Input:
 Write a comprehensive guide for new tops in the BDSM community. Include the following elements:

1. The importance of seeking out a community and establishing connections with other experienced tops, bottoms, and switches.
2. The potential pitfalls of focusing solely on finding bottoms, and the benefits of developing a broad range of skills and knowledge.
3. The role of the Internet in connecting with the kink community, including websites, newsgroups, chatrooms, and private mailing lists.
4. The advantages and disadvantages of virtual communities, such as anonymity, access to a wide range of information and perspectives, and the potential for miscommunication or harm.
5. The value of attending munches, leather bars, and support groups to meet other kinksters and learn about the etiquette and customs of the community.
6. Strategies for integrating diverse communities, specifically addressing the needs and concerns of people of color in predominantly white spaces.
7. Tips for finding quality bottoms, including the importance of continuous learning, responsible behavior, and effective self-marketing.
8. The challenges and opportunities of introducing BDSM into an existing relationship, with suggestions for broaching the subject and addressing potential concerns.
9. Characteristics to look for in a bottom, such as responsibility, the ability to give as well as take, discretion, self-control, and supportiveness.

Response:
12

FINDING OTHERS

FIRST THINGS FIRST. Many tops make what we think is a big mistake – they set out looking for bottoms, maybe only for bottoms of a particular type.

Why is that a mistake, you ask? Well, because it takes a lot more than a bottom to be a top. It takes a set of techniques that will enable you to do what you do with skill and confidence. It takes a sense of the many ways BDSM can work out in real life, as opposed to the ideas you've probably encountered in fiction and videos. And it takes the support of a network of more experienced tops, bottoms and switches to introduce you around, help you when you encounter difficulties, and coach you on the etiquette and customs of this strange new environment. In other words, it takes a community. So when you attend your first munch or club meeting, tear your eyes away from the people who look like potential play partners, and start looking around for people who look like the kind of top you want to be, because those are the people who can help you become that kind of top.

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES. Since we wrote the first edition of this book, the Internet has become the main venue in which players from around the world can meet, flirt, make friends, exchange ideas and become part of one another's lives.

If you're reading this, it's a pretty safe bet that you've already spent a bit of time on the 'Net – these days it's the first exposure many people get to the world of kink. But if you haven't, allow us to recommend that you do so immediately; if you can't afford your own computer, you can arrange to use one in a café or library. Being 'Net-illiterate in this day and age could cost you knowledge, social opportunities and quite possibly partners.

Whether you decide to explore websites, newsgroups, chatrooms, and/or private mailing lists – all of which we discussed in some detail in The New Bottoming Book – keep in mind that the virtual BDSM world has its good points and its bad points. On-line interaction is a relatively low-risk way to exchange ideas, learn new philosophies and techniques, discuss issues, ask for help with problems, experiment with different personae, and flirt with anyone who's willing to flirt back. If you use one of the Internet providers that allows you to have one or more "screen names," it's very difficult, often impossible, for anyone to find out your real identity… so if you feel too scared or shy or vulnerable to attend a real-world function, on-line interactions can be your lifeline to the kink world.

On the other hand, that very anonymity enables some people to feel less accountable for what they say or do. They can pretend to be someone they're not, since you'll have no way to find out otherwise. They can insult ("flame") you, spread rumors about you, cyber-stalk you, or promise things they have no intention of delivering.

Some people feel that the 'Net is a safer way to interact than real life (or "meat life," as 'Netfolk call it). In some ways it is – it's rare to come away from a chatroom with bruises or sprains. But the emotions generated by Internet debates and by fantasy play in chatrooms can be quite real and powerful; we've both known people badly hurt by virtual interactions gone wrong.

So consider this section a caveat emptor regarding the Internet. Use it, explore it, learn from it – but always remember that you have no way of knowing whether the person you're talking to has your best interests at heart. We love the 'Net – well, one of us does, anyway – but we see it as a supplement to, not a substitute for, real-world interaction.

MUNCHES. Munches were developed as a venue in which people who had met on the 'Net could get together to meet one another face-to-face; since then, they've grown into one of the most widespread phenomena in the kink community. A munch is an event in which kinkyfolk can meet in a non-kink space – typically a restaurant, food court or bar – to socialize, flirt, cruise and generally hang out. They're usually less threatening for newcomers than parties or support groups, since most people wear street clothes and no serious play takes place. Here in the Bay Area, it's possible to go to a munch almost every night of the week, and even the smallest towns these days usually have at least a monthly munch. And where do you learn about them? On the Internet, of course.

LEATHER BARS. For many decades, the primary venue for kinky gay men to form community and to look for partners has been the leather bar. These venerable institutions usually feature a fairly conventional bar space in front, and often have some sort of small play space in back.

More recently, lesbians, bisexuals and heterosexuals are finding increasing welcomes in leather bars (but check with your gay men friends about the vibe in any particular bar if you're not positive that you're welcome there). Many leather bars also help form community by sponsoring fund-raising events such as leather competitions and beer bashes to raise money for local charities.

SUPPORT GROUPS. If you can, we strongly recommend that you join your local BDSM club. Many large urban communities have several clubs of different orientations (gay, lesbian, het, bi, male-top, female-top, pansexual and so on); pick one or several that suit your orientation. If the only one you can find doesn't fit you, get in touch with them and ask them what else is out there. If you're feeling shy and having a hard time making connections, offer to do some volunteer work: get out a mailing or work the door at an event. You'll meet lots of people, and help build support for people who are newer and scareder than you.

If you don't have a local club, join one of the big urban ones (at least that way you'll get to read the newsletter, and perhaps to attend an event or two during vacation time), or start your own.

If you think you are too shy to go to a support group, allow us to reassure you. Such meetings are nowhere near as threatening as you may imagine. The first Society of Janus meetings Dossie attended were held in the basement of a church: how wholesome. People at support group meetings are generally friendly and straightforward, not likely to come on with a lot of attitude or deeply in role, and what cruising there is is customarily civilized and respectful. Confidentiality is paramount – nobody is going to call up your boss or spouse and reveal your secret life, and if you run into someone from the office at the meeting... well, what is he doing there? And if your fantasy embarrasses you so much that you cannot imagine getting together in a room with other people who also have fantasies, remember that none of them can read your mind – so your privacy is ensured anyway.

THE KINK COMMUNITIES AND PEOPLE OF COLOR. Our communities are places of refuge, often the only place in our lives where we can be ourselves without shocking or enraging the people around us. We need that sense of safety, and we rely on cultural recognition signals – shared concepts, language, body language – to feel secure that we are at home among our tribe. Our community is our wildlife sanctuary where we are safe to live our wildness.

Similarly, many people – who for a variety of reasons constitute oppressed minorities within the predominant culture – have too often experienced being misread, misjudged and mistreated for being different. They rely on their own communities for a place of refuge, where it is okay to be who they are. This is particularly important for people of color, whose "difference" is inexorably visible. Several people of color told us that their first impression of the BDSM community was: "There's nobody here who looks like me."

Sadly, since most cultures are not accepting of our sexual lifestyles, people of color often enter the kink community at the expense of their membership in their original place of refuge, the community of people-who-look-like-me.

So how can we make our wildlife sanctuary a place of refuge for everybody? Most BDSM communities are predominantly white, middle-class, relatively well educated. This poses a problem for anyone else who wants to join.

It's not enough for white people to say "Hey, I'm not a racist, you can trust me." It's going to take a much more interactive process to truly integrate our communities. Just recently, we have been hearing from people of color who have come together to open up the discussion of race and community. This is an extremely sensitive topic, and conversations tend to get heated, so perhaps the first thing to understand about doing this work is that we all have to be willing to feel uncomfortable. We are, after all, attempting to connect in an intimate environment under the weight of centuries of brutal oppression.

What people of color tell us is that white people need to raise their awareness of the racism that permeates our society. It is not enough to simply assume that people of color will automatically think themselves privileged to be allowed into eurocentrist environments. We all need to make room for cultural difference in our communities, for different ways of communicating, of making connection, of dealing with feelings, of generating family. That's what cultural difference is, a huge repertoire of ways of doing everything, and that is the richness that cultural diversity can bring to all of us. People of European ancestry need to be willing to get changed a little, to expand their vision, to allow difference to have an impact on them.

In preparing to write this, we spoke with a number of people of color who are creating this dialogue, and this is what they wish white people would not do. Watch out for being excessively polite: overwhelming welcome tends to be accompanied with nervous laughter, and nobody feels comfortable. Don't talk down, don't assume that just because a person is not white he is illiterate.

Hate words are not good jokes. White people may feel safe enough to laugh at ethnic slurs, but living as a racial minority in a white culture is far more dangerous.

Beware stereotyping… especially stereotypes that turn you on. Approaching someone because you have always wanted to play with, for instance, a submissive Asian woman or a hypersexual black man, is objectifying and objectionable to the person being stereotyped. Being welcomed as an exotic is not the same as being welcomed as a person.

As marginalized outsiders, we kinksters have experience and knowledge that is unknown to those who are not sexual adventurers. Similarly, people who are marginalized, made outsiders, for reasons of racial or ethnic difference, have special and valuable wisdom. White people, in learning to listen to an outsider's perspective, gain opportunities to see themselves in new mirrors. The reflection may be difficult to look at, perhaps not flattering, and often colored with the justified anger of the oppressed. And when we hold still and listen to the wisdom of people whose experience is different from ours, then we can start to change things.

And then we all win.

OK, BUT WHERE ARE ALL THE BOTTOMS?

If you ask a bunch of bottoms, you will hear heartfelt and often bitter complaints about the scarcity of tops in the kink community. The good news (if you're a top) is that this is often true – particularly in heterosexual communities or those in smaller cities and rural environments. The other good news is that it's changing: both of us have noticed that more and more of the new young players coming into the scene are top-identified.

However, for the time being, there are more bottoms than tops – often many more. Dossie remembers learning to top because in the women's community in which she came of age as a player, there essentially were no tops, so bottoms politely took turns topping one another so that everybody got to get played with. What that means to you, particularly if you're a heterosexual female, a lesbian or a gay man, is that you as a top are in something of a buyer's market.

That certainly doesn't mean, however, that all you have to do is lean back and casually choose from a parade of eager bottoms who are all dying to throw themselves at your feet. Quality tops get quality bottoms – it's up to you, not only to be a quality top, but to make sure your potential bottoms know it. This goal is not accomplished by boasting about your true master- or mistress-hood, or by acting pushy and bossy outside scene space in order to demonstrate your natural gift for domination, or by hauling around a bunch of toys that you had to take out a second mortgage to buy. The best tops we know are quite modest, often soft-spoken, and always scrupulously polite – until they've finished their negotiations and the scene begins... then, watch out!

So, you ask, how do I let the world know of my wonderful toppiness without coming off like a cross between P.T. Barnum and Attila the Hun? The first suggestion we can make is that you learn as much as you possibly can, and never stop learning. Take classes. Read everything you can get your hands on (remembering, of course, to distinguish between fantasy/fiction and reality). Practice, practice, practice – if not on an eager subject, then on an inanimate object like a pillow or teddy bear, or on yourself.

IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE. When you're searching for play partners or life partners, what you are doing is marketing – and if you think it's beneath your toppish dignity to market yourself, we hope you and your dignity have many happy nights together.

The first step in marketing a product is, of course, to make sure that the product is marketable. Are you technically skilled? Are you responsible? Are you flexible? Are you empathetic? Do you take good care of your physical and emotional health? If you didn't answer all of these questions with an emphatic "yes," we suggest you do some close self-examination and self-improvement: all the marketing in the world won't move a product that people don't want.

Next, take a look at your packaging. While it's not necessary to wrap yourself in custom leather from head to toe, a little toppish accessorizing helps catch bottoms' attention. Gay men and lesbians can use hanky and key codes as shorthand to communicate their orientations and interests, which is convenient; unfortunately, these signifiers haven't worked their way very far into the het community just yet. Since many male bottoms are also fetishists, the wearing of fetish apparel – tall boots, tight corsets, leather or rubber or PVC – is convenient code by which het female tops can communicate their interests. Heterosexual male tops can run into problems – if they look too fetish-y, women may assume they are gay and discount them as possible play partners. Still, a leather vest over a handsome silk shirt or turtleneck sweater, possibly paired with leather pants, a "significant-looking" leather belt or a small whip worn on the left side, and/or a handsome pair of shiny boots, will get your message across. Various kinds of drag – schoolmaster or -mistress, pirate, cowboy, cop – will, of course, get attention from devotees of all genders and orientations.

GET THE WORD OUT. Techniques used by vanilla people for partner-finding – personal ads in print media, voice mail, or on the Internet or computer bulletin boards – can also be used to good advantage by kinky folk. Some of these venues may not allow overtly kinky ads, but a little clever indirectness can usually get your point across: words like "take-charge," "stern," "bossy" and so on, or references to favorite works of literature, are common routes. Some newspapers, deplorably, charge more for kinky ads than for vanilla ones. We suggest that you protest these policies when you find them, but if they're the only game in town, well, it's better to get the word out via a discriminatory newspaper than not to get the word out at all.

The trick to writing a good personal ad is to be as clear and specific as possible about your toppy interests while still communicating a good sense of what you're like as a person. This is true whether you're placing your own ad or responding to someone else's. We recommend that you do both.

One friend of ours says "The ideal personal ad gets exactly one response – the right one."

TO CRUISE OR NOT TO CRUISE? We think singles-bar-type cruising – walking up to total strangers and asking "So, wanna get whipped?" – is probably not an optimal strategy for you, unless you're very gorgeous or very self-assured. (However, neither of us has ever been bold enough to try it, so we don't know for sure.)

If you try thinking of an S/M event as more like a cocktail party than a singles bar, though, your chances will go up. One of the more successful cruisers we know says he has a seldom-fail opening line: "Hi, I'm Mike."

While some bottoms choose tops who are bossy, pushy and overbearing, we believe that such bottoms are likely to have trouble separating their fantasies from their realities – not a good formula for a future of safe, life-enhancing play together. The bottoms we suggest you play with are the ones you connect with at a personal level – the folks with whom you "click" in terms of personality, intelligence and chemistry. And the best way to find out if that "click" is going to happen is to simply be yourself – personable, honest and interesting to talk to. If you do this right, there will be plenty of time to be mean, harsh and overbearing later, after the scene has begun.

The art of cruising comes at the moment when this friendly get-acquainted chatter turns to matters more personal. If you're at a kink event, this isn't too difficult: simply ask "So, what kinds of play do you enjoy?" and begin discovering whether the two of you have enough in common for further discussion. We suggest, that you not set your heart on play that very evening. If you can get your potential bottom's phone number, or a date for coffee or a meal at some other time, that will give you more opportunity to get to know her, and will probably lead to better play later. On the other hand, if you're both interested in playing right then and there, and your negotiations show no deal-breakers, then why not?

If you're at an event that is sexual but not specifically S/M in nature, we suggest you stay specific about the kinds of activities that interest you – "I'm into S/M" is a turnoff to a lot of people who have mistaken ideas about what that means, but "I enjoy bondage" or "I've had fun spanking some of my partners" might pique someone's interest.

If you're at a nonsexual event, you have to be even more indirect. A mild, flirtatious joke about "Oooh, you naughty boy" or "How come there's never a slave around when you want one?" or "She was all tied up that day... and I couldn't find the time to untie her" will give you some information about your potential partner's interests. If she flirts back, you can take the conversation onto a slightly more direct level, although we still suggest you avoid words like "BDSM," "dominance," "submission" and "pain" until communication is established.

INTRODUCING BDSM INTO AN EXISTING RELATIONSHIP

These tips are all very well for all those single tops out there, you say. But what if you're already happily coupled, and hoping to introduce your partner to the delights that lie within your delightfully toppish hands?

"So, honey, whaddaya say tonight I tie you up and flog you within an inch of your life?" is probably not a good start. Keep in mind that most people have a very inaccurate view of what BDSM and its practitioners are all about. Thus, you might do better to open the discussion by talking about a specific and not-too-scary activity that interests you – a little light bondage, some mild role-playing or a bit of sensuous spanking are often good places to start. Some couples enjoy reading erotica aloud to one another as a way to get turned on, and explore actual play later as it starts to feel safe.

He may surprise you by greeting your proposal with enthusiasm. Or he may have some concerns, which it's important that you talk through. Often, first-timers are more comfortable topping, not bottoming. You should probably go along with this plan if at all possible. Once he sees that what you have in mind is safe, exciting and fun, he may be more open to being on the receiving end.

Our book, When Someone You Love Is Kinky, was designed to be read by people who don't see themselves as being into kink, and might be useful for the two of you to read together. Or maybe you could go together to a program put on by your local BDSM club.

If he says "Absolutely not!" you're kind of stuck. Let's face it, some people are just vanilla. If your partner turns out to be one of these, there's not much point in nagging: you will have to choose between opening up your relationship (which we encourage you to do honestly and consensually), giving up your interest in kink, or giving up your partner. One of us has had to do the latter, and it is a sad and difficult decision which we hope you never have to make.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT BOTTOM

We know tops who have found lifelong joy, connection and pleasure with the right bottom – and tops who have been plunged into nightmares of guilt, self-doubt and depression by the wrong one. We want you to be in the first group. So what characteristics should you look for in a bottom? We think these are important:

> • Responsibility for one's own actions. A bottom who blames you when anything goes wrong... or the obverse, a bottom who expects you to control all aspects of your scene, without any input or feedback... is not taking the proper amount of responsibility for his or her own actions. We know one bottom who, during his pre-scene negotiations, tells his tops, "I want you to know that I'm doing this scene with you because I want to, and because I trust you to take good care of me. If anything goes wrong, we'll work it out together; I won't lay it all on you." Not surprisingly, this bottom finds lots of play partners.

> • Ability to give as well as take. Sometimes "do-me queens" don't give energy back simply because they don't know how to – that problem is easily fixed by telling them. But others feel entitled to simply lie back and get done, without any desire to make sure that your needs get met. If you feel that your bottom falls into the latter category, it's time for some serious renegotiation before you burn out badly.

> • Discretion. It's always tempting to enjoy hearing gossip about your fellow players – but if you hear a bottom spreading bad rumors about his or her previous tops, you might want to ask yourself what she will say about you if the relationship ends. Watch out especially for the bottom who has nothing good to say about any of her former play partners.

> • Self-control. A bottom with a reputation for bad-temperedness or intoxication is probably not a safe choice of play partner. Remember, sooner or later you have to untie 'em.

> • Supportiveness. Most bottoms will support you enthusiastically while you're acting like a top, especially if you're acting like the kind of top they like. But a good bottom will also be supportive when you're not acting like a top – when you're feeling tired, vulnerable, confused, depressed or simply untoppy. Just as it's not much fun to be someone's "sex object" or "money object," it's hurtful to be thought of as a "pain object" or "domination object." As Janet says, "a top is more than life support system for a whip."

All of this – looking for and finding the right bottom – probably sounds like a lot of work. But we assure you, when she is looking up at you with that marvelous combination of fear, awe and love, all the work and struggle will recede into nothingness, and your bottom-finding time and energy will seem like the best investment you ever made.


Input:
 Write a section for a guidebook about special cases in the BDSM community, specifically addressing the following topics:

1. Novices: Explain the unique challenges and rewards of topping a BDSM virgin. Discuss the importance of going slowly, asking lots of questions, and providing support and guidance during the scene. Share a personal anecdote to illustrate the potential consequences of not being thorough in your preparations.

2. Professional domination: Describe the world of professional dominants and their studios. Explain the reasons why someone might choose to see a professional dominant and the benefits of doing so. Address the issue of boundaries and what is typically considered acceptable in a professional scene. Mention a film that provides an insightful and humorous depiction of this world.

3. Public play: Explain the concept of play parties and their importance in the BDSM community. Describe the typical layout of a play party space and the various types of furniture that might be found in a dungeon. Address the issue of safety and the role of dungeon monitors. Discuss the benefits of public play, including meeting new people, watching others, and feeling more okay about oneself. Emphasize the importance of responsible voyeurism and not allowing the crowd's enthusiasm to push one into doing something they'll regret later.

Response:
13

SPECIAL CASES

NOVICES. Do you want to bring out BDSM virgins? Topping a player who has little or no experience requires special care and commitment, and extra responsibility. The rewards are clear – a first-time fulfillment of years of fantasy can be incredibly exciting for both parties, hot stuff with heady feelings of conquest of the unthinkable. If the scene comes off well, your bottom will remember you with fond feelings forever, and you will feel like Santa Claus.

On the other hand, most often the first time we try anything, we don't do it as well as we will when we've had some opportunities to practice – so the first scene is often anticlimactic. Novice bottoms often have extreme fantasies but find that the realities are much harder to deal with than they thought, so be prepared to stop much sooner than you'd anticipated. Remember that the first time is probably not the last time… there's tons of stuff to learn to pull off your favorite fantasy, and you get all the tries you want to learn.

What knowledge do you need to top an inexperienced bottom? If you are a novice top, and your bottom is also a novice, then go very, very slowly. You will both make lots of mistakes, and if you can accept that, you will learn from them. If you are the more experienced player, then remember that virgin bottoms will not know much about their limits, and will not know the consequences of various types of play. Dossie recalls:

> I once topped a novice bottom at a party, a sweet young thing all done up in white lace, eagerly waiting to be decimated. I started slow, but this bottom liked the feel of it and worked all the way up to a heavy caning by the end of the scene. Afterward, it became apparent that she did not know that she would have bruises from such a caning, and that she had a vanilla lover at home – I will never forget to ask about marks again! I took care to drive her home, and call the next day to make sure she was all right – she was, thank goodness.

So when you top a novice bottom, be sure to ask lots of questions, so you will have the opportunity to fill in the bottom's information about what to expect. Many first scenes are, rightly, very lightweight – it is inappropriate to push limits hard when you are topping a novice. Rather, you should be prepared to be very supportive, and share in the excitement of doing something that is new for the bottom, even if you've done it before. After all, good play is not judged by how heavy it is, but rather by how wonderful it feels.

Other bottoms may go so far out in a first scene as to push the limits of experienced tops (never underestimate the power of endorphins). A friend of ours describes a scene in which he was asked to top a novice whose stated purpose was to satisfy her intellectual curiosity about S/M so she could write about it.

> Our friend started out cautiously, but the bottom turned out to have an enormous pain tolerance, so soon she was wearing sixteen small but very intense clamps on her skin, and liking it a lot, and the top was starting to feel like his limits were being pushed. He removed the clamps, and spent half an hour doing various other things. Toward the end, she was kneeling at his feet and he saw a shadow pass over her face. He asked: "Is there something you want to tell me?" "Yes, Master," she replied. "You may speak." "Please, Sir, the clamp you left on my clit is beginning to hurt a little."

New players need and deserve a supportive environment in which to explore their desires and to learn how to bottom. Good tops honor and value the trust and hard work a new bottom offers to us when he struggles with a new sensation, or fulfills a role he has never played before. We can help by presenting new events one at a time, by giving novices plenty of opportunities to feel their way into an unfamiliar sensation or command, and by letting them find out what they like and don't like without fear of judgment or condemnation.

When we watch over our novice bottoms carefully, and treat them with responsibility and respect, we get to share in the great adventure of starting down the path of kinky exploration, and to witness the blossoming of many happy little sluts and slaves.

PROFESSIONAL DOMINATION

The world of professional domination is one of the highest accomplishments of the BDSM scene. A good professional dominant is a skilled and respected expert on many if not all forms of play. Many give their knowledge back to the community by teaching classes or workshops, as well as being available for actual play in negotiated sessions.

The professional dominant's studio can be an amazing site to behold. Entire houses may be full of rooms decorated and furnished to satisfy every fantasy, with much of the furniture offering practical applications for play: racks for bondage, horses for bend-over beatings, overhead winches to support the standing bottom for a flogging, specially designed bondage tables for the most complete immobilization. Many professional studios include rooms for different fantasies: the dungeon, all black and chains… the nursery for big babies, with lots of flannel and extra-large teddy bears… transformation rooms, with costumes, wigs and makeup to turn the bottom into the creature of his or her fantasy… white rooms with examining tables for playing Doctor Doom or Nurse Nasty.

Paying for the opportunity to play with such an expert is considered completely acceptable by S/M community standards. A person may want to see a professional because he wants to learn from an expert – a top who is somewhat uncomfortable with bottoming but wants to learn from that experience can often arrange a scene with a professional that includes exactly what he wants in a confidential environment. A bottom may go to a professional dominant for elaborate scenes that he can't get from his partner. A bottom who loves his wife and kids, their house in the suburbs and his standing in a straight community can visit a professional occasionally without giving up the rest of his life. And money is a fair and clean exchange for fantasy play sculpted by an expert to the bottom's needs, even when the bottom needs to serve. Some professionals also offer submissives, or switch themselves, for carefully negotiated and limited scenes with customers they trust (for obvious reasons of safety, there are few professional bottoms advertising in the open market).

A competent professional dominant is good at limits and boundaries. She will know which fantasies are workable in a professional relationship and which are not. It is traditional in professional scenes to include a lot of extremely wild S/M and to exclude actual sex, partly because that may fit better for the professional, and mostly because the exchange of sex for money is illegal in most states.

If you would like to know more about the world of professional domination, we recommend the excellent and hilarious English film "Personal Services," very loosely based on the career of British dominatrix Cynthia Payne, which includes wonderful depictions of parties and Christmas dinner at this house of pain.

PUBLIC PLAY

The play party has become a basic institution in many BDSM communities, so basic that we have been asked if a person can explore kink at all if she doesn't want to play in public. Of course you can play without going to play parties, and many do. But public play is very popular among S/M players, so if you have fantasies of large audiences applauding and cheering your amazing sexual feats, we have a party for you.

Play parties are usually held in a space designed for that purpose, possibly a dungeon in someone's home, or the studio of a professional dominant. Other party play spaces are maintained by support groups as a volunteer endeavor, and some people make a profession of running a party house. Some clubs in major cities are set up for public S/M play, some on one night a week, some all the time. A play party space usually will have one or more dungeons equipped with furniture – one or more slings, a St. Andrew's cross, medical examination tables, bondage tables, overhead hoists, cages, and the like… occasionally even beds. Conversation in the play area is discouraged because it intrudes on the consciousness of the people who are playing.

Normally there is also a social area, where food and beverages are available, where people can meet and cruise and negotiate, or come down after a scene. Most party houses have a set of rules or guidelines printed up for you, covering their expectations about everything from safe sex to responsible voyeurism, and most have dungeon monitors on duty throughout that party so there is always someone who can answer your questions. Safety is a prominent concern – what a nightmare to have to call an ambulance in the middle of an S/M orgy!

The play party provides a safe opportunity to meet people, watch how they play, explore new partners and play in a playful environment, with not so much personal commitment beyond the moment. Some monogamous couples come to watch others, socialize and to play special scenes for public display – we like to watch these scenes because couples who have played together for a long time are often very good at it, and you can see the intimacy and profound connection. People who like to watch are asked to be responsible, and keep at a non-intrusive distance. We enjoy voyeurism a lot – we get the chance to learn from what other people do, and tons of ideas and how-tos to take back to our own play. The encouragement of an eager audience helps many people push their limits – be careful not to let the crowd's enthusiasm push you into doing something you'll regret later.

Seeing others play can also help us feel more okay about ourselves. Dossie says: "When I see someone very turned on, stark naked and thrashing and looking real good, and that person is not necessarily young or thin, then I start to realize that maybe I look good when I play even if I'm not built like a centerfold. And when I see other tops, taking their time, dealing with the equipment and their bottoms, going through all the effort and technical work to get a scene off the ground, and then I see that scene flying into the stratosphere, that helps me not feel like an idiot when it takes me a little time to get a scene working."

We believe that the deprivatization of sex is a radical political act. Hush-hush attitudes toward sex have generated a sick history of shame, embarrassment, guilt and self-loathing that have crippled many people – kept them from realizing their wonderful sexual selves and often decimated their entire sense of self-esteem. In BDSM in particular, coming out is often made difficult by feelings of shame and inadequacy, as well as the problem of acquiring the extensive technical information and experience that make a good top or bottom. All of these difficulties can be addressed at the play party, where the opportunity to share sex and S/M with others can be powerfully healing.

We also like the challenge of play parties. When we prepare a scene for a play party, we often put in extra effort to make something that will be powerful for us and attract an appreciative audience, and playing in public gives an edge to a scene that can help it go further, or higher, or wherever you want it to go.


Input:
  Write a section for a guidebook about full-time D/S relationships, addressing the following topics:

1. Definition and fluidity: Define full-time D/S relationships and discuss the fluidity that exists within them, emphasizing that while the dominants in novels may express their dominance nonstop, this is not often the case in reality. Explain that successful D/S couples have a very strong ability to read each other's signals and move in and out of their dominant or submissive mindsets.

2. Activities and behaviors: Describe the various activities and behaviors that full-time D/S couples engage in to manifest their way of being together. Some dominants may control their submissive's behaviors with a goal of improving their life, while others may require valuable service or enjoy training their submissives in postures, vocal mannerisms, forms of address, or types of service.

3. What's in it for the submissive: Discuss the different motivations and rewards for submissives in full-time D/S relationships, such as being noticed and appreciated for their contributions or the ability to "turn off their brain" by becoming a pure instrument of the dominant's will.

4. Contracts and symbols: Explain the purpose and importance of contracts in full-time D/S relationships, which can help both parties understand their rights and responsibilities. Contracts may cover topics such as the duration of the relationship, symbols like collars or rings, obligations, ways to communicate, agreements about sex and play with others, and disagreements.

5. About collars: Discuss the significance of collars in D/S relationships, and the different interpretations and uses they may have for different individuals. Address topics such as training collars, personal collars, and collaring ceremonies.

6. How to keep it fresh: Offer advice on how to maintain the excitement and passion in a full-time D/S relationship, including setting aside time for play, treating each other as you did when the relationship was new, and respecting everyone's roles.

Response:
14

FULL-TIME D/S

Some players live in their scene roles all the time: Master or Mistress and slave, or Daddy and boy, Mommy and girl, Mistress and dog, houseboy or french maid. In some people's eyes, living full-time is the ultimate expression of kink, complete immersion in the fantasy, making the fantasy their total reality.

Sometimes elaborate families are formed, where a senior top's girl might have a slave of her own, and another human may be functioning as the dog. Players form these families according to their needs, and demonstrate a startling facility to adapt to changing conditions – there's no rule that says you can't make agreements to change roles in whatever way suits you. And for those who are successful, wonderfully fulfilling and creative lives can follow.

We would like to point out that living full-time in role is not the "gold standard" of BDSM. We see far too many players who feel that if they're not "24/7," they're somehow wrong, or not "real" dominants. If this doesn't sound like the way you want to live, if BDSM is a more comfortable fit in your life when you keep it in scene and drop roles the rest of the time, don't let anybody tell you that you're in any way inferior. However, if full-time BDSM does feel like a good fit for you, we encourage you to try it – starting slowly with one or two types of relatively easy power exchange, and adding new aspects of the power relationship as the old ones become habitual.

If people owning slaves or otherwise involved in relationships with a declared power inequity push your buttons, please remember that these lifestyles were consciously chosen, which may put them a step ahead of traditional marriages and the power dynamics of traditional sex roles that most people don't even think about. And role-bound relationships work well for a lot of people. Many people are relieved to have a clear idea about who is empowered to do, say or decide what, and many bottoms are quite content to let their masters or mistresses run the show.

FLUIDITY. We've been friends with many people in full-time dominant/submissive relationships. Our observation is that when we spend time with such people as friends, we rarely see them behaving in ways much different than any other couple: the day-to-day demands of running a life remain the same, and must be addressed by someone or other. And almost nobody can be in full control of everything at every waking moment – or would like to be. While the dominants in novels (and sometimes chatrooms) express their dominance nonstop, in reality this approach doesn't often work out very well.

However, what we do see in successful D/S couples is a very strong ability to read each other's signals and a very fluid approach to moving in and out of their dominant or submissive mindsets – so the couple who at one moment is discussing someone's problems at work may at the next moment be in full dominant/submissive mode, with the dominant in complete control and the submissive completely pliable to her will.

What kinds of signals do these people give each other to make such extraordinary transitions possible? Some might be consciously chosen, like using a particular name ("boy" or "girl," for example) or a particular behavior (a submissive kneeling, a dominant placing her hand on the back of the submissive's neck). Others are less conscious, more intuitive – a tone of voice, a shift in body language. Longtime D/S couples grow extremely skilled in reading such signals and responding to each other's shifting needs and desires as the moment dictates.

ACTIVITIES AND BEHAVIORS. What kinds of things do full-time D/S couples do to manifest their way of being together? The list can vary from one couple to the next, of course. Some dominants like to control their submissive's behaviors with a goal towards improving his life – making sure that he quits smoking or does the work he brought home for the night or gets his daily exercise. Others require that their submissive give them valuable service of some kind – maintaining the household, caring for the dominant's body or possessions, or even managing or training other submissives. Still others enjoy training their submissives in postures, vocal mannerisms, forms of address or types of service that are particularly appealing to the dominant – for example, kneeling with the knees 14" apart, eyes down, back straight, while proffering a cup of coffee that's exactly the right strength and temperature and contains the perfect amount of cream and sugar.

Lifestyle D/S-ers have generated many clever devices to keep the submissive enslaved when the dominant is not present. The submissive may wear a collar or other symbol. You can padlock a chain around her waist, or give him instructions to go into the bathroom at work at two o'clock every day and masturbate for five minutes without coming, and so on…

WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE SUBMISSIVE? One submissive we know, who drove twice a week from her work as a housewife and mother to take care of her master's household, told us, "At home, I do the same things, and nobody notices. When I do them for my master, he notices them and appreciates them and gives me lots of positive feedback for doing them." So for at least some submissives, part of their pleasure comes from being noticed and appreciated for what they have to offer. The owner of such a slave told us, "She is the most precious thing I could possibly own, and I never forget that."

For others, the charge is just the opposite – being faceless, dehumanized, as much the dominant's possession as her furniture or toothbrush and hence unworthy of comment. For these, the ability to "turn off their brain" by becoming a pure instrument of the dominant's will can be both rewarding and sexy.

The fantasy may be that the dominant's will is paramout and that the submissive's needs don't matter – but in reality, a submissive whose basic needs aren't being met won't feel submissive for very long, and a dominant who's exerting her will over an unhappy submissive will find the experience hollow and frustrating. Thus, it's important that there be a good match between the dominant's style and the submissive's desires. Some dominants prefer to manage their submissive's behaviors very closely, giving orders for each behavior they want; these dominants may do best with submissives who prefer to be pliable and will-less while in their submissive space. Others want submissives who can anticipate and meet their needs, and these may do best with submissives whose charge comes from caretaking and appreciation.

CONTRACTS AND SYMBOLS. There are many ways to do full-time BDSM relationships, and one way that people get clear about what they are doing is to write a contract, often called a slave or ownership contract, in which the rights and responsibilities of both parties are spelled out.

Why a contract? You might think that when you own someone they just do what you want all the time. Well, there are always limits, and if your bottom's limits offend you, remember that you probably have limits of your own. For instance, when you own a slave, does that mean you have to be lean and mean and in top role twenty-four hours a day, or do you get to relax now and then? If you have a little boy or girl, do you have to get up in the middle of the night when your "baby" has bad dreams? Are you contracting to provide income for both of you, or who goes to work and how do they do it? Contracts also normally cover agreements about monogamy and nonmonogamy: are both parties monogamous? If not, what are their responsibilities to each other? Can the top give the slave away to someone else? Can the slave ask to be given to someone else?

Many "contracts" are simply props, documents designed to turn people on but not to convey much real information. The contracts we've seen that actually worked well as relationship blueprints are fairly detailed documents that spell out both the submissive's and the dominant's responsibilities toward the relationship. The contract may include any or all of the following:

> • The duration of the contract. Many couples start with a relatively short contract – a few weeks or a month – then, as they learn more about one another's needs and limits, may adjust and extend the contract for longer periods of time.

> • Symbols. If the relationship includes the use of symbols such as collars or rings, the contract may dictate when and how these are to be worn.

> • Obligations. What kinds of service must the submissive agree to provide, and under what circumstances? In what ways does the dominant agree to take care of the submissive – financially, emotionally, physically? In what ways is the submissive expected to take care of himself? Is S/M play expected or optional? How about sex?

> • Ways to communicate. If one or the other partner has something to say that cannot be said within the confines of their role, how and when can they communicate that? Will the partners set aside a certain time, place or medium in which "amnesty" applies and they can communicate clearly without reprisal? There are many creative ways to accomplish communication in role without resorting to manipulation. One Mistress of our acquaintance has her slave write a journal entry onto the computer every morning, with orders to include information about his state of well-being, his emotional reality and any problems he might be experiencing. She can then read what he wrote, and decide on her response, without breaking role unless she chooses to.

> This is also the area in which you will discuss code words and safewords. While long-time D/S couples often find that they have come to read each other well enough that they no longer need safewords very often, we suggest keeping at least one safeword in place in case of genuine emergency – if you've never seen your submissive have a heart attack before, you may have trouble figuring out that her gasps for breath aren't issuing from unbridled lust.

> • Agreements about sex and play with others. The contract may include agreements about what kinds of activities may and may not take place outside the relationship, and under what circumstances – both for the dominant and for the submissive. One contract we've seen does not allow the submissive the freedom to come without the dominant's permission, but gives the submissive five "get out of jail free" cards each month, in which she has sexual liberty for a brief period of time. Contracts should also include clearly stated agreements about safer sex standards.

> • Disagreements. If there's a serious and real problem between the dominant and the submissive, how will this be handled? Is there an outside person who both parties trust who can help listen and mediate any problems?

ABOUT COLLARS. For some people, a collar is at least as meaningful as a wedding ring; for others, it's simple decoration, no more meaningful than a necklace. We think it's safe to say that for most people in D/S relationships, the collar is a potent and meaningful symbol.

But what does it mean? That depends on your own desires and those of your submissive. Some dominants like to keep one or two "training collars" around to use during casual or short-term play, then buy a personal collar for a submissive when their relationship deepens and lengthens – it's not uncommon for a couple to celebrate the initiation of their contract with a collaring ceremony.

If you are contemplating giving someone a collar, we suggest the two of you have a long talk about what it signifies to each of you – this isn't an area in which disagreements typically work out very well. Other good things to discuss are when the collar is and is not to be worn: some people who work in straight jobs have special collars which look like ordinary jewelry but have special significance to them and their dominants, and which can be worn to the office or to dinner at Mom's.

It's also a good idea to get clear on who owns the collar. While in ordinary vanilla etiquette, a gift belongs to the recipient, many dominants feel strongly that they own their submisive's collar, and that it should be returned when and if it is no longer in use. This won't typically be an issue as long as the two of you are together, but if the relationship ends, a misunderstanding on this subject can cause unnecessary hard feelings.

HOW DO YOU KEEP IT FRESH?

Both of us have seen more than a few lifestyle couples come to painful disgreements, sometimes even a complete parting of the ways, when the dominant loses interest in play or sex, and the submissive begins to feel burned out or exploited. This is a common enough pattern that we suggest you take steps to make sure it doesn't happen to you.

It's not a bad idea to include in your contract, if you have one, some provisions for how often play will happen in the relationship – and then stick to them. Obviously, we all go through periods when we're feeling sick, depressed or overworked, and it's reasonable to allow yourself some downtime in your contract. But if for some reason you're not feeling like playing at all, ask yourself why: are your needs not being adequately met? Is there something you're missing that your play should be providing and isn't? Or is something missing that can't be taken care of in play, that needs to be addressed by you and your partner dealing with each other as equals? If you're suppressing anger, frustration, sadness or other difficult emotions, it's unlikely that you'll be up for frequent or hot play.

It can be difficult to view your submissive with the thrill of domly lust you felt when you first met him; after all, may of us love novelty. But lifestyle couples can benefit by the same advice often given to vanilla couples: treat each other the way you did when your relationship was new and passionate. When you're going to spend time with your submissive, be as present for him as you can: take time to prepare yourself physically and mentally so that you're as sexy and dominant as you know how to be. Touch each other often. Remember the things that made you think he was so hot in the first place. Think of new ways to express your feelings toward him, and that he can express his feelings toward you – after all, one of the perks of being a dominant is that you can demand what you want.

We observe that people who do well at lifestyle relationships usually have very clear boundaries, even if they don't call them that, and can readily describe how they know when they are in and out of role, or which roles, or how deeply. They tend to be good at signals, and slide in and out of role with facility. They have respect for everybody's roles, submissives and dominants alike, and take pride in playing their part well. The reward is the opportunity to delve into yourself with tremendous intensity and manifest your dominant persona in a very complete way – to be truly the master or mistress of your own domain.


Input:
 Write a section for a guidebook about "Shadow Play," which delves into deep psychological territory in BDSM scenes. Address the following topics:

1. Definition and purpose: Define shadow play and explain its purpose in BDSM scenes. Discuss how shadow play can be used to explore parts of ourselves that we may have previously been aware of only in deep shadow and how it can help us push our emotional limits.

2. The Shadow: Describe Carl Jung's concept of the Shadow, a realm of the mind that shuts away thoughts, memories, and feelings that we have forbidden to consciousness for one reason or another. Explain the function of the Shadow and its role in our individual histories, family notions, and social and cultural paradigms.

3. Playing in the Shadow: Discuss the various scenarios that can be considered shadow play, such as rape scenes, emotions like rage or misery, and personal traumas like child abuse, molestation, or rape. Explain that the charge each individual feels about a particular scenario is what makes it deep and that playing in the Shadow can be hot, intriguing, and sexy.

4. The bottom's perspective: Discuss the motivations for bottoms who choose to engage in shadow play, such as becoming a warrior by surviving an ordeal, conquering from the bottom, and finding emotional strength to deal with oppression. Explain that the bottom gets to write the script, choose the outcome, and be received as beloved and desirable.

5. The top's perspective: Discuss the challenges and fears that tops may face when engaging in shadow play, such as worrying about hurting their bottom's feelings, being seen as racist or sexist, and bearing the guilt of their ancestors or shame for their privilege. Explain that playing with cultural trauma offers the opportunity for tops to meet their internalized abuser and find out what their own hooks are to that role.

6. Playing with cultural trauma: Discuss the attraction to playing with cultural trauma, such as war, genocide, torture, and enslavement, and how it can be a constructive way of dealing with a history of oppression. Address the controversy surrounding this type of play and the importance of respecting each other's feelings and boundaries.

7. How to do it: Provide guidelines for negotiating shadow play scenes with extreme care, showing respect for safewords, checking in more often than usual, and establishing mutual respect, regard, and affection before and after the scene. Discuss the importance of choosing a script with an appropriate distance or closeness to the actual experience and the use of stereotypes as archetypes or iconic roles.

8. Aftercare: Explain the importance of planning for aftercare for all parties involved in the scene, as everyone is playing into their own shame and their own Shadow. Discuss the need for time after the scene to talk, to check in the next day, and to talk again a few days later to see how things are shaking out.

9. Public play: Discuss the appropriateness of shadow play scenes in public play parties and the need to respect the limits of those who haven't consented to play with us. Explain that it can be hard to predict what is and is not okay with others around us and that we need to negotiate as best we can to make room for everyone's needs and respect everyone's vulnerabilities.

10. Healing: Discuss the potential for healing and transformation through shadow play, using the example of a black woman and a white woman who lived together in a full-time owner-slave relationship and eventually stopped playing such scenes once they had learned what they needed to know. Emphasize that when we bring the horrors of history out of the Shadow and into clear consciousness, we can begin to heal our histories and ourselves.

Response:
15

SHADOW PLAY: DARKSIDE S/M

WHAT IS IT? Shadow play is our name for scenes that delve into deep psychological territory. It is our understanding that all BDSM involves explorations of parts of ourselves that we may have previously been aware of only in deep shadow. As you learn your emotional limits, you may find yourself wanting to push those limits by deliberately setting up an scene to travel in forbidden territory. Such scenes may involve emotions like rage or misery that can cause dysfunction if allowed to run free in our real lives. Adopting parent/child roles is often deep play, as is playing out personal trauma like child abuse, molestation or rape. Some players may use a scene to explore historical social oppression, like slavery, witch-burnings, the Inquisition or the Holocaust.

Dossie had a powerful experience of reclaiming a piece of her history after the scene with Janet that we told you about before, where Dossie was a poor waif in a Victorian workhouse. She recalls:

> Janet had cleverly gotten around my limit about playing with punishment by caning me "to show you what would happen if you ever did do something you shouldn't." My role required nothing of me but to whimper and be pathetic for about three hours, a feeling I found to be curiously luxurious. Wondering about this the next day brought to mind a time in my life when I really was pathetic – in my early twenties I had to leave a violent partner when I was pregnant, with just about no resources. I used to hang out at this ecumenical ministry in the Haight because they gave me free yogurt, which for a few weeks was my primary source of protein. I'm sure I looked pretty pathetic to them, but that's not how I felt. I was furious at myself, blaming myself for having gotten into this situation in the first place, and I was ferociously determined to be strong enough to pull my life back together and raise my baby, which I did. I couldn't afford to be pathetic back then. It took an S/M scene 25 years later to bring me to compassion for my younger self and become able to empathize with how pathetic my situation really was. The scene gave me permission to give myself comfort, which I found very healing. Now when I remember that time in my life I no longer feel ashamed.

The Shadow. Our experience in the aftermath of that scene, which we played while we were writing this book, also led us to coalesce a theory about how S/M works as a healthy drive toward healing and integrity. Carl Jung envisioned the human psyche kind of like this diagram, only more dynamic, of course. The Conscious mind is what we are familiar with: me at my computer, you holding this book. The Preconscious is about what we are only partly, or perhaps occasionally aware of, like dreams, or fantasies, or long-ago fuzzy memories – images and ideas that come and go like the tide. The Unconscious mind is that reservoir of instincts, archetypes, primal process that shows up in our dreams and desires, but of which we are only indirectly aware. And Jung placed the spiritual sense, which he thought of as the Collective Unconscious, at the very bottom of that ocean.

He also posited a realm of the mind, sometimes conscious, often not, called the Shadow, drawn in this diagram like an iceberg floating on the sea. We all know that the part of the iceberg that we can see is only the smallest part. Jung thought the function of the Shadow was to shut away thoughts, memories and feelings that we had forbidden to consciousness for one reason or another. This forbidding happens not only in our individual histories, but in our family's notion of what is and is not okay to discuss or acknowledge, and in our social and cultural paradigms of the same. An example for many of us would be the taboo against talking about sex, or even being aware of sexual energy except under very restricted conditions.

Individually, we may banish memories of trauma, embarrassment, fear, awareness of the less acceptable parts of ourselves – needy, yearning, pushy, cruel. We may banish desires we have been taught are inappropriate. And we may banish feelings that have been so scary, or responded to in such a negative fashion, that we decided, perhaps when we were too small to be making adult sense, that we must never feel that particular way again. Forbidden emotions sent to the deep freeze commonly include pathos, anger, shame, terror, villainy and victimhood. Starting to sound familiar?

So our thesis is that it just might be that our kinky desires, the drives that lead us to enact our dark and dangerous fairy tales, may very well be the longing to reunite with a part of ourselves that we have lost in the Shadow. Perhaps we yearn to bring that part back into consciousness, in the validating presence of another who can mirror us, and in this terrible state find us desirable. As we eroticize these tales from our own deepest personal mythology, we inject our self-rejection with the healing energy of the life force, with Eros, and confirm our newly enlarged sense of self with the affirmation of orgasm. As we welcome back our own lost parts, we become more whole – increase our integrity – with the healing power of S/M.

PLAYING IN THE SHADOW. The charge that each of us as individuals may feel about a particular scenario is what makes it deep. Many of us play rape scenes, and more than a few of us have actually been raped, so for some a rape scene is very deep play, searching for understanding, catharsis, healing or resolution.

Play can be deep for the top or the bottom or both. If we reenact a scene of abuse, it is not only the bottom who may be playing deep. Survivors of child abuse frequently carry with them what they learned from the adults, engraved into their psyches as the internalized abuser. Tops may experience profound emotion in playing the role of molesting bully or punitive parent.

People are attracted to playing in their shadows because it is very hot, intriguing, sexy. Please don't think that we are robots doomed to reenact the dysfunctions of our childhoods over and over without release, but rather that we seek out opportunities to struggle with these conflicts so that we have a chance to make the story come out differently.

If we let these desires drive us without our awareness, they may manifest in destructive ways. This is why we may repeatedly pick the partner who makes us the craziest. Dossie used to express this desire by hunting down rough trade in the streets of New York (she found lots of it, too); Janet used to have such a profound need to be needed that she drove herself and her partners crazy by insisting that they need her even when they didn't. We find it a lot safer and more constructive to play out our old tapes with full awareness, within the boundaries of a scene. We can relive our old dramas to our heart's content, only this time we control the outcome. In this lies empowerment, with great potential for healing and transformation.

PLAYING WITH CULTURAL TRAUMA

Some of us like to play with cultural trauma, take the scripts for our psychodrama from the horrors of humanity's more brutal histories: war, genocide, torture, enslavement. The Holocaust, African slavery, the Spanish Inquisition, the rape of Nanking. These scenes are more than merely hot. They can be a constructive way of dealing with a history of oppression of our ancestors, our class, our race – or, for that matter, a history of being the oppressor. More dirt to dig up from the Shadow and plow into fertilizer for new roses.

Playing with cultural themes is highly controversial. Many people, including many S/M players, are of the opinion that no one should play with these ugly realities. Some see such play as insulting, or belittling to their serious struggle to heal from historical oppression and to refuse to be victimized in the present. History offers us many emotional minefields, and a lot of us don't want to have our buttons pushed, because we don't want that particular kind of overwhelming emotional pain happening in our sexual sanctuary.

Playing with the horrors of history brings up all our current struggles with racism, sexism, classism and so on. Bringing historical play into the S/M arena also challenges the secrecy and mistrust that oppressed people use, for good reasons, to protect themselves in potentially hostile social environments – which means letting go, for the sake of the scene, of some very crucial defenses. For those of us dealing with racism and the history of slavery in the United States, the issues of submission and dominance are especially loaded.

Everybody has a right to protect their feelings. If you don't want to enter into playing with cultural trauma, we support you in that choice. And if you do want to travel in that difficult territory, we support you too.

WHAT IS THE ATTRACTION? The horrors of history comprise our cultural Shadow, and many of us are drawn to it just as we're drawn to our individual and family Shadows – like finding yourself sucking on an aching tooth. The motivations might be something we discover in our fantasies, or out of curiosity – what might it be like to go there on purpose, how would it come out? Or the sense that there's something in that Shadow that we need to know, and a willingness to deal with the consequences. Maybe we want to face our fears, get pushed into seeing, find our power, transform pain into wisdom. Maybe that sexual draw represents the need to bring that terrible history into consciousness, in clear focus, to end repression and start healing.

FROM THE BOTTOM. If you choose to bottom to a script based on cultural trauma, you may be aiming at becoming a warrior by surviving an ordeal, conquering from the bottom by having the emotional strength to deal with oppression, finding out how your ancestors survived. Conquering might mean feeling free to cry for a long time, or beg for mercy, or it might mean stoicism, surviving. It most certainly could involve coming face to face with your own internalized oppression, your own racism. We all have racism, even those of us who are oppressed by it. Playing with it could bring about dissociation, flashbacks, open up wellsprings of rage, and it's possible to fall into really believing in the moment that the top is angry, despising, sees you as less than human.

Remember, you get to write the script, you get to choose the outcome. You get to conquer, and you get to be received, in the full emotional complexity of all this, as beloved and desirable.

FROM THE TOP. Very scary. As a general rule, in any kink grouping there are a lot more eager victims than there are Simon Legrees. So how would you feel if your friend asked you to call her a nigger? A filthy Jew? A faggot? Tops worry about hurting their bottom's feelings, being seen as racist or sexist, bearing the guilt of our ancestors or shame for our privilege. And what if we like it? What if we get turned on by playing this horrible person?

For the top, playing with cultural trauma offers the opportunity to meet our internalized abuser. We all have one: it's not if you discover your precious inner bully, it's when. When you play the oppressor as a gift to your bottom, you will find out what your own hooks are to that role. When tops invoke the spirit of bigotry or brutality, what shocks us is how real it can get, how strongly we can feel it. Are we willing to be conscious of that?

Janet recalls what it felt like to play a sexist brute:

> I felt myself in the teeth of the fantasy, hurtling as if I were on a steep ski slope, unintentional space opening up before me. The momentum of the scene took me skidding into dark, unexplored, frightening territory.

And let's not assume, as we talk about this, that all the bottoms are members of an oppressed minority, or that all the tops are white and middle-class. What would it be like to be an African-American topping a slavery scene? Or a revenge fantasy? Or a German pretending to be a victim of the Holocaust?

HOW DO YOU DO IT? Negotiate with extreme care, follwing the suggestions in the next section on emotional safety for deep scenes. Expect a deep emotional charge for both bottom and top. Show a lot of respect for safewords – you may need them. Tops should check in more often than usual, because if the scene really begins to roll, the bottom may forget that there is a safeword, or that there is any consensuality at all. And remember, both top and bottom are playing into shame – so before and after, outside the scene, you want to be very sure to establish mutual respect, regard and affection.

When you are choosing your script, think about the distance or closeness your scenario holds to your actual experience. For most people, further away in history feels safer – so a scene from the Spanish Inquisition may feel less terrifying than one from the Holocaust. Some people choose to play with someone else's cultural trauma rather than their own.

Do remember, when choosing your historical horrors, that you get to do this more than once. So select something relatively easy for the present, and if all goes well, you can take on something more challenging next time. Leaping off cliffs is optional.

The characters we play in these scenes are usually stereotypes. While stereotyping is an active form of societal oppression, stereotypes in scenes are more like archetypes, the icon of the oppressed or oppressing person. The roles act as containers, boundaries that say very clearly, "This is not who I am all the time."

Stereotypes, especially as you are starting up the scene, can easily look more like caricatures, and you may have a hard time keeping a straight face. Just ride it, continue, and let the turn-on gradually draw you into the drama.

An important point of negotiation: white people can't really initiate racial scenes, at least not with anybody they don't know really really well. A question arises for the bottom: would I want to bottom to someone I suspect is genuinely racist, sexist, a conscious oppressor? Or for the top: If I truly believe in some other people's inferiority, is it okay for me to play this out in scene? We hope not. Ideally, the top is pretending to be an oppressor that she doesn't identify with.

AFTERCARE. Plan on aftercare for both or all parties. Everyone in this kind of scene is playing into their own shame and their own Shadow, everyone is terribly vulnerable. Plan for time after the scene, and to talk the next day, and to talk again two or three days later, to see how things are shaking out. If you are partners who live together, it is particularly important to set aside time for these discussions. Making assumptions that everybody is fine is dangerous. It can also be helpful to have some neutral friends that you didn't play with who you can talk to.

PUBLIC PLAY. Cultural trauma scenes are not always appropriate for public play parties. We need to respect the limits of those who haven't consented to play with us, and who have no way to close their ears to shouted slurs. It can be hard to predict what is and is not okay with others around you. And sometimes this can feel like another kind of oppression, when your fellow perverts think your particular scene is disgusting. There is, in our opinion, no one right way to deal with public reaction to highly charged scenes. The problem is not simple, and all we can really do is negotiate as best we can to make room for everybody's needs, and respect everybody's vulnerabilities.

HEALING. Many years ago, we knew a black woman and a white woman who lived together in a full-time owner-slave relationship in which the white woman was the master. They were healthy, happy people, proud of their partnership; eventually they moved to the country to bear and raise their child. Some years later, we had the opportunity to talk with the top in this relationship, and, knowing they were still together, ask how the slavery question had worked out. She told us that her lover had, after some years, learned what she needed to know from playing into the history of slavery and gotten the healing she was seeking, so they stopped playing such scenes. Now, still together and raising their child, they play other games.

When we painfully seek a deep emotional experience of enslavement, oppression, terror and helplessness, when we bring the horrors of history out of the Shadow and into clear consciousness, when we light up those terrible shadows with love, determination and the sweet fire of erotic energy, we can begin to heal our histories and ourselves.

DEEP EMOTIONAL SAFETY

In a previous chapter we told you how to handle psychological emergencies that might come up when your play accidentally sets off somebody's emotional land mines. In shadow play, you go into that same territory on purpose, and these skills will be your safety net, enabling you to get back out whenever you want to, no matter how deeply you have gone in.

This is advanced play, and we do not advocate shadow play with new partners or with unfamiliar physical techniques – this is no time to fumble. And let us remind you that just as we deplore values that add up to a hierarchy of hip about heaviness in stimulus play, there is no status value in playing deeper than the next guy – play at the depth that feels right to you.

There are still limits, there are always limits – but it may be trickier figuring out what they are. Both of us, for example, have limits about face-slapping because our parents used to do that, so we only allow face-slapping in scenes that are planned to be deep. Janet tells potential tops, "If you slap my face I may come unglued; don't do it unless you're willing to help put me back together again." Punishment for real or imagined naughtiness may be hot for one player, too sensitive for another.

You may discover a limit you didn't know you had. Dossie remembers:

> My partner had been playing Mommy to my very young baby, personae that we had fooled around with while snuggling, but never in an actual S/M scene. When we discussed playing a scene with the baby, we decided that it was too scary to hurt her, but that sex might be okay. In scene, I got deeply into my baby role, being fed ice cream, playing with toys, sucking on everything. When we progressed to the sexual part, though, I got confused, overwhelmed and profoundly disturbed. I began to cry in a strange and mournful way, and my partner responded by stopping the sex and comforting me. What I got from the scene was that the baby was not big enough to have sex, and that, since my family was very stern and intolerant of crying children, it was incredibly healing to be comforted when I was upset, with no justifications needed. So in one way this scene was a disaster, and in another way it was a healing experience. A new outcome, and a chance to reclaim a part of myself: the baby who wasn't allowed to cry. In case you were worried, the baby is fine and just learned to say "doggie."

When you play with emotional risk, plan to spend some time talking about feelings. Honor your feelings, whatever they may be, as the scene reveals them to you – there is no way that you are "supposed" to feel.

Also remember that you already have psychological defenses that have been protecting you from your own painful stuff. S/M technique may bypass these defenses for a while, but will not disable them. Your normal defenses will return in due time and continue to protect you as well as they always have. Above all, stay conscious and respect the fragility with which you are playing. Deep scenes connect to unmet wants we had long since given up hope of ever fulfilling: take care to honor the terrible vulnerability of yearning. Shadow play requires a commitment from all players to serious exploration, and a willingness to give that exploration the time, energy and respect it deserves.

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

So you have inklings of some part of yourself that you or your partner wants to explore. The next question becomes: how do you get there?

If you discovered this space in play by accident, you can return by the same route that got you there in the first place: a role, a script, a costume, a phrase, a whipping or whatever. You might be surprised to find it less scary this time – when you make the choice to walk a risky path, you are much more in control, and it's amazing what the light of consciousness can do to defuse old fears.

You may already have a script in mind, an old fantasy, something you read that turns you on. A lot of S/M erotica has the primal intensity of myth, because fantasies often express the dynamics that run our unconscious minds.

If you want to build a fire, first you should build a fireplace. Negotiate. Talk a lot. Obsess a little. Put out your limits, make a place for your bottom's limits. This could be your story, or your bottom's, but you both need to be safe. Talk about fears, fantasies of what might go wrong. Talk about safewords, and what you will do if something in the scene doesn't work out, a fallback position. Remember that practice makes perfect, and if you try something that doesn't work, you will both be more experienced the next time. Don't forget to negotiate time for closure, connection, the gradual return to everyday reality. Negotiate how you will deal with any aftershocks: a phone call? A dinner later in the week?

BEGINNING. Negotiate how you are going to start. You can approach psychological depths by going through old wounds, reenacting abuse, becoming parent, child, perpetrator, bully, brat, crybaby and vicious schoolmarm. You can act out forbidden feelings – angry, amoral, cruel – and their equally forbidden opposites, pathetic, needy, frightened, ashamed. Physically, you might gather up the power with bondage, a collar, a blindfold, the order to kneel. Find the feelings that are most powerful for you by going for the juice, the charge, the place where your emotions are strong and scary: this is your fire. You built your fireplace when you negotiated your scene, so you are safe, and you can explore one step at a time. To increase the intensity, you can make heat with friction, tension, resistance – pushing against each other to amplify, blow up flames from coals.

MIDDLE. What do you do when you get into those intense roles and feelings? Let your physical script support you. For instance, if you and your bottom have agreed on a flogging, as the heat rises you can imagine running your intense feelings down your arm and out the end of the whip into your bottom – believe us, she will feel it, and you will too.

You can use any activity as a focus for your energy, and to get more fully into your role. You know your bottom: limits, preferences, what gets the endorphins running, what arouses, what triggers an orgasm.

Who says you have to be consistent? Tops can play from multiple positions in the same scene, from torture, wickedness and betrayal to support, love and nurturance. We see no contradiction in a big bad mean top who has just tortured some poor bottom, now patting that bottom on the back while murmuring "there, there, poor baby, you're all right now." The inquisitor who tortures the sinner must have great love to go to such lengths to save that immortal soul, right?

Techniques of interrogation can be used to confuse and liberate the bottom by generating a double-bind, like ordering someone to tell the truth as you insist that he lie, just like real brainwashing. For betrayal, you can make your bottom struggle to meet your demands and then punish him for succeeding. The ways to create no-win situations for mindfuck are endless, and most of them are based on intensely polarized contrast between hurting and caressing.

ENDING. We empower ourselves when we replay old scripts and arrange for them to come out differently. Ideally, all scenes end in a win for both players. The successful completion of a scene gives feelings of competence, mastery, control and empowerment, and as the top you can reinforce those feelings in your bottom by offering praise for how well she took the sensations, or followed your orders, or by letting your bottom know how good you feel, how turned on you are. He can tell you how wonderful you are too.

Most of what we dig up from our shadows consists of feelings or roles that we have some shame about, so sharing that piece of ourselves is powerfully intimate. We are letting another person into a part of ourselves that we ourselves may have rejected. And when that person accepts us, complete with our old tapes, and responds with erotic enthusiasm, then we get the ultimate validation: love given to the part of ourselves that we may fear the most.

You close a deep scene just as you close any other scene, only make sure you do it. Don't skimp on time and energy for the return trip to the so-called real world. When you prepare for voyaging in the shadows, discuss how much time you will have afterwards, if anyone thinks he may want time alone, if you will sleep together, whatever feels most comfortable. Do allow lots of time for snuggling and good feelings, and do check back in over the next several days so you both can talk about any aftershocks you may experience.

WHAT ABOUT THERAPY? Does deep psychological play make the top into a therapist? Emphatically not. Shadow play can be therapeutic, and indeed healing, but is very different from a therapeutic relationship. Ideally, your relationship with a professional therapist is an island where you can explore your inner truth with no consequences in the rest of your life. A BDSM scene is also an island, but with very different rules and boundaries.

If you find yourself digging up a profound conflict, maybe in the form of intense emotions, panicky feelings or flashbacks to old trauma, you might well want to seek therapy, whether or not you plan to play with this dynamic in S/M. When an old conflict opens up, there is opportunity for healing, and therapy will not only protect your partner from having to be your therapist, but will allow you to work on your issues at a time that is very likely to be profitable for you. In the Resource Guide, you will find a website that lists BDSM-friendly therapists and a couple of books that can help you find and talk to one.

SHADOWS AND REBIRTH

There is a Native American medicine story about Crow who dances between the worlds. At one time Crow became fascinated with her shadow. She could not leave it alone. She kept looking at it, scratching it, poking at it, pecking it, until her shadow woke up and came to life. Then Crow's shadow ate her.

In this story, Crow gets chewed up to emerge transformed, with the ability to travel between the everyday world and the spirit world. Many myths feature heroes and heroines who travel into the shadows, get destroyed and then reborn, transformed and enlightened by the experience. These stories warn that travel in the shadow is both dangerous and rewarding. We have written here what we know about how to travel as safely as possible in your precious darkness. If your intuition tells you that this kind of play does not feel safe or growthful to you, we suggest that you trust your inner wisdom and refrain. Perhaps later you may feel differently, and perhaps you will not. Perhaps another path will work better for your journey to self-knowledge.

Once again, all BDSM play is shadow play – when we play together, we find acceptance for emotions and behaviors that would be unacceptable outside scene space. And we believe that all play is potentially, and potently, healing and growthful. When we venture purposefully into our darkest shadows, we get to write our own script, determine the outcome, validate forbidden and rejected parts of ourselves, reclaim parts of ourselves that we had lost or buried, and find ways to grasp all the parts of ourselves, every single one, in a profound act of self-acceptance through which we may become whole.