The New Topping Book (7 page)

It sounds obvious to say that a top should tell his or her bottom how to meet his or her needs – after all, isn’t that what a top does? But we’ve found it isn’t necessarily that simple: asking for what you really want, particularly if it isn’t part of a standard S/M scenario, can feel vulnerable and embarrassing. All we can tell you about that is that the payoff is, or should be, worth the vulnerability: that a scene where you and your bottom both get your needs met is almost certain to be more satisfying for both of you, and to lead to more and hotter scenes later.

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AVE A
R
IGHT TO
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ESPONSIVENESS
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Very few tops enjoy pouring their energy and toppiness into a bottom who’s so stoical that they can’t tell whether or not he’s enjoying it. When we top, we enjoy a bottom who gives us lots of hot sexy screaming, moaning, trembling and/or writhing, preferably with a wet pussy or hard dick for reinforcement. Other tops like watching a bottom struggle to maintain composure under stress (although a bottom who maintained composure
too
perfectly probably wouldn’t be very much fun to play with). Again, ask for what you want.

You also have a right to verbal response during the scene if you want it. When we ask “How are you doing?” or “Is this working for you?,” we all like to hear answers in the affirmative. However,
always
getting an affirmative answer, or getting an affirmative answer in the face of evidence to the contrary (wrap marks on a belly, for example), leaves us clueless, foundering and frustrated. If having a bottom chirp “Pardon me, sir or ma’am, but could you hit a little lower, please?” seems disrespectful to you, tell him or her to ask permission to speak first – and, upon receiving it, to give you the information you need. (We like to thank our bottoms when they give us important information.)

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AVE A
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IGHT TO
C
ONSTRUCTIVE
F
EEDBACK
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At some point within a day or two after your scene, you and your bottom will probably want to do some talking about how it went – what worked and didn’t work for you and for her, what you might like to do differently next time, and an overview of how the scene was for both of you. During this “debriefing” – which we think is essential to both your relationship with your partner and your growth as a top – you have a right to helpful, constructive criticism. Your bottom should tell you about anything that didn’t go well in such a way that you know how you can do it more successfully next time, and she should also tell you about the stuff that
did
go well, giving you lots of nice ego strokes along the way. Similarly, any feedback you have for your bottom also needs to be supportive and constructive. A bottom who blames you for your mistakes, tears down your performance without offering constructive suggestions, or shuts down and simply won’t tell you what his or her experience was like, is not a bottom we suggest you play with twice.

T
HE
T
OP’S
L
IST OF
R
ESPONSIBILITIES

Like all rights, top’s rights carry a burden of responsibility. Here are some of the responsibilities we think you take on when you agree to top:

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R
ESPONSIBLE FOR
K
NOWING AND
S
TATING
Y
OUR
N
EEDS
, W
ANTS AND
L
IMITS
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When you’re pretending to be Attila the Hun, Scourge of the Dungeon, it can be easy to forget that tops have limits too. But doing scenes that make you feel incompetent or disgusted or like a bad person is a really good way to lose track of the fact that we’re supposed to be having fun here, and to burn yourself out.

Everybody has needs, wants and limits. If you’re new at this, you may discover some of yours by tripping over them – by doing a scene and discovering that you feel just awful, either because of something you did that you shouldn’t have, or because of something you didn’t do that you should have. But even if you’re an old hand, your limits may change over time: Janet spent years with a strong limit around breaking skin during play, but then discovered play piercing and started sticking needles into her friends every chance she gets.

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R
ESPONSIBLE FOR
F
OLLOWING
T
HROUGH
O
N
Y
OUR
P
ROMISES
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When your play date is coming up, you may hear a chorus of “yahbut” voices in your head – “Yah, but I’m not feeling toppy.” “Yah, but I didn’t get a good night’s sleep last night.” “Yah, but I’ve got a lot to do afterwards and I don’t want to tire myself out.” “Yah, but what if I fuck up?” While we understand that pre-scene nervousness (which is often the part of you that’s literally “scared of your own shadow” – see Chapter 15) can be daunting, bottoms are driven insane by tops who promise playdates and don’t follow through; this sort of approach/avoidance behavior is unfair and irresponsible.

If you’re feeling like you want to cancel or no-show on a playdate, please don’t, unless your reasons are excellent. Go, and use some of the suggestions you’ll read in Chapter 9 to help yourself get turned on and into top space. We don’t think you’ll regret it.

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R
ESPONSIBLE FOR
Y
OUR
O
WN AND
Y
OUR
P
ARTNER’S
P
HYSICAL
S
AFETY
.
Your bottom may or may not be able to tell you if something you’re doing is causing physical harm. She may be so high on endorphins that he simply can’t tell what’s happening, or may have gotten non-verbal and forgotten how to communicate. If you’re not sure whether or not your bottom is able to communicate, you’ll have to take the responsibility for initiating the communication. Questions like “How are your hands feeling” or “Some of these strokes seem to be causing some bruises; is that OK” or “Are you getting dizzy” are perfectly all right, and if your bottom doesn’t want to answer them, you should probably order her to.

Janet did a scene once where her top did a good job of taking care of her physical safety:

We were at a costume party where I was wearing a dress made out of imitation chain mail with nothing underneath – so I’d been sitting on a rough surface all night. I got naked, and my friend started spanking me with his hand, then with a hairbrush. I was having a swell time and could happily have gone on all night… but suddenly he stopped, said, “I think you’re losing some hide here,” and ended the scene (against my vociferous protests). But sure enough, when I got home that evening, one cheek of my ass bore a large raw blister that took several weeks of cleaning and bandaging to heal properly. If my friend had kept on going as I demanded, the combination of the rough chain mail and the heavy spanking might have done serious damage to my skin – and I’d never have known it until it was too late.

Sobriety is also important. While different players’ standards vary – some folks feel OK about very light use of intoxicants in scene, while others do not – it is certain that if you are too stoned or drunk to drive a car or go to work, you should not be playing. We urge extreme conservatism in the use of intoxicants during any kind of sex, and most especially during BDSM: there is probably nothing you do that demands better judgment and emotional balance, and using chemicals to impair those qualities strikes us as a very bad idea. Besides, why on earth would you want to blur such a wonderful experience?

Safer sex is a subset of physical safety. Part of safeguarding your bottom’s, and your own, physical well-being is making sure that neither of you takes anything away from the session that you don’t want – an unplanned pregnancy or a nuisance infection or a deadly disease. Opinions change monthly as to how risky various sexual and S/M activities are in terms of disease transmission; we urge conservatism – when in doubt, use a latex or polyurethane barrier. Don’t assume that your partner’s definition of safer sex is the same as yours: discuss beforehand which activities each of you thinks are risk-free enough to do without a barrier, which are risky enough to require a barrier, and which are too risky to do at all. If one of you has more conservative standards than the other, that person sets the standards, regardless of who’s topping and who’s bottoming – it is entirely unacceptable to subject someone to a physical risk to which they haven’t consented. The important thing is not the latest statistics or scientific study; the important thing is that you both
feel
safe.

Take care of your own safety, too: don’t play with strangers in private, and the first few times you play with a new partner, tell a trusted friend where you are and who you’re with (and make sure your play partner knows that you’ve taken that precaution).

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ESPONSIBLE FOR
E
MERGENCY
P
REPAREDNESS
.
Not everything that can go wrong in an S/M scene has anything to do with S/M. As part of taking care of your bottom’s (and your own) physical safety, you should have the equipment, training and ability to handle real-world emergencies ranging from quakes and fires through heart attacks and seizures.

If you don’t know what you’d do if the lights went out, if your bottom suddenly became seriously ill, or if you inadvertently started a fire in the playroom, you shouldn’t do the scene until you’ve figured these things out.

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R
ESPONSIBLE FOR
C
ARING FOR
Y
OUR
E
QUIPMENT
.
If you own your own whips, sex toys, bondage equipment and so on, you are responsible for seeing that these items are carefully selected, well maintained and properly cleaned. Aside from the aesthetics of the situation (dirty or uncared-for toys are a sign of a sloppy top), poor quality or poorly maintained toys are downright dangerous. We know one top who broke a finger trying to grab a whirling handle on a poorly designed winch, and we’ve heard many stories of bottoms pulling inadequately attached eye-bolts out of the wall and sustaining nasty falls.

While the jury is still out regarding whether or not HIV can be transmitted via uncleaned sex toys, it is certain that various other nasties, including hepatitis C, can be. When you’re not sure if a toy has been exposed to body fluids, assume that it’s contaminated and clean it carefully. Chapter 10, and several of the books in the Resource Guide, give more detailed toy cleaning information.

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ESPONSIBLE FOR
Y
OUR
O
WN AND
Y
OUR
P
ARTNER’S
E
MOTIONAL
S
AFETY
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This may seem a little counterintuitive – after all, in the real world, we believe that people should be responsible for taking care of their own emotions and for asking for the kinds of emotional support they need. But we believe that the implied contracts of what we do are a little different, and that the usual boundaries get shifted a bit when we play together.

If Dossie showed up for our co-authoring appointment tomorrow, and Janet said to her, “Dossie, I feel angry because of something you said last week,” we would handle that in certain ways: Janet would accept responsibility for her own anger and would process it herself – with Dossie’s help if Dossie cared to give that help, or without it if Dossie didn’t.

But when we agree to play together, there is an assumption that those adult boundaries are going to be altered – perhaps even to some degree dropped. This is what we meant in the Introduction when we said that “BDSM is ritualized codependency.” Unlike the real world, where we assume that adults are responsible for processing their own emotions and taking care of their own needs, an player – particularly a bottom – may become quite dependent. Part of our responsibility as tops is caring for our bottoms when they are in that childlike, dependent state. If you think about it, this dictum is actually similar to our responsibility to care for our bottoms’ physical well-being when they may be too endorphined out or too deeply in bottom space to do so.

So we believe that whether or not a bottom has asked to have their emotional safety taken care of, our responsibilities are to provide that support. As a default, we think that a top should take the lead in discussing what kinds of stimuli are likely to trigger emotional trauma for a bottom (Was she abused as a child? Is she a victim of violent crime? Is she grieving a lost friend or relationship?), and in ending or altering a scene that seems to be pushing emotional buttons in an unexpected way. If a top and bottom agree to venture into difficult emotional territory, we also think the top thereby takes responsibility to be available to the bottom during any emotional “aftershocks” that ensue. Tops have aftershocks too, so we think this agreement should be mutual.