The New Bottoming Book (3 page)

Somewhere between fantasy and reality lies the full-power bottom's role in S/M. When we give up our power, we feel more powerful. When we give up control, we feel freer. We encourage you to bring your full power and all your greedy, nasty, raunchy, intense and horny lust to your play, u ntil you pull up enough energy to devour the planet.

Before we launch you into the nitty-gritty of how to be the bottom of your (and everyone else's) dreams, we want to do a quick checkin to make sure you know some of the basic ideas and skills you'll need to stay physically and emotionally safe while you follow the advice in the rest of this book. If you're an experienced bottom, much of this material may already be familiar to you, but the fundamentals always bear repeating - so here goes.

know Thyself. Before you can communicate your desires to a partner, its a good idea to know them yourself -not always easy when your head is full of a tangle of fantasies, beliefs and rumors about romance and sex and BDSM.

One of our favorite exercises to help straighten out the tangle is called "Yes/No/Maybe" - sex educators everywhere use it as a way to get people thinking and talking about their sexual needs and desires. You can do it by yourself, with a partner, or even with a group of friends.

We commonly do this exercise in groups or workshops to help people discover their desires and their limits. First, take a big piece of paper and make a list of all the sexual and BDSM activities you can think of, including those that you would not choose yourself.

Prefabricated lists now can be found in books and on the Internet... and we still recommend you make your own. Pay attention to how it feels to speak the words for forbidden and exciting acts of pleasure.

After you finish making the big list of all possible activities, take a regular piece of paper and mark three columns: YES, NO and MAYBE. In the YES column write all the items that you know you already like or clearly want to try. The NO column is for those things that are definitely outside your limits at this time, the things you do not want to try at all. The MAYBE column is for those things that you might like to do if it felt safe, or you were turned on enough, or your partner was confident enough, or you were confident enough. This is the exploration list.

Just in case you didn't think of them, here are some activities that appear on the NO lists of many experienced players:

• Temporary marks like bruises, welts or shallow cuts
  

• Permanent marks like cuts or burns or tattoos
  

• Flowing blood of any sort
  

• Play with piss or shit
  

• Play with guns or knives
  

• Sexual or genital play or penetration
  

• Unsafe sex
  

• Parts of the body that don't want to be touched, hit or whatever
  

• Gags or breathing constriction
  

• Use of intoxicants by top or bottom
  

• Health issues like poor circulation, allergies, joint problems
  

• Triggers (like "don't slap my face, it reminds me of my abusive father")
  

• Emotional limits (like "don't tell me I'm bad," "don't tell me I'm small," "I don't play with abandonment")
  

• Hypersensitivities (like tickling, or "don't touch my clit right after 1 come," or...)
  

After the list is made, give yourself some time to think. Go back over your YES list, and mark with an N those items that you feel you NEED, in the sense that without these things the scene is not worth doing. For instance, for some people a scene needs to include some orgasmic activity. A scene may not be a scene without pain, or without bondage, or without service. Your needs are the items that are essential to you, and are not negotiable: if a prospective top doesn't want to do these, you probably wouldn't have enough in common to play with that person.

You can mark the remaining items, including some in the MAYBE column, with a W for WANT - these are the fascinating challenges that constitute the icing on the cake, and while we can get along fine without any one or two or three of them, without any icing at all that cake may become kind of, well, plain. Try writing all the items on your MAYBE list on cards and putting them in order from what feels safest to what feels scariest. You may learn something about yourself, and when you are ready for some risky exploration, start with the easiest item.

We strongly encourage you to try this exercise. You might also like to check out any of the good "negotiation checklists" available in other books and on some web sites - we like the one in SM101: A Realistic Introduction, but we're prejudiced. Exercises and checklists can help you to know and accept your desires and limits:

self-knowledge makes for powerful bottoming, and powerful bottoming makes for hot play!

So here you are, you've made your list and so has your top, you're ready to play. Now what?

Negotiating a scene is basically mutual scheming. What you want to do is compare notes on the things you like till you come up with a list of things you would both enjoy or be comfortable doing, and then you get ro do them. So you start by proposing the things you're interested in (remember the YES-NO-MAYBE list?) and asking your prospective top what sorts of things she likes. This always starts the negotiation out on a positive footing since talking about sexy filthy dirty forbidden things that you might want to do is, although embarrassing, a tremendous turn-on.

Don't forget to ask your top what he would like to get out of the scene: too often negotiation is all about the bottoms likes and limits, which is to say about the things the top should and should not do. Inviting your top to tell you what she likes and what her limits are will help make you a popular bottom.

Negotiations must include your limits and any physical or medical problems that require special attention (people with heart problems may do better lying down than standing up, asthmatics need to be able to breathe freely, etc.). Negotiation also must include a discussion of your practices about safer sex, and how you will protect each others health. If this is difficult for you, we suggest you go to a workshop on safer sex risk reduction: your local AIDS program can probably direct you to one, or check the Bibliography for good books on safer sex. We are a sexually active group, and it is imperative that we learn to protect each other from the transmission of diseases: there are no exceptions, and no acceptable excuses. We do note that the aspect of our practices that is about high-tech sex makes us really clever at reducing the risks of transmitting unwelcome organisms: many toys can be sterilized much more easily than people, and the more abstract joys of mental domination pose no risks of disease

whatsoever.

It is also a good idea to bring up and discuss your and your top's customs regarding the use of intoxicants. We strongly recommend that you do not play when you or your partner is stoned or drunk. An intoxicated top is a dangerous top, and a bottom who is so stoned that she cannot tell what is going on is asking for injuries. We advocate moderation or abstinence. If you are so high that you are "feeling no pain," you're probably not feeling much pleasure either. We prefer to play with all our faculties intact because we like to be able to feel everything.

Do let your prospective top know what you don't like: individual differences are valid and important. For example, one man might hate any kind of pain on his scrotum, while another might adore it. Sometimes these differences are surprising: one of your authors hugely enjoys having her nipples bitten and pinched, while the other can't tolerate the lightest touch there.

If your scene will include sex, it's a good idea to let a new partner know the particulars of what works for you to reach orgasm. Do you need clitoral stimulation? A firm grip? Lubricant? A particular position?

Finally, you want to tell your partner how you get turned on, and you want to know how to turn your partner on. A play date is, after all, a commitment to get together, get turned on, and do lots of hot stuff. But what if you get nervous and you can t find your turn-on? Well, nobody gets turned on by magic. If you think about it, there are activities that get you there: the sucking of ears and stroking of necks is a common route. Or maybe tell me a dirty story, or take your clothes off real slow, or take my clothes off real slow... Many of the routes to finding your

turn-on when it doesn't show up simply from the magic of opportunity can be discovered by simple common sense. Start with sensual stimulations that pose no challenge: massage, light flogging, touching of less sensitive parts of the body are good warmups for most folks. Intense stimulation and direct stimulation can come later.

So there you are. Stan out getting turned on talking about what you like, tell them the necessities in the middle, and then get hot again with what turns you on... and you're ready to play.

Can You Negotiate In Role? Good negotiation is best cone between equals. You may find communities in which this principle is not universally adhered to, but we believe that you can play more, with more people, more safely, and go further out on the edge, if you start from the position of two equals negotiating something they both want to do. They do not become tops or bottoms until the scene begins.

Negotiating in role is not actually an exception to this principle of negotiating between equals, as long as it is understood by both parties that the top has made a commitment to hear and respect the bottoms limits and desires. Remember that you, as a bottom, still deserve complete respect for your limits and desires.

However, there is an increased danger of missed communications when you negotiate in role. Consider, for example, this dialogue. Top: "Seems to me you deserve a good spanking with this hairbrush, my little slut." Bottom (in role as obedient slave): "If it pleases you, sir or madam" — or bottom (in role as reluctant victim): "No! Please! Not the hairbrush!" In either case, the top has no guide to the bottoms real feelings, and the poor bottom, who may have been nonconsensually brutalized by hairbrush spankings as a child and be terrified of anything with bristles, winds up safewording out of the scene while the top wonders what she did wrong.

Partners who have been playing together for a while may understand one another's limits and communication style well enough to overcome these obstacles, and all of us sometimes need to negotiate in role in when something unexpected comes up. Experienced players accept this need and develop a language that works for them.

Sometimes the bottom might say 'I will do that if it is your desire" which, by agreement, might mean "I really don't want to but I also don't want to mess up this scene." The old convention of having the bottom kiss the whip offers an opportunity for the bottom to evaluate his readiness for the particular object in mind, and, again in role, might offer: "Sir, I could probably take more of that for you if you flogged me with the soft one first." Because of the possibilities for misunderstanding, and because one of your authors becomes conspicuously nonverbal the minute she gets turned on, we do not negotiate play in role with new partners or novice players.

If you have to interrupt a scene to negotiate something, is this necessarily a disaster? So none of your clever

communications in role managed to get across that your left foot has fallen asleep and you cant ignore it any more, or that your top needs to excuse himself to pee? So its time to take a time out, and organize reality to better support your fantasy. Our experience is that this is not that difficult to do. If you stop the scene and fix whatever needs fixing, you will soon learn that a level of turn-on that took you both an hour to achieve in the first place is not lost, and can be easily reestablished in five or ten minutes.

Negotiations can also be handled in role when a top forces a bottom to reveal his or her most embarrassing fantasy, along with limits and other pertinent information. The top who insists that you tell him or her what you were too shy to say in the first place supports you and gives you permission. The embarrassment makes this very hot: tie me down and force me to reveal my heart's desire? Oh, poor me!

Negotiation can also be done in writing or by e-mail (although we counsel caution in sending e-mail from non-private locations like your workplace). Some dominants order the bottom to write out one or two or three

fantasies, including information about his limits and desires. A letter or e-mail has the advantage of being a kind of private communication, reducing self-consciousness as it forces you to think clearly about what you would like. It gives the top time to think and prepare a response, and allows a scene to be set up where the roles are in place when the bottom comes to the door.

Thanks But No Thanks. Sometimes what you learn from a negotiation is that you and your prospective partner do not have enough common ground to develop a successful scene: not enough items in common on your YES lists, or one of you has a need for something that is outside the others limits. Maybe you don't want to play the same game. Or your relationship needs and expectations are too different. Or maybe, during the negotiation process, you do not feel comfortable or safe with some aspect of this tops approach.

It can be tempting, in this circumstance, to try to push for agreement that doesn't really exist. Or to start operating on the assumption that something is wrong with you if you don't want what this other person does. Or to be untrue to yourself in order to please another.

This won't work. If you cant negotiate a scene honestly, then you need to not play. However embarrassing or uncool or unsatisfying or disappointing it may be, it is important to be able to say NO.

Saying no to sex or S/M needs no reason beyond not wanting to. No excuses arc required. All you need to do is say no. No, thank you. No, I find you terrifically attractive but I don't think we want to play the same game. No, I don't feel that there's chemistry between us. No, that's beyond my limits. No, I don't want to. Thank you for offering, but no.