SM 101: A Realistic Introduction (14 page)

Asking about getting together for future sessions at this time is usually acceptable. Your partner has usually had enough time to work through their reactions and can give you a realistic answer.

One-week-later negotiations and feedback are mainly to check for complications. Monday Morning Rebound Syndrome, top drop, and any injuries not readily apparent have usually emerged by this time, and can be dealt with. It’s certainly all right to ask about getting together again at this point.

Second-Session Negotiations

If the first session goes well, negotiations usually take much less time for a second session. Again, make sure you agree on the 16 basic points. Be sure you cover limits, sex, bondage, and safewords. Incorporate feedback from the first session. Still, negotiating the second session usually takes much less time. Additional sessions usually take even less.

Conclusion

The minutes spent negotiating are usually the most important minutes of the entire session. Rushed or sloppy negotiations open the door to disaster. Good, complete negotiations open the door to a future containing many pleasurable sessions. I have never met a good negotiator who turned out to be a bad player.

Negotiation Forms

To help clarify matters as you negotiate, and to help you remember what your agreements were once the play begins, I’ve included two “negotiation forms” in this section. They proved to be among the most popular parts of the first edition.

As with your income tax, you can use either the “short form” or the “long form” as appropriate. Among other things, looking over these forms, particularly the long form, helps people realize how many different aspects of SM play can come up during a session. That in itself can be highly educational and clarifying.

Notice: Permission is hereby given to photocopy (only) the negotiation forms in this book.

Variability

One of the most basic principles of SM is that people vary in how they react to it.

First, people vary
tremendously
from person to person in what arouses them. It’s common in this community for one person to feel deeply aroused by something another person would find highly unpleasant, or even traumatic.

Second, and not so obviously, a given person varies over time in how they respond to something and in what aspect of SM interests them. This is particularly true during their first year. It’s not at all rare to meet someone who insists that they could never be interested in bondage, spanking, piercing, and so forth - and yet, eight months later, you see them at a party happily engaging in exactly what they said they would never do.

I can’t imagine dominating a man.

I need to make the sub-point here that this is not a matter of escalation. People are most definitely
not
inevitably drawn to giving or receiving ever-increasing levels of pain, humiliation, and so forth. The usual pattern is that the levels they feel comfortable about tend to increase for a while, but level off with time and experience. Also, most of these activities cannot be done beyond a certain intensity without causing harm, and SM people have no interest in causing genuine harm. Therefore, their interest stabilizes. If anything, people usually come to enjoy
more varieties
of SM play rather than
higher intensities
of SM play.