves and why they are not wrong. When they do that they have stopped listening to you.
The I-message basically means I share something of my internal reality, my feelings, my desires, my thoughts, my beliefs, like: “I feel angry, I would like something to change, I want to have fun, I want to find some things that we both want to do.” The I-message is clearly about our own stuff, and once we make it clear that we can be responsible for our stuff and willing to take the risk of sharing it, our partners become free to own their own feelings and problems and desires, and to speak their own truth, from their own tender places n
ear the heart. And we are fond of exposed tender places, aren’t we?
NEEDY BOTTOMS. Sometimes our roles get in the way of good communication. As tops, we have permission in scene space to be mean, nasty, intrusive and overpowering; similarly, bottoms may go into their own emotional spaces and become childish, dependent, needy and clinging. In real life we often respond to neediness by closing our boundaries and pushing people away, perhaps becoming annoyed and judgmental in the process. In BDSM, while ideally we both get to open our boundaries in a sort of controlled codependence that would not be acceptable in real life, the urge to withdraw in response to neediness can still be strong.
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.
BLACK HOLES. “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.
ACTIVITIES THAT REQUIRE SPECIAL CONSENT
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, ima
ges 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.
The New Topping Book Page 8