The New Bottoming Book Read online

  WHO ARE YOU?

  SO YOU WANT TO BE A BOTTOM… Some of you reading this book have years and years of bottoming fantasy or experience. But others may not be sure whether or not they really want to bottom. Some readers might not even understand why anybody would want to bottom.

  How do you know if you want to bottom? One way is to take an honest look at your fantasies. Both of us have had experience with people who have brusquely said, “Naah, I’m not into any of that weird S/M stuff,” then gone on to behave in a way we would see as outrageously toppy or bottomy Janet went out for a while with a fellow who scorned her interest in kink, yet was fond of pinching her nipples very hard while calling her “bitch”…

  Honesty with yourself is an absolute prerequisite to honesty with others… and if you’re not honest with yourself and others, you cannot be a good S/M player. Period.

  Understand that definitions vary a lot, and that this is how it should be. You get to define what you mean by BDSM. Dossie had a play date with a woman from out of town:

  She called ahead of time to let me know that she had given up S/M for the time being. Now, I pride myself on being easy, so rather than shriek in horror, I continued the negotiation, asking what that meant to her. It turned out that “not doing S/M” meant that I got together an outfit made from thrift store lingerie so that my temporarily vanilla friend could tie me to the bed and cut my clothes off with a switchblade while fucking me senseless.

  But perhaps your desires are a little less concrete. You may feel unformed yearnings for stronger sensations than ordinary sex can provide… for the feeling of relinquishing control, of being swept away… for permission to be as dependent, as smart-assed, or as voracious as you like. Janet remembers:

  I met a woman at a Society of Janus program for the first time, a conservatively dressed middle-aged woman. I asked her what brought her to the club, and she answered, “Four months ago, the guy I was in bed with pulled my hair.”

  Whether you become a bottom or not depends on the strength of your needs, and your success depends on your own skills in communication, negotiation and partner-finding. We hope we can help: the world needs more great bottoms!

  Some people instinctively recognize the rewards of bottoming, while others have difficulty understanding what we could possibly get out of this. Here are some of the rewards we, and some the people we know, get from bottoming:

  • Bottoming lowers the boundaries between the bottom and the top. The result is a more profound intimacy than we usually experience during any other kind of sex.

  • When we bottom, we feel desired (“I’m helpless and passive and he’s still here”), OK about our needs (bottoming gives us permission to be what we can’t otherwise be), and beautiful (we are all gorgeous when we are turned on. Honest).

  • When we bottom, we feel nurtured and taken care of – so, paradoxically, we may feel safer in the “dangerous” world of S/M than anywhere else.

  • Bottoming gives us a safe place to release the anger, fear and frustration we accumulate in the real world; it’s incredibly cathartic.

  • Bottoming can “turn off our brains” – giving us a quiet respite, in the endorphin high of pain play, the stillness of bondage, or the clarity of giving good service, from the day-to-day clutter and chatter of existence.

  • Bottoming offers us a chance to please the people we care about, with a perfect pedicure, a dusted mantelpiece, really skillful oral sex, or whatever else gives pleasure. And we can get our skills in pleasure-giving acknowledged in ways that the workaday world, which so often takes its people for granted, rarely offers.

  • And let’s not forget that bottoming just plain puts us in overdrive. For stimulus junkies like your authors who have big needs for excitement, powerful sensation and high intensity, bottoming is a Shakespearean tragedy, a needle shower and a roller-coaster ride all rolled into one.

  OR A TOP. We hope tops will read this book too. You might get some insights into bottoms’ fears, needs and rewards. Dossie loves to teach classes in topping skills, because that way she gets to train tops who will do her exactly the way she likes. Her poetry reads like an instruction manual.

  Or perhaps you’re a top who is interested in trying out bottoming. We hope this book will show you ways to explore new roles without giving up your boundaries, or your identity and potency as a top – without giving up anything except what you want to.

  If you’re a top, or if you’re a bottom who tops, we suggest you take a look back at the previous section. What rewards do you experience from your play? What do you need from your bottom to make sure you get those rewards? If you understand your own needs and motivations and can communicate them clearly, you’re well on your way toward becoming a good top. Janet says:

  I like tops who tell me they’re having a good time – grunts, compliments, heavy breathing, the brush of a hard dick or wet pussy against my thigh. When things get intense, my top’s pleasure gives me permission to open up and enjoy the sensation and reasons to go on accepting it.

  Here are some ideas that bottoms and tops may want to discuss together, about the kinds of rewards tops may get out of a scene.

  • Many tops simply enjoy the pure, raw power rush of topping — that’s what makes them tops. When a scene is really working, they feel flooded with power, control and competence. Some report feeling that they’re “channeling” power from some source outside them.

  • Topping, like bottoming, gives us permission to explore energies that are not OK in the outside world. It’s immensely liberating for a top to find out that there’s a place where the top’s “dark side” – cruelty, bossiness, bullying or nastiness – is not only tolerated, but appreciated.

  • Some tops enjoy and/or eroticize receiving service: cleaning, personal care, office work, errands, whatever. Their satisfaction may come from the seeing work done properly under their direction, from seeing a bottom working hard to obey their orders, or from the feeling of being taken care of that comes from good service.

  • Many tops enjoy having the opportunity to give nurturing and caretaking within the context of a scene. By lowering the bottom’s boundaries with the skilled application of sensation and/or direction, they get to take care of someone at their most vulnerable. We once met a butch woman at a workshop on how to stage a “kidnapping” who told us that her fondest childhood fantasies were all about rescuing victims.

  • It may seem obvious, but many (not all) tops want to receive sexual arousal or orgasm. Some find they can’t stay in top space while coming and thus prefer to come after the scene is over, either solo or with the bottom’s help; others prefer to come during the scene.

  • And virtually all tops need, want and deserve appreciation for the energy and craft they’ve put into the scene.

  Being a good top isn’t really all that much different from being a good bottom. Great play can only be done when the bottom and the top are sensitive, empathetic, good communicators, and in touch with their own needs and feelings.

  RECLAIMING OUR GREED

  “GREEDY” is often used as a pejorative term, both outside the S/M communities and within them. We would like to propose the reclamation of the word “greedy.”

  There’s nothing wrong with wanting a lot; there’s nothing wrong with getting a lot. In fact, the more you get, the more you have to give.

  In this book we want to teach you how to be a greedy bottom. A bottom who has acknowledged his or her needs and wants, and who is getting them met, is usually an open-hearted, generous, supportive bottom – and we’re writing this because that’s what we want you to be. Greed and generosity are two sides of the same coin: grasp it firmly and spend it well.

  part one

  skills

  2

  WHAT KIND OF PLAYER ARE YOU, ANYWAY?

  WE think you’re reading this book because something in your life – a fantasy, an experience, a partner who wants to experiment – has led you to a desire to explore bottoming. />
  But what, exactly, does that mean? There are as many different ways to be a bottom as there are to be a human being. An experience that feels intense, profound and highly erotic to you may do nothing at all for the next guy, and vice versa. So before you begin your explorations of bottoming, it would be a good idea to get a handle on what bottoming is, or could be, to you.

  Many bottoms talk about a state of mind they call “bottom space” or “sub space,” a kind of altered consciousness in which their relationship with their own minds, with their partners, and/or with the outside world becomes in some way different. Bottom space manifests itself in many different ways: Dossie gets very nonverbal in bottom space, while Janet chatters like a magpie. Among bottoms we’ve played with, we’ve been privileged to witness bottom spaces that range from docile and passive to resistant and bratty to serene and transcendent. Some people find that they go into different bottom spaces in different kinds of scenes – the bottom who is an obnoxious brat in a spanking scene may become a calm, centered nurturer while giving service.

  We know people whose bottom space is an extension of their real-world persona – perhaps they’re timid and shy in their day-to-day lives, and they like to be “small” and receptive when they bottom. We know others whose bottom space is exactly the opposite of what you’d expect – they’re powerful and assertive in their real-life interactions but like to experience being victims, slaves, babies or other powerless beings in their fantasy and play lives. Some people’s real-world hobbies and professions are a clue about their bottom space – Dossie likes to knit and crochet, and loves rope – while others bottom in order to have experiences outside their ordinary existences. So your real-life choices may or may not be a clue to what your bottom space will look like.

  Some people have negative judgments about bottom spaces that don’t look like the kind of bottoming they have in their own fantasies. Unless you’re considering playing with someone, they don’t get to vote on your bottom space at all. If it’s someone you’re playing with or would like to, then they may need to give you some direction as to what feels sexier to them (talkative Janet is fine with tops telling her that now would be a good time to shut up, thank you very much), or some compromise may be in order. But whatever your bottom space might look like, if it feels real to you, it is real.

  WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM BOTTOMING? Bottoming gives us a chance to explore feelings, roles and interactions that may not be a good fit for us in the real world. So when you bottom, you may want to experience emotions like…

  • anger

  • helplessness

  • martyrdom

  • rebelliousness

  • objectification

  • victimhood

  • redemption

  • neediness

  • innocence

  • lust

  • abandonment

  • belonging

  • pathos

  • humiliation

  • loss of control

  • fear

  Maybe you want to be a…

  • victim

  • brat

  • baby

  • saint

  • good girl/boy

  • fixer

  • cherished possession

  • object

  • target

  • scapegoat

  • drama queen

  • captive

  • rebel

  • orphan

  • sex object

  • passivity

  • forgiveness

  • resentment

  • sadness

  • “smallness”

  • nurturing

  • being nurtured

  • humility

  • power

  • shame

  • catharsis

  • competence

  You can experience these emotions while enacting a variety of roles, too.

  • servant

  • whore

  • animal

  • sissy

  • pleasure slave

  • nothing

  • “proud beauty”

  • child

  • prisoner

  • criminal

  • bad girl/boy

  • martyr

  • wild thing

  WHEN DOES IT

  END? It is, unfortunately, not too rare for these roles or emotions to be so potent that we find ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, trying to enact them in places where they don’t work out too well for us. For example, you may find yourself so attached to the role of “fixer” that your need to fix things for other people is getting in the way of getting your own needs met, or so fond of being a “bad boy” that you’re alienating your friends and coworkers.

  If your chosen bottom role is turning into a script for the way you live the rest of your life, this can be a big problem. Some people find that playing that role in the dungeon or bedroom can help make them more conscious of the ways that they’re enacting it in the outside world, thus giving them better boundaries for when to play the role and when to leave it alone. Others may find that this form of erotic role-play reinforces the outside-world behavior to an unac-ceptable degree, so that they may decide that this role is too risky for them to play right now and is better explored in therapy.

  For some people, the identity they feel as a bottom feels like their primary identity. They understand themselves better as a submissive or a slave, and seek to manifest that sense of self in all aspects of their lives: they tend to seek out relationships with dominant people in which they can live in their chosen role full-time. People living in full-time D/S relationships have created many clever ways to satisfy the needs of healthy living in a role-defined lifestyle: you will read more about this in Chapter 10.

  On the other hand, some bottoms wish to be in role only when they playing a scene, because who they are as a bottom is not compatible with their needs and desires in the outside world. Dossie is one of these: in her bottom space she is very much the passive victim (when she isn’t being a brat), and in the rest of her life she is an assertive, outspoken professional.

  Neither of these choices, nor any of the gradations between, is inherently more “real” or more valuable than any other: your success will depend on your ability to make your choice work, and your willingness to work hard at it. Either way, it can be very illuminating to examine why we choose the roles we do, what turns us on about them and why this particular role is so very very hot for us.

  THE “FULL-POWER BOTTOM”

  WHEN we bottom we feel fabulously powerful. This is the experience of most bottoms we know, and it is in complete contradiction to the popular stereotype of a bottom.

  How can bottoming make us powerful? Here is Dossie’s description of how she gains power from a flogging:

  When I’m being flogged, early on I often come to a place where I need to stretch to take in the intense sensation, where I struggle and wonder if I can take it at all. That struggle seems to make me stronger, and soon I feel intense energy running through me, as if all the force with which the whip is thrown at me is injected into me – becomes my energy to play with. While my tops throw the whips at me as hard as they can, I take in their power and dance in the center of the storm.

  Standard mythology would have you believe that a bottom is a passive, disempowered, self-destructive, needy, whining wimp. We hope you will refrain from believing these things about yourself. We suggest that you see yourself as a full-power bottom.

  ARE YOU REALLY POWERLESS? Most of us in our everyday lives struggle constantly with power, striving to empower ourselves, and to protect ourselves from being overpowered. We are always working to find, increase and express our power.

  In S/M, in contrast, we play with power for the fun of it – pulling its fangs to turn it into an exciting, erotic experience instead of a serious high-stakes struggle.

  S/M has been described as “power games for fun rather than profit.” Playing
with power offers not only a relief from the tedious battle for power we’re stuck with in the so-called “real” world, but also a way to learn and explore by trying out new and different experiences of power and powerlessness.

  In order to play with power safely, it helps to understand the concept of “power-with” as differentiated from “power-over.” Most of our culture’s systems run on power-over, with sexism, racism and militarism being some ugly examples.