The New Bottoming Book (14 page)

about the whole thing can be challenging, too. While we love roleplay and consider it a major treat when we get to do it, we've done a whole lot of fabulous scenes in which were just plain old Janet and Dossie. Still, roleplay offers a chance to indulge our love of theater and to enact parts of ourselves that otherwise would have to stay hidden — what fun!

Roleplaying fills the need for theater and play, which we believe is programmed into the human animal. It's also a safe environment in which to experiment with feelings that wouldn't be acceptable in the outside world... rebelliousness, dependency, subservience and so on.

We suggest that role-players adopt some tangible symbol to show when the scene has started and they're in role, and when it's over. The collar, of course, is a classic, but may not be appropriate for many kinds of roleplay - for example, governesses rarely collar their students, but they may force them to wear a neatly tied school tie.

Use of such a symbol helps maintain the boundary between play persona and real world, and eases the transition back to reality.

Authority Scenes. These scenes include all those in which the top takes the role of an adult authority figure -a master or mistress, teacher, military officer, sensei, doctor or nurse, boss or whatever - and the bottom is under his or her control, as slave, student, private, patient, maid or houseboy, employee. The roles may be very harsh and unyielding, like a drill sergeant, or they may be nurturing and supportive, like a "nice nurse." Roleplaying in which the bottom's age regression plays a major role is a special case and is handled separately in the next section.

Like all BDSM, these scenes require some willing suspension of disbelief. A real drill sergeant probably isn't going to care much if a buck private crumples to the ground sobbing, but a "drill sergeant" in a consensual roleplaying scene might interpret the tears as cause for a break and some conversation... or, perhaps, as a sign that things are just starting to get good!

If you're a little self-conscious about expressing your bottom or top energy in your own persona, taking on another persona may give you easy access to that part of your personality. Janet once read of a couple who, when the top needed to switch, would cast the bottom as the "overseer." The top would leave his employee a letter instructing her how to train the "new slave"... guess who. Never forget that you get to write the script however you want to!

Regression Play for Big Kids. Regression play means any form of play in which one or more participants pretends to be younger than they arc, or "regresses" to an earlier time in their life. Any age will do, from teenager to baby, and many people have fantasies involving playing out scripts from a certain age, or playing with another person in a kid persona.

The top in such a scene is most often an adult (parent, teacher, governess, nurse, babysitter), but once again variations may range further: a regression scene could involve two ten-year-olds playing doctor in the woods. Dossie once played with water pistols with another baby in a playpen... foolish adults who ventured within range got wet too. {Bad babies.) She has also played as a teacher being topped by two nine-year-old boys who were actually thirty-year-old dykes and utterly vicious - the kind of kids who pull wings off bugs.

Generally, adolescent personae are horny and eager, and may be looking for support in developing a sense of identity or a particular self-image. Prc-adolesccnt kids (about eight to eleven) can be playful, silly, explorative and sometimes cruel. Small kids and babies are more likely to play with nurturance and discipline, sometimes with nurturance alone. An erotic dancer once asked Dossie to come to her birthday dressed as a schoolmarm; it turned out her fantasy was to be a seven-year-old boy, to sit on Dossie's lap and get read a story - a sweet and tender gift for the birthday child.

Infantilism means baby play that may involve diapers, potty training and very parental tops. Fetish latex retailers supply oversized rubber panties and the like, and we have heard of some creative adventures with KY Jelly or canned pears for those who want the sensation without the smell of actual poop.

The top doing a regression scene might be harsh or nurturing; she might offer training, discipline and punishment, and/or nurturance, cuddling and loving. Often the top's role is to provide containment for wild kid energy that needs a limit-setter to feel safe. Janet, in an effort to explore both discipline and nurturance in this setting, actually wound up evolving two entirely separate child personae: bratty, rebellious, whiny and sexually explorative "Jessie," whose age varies from about nine to twelve, and sweet, compliant four-year-old "Janey."

Child play can be very light and playful, and many child personae are fairly easy to get in and out of. Other scenes may involve wounded inner children carrying old pain and conflict, and may require a lot of support. For tops, the chance to be both the good parent and the bad parent may be both profound and challenging. Ideally, these deep scenes are planned and negotiated with the full consent of the top as well as the bottom.

Dossie recalls a scene that was conceived after watching Madonna's "Oh, Father" video. She and her top discovered that they were both abuse survivors, and were interested in playing a scene about that.

We talked extensively beforehand, and agreed in particular to support one another if the scene got too hairy. I had always avoided punishment "bad girl" scenes before, so 1 had no idea how I would respond. My top cleverly devised a way to nurture me while he was being stern and punitive by holding me down with lots of body contact while spanking me and saying th agreed-upon "Now listen here young lady" script. I found myself saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again, and recognized my own child voice. I think because of the support I was able to get into that scared kid space in a very safe way - I had expected to sort of fall over the edge, but I actually went down, with my top, so easily that I knew it would be just as easy to come back up.

Nowhere is it more important to know your own limits than in regression play and nowhere is it more challenging. These are psychological limits and difficult to predict, so you often discover them by tripping over them — be ready to be good-natured about learning from your mistakes. If you are a survivor of physical or sexual abuse, give yourself permission to honor your own limits whether they make sense or not. You may have some areas that are better explored in your therapy than in your play, and it's important to recognize that too.

Be clear about whether or not you want to play with punishment (see the section on punishment earlier in this chapter), and whether or not you want to play with sex, penetrative or non-penetrative. Some adult babies, for example, might like to be touched but be too little to get fucked, and others might love it.

An adult regressed into a child state may become genuinely childlike and quite fragile, so to do deep regression play, its important to establish safe physical and psychological space. Be particularly clear about the boundaries of scene space, establishing when you are and are not playing, and allowing plenty of time and support for

re-entry.

We acknowledge in society that children have a special vulnerability, and thus need and deserve special protection; this is also true for children in regression play. The rewards of regression play range anywhere from having a lot of uninhibited fun through exploring some uncharted territory and perhaps all the way into healing old wounds and reclaiming damaged childhoods.

Gender Plat. When you were a kid, did you like to play dress-up? Did anybody give you a hard time about it? In the so-called "real world," gender roles are very rigidly prescribed, and serious sanctions are applied to men and women who violate them. In the kink world, playing with gender allows you to create new options, rewrite your gender scripts, try on new roles with your drag, and express forbidden parts of yourself.

Janet's first experience with gender play came by surprise:

I was doing an intense, but not roleplayed, scene in which I was topping a good male friend. I'd strapped on a harness and dildo and was happily fucking him up the ass to our great mutual enjoyment. Suddenly he looked back over his shoulder at me and asked in a small, urgent voice: "Will you please call me your bitch?" Wow! I experienced an immediate and highly arousing shift in consciousness. I wasn't wearing a dildo any more, I was using my own dick to fuck my bitch... I could feel the nerve endings in my penis as it moved back and forth. I

grabbed his hair and told him to call me "sir"... and the scene exploded into powerful orgasms for both of us.

Gender transformation is erotic in and of itself for many players, and the scenes they play might be entirely about crossdressing: a fantasy so popular that many professional dominants keep a stock of make-up and costumes for "transformation" scenes. For other players, gender play may be an important part of a larger script. Some players have gender roles or personae that they only bring out in scene space, while others find support in the leather community for exploring how they want to manifest their gender in their complete life: the term "transsexual" refers to people who live full-time in a gender identity other than that determined by their chromosomes, and differentiates them from "transvestites," who crossdress mainly for erotic purposes. "Transgendered" is an inclusive term referring to anyone who lives in more than one gender, or perhaps somewhere in between.

Gender roles range way beyond the simple crossgender images of a man in a dress or a woman packing a (preferably huge) dildo. One individual may have many gender roles: a male friend of ours sometimes sees him/herself as a woman, and other times as a drag queen. In gender-fuck, people express aspects of both genders at once, like a man in an evening gown cut low so you can see his chest hair or even his cock, or a woman exposing her cleavage in a tuxedo. Gender play for another person might involve an exaggeration of their anatomical gender, as in the gay macho man or Flaming Mamie the HyperFemme.

It's important not to make stereotypical gender assumptions about people you may see in drag of some sort or other. You may fantasize that the butch with the crew-cut and the bulge in her Levi's wants to kidnap you, while she may actually be hoping to get down on her knees and worship your corset. The guy dressed up in crinolines and pink silk could want to tie you down and beat you to shreds. You also can't tell what orientation a person in drag may have — a man in lacy lingerie may be looking for a femme woman, a butch dyke, a macho man, or another man in lingerie. Butch women in uniforms may play with each other as "faggot dykes," with gay men as equals, or even with femmes (the perverts!).

How do you know what to do amidst all this confusion? Well, you have to ask. We think that one of the most wonderful aspects of the BDSM scene is the facility with which its members explore gender, so maybe you might want to let go of some of the rules and requirements of official gender roles, cut loose, and get to know a little bit more about yourself and the people you're attracted to.

Beasties. Have you a creature inside you aching to be let out? Try playing the beast within. Animal play is an opportunity to really turn your brain off and can be wonderfully uninhibited and releasing. And you have lots of animals to choose from.

Human horses tend to have a lot of accoutrements: bridles and saddles and bells and hooves; insertable horsetails are available. Horsies sometimes prance, sometimes get ridden or pull a cart; they might like to be blindfolded and patted on the rump while being led back to the barn. They might get whipped.

Dogs and puppies like a lot of attention and petting; they also get obedience training. They might get taken for walks and fed from a bowl, and they are very good at licking things. Negotiate in advance whether you're a good dog or a bad dog: we have friends who hold "disobedience school."

In animal play you can explore a totem animal by becoming that creature; getting validation and feedback from others helps to make the role feel more real. Many animal scenes are about predator tops and prey bottoms. Or become a unicorn, a dragon, a werewolf, or a mythical creature of your own imagining.

Wild animals do a lot of snarling, growling, biting, scratching and general rumpussing: Janet once did a scene where both she and her top were wild animals, and agreed to speak only in growls, shrieks, hisses, purrs and such... a great scene that cost them both sore throats for several days. Animals like getting primal.

Inanimate Objects. Bottoms in a scene can become inanimate objects — sometimes useful, like coffee tables, or purely decorative, as in a bondage sculpture. Dossie once spent a very contented hour or two wrapped up in

miles of rope, blindfolded and hooded, while an orgy that she could hear but not see took place at her feet. This might sound frustrating, but the actual experience was wonderful: there is a trancelike delight in having absolutely nothing to do in a sexy environment.

To be a human coffee table may satisfy a need to suffer in the name of submission, or may be an excuse to do nothing but enjoy the presence of your top and his guests. Again, much of the reward comes from the extreme passivity of the role.

Bondage sculptures, using hundreds of strings attached to permanent or play piercings, are a popular human art form. You get the stimulation of lots of needles, and can hold still and do nothing while one or more piercers fusses all over you. A major piercing sculpture could involve several bottoms: we recall an especially delightful "string quartet/' Do be careful to choose a position that you can maintain for several hours without needing a chiropractor to recover.

Dossie recalls a mannequin scene in which the bottom was required to stand in very high heels with a book balanced on her head while two tops tried to distract her. This forced her to stay very centered and perfectly in line with gravity while absorbing a lot of stimulation, with no permission to respond to it in any way. Miss High Heels got very high indeed!