The New Bottoming Book (5 page)

Some feel that it's okay to renegotiate consent when the situation is very clear. We've both had experiences in which "very clear" has sounded like "Yes! Push that limit! Do it now! Yes, please!" And that can indeed work very well at times, and we don't want to argue with inspiration... but, if there is any doubt at all, please include the activity in future negotiations rather than trying to include it in that session. Remember, there is always the future, and play that is worth doing is worth waiting for.

The watchword for these kinds of decisions is "know thyself." The more you can be honest and accepting of yourself and your desires, the easier it is to make sane decisions about how to achieve them.

Afterwards. Many good players also set up a time after the scene to review what happened, what worked, what didn't, who wanted more of what, and so on. Maybe the next day, maybe over brunch, maybe a phone call during the week - anytime but directly afterwards. Right after the scene, objectivity is not possible.

Some communicate in person, others by e-mail - some dominants require their submissives to maintain a journal which the dominant can access.

However you choose to organize this discussion, remember to include praise for what you liked, and approach any concerns or difficulties without blarne. None of us are psychic enough to prevent misunderstandings, and so we have to figure out more mundane ways to let each other know what s going on. In a friendly and cooperative manner, share what you liked, and what you might have liked different. Give your top a space to share her experience as well.

If you make this a regular practice in your play, you will rapidly learn to collaborate to create scenes from your wildest fantasies!

Most people's first bottoming experience does not take place in a bedroom or a playroom or a dungeon. It takes place on an absolutely ideal, perfectly decorated and populated stage: inside their minds. That was our first bottoming experience, and we bet it was yours too.

On that mental stage, we are graceful and gorgeous, our tops do exactly the right kind of perfectly awful things to us, and the perfect toy or piece of equipment magically appears at just the moment we need it and disappears again when we're done with it.

Yet as perfect as that stage is, most of us sooner or later hanker to step oft it and into something a bit more, shall we say, immediate. We want to connect with real partners and experience real sensations. This chapter is about how to step across the chasm between our fantasies and our realities.

Where Are You Starting From? Both of us started out with solo and rather lonely fantasies, feeling like we were the only people in the world who had thoughts like ours. Dossie struggled to reconcile her fantasies of kidnap and captivity with her feminist beliefs. Janet had a hard time figuring out how a nice girl like her could be hankering to wallop perfectly innocent backsides. Eventually, we both hooked up with folks who helped guide us to recognition that there were safe, healthy and ethical ways to enact our fantasies without taking or giving up any more power than we wanted to.

Sad to say, many people still struggle in isolation with questions like ours — although it's certainly a much easier and more informative world in which to be a pervert than the one we came of age in.

Today, many people pick up an erotic or educational kinky book or magazine, and find that something in them responds to the thoughts or images they discover there. Some may learn about their local educational or support group through an ad, a booth at a street fair, or a public demonstration of some kind.

And then, of course, there's the Internet. We think it's safe to say that as we write this, the 'Net is by far the greatest single point of entry for new players into the BDSM scene. (In the first edition of this book, written a decade ago, there is one paragraph of information about the 'Net. How rapidly the world has changed!)

Whatever your point of entry, we think it's safe to say that you'll experience some rude shocks as well as some blissful revelations as you cross the threshold into realtime play with a flesh-and-blood partner.

About the 'Net. Whole books have been written about sexuality and the Internet - it may well be the cause of the most radical shift in sexual thinking since the advent of reliable birth control. One of your authors is a dedicated 'Net geek, the other uses it only when absolutely necessary — but each of us has been part of the leather scene for well over a decade, and know our way around pretty well by now. If you're new or just learning, we think it's a

pretty good idea for you to get on-line and begin exploring. However, there are some pitfalls as well as many benefits to on-line oration, so we'd like to give you our thoughts about what you might expect from the many different venues available through your friendly household computer.

In some ways, the Internet is not much like reality at all — one of our friends says, "The 'Net bears about the same resemblance to real life that television does." But, like TV, the 'Net affects real emotions and addresses real issues, and is an important mode of interpersonal communication for a and growing number of people. Electronic interactions are like real-world ones in some ways. Although a cyber-scene or discussion may not leave you with bruises or welts, they can affect your emotions and relationships in many of the same ways that real-world play might. The skills you're learning elsewhere in this book — negotiating your needs and wants, setting your limits, getting to know your tops before you play with them, going slowly, checking in afterwards, and so on - are just as necessary when your scene takes place on a monitor as they are when it happens in a dungeon. We've both heard many unhappy tales of bottoms who thought that just because their play was virtual instead of real, that they didn't need to take good care of themselves... and who found out otherwise when a scene left them feeling surprisingly used, upset, unseen or generally stomped-on.

Virtual play enables its participants to connect and mirror their fantasies in a kind of feedback loop not available in the "real world," often leading to startlingly intense fantasy gratification. The reason we put "real world" in quotes is because in many ways cyberplay is real: the shared fantasy is a real fantasy, and the physiological response in your body is very very real... so in some, but not all, ways, the universe you create in your head and manifest through your keyboard and monitor is just as real as the one you're occupying now.

On the other hand, many of the people playing in cyberspace have litde or no experience in realtime BDSM. This absence of "reality checks" sometimes means that its easy for them to get unrealistically caught up in their roles, enacting the impossibly controlling and arrogant dominant, or the cringing and servile submissive, without much recognition for their own or their partners' real needs or limits. If you find yourself in an Internet environment where it seems like bottoms aren't valued, or are treated rudely or disrespectfully, we assure you that there are plenty of other places to hang out - the 'Net is a huge and varied universe. Leave, and let the other folks there know why you're leaving - some of them might just decide to follow you.

One final warning: one of the down sides to cyber-interaction is a lack of accountability - the 'Net lets you play however you want, with little or no chance of your actions ever being connected with your real-world self. Good people use this opportunity to explore roles, scenes and characters that may be too scary or unrealistic or embarrassing to enact in reality. Bad people can use it to stalk you, threaten you, insult you, tell people untruths about you, or reveal information about you without your consent. We suggest that you be as careful about who you associate with on-line as you would be in real life, and be especially careful in sharing information about your name, location or life situation, unless this is information you'd be comfortable having the whole world know about you.

Now that we've talked about the scary part, let's talk about the good part - the Internet offers a wide world of information, support, friends and possible play. But the 'Net is a huge jungle of websites, mailing lists, newsgroups, chatrooms and other venues... so how do you get started?

A lot of people exploring kink on the Internet get started looking at sites on the World Wide Web. These sites resemble magazines in many ways; they may feature pictures, text, and sometimes even video and audio, and they allow you to move from one page to another as your interests dictate. They are appealing to many beginners because you don't have to participate in anything to look at them: they are very anonymous, although many do require paid membership, or ask that you register with a relatively inexpensive service which confirms that you are old enough to look at sexually oriented material.

Some may be porn sites, intended purely for sexual stimulation. Others might be informationally oriented, with articles about various aspects of BDSM, and links (connections that you can click on to go look at something else) to other informational sites. Some might belong to a manufacturer of sex toys, publications, or fetish clothing, and still others are maintained by support and education groups for BDSM folks. Since the Web is essentially

unregulated and chaotic, the only way you can tell what kind of site you're looking at is to use your own common sense - if it seems to be mostly there as a sexual turn-on, its not intended as a source of realistic advice and ideas.

Information on the Web, or for that matter anywhere on the Internet, is only as good as the person who put it there. Don't take any advice from a single source. Look at several websites, and discover for yourself where they agree and where they disagree: the points of disagreement may be issues that you'll want to think about and explore carefully.

Another way to explore the Internet is in chat rooms. These rooms enable you to converse in real time (just like an in-person conversation, except typed onto a screen) with other folks who share your interests. Chat rooms tend to be sorted by sexual orientation (special rooms for female-dominant/male-submissive players, gay players, etc.), sexual fantasy (rooms that explore the male-dominant culture described in the "Gor" fantasy novels by John Norman, rooms for men who enjoy being treated as "sissies," etc.), support (rooms for people married to

non-kinky people, for people overcoming abusive backgrounds, etc.), or location (rooms in which people who live close together can get to know one another). There are also many general get-acquainted rooms in which everybody can mix freely.

Chat rooms can be great fun, and a terrific way to meet kindred spirits - either for on-line interaction, or in person. However, be aware that many of these rooms have special protocols, such as ways in which submissives are expected to address dominants, which are not necessarily typical of realtime kink interactions. If you want to hang out in a chat room, learn and use the local conventions, but don't assume that anyone outside the chat room will use or appreciate them.

People often "play" in chat rooms, sometimes only in words ("I fasten the collar around your neck and stroke your silky hair"), sometimes by giving the submissive orders that can be followed at home.

Janet once did a chat room scene that led to new insights for herself, her partner and several onlookers:

I knew and liked my friend C - a male top -from many online conversations in the past, but we'd never actually played, in reality or on-line. But one night we were in an open channel, with quite a few people exchanging conversations around us... and, well, one thing kind of led to another: we wound up exploring a lengthy scene that was his first experience ever as a bottom.

In lustful, stroke-by-stroke detail, I described myself shaving his backside, sensually applying the warm lather, deftly slicing through it with the edge of my safety razor, exposing stripe after stripe of fresh pink skin until his butt was smooth and glowing. He, in his turn, described the slippery creamy lather, the cool feeling as the hair and foam were stripped away, the vulnerability of his new hairlessness. Then, when we were both thoroughly turned on by the shaving, I informed him that I was strapping on my "dick"... by this point, everybody else's conversation had pretty much stopped; they were mesmerized by C's and my scene. I described the thick glob of lube I put on my fingers and used to probe his butthole. Then, each of us took turns describing our sensations as my relentless dildo took possession of his freshly denuded backside. I described the rhythmic pressure of the dildo flange against my mound, and how it was driving me closer and closer to orgasm... he described the relentless pressure against his prostate, the intensity of my thrusting, the feeling of being totally possessed... and eventually, in cyberspace (and perhaps in real space as well) we both reached orgasm.

It was a reality-changing scene for both of us. Soon afterwards, C went on to explore his bottom space in real time

— the last time I saw him he was a happy switch. I discovered a shaving kink I'd never known I possessed. And, based on the enthusiastic and slightly startled comments I got afterwards, several onlookers learned a bit more about their own turn-ons! It's easy to assume that, since no physical force is being exerted, you don't need to negotiate your limits or needs. On the contrary, we both know people who have experienced unexpected and genuine emotional trauma from chatroom encounters: our suggestion is that you negotiate them as carefully as you would a physical scene. You can use the "Yes/ No/Maybe" exercise we describe on page 34, or any one of several negotiation checklists available on-line, as a jumping-off point.

Newsgroups and Bulletin Boards arc environments in which people can post messages which everybody can read,

just like a bulletin board on which people could tack up notes. The best-known newsgroup environment is called Usenet, and offers tens of thousands of groups for every interest, including yours. Some newsgroups are "moderated," which means that someone keeps an eye on what's posted there to keep out unsolicited advertisements (known as "spam"), insulting or haranguing posts (known as "flames"), and off-topic discussion. Other groups are unmoderated, and have more of a free-for-all spirit. Some people prefer moderated groups for their relative calmness, others prefer the uncensored chaos or unmoderated groups.