The New Bottoming Book (4 page)

Remember, its emotionally far easier to say "no" before a scene than to stop one in progress... and the time you're wasting doing a scene you don't want could be better spent doing the scene of your dreams with someone else!

Where Does Sex Fit In? Take some time to look at the meaning of sexuality in your concept of a scene. Many players take this issue for granted - either assuming that there will be sex, or assuming that there wont - far too often. And there is a lot of variation from one individual to another. For some people, sex is the reward they get after successfully completing an intense scene, so after the great beating or whatever the top becomes more of a nurturer arranging for the bottom's pleasure. For others, sex is submission, more a part of how they get into bottom space and how they feel dominated by their top - if this is your picture, then waiting for the end of the scene to get fucked won't work as well for you.

And if your fantasy of giving service includes a little sexual violation now and again, then it is probably better to let your play partner know about this than it is to wait patiendy forever in a state of unfulfilled yearning. On the other hand, if your hot fantasy about this is that your top is withholding sex from you because she likes to see you yearning, its a good idea to check that out with her, because that may not be her idea. Your top cannot read your mind, and unfulfilled yearning (sighing, heavy breathing, etc.) doesn't really look that different from terrifically turned on.

Your authors tend to like a lot of sex in our scenes: foreplay, middleplay, afterplay. We find that for us, sexual

contact increases the intimacy of a scene and can generate an almost psychic intensity.

Turning Fantasies Into Realities. To script scenes from your fantasies, start by recognizing that you already have a lot of skills in manipulating fantasy that you have practiced over and over while playing with yourself

-masturbation is a great learning tool as well as good fun. You probably already know how to pace and time the story, to rewind, or play certain parts over and over, and to fast-forward to the orgasmic part at the right moment. Real play can benefit from these skills as you adapt the timing of your mental images to the exigencies of reality, including the needs of a real partner of less-than-infinite strength, technical expertise and sexual capacity.

If you try to make your scene look exactly like your fantasy in every detail, you're scripting too tightly: your top will find it virtually impossible to play with you, and you are very likely to encounter interruptions and disappointments as reality stubbornly refuses to conform to your fantasy. Fortunately, you can help reality along by running the complicated or excessive parts in your imagination. You probably already know how to fantasize while you are driving a car, or at work, even while you're having sex. This is a good way to deal with those frequent occasions when you want more than is really possible: as Dossie puts it, "Sometimes my eyes arc bigger than my cunt." Fantasizing while you play also can help you get into your part as slave or kidnap victim or

what-have-you (or possibly who-has-you), because you can change your experience of yourself. You knew how to do this when you were a kid: your Batman costume made you a superhero, even with no Batmobile. That's why we call it "play."

Your authors once did a scene together in which Janet was an evil pirate and Dossie her helpless kidnap victim. Janet confessed afterwards her concern that she wasn't providing enough appropriately piratical dialogue, but Dossie reassured her that she had the ship firmly envisioned in her head, and Janet's chuckles of genuine pleasure were all it had taken (besides a little creative costuming and appropriate bondage) to convince Dossie that her cruel captor had malicious designs on her, and to keep the pirate fantasy alive. And so what if one of us thought Dossie was tied to the mast, and the other to the wheel? It was actually some eyebolts on the wall anyway.

S/M players are schemers. We are always scheming ways to take the most outrageous of our imaginings and experience them in reality. No matter how impossible a particular fantasy of, perhaps, extreme violence, or unlikely adventures like sprouting wings and flying, or science fiction extrapolations - the question is simply how to figure out a safe, consensual and do-able way to make it happen.

At any time, in any scene, it may feel right to do part of what you want, but not all of it. Then you can choose whether to grieve over the part that wasn't there, or delight in the part that was. Please remember - there is always the future. Anything that is worth doing in the first place is worth waiting for the opportunity to do it right. And if it's really worth doing, then it's worth practicing and doing it over and over till you get it right. After all, once you do, you'll probably still want to do it over and over again because you got so good at it! We hope you will rejoice in the riches you have today while you scheme for the even greater riches you will enjoy tomorrow.

Safewords. Since we all agree (we hope!) that BDSM should be consensual, we need ways to ascertain that everybody involved is still consenting once the scene is under way. One of the easiest and most flexible ways to do so is with a safeword.

A safeword is a code word that players agree on to mean "Stop, something is wrong." The reason we need code is that lots of us like to pretend we don't want to have all these amazing things done to us, and we may pretend by joyously shrieking "Nononononono," so we need another word to mean that. Or we may become incoherent and need a one-syllable way to communicate.

Safewords come in many forms. Many players use "red" to mean "stop, something is wrong," and "pink" or "yellow" to mean "I don't want you to stop but could you please do that lighter or slower or something or we will have to stop." "Green" also can come in handy when what you want to say is "more, more, more!'

Some safewords do not have to be in code: "My right foot is asleep" is a perfecdy clear message, "May I speak?"

is always a polite form, and "I need a little break now or soon" is also good communication. If you don't want to use words, or you do want a gag, a rubber ball or jangly keyring, held in the hand, can be dropped or thrown to let your top know there is a problem that needs to addressed.

Using a safeword is a difficult decision for a player, particularly an experienced one. Good players know that when their partner uses a safeword, she is often feeling disappointed, chagrined and inadequate over needing to do so. This is an important time for mutual support and affection. Whether the safeword has been invoked by the top (yes, tops use safewords too) or the bottom, it means somebody is having a hard time, and needs and deserves caring support and validation. Dossie was once subjected to ridicule for using a safeword, of the "Aw, c'mon, can't you take it?" variety - and, she says, "It turned me into a real bitch real fast." She never played with that top again.

Never allow anyone to tell you that you were wrong to use a safeword; the judgment of when to use or not use one is purely your decision and is not debatable. Even if you've given consent to an activity in your pre-scene negotiations, you are entitled to withdraw that consent if the activity isn't working for you — if its too intense or if you're reacting in a way you hadn't anticipated. Although a top may feel disappointed by your use of a safeword, she doesn't get to express anger or reproach, or put you down for safewording. Your safeword is your mechanism for taking care of yourself and nobody but you can tell you how to take care of yourself.

It can happen (and probably will) that in some scene or other, you may fail to safeword, then on later consideration wish that you had. You may have gotten so deeply into the role that you forgot that you had choices, or you got so nonverbal you forgot about speech, or you may have been too embarrassed, or maybe you just kept putting it off... most experienced bottoms will admit to having made all these mistakes. This can leave you in the very uncomfortable position of having played heavier (with, perhaps, some bruises and welts to remind you of it) than you would have if your top hadn't turned your brain off for you like you asked him to.

This is not an occasion to blame anyone, not your top or yourself. It is an occasion to arrange to talk later to the top so that she doesn't continue operating on the assumption that you liked something that in fact you didn't.

We have met bottoms who say they don't want to negotiate a safeword because "if I have one, I use it before I'm really ready for the scene to stop." Our experience has been that as you learn more about your own limits and about your partner, you'll learn how to "stretch" and allow your limits to be pushed further and further. There's also no reason why the use of a safeword should mean that you have to stop playing entirely, unless that's the specific meaning you've negotiated for your safeword: you can safeword, drop out of the scene, do whatever communication is called for to make the scene work for everybody, and then go right back to stretching those limits. Don't give up on safewords... simply learn more about your own capabilities and desires.

We have also met tops who want to dispose of safewords for certain scenes, such as punishment scenes ("How can I push limits if my bottom's just going to call safeword on me?"). We strongly suggest that you not allow this to happen with you. A possible compromise might be an agreement that you will do your best not to use your safeword because of intense sensation, but that you still have it in place if you need it due to extreme emotional distress (such as unexpected age regression or violent rage), an awareness of damage to your body, physical illness, or similar emergencies.

Playing without a safeword may seem like a hot scene — that's the fantasy - but the reality is that in consensual BDSM there are always safewords or safeword-equivalents. They may be subtle, or based on a couple's knowledge of each other, or they may be normal speech or messages in the code of bottom and top roles, but they still function as safewords. When no form of safeword has been agreed on, the bottom has to resort to shrieking "Stop this scene you are a crud I hate you stop NOW!" to get the point across. We think safewords are a more civilized choice.

We have met players who structure scenes by playing heavier and heavier until the bottom calls a safeword. This is not an appropriate goal for a scene: for most bottoms, using a safeword is associated with feelings of failure and shame. Most of us would rather end a scene by succeeding in taking some intense and difficult stimulus. Then everybody feels like a winner. Besides, any fool can do things to you that you dont like - why bother to play at

all?

We hope it never happens to you that you have to call safeword because your top has purposefully and maliciously violated a limit. But if it does, there may be no point in trying to continue the scene; trust has been broken. It may or may not be worthwhile to spend some time later in non-scene space trying to explain your feelings to this top, in hopes that he will learn something from the experience. Or you may find that later, when you're not in role and not under stress, you no longer perceive the top's actions as malicious - in which case you owe him an apology.

But the vast majority of safeword situations fall under the "shit happens" category: something has gone wrong that neither the top nor the bottom could have reasonably predicted, or one partner has made an honest mistake. In this case, it is usually both possible and realistic to talk through what happened, agree on a solution to the problem, and proceed with the scene. You'll find it requires much less time to get back into the same space and level of arousal then it took to get there in the first place. Dossie remembers:

The first year I did S/M with a partner, every scene we did ended in a safeword from one or the other of us. We were new and very nervous, and when one of us safeworded, we would throw all the toys and bondage stuff off the bed, have something to drink, agonize over whatever went wrong this time, despair a little, and then realize that we were terribly turned on and fuck like crazy amidst the abandoned piles of ropes and chains. It took us a long time to realize that these weren't failed scenes — they were successful ones!

CheckIns. "Checkins" are a way for tops to take initiative to see how the bottom is doing and stay in touch with what's going on. Consent can thus be reaffirmed throughout the scene without breaking role. Consider, for example, asking a bottom to kiss a whip or other implement: it lets the bottom know what is proposed, giving him or her the opportunity to question or object, or consent with a kiss.

Threats of scary or new activity are also sexy, and offer a chance for the bottom if necessary to say "I don't think I'm quite ready for the steel bullwhip tonight, sir or madam."

Checkins are necessary to stay in touch with what's going on, especially when the activity places the top in a location where she might not be able to hear words or read facial expressions, or when the top has reason to believe that the bottom has "gone under" to an extent that taking initiative may be difficult. Overly frequent

checkins can be irritating: when a top asks you if you're okay every thirty seconds, you can come to feel that your top's need for reassurance is disrupting the play However, tops should not be forced to carry on with no reassurance whatsoever; then they might not feel safe to go as far as you want them to.

A top can check in with questions like "Do you remember your safeword?" or "Are you still with me?" Partners can agree on a checkin code similar to a safeword -the "two squeezes" checkin, in which the top squeezes the bottom's hand twice to check in, and the bottom squeezes back twice if he is okay, is growing in popularity.

Can You Change Your Mind? Some players believe consent should never be renegotiated "upwards" mid-scene, because when people are excited they may decide it would be great to do something that in a cooler moment they would regret. You are always entitled to withdraw consent if you have changed your mind about a proposed activity - you may have tried something new and found it didn't work, or you may have reacted in a way you hadn't expected.