The New Topping Book (11 page)

Are there exceptions to confidentiality? Yes. We can look to the legal and ethical standards of medical and therapeutic confidentiality for guidelines: it is acceptable, and at times even required, to violate confidentiality when there is significant danger of harm to any person. If a person assaults you, you don’t keep it a secret, you call the police. Gossip may sometimes have an unpleasant but necessary function within the community to warn others of players who in your experience are in some way dangerous. (It is not ethical, however, to badmouth a player simply because you don’t like them or are angry with them.) We try to balance negative gossip with “goodmouthing”: making a point of introducing people to each other with full regard for their prowess, and letting others in the community know when a player does something wonderful.

B
OUNDARIES AND
B
LAMING

Any problem in ethics, including the complex dilemmas we may run into when we pretend to be unethical, can be clarified by looking at it from the point of view of boundaries.
Personal
boundaries are found wherever we understand that I end and you begin. Within the boundary of scene space, our personal boundaries will probably be very different than they are in the outside world… so when I know which boundaries are in effect right now, I know when it’s the right time to violate you.

People also have
internal
boundaries that tell us what state of consciousness we are in. For those of us who play a number of roles – top, bottom, Doctor Mean, Dracula, little boy, baby girl – we open and change our internal boundaries to get in and out of role, often unconsciously. The more conscious we can be about this, the safer we will be, and the more adept at getting into (and back out of) the role we want to play right now.

Internal boundaries tell us the difference between a thought, a wish, a fantasy and a dream. For the S/M player, the boundary between fantasy and reality is all-important: it is how we maintain our sanity, and how we maintain our identities as big bad mean ethical loving sadists.

Blaming, a special case of bad boundaries, consists of refusing to own and take the responsibility for our own stuff, our feelings, dilemmas, and actions. Of course, occasions in which a problem is truly one person’s fault do happen, and need to be respected… but we believe most problems that crop up between people actually belong to both or all of them. When we blame, we fail to shoulder our part of the burden; we project the responsibility for whatever is wrong onto another, usually to protect ourselves from feeling terribly guilty or anxious. When we blame, we also disempower ourselves – if it’s all
your
fault, then
I
must be impotent.

So we recommend that you approach conflict that arises from play (or any other relationship, for that matter) in a nonjudgmental mode. In our culture, you can observe many people attempting to resolve a problem by discovering whose fault it is (the comic author Fran Lebowitz says “It isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s where you lay the blame”), as if most of our dilemmas were caused by somebody doing something wrong. In S/M, we can make tops wrong by accusing them of anger, attitude or abuse when a scene doesn’t work out well. We can make bottoms wrong by accusing them of being needy, resistant or smart-ass.

Blaming may alleviate our anxiety on a short-term basis, but in the long run resolves nothing. If, on the other hand, you can put your judgments aside and operate on your own feelings while you listen to your partner’s feelings, you may be able to come to an understanding that keeps you in sympathy with each other
and
empowers you to take care of the problem so you can continue playing and having a good time.

H
EARING
F
EEDBACK
. Good post-scene etiquette is for the top to call the bottom within a few days of a scene to check in and make sure everything’s okay, and bottoms will respect you and feel well cared for when you do. Mostly you will hear flattering feedback that can be a big help if you’re feeling a bit uncertain, guilty or low. This is also an occasion to ask the bottom if there was anything in that scene that she would change, or do differently in the future. This is how you make space for your bottom to tell you about that little bruise in the wrong place, or something that was sharp or harsh or otherwise not optimal for them. Our experience is that bottoms often tell us what we could have done harder or longer or louder or stronger. Greed is a wonderful thing in a pig slut bottom.

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.

R
ESPECTING
P
ERSONS

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.

8

O
N
Y
OUR
M
ARK
… G
ET
S
ET
…

C
OMMUNICATION
S
KILLS FOR
T
OPS
. 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.

G
ETTING THE
I
NFORMATION
Y
OU
N
EED
. 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 near the heart. And we are fond of exposed tender places, aren’t we?

N
EEDY
B
OTTOMS
.
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.