Input: "Write a section for a BDSM guidebook discussing the rewards and the process of preparing for a scene. Include examples of different rewards such as getting 'in the flow', catharsis, spiritual states, and the desire to get bigger or smaller. Also discuss the importance of communication and negotiation in determining the direction of the scene. Finally, provide tips on how to prepare for a scene, both physically and mentally."

Response:
## Part Two: Scenes

### **The Rewards**

Here we are going to share some examples of what has worked for various bottoms based on how they want to get to feel in a particular scene. There will be a lot more detail about how to explore these rewards in actual scenes later in the book, in Chapter 10.

Getting "In the Flow": There is a sense in BDSM play of getting to a place where everything flows, a sort of slow-motion world where you feel quite sure you are doing it all just perfectly. There is a sense of rightness -

everything is as it should be. We can feel the power flowing through both of us, feel all the players in the scene connected in the How of power, we are all flying together. When we get in the flow we feel that we can take any risks, and communication seems easy and obvious.

One friend of ours, a service-oriented submissive, told us: "When I'm serving, I know what I need to do, it's uncomplicated. 1 love service because its not about me — its about the other person. I seek to make service into an act of love. It turns off all my self-focus and lets me exist in a separate space. When I'm serving at my very best, I'm invisible — an extension of the will of my master."

Catharsis: Tears of grief tears of joy. Sometimes what you want out of a scene is a purging, to go into overload and let it all out. Maybe there is something happening that you need to cry about, or maybe you just need to clear your feelings out in general. We have deliberately negotiated to play scenes to vent anger or other difficult emotions. Sometimes catharsis is found by bringing out a forbidden part of ourselves, like for instance the crybaby that we were teased for being in childhood. We all value these scenes for the emotional release they bring, and our partners usually value sharing in the process. Next time it might be our partners turn - catharsis works from the top as well as from the bottom. It helps to let prospective partners know that if you burst into tears, or become enraged, its what you want, and that whatever they are doing, its obviously working.

For example, Dossie recalls an intensely emotional flogging scene at a party that was fueled by the fact that a close friend of both Dossie and her top had died that week of AIDS. She had been an important member of our community, indeed the founder of the Society of Janus, and virtually everybody at the party knew her and was moved by her death.

As David flogged me, I felt myself go into intense sadness, almost crying, and then felt overtaken by equally intense rage, that seemed to have nowhere to go until I reared up, turned to my top in the presence of a lot of people, and screamed: "You stupid fuck can't you hit any harder than that?" This would be a seriously rude maneuver in most scenes, but we were in the flow and David understood perfectly. Grinning wolfishly, he swung his arm back and gave it all he had. I let my rage pour out, and fell again into sadness, then reared up again screaming in rage, with David flying right along with me. Round and around we went until the rage was satisfied and I fell down crying - he fell right on top of me, and we both cried until we were satisfied. And both agreed that there was something magically right about this scene, that in struggling against each other we had done just what we needed to do for funeral games.

Spiritual States: Many players report that the feelings they have in playing a great scene can only be described as spiritual. Some people may feel they leave their body, others feel an intense psychic connection, or perhaps an awakening of kundalini, the snake that represents the spiritual energy that can be felt in the spine. Sometimes we may envision ourselves shape-shifted into a totem animal, and writhe like a panther under the whip. Another time we may become a god. Or maybe our top becomes goddess.

If this is where you go when the play goes well, it's a good idea to discuss it with your top beforehand, especially if you tend to leave your body during play. Some tops love It, and feel like they fly right along with you - others may feel abandoned, and want to stay connected in some more tangible way.

Getting Bigger, Getting Smaller: Some bottoms see themselves as warriors, conquering an ordeal, an initiation, triumphing over the obstacles presented by their top. They want to find their strength in an ordeal, and they want their tops to be strong enough to challenge them. Others, or maybe the same people at different times, want to get small. They want to become invisible, helpless, overwhelmed, they want to dissolve. They love to enter into struggle and lose, to be conquered, to give it up to a powerful and inexorable top.

Whether you like to get bigger or smaller, you need to cooperate with your top. Your top may have her own limits about playing with unconquerable or invisible bottoms, and she need:* a chance to figure our what's coming and express her own needs. The following story will illustrate the importance of negotiating the direction of the scene beforehand.

A friend of ours was topping an interrogation scene in which she set out to conquer the bottom and get him all soft and squishy, as she imagined was her task. The bottom in this case, however, in his own fantasy saw himself as nobly suffering and refusing to give in no matter how hard it was: in short, wanted to conquer an ordeal. It soon became obvious that they were working at cross purposes in the scene, and the bottom eventually, and appropriately, safeworded out. 1 he fact that wc can even relate this story to you illustrates an important point -

these two people didn't just end the scene, they talked about it later and figured out what went wrong.

Willingness to get together and unscramble what happened when a scene went wrong is another mark of a great player.

Submissive States: In the submissive mode - you may recognize a lot of this from your fantasies - the desired state of mind is one of will-lessness, receptiveness, passivity, even selflessness. In giving over as much of your own choices as feasible to a trusted top, you can allow yourself the luxury of turning your brain off. Everything becomes really simple: will my dominant like this or not? Nothing else to worry about.

There are two distinct modes of submissive consciousness (well, probably lots more but these arc the two we want to tell you about). In one, the bottom is a sort of tabula rasa blank slate who waits for input. The bottom in this state is totally receptive, obedient, with no worries about whether or not he is doing something right because he will be told exactly what is required. Some of us like to be corrected, reined in, contained - it tells us someone is paying attention. Or receptivity might involve being acted upon while having no actions whatsoever to perform yourself, as in a bondage scene: this allows an intense focus, free of distraction, on whatever sensational or emotional exchange you and your top have chosen. The selflessness here involves giving yourself over to another so completely chat you effectively leave your self behind.

A second state is the submissive who likes to please, who takes the initiative to have that cup of tea ready before the master is even aware he wants one. The rewards of the pleaser include being recognized: thanked, stroked, petted, appreciated, rewarded for competence and graciousness. The selflessness comes from putting yourself into the service of someone else's goals and having none of your own. The selflessness of the submissive can become like a meditative state, very quiet, tuned in, serene.

Do keep this distinction in mind when you negotiate for a submissive scene. One friend of ours tells us she was once playing with two doms, one of whom loved service, the other, the blank slate. Our friend eventually figured this out - she tells us it was a challenge to remember what she was supposed to do in each circumstance.

Fighting Back: The resistance scene is a tremendously collaborative scene, because if you fight hard enough you can probably discourage any reasonably ethical top from continuing. So if your fantasy is all about struggling, resisting, needing to be conquered or forced to have a good time, you need to work that out with your top in advance, and maybe set up a safeword for the top so she can tell you if you're fighting harder than she can stay on top of. A lot of us really love the thrill of being forced against our will, so we collaborate to fight over some hot scenes - Janet once bottomed in a scene where her hands were tied with about eighteen inches of slack rope

between them, so she could fight back like she meant it and still be pleasantly certain of losing.

We have met other players who like to fight it out to see who will top and who will bottom in a ritual of dominance with no predetermined winner. All you need to know then is what are the accepted forms of struggle and what is below the belt (or maybe outside the belt, since below the belt is exactly where you may want to get...)

Forbidden Thrills: Some people don't want things all clean and nice. Their notion of a good bottom space is feeling dirty, nasty, naughry, beyond the pale - breaking the rules. They want to preserve the sense of doing what you're not supposed to and enjoy the guilty thrill: guilt and shame are, after all, more sexy emotions to be explored. Some enter into the forbidden with the script of finding a passion there that is cleansing, and that washes away shame. For others, its more fun to just get dirty.

Punishment: Some bottoms find a keen delight in being treated as the naughty child, or adult, and punished for real or imagined crimes. The state of mind is one of expiation, and perhaps another form of catharsis: a person of authority, our top, has seen our sins, found us sexy, and purged our errors in pain that can transform into ecstasy.

It's a very good idea to get clear, before playing with anything that looks like punishment, to decide whether this is "play punishment" for erotic fun, or genuine punishment designed to modify behavior (we discuss both of these activities in more detail in Chapter 10). One of your authors is very turned on by playing with punishment, while it's a serious limit for the other one... so it's clear that even experienced bottoms may have limits in this area, and that going slowly here is advisable.

Archetypes: We will discuss archetypes in more detail later, but for now take a look at who you are in your fantasies: warrior, baby, pleasure slave, captive, kid, cheerful, tearful - all these are archetypal characters, the roles we play in s/m. The better you understand what role you are playing, the easier it is to arrange for everyone to play along with you. All you need to keep things clear is to figure out who you are when you are in scene space.

Confusion can arise when a bottom falls into a role in the middle of a scene and doesn't really have a clear idea of what that role is. In the middle of an intense pain scene which included being drawn on with the tip of a sharp knife, Janet once startled and annoyed her top by asking, "I like elephants - will you draw me an elephant, please?" It was only later that the two of them realized that the intensity of the painplay had brought out a kid persona, who jus: happened to love animals of all kinds and especially elephants.

Sensation. Oooh, let I not forget sensation, lots and lots of it. S/M features an enormous range of sensation, from the gently sensual to the acutely intense, with an abundance of possibilities in between. Many of us describe ourselves as stimulus junkies — we don't see that as a pathological addiction, but rather as an extraordinary capacity to experience and enjoy a huge range of sensation. Play can transform sensations: small sensations become huge when we eroticize them, a blindfold can turn a feather touch into an ecstasy of suspense.

Sensational!

So many fabulous rewards to choose from! As you continue your journey as a bottom, you may find new ones, or discover that a form of play you didn't think appealed to you has suddenly come to seem very desirable indeed. Stay open to new possibilities and you may be in for some wonderful surprises.

**Getting Ready**

G rooming Yourself, Physically and Mentally. Any scene actually begins before you are even in the presence of your top. Before you play, you will usually spend some time showering, bathing, dressing, preparing a space if you are playing in your home, and (of course!) fantasizing: your authors once did a scene that got started almost an hour late because Janet was so busy fantasizing that she drove right past the freeway off-ramp to Dossie's house. This is the time when you prepare to present yourself as a valuable gift to the lucky person who has a date with you.

Now is the time to do some relaxation, remember your deep breathing, maybe put music and candles in the bathroom while you relax in a long soak. Now is the time to get grounded, centered, to get in touch with your own power. You can think about what you want to communicate, use your fantasies as rehearsal for the encounter to come. Investing some time and energy in preparation will also begin to excite you, so you can greet your partner in the attractive flush that comes from thinking filthy thoughts. Don't forget these preparations even when you're getting ready for a session with your life partner - Dossie, as a therapist, is constantly reminding couples who live together to take the time to prepare for their encounters as they did when they were dating... a great way to revive the spirit of honeymoon lust.

As you gain experience in preparing yourself for play, you will probably begin to discover certain thoughts and activities that are particularly helpful in preparing you, physically and mentally, for the adventures to come. You might like to moisturize your skin cxtra-carefully to make it supple and resilient, or to do a series of yoga stretches to prepare yourself for challenging bondage. We know one male bottom who conditions his beard before play so it will be soft and pleasing to his mistress's feet. Extra attention applied to cleaning sensitive parts of your body will bring rewards of turn-on as well as hygiene.

And what gets your mind ready for play? Is there a particular piece of music you like to listen to that helps get you into a lovely bottomy state? Is there a fantasy you like to review in your head to help get your juices running? A piece of literature you might like to read? A mantra you can repeat, out loud or in your mind? Or would you like to simply kneel for a while in a quiet spot, breathing calmly and centering yourself? Whatever works for you to get yourself revved up, turned on and ready to play, now's a good time to do it.

This is also the time for you to pump up your pride in yourself and the gift you give your top. You needn't be rich, or have expensive clothes, or be young and thin to be terrifically attractive. Good grooming, a little creative drag from the thrift store, a proud posture and a happy expression send out the right message and make you gorgeous - we promise!

On Your Mark... Get Set... Go! So here you arc in the dungeon, the playroom, the bedroom or wherever. Your top may start the scene by touching you, hugging you, blindfolding you, tying you up, collaring you, throwing you to the floor and tearing your clothes off... the possibilities are infinite, and you'll learn more about as many of them as we can imagine in the next chapter.

The initiative belongs to the top - so what is your responsibility? Your responsibility is to respond: to get turned on and to make sure your top knows you're turned on.

One of the myths we encounter is rhar yon have ro be turned on before you start playing. If we believed that, we wouldn't get to play very much. Remember in the last chapter when we told you to spend part of your negotiation time telling your top what turns you on, and finding out what turns him on? Well, here's where both of you get to use that information.

We've found it's often easier to get turned on with physical sensation than to try to launch right into emotional or role-played mental stimulation. Many people like to begin a scene with having their top place a collar around their neck, with appropriate ritual and, perhaps, a few prearranged words from one or both of you about what the collaring means to you. Sexual players might enjoy having necks kissed or sucked, ears nibbled, nipples pinched. A light flogging works to get a lot of people turned on; so does getting tied up. With practice, you may be able to learn to breathe yourself into an altered state.

Atmosphere is important, too. It's tough to get turned on if the room is cold or if there's a bright light shining in your eyes (unless you're planning an interrogation scene). Make sure that distractions have been minimized - the phone ringer is off, the pets arc locked out, any visual clutter has been cleared away. If you have a favorite piece of music, especially if its one that you've come to associate with play, now is a good time to put it on - Janet can get turned on just listening to the Velvet Undergrounds "Venus In Furs".

A lot of people run into obstacles when they try to get into role - they may feel self-conscious in the beginning,

before they start to feel turned on. We suggest that you act as though you were turned on, because you'll probably find that you convince yourself. So whimper and moan, breathe heavily, play your role (one of our friends loves to use the phrase "This is so scary!"). At first, while you're searching for your turn-on, this may feel awkward and phony. But then a miracle can happen: if you start by playacting an appropriate response, perhaps even dramatizing your responses a bit, you will probably start to get a little turned on, and so will your top. The more excited you both get, the more real the scene will seem, and the more naturally you will respond... and before you know it you're both part of a full-blown reality.

Remember - now is not the time to judge yourself. There are no critics in this audience; when you and your top are both turned on, you're a superstar!

**Ending the Scene - And Afterwards**

Closure. Alas, even the hottest scene must eventually come to an end. The best answer to the question "When do you end the scene?" is "When either partner wants to."

If you're really enjoying yourself as a bottom, you may get to what Dossie calls "The Forever Place," where you feel that you want to keep on doing this forever and ever and ever. A good top gives you some warning when the scene is drawing to a close, so you can start gradually withdrawing from The Forever Place and getting ready to come back into the real world. An excellent way to bring a flagellation, for example, to an end is for the top to announce "Pick a number from one to ten (or fifty, or a hundred)." Then you know you're going to get that many strokes of the greatest intensity you can possibly take, so get ready for the big climax!

The scene isn't over when the action stops, either. It can take quite a while for both partners to decompress and be ready to deal with reality. Don't try too soon after a scene to do tasks that take concentration and focus, or to do detailed post-scene negotiations - whether you know it or not, you're probably still a little spacey and a little bit in role.

It's a good idea to learn what your decompression pattern looks like so you can tell your top what to expect: Dossie says "I sometimes get a little hyper, I want to talk, not sleep, but I'm really kind of stupid and I can't remember which goes on first, my stockings or my shoes"; Janet says, "I get verbal again right away -

sometimes even making puns or jokes or acting a little smart-assed - and tops think I'm back, but I'm not; I'm emotionally very fragile."

Closure is not a chore (except the picking-up-the-toys part). It's an invaluable time for intimacy and closeness, part of :he scene's rewards for both people. Your boundaries arc down and it's going to take a while for them to come back up — why not relax and enjoy it?

Here are some of the ways we like to close and decompress:

• Having sex or an orgasm

• Taking a nice hot bubble bath

• Being put into a flannel nightie or PJs and tucked in - with the top there to cuddle us

• Doing something to get back up into our heads, like going to a movie (only somebody else better drive!). Janet remembers:

I'd done a submissive scene at a Saturday night party that put me way under. My top had me sleep in my collar, and I woke up the next morning still deeper than the lost continent of Atlantis. I served him breakfast and sat on the floor at his feet reading the newspaper... and somewhere in the middle of the Datebook section I drifted back up, thought "Hey, wait a minute, this is me" and wanted the collar off right away.

• Having something to eat or drink together (Janet is notorious for craving donuts and milk after a scene)

• Moving around or doing something, like taking a walk together

• Curling up for a snuggle to savor the connection

Later. After you're both pretty sure you're back to your day-to-day selves, you might want to talk briefly about the scene - what worked for you, what didn't, what you'd like to try next time. But we suggest you leave the detailed discussion for the following day, when you're one hundred percent yourself again.

Even if the scene went badly, try not to be judgmental or harsh in discussing it with your top: it's virtually certain that she was doing her best. Be constructive, and be sure to talk about those aspects of the scene that did work for you. And don't forget to express your appreciation and affection.

Remember, topping, like bottoming, entails a significant emotional risk. One good reason to try topping, if you can, is so you can experience firsthand the vulnerable feeling it entails. We once heard of a therapist who explained, "the subconscious doesn't understand consensuality." Your top is engaging in activities that at some level are scary and guilt-producing - a harsh or critical judgment from you can be devastating. If you want to criticize, do so gently, and use a lot of "I" and "me' statements: not "the clamps were awful," but "the clamps didn't work for me."

Good tops can hear feedback, and good bottoms can offer it without blaming or guilt-tripping. Work constructively with your top toward figuring out what can be improved - so you can have an even better, hotter scene next time.

When the Game Is Over. Doing BDSM can be so fulfilling, so magical, so extraordinary that we hate to see our scene end. The desire to stay in role or to go on experiencing these marvelous sensations can be so compelling that we feel anger toward the partners, or toward the pressing real-world issues, that make us need to stop and go back into our day-to-day personas.

Remember, tops may have a "Forever Place" too. The feeling of being invulnerable, in control, impervious, is very compelling. Help your top stay flexible enough to come out of role by making sure that he is sure of your friendship and affection even when he shows vulnerability: tops sometimes worry that you re only interested in their top persona and not in their real-world persona.

Similarly, as bottoms, we feel that one of the wonderful things about play is that it gives us a safe space in which to be boundary-less and will-less, a vacation from the responsibilities of everyday life. We hope this book will help you develop the flexibility to be able to assert your boundaries and make your own decisions outside scene space, and the ability to return from scene space to the rest of your life, so that giving up power in scene is a delicious contrast and a safe adventure.

**Playing: Scripts, Scenes, Roles.**

When you think about the many and varied scenes and roles you might choose to explore, you might recognize a continuum of apparent intensity of dominance - from analytically collaborative, through nurturing and supportive, to harsh and frightening. It's important to remember, however, that all scenes are collaborative at heart in that they require the active cooperation of top and bottom in order to succeed.

A lot of BDSM folk distinguish between bottoms who are submissive and those who are masochistic — you often hear such people state, "I'm a submissive, not a bottom" or vice versa. We're not sure the lines are all that clear, nr that it's all that good an idea to support such binary or even hierarchical thinking. So, instead of a dualistic model with S/M and D/S in opposition or in distinctly separate pigeonholes, we sec a continuum, with some scenes getting more of their heat from control and power, and others depending more on sensation - but with virtually all scenes containing at least some aspects of each. Thus, instead of labeling ourselves and expecting the world to figure out what we mean by the label, we've both found it easier to describe what kinds of scenes we like and who we like to do them with.

Please keep in mind as we discuss these various scenes that very few scenes fit classically into any one pigeonhole: it's typical, for example, for a mistress/slave scene to have governess/child or captor/captive overtones. As we explore scenes we've seen, heard about, and participated in, please view them as inspirations,

not as rigid scripts or categories.

Another point of difference from one scene to the next is genital sexuality. Whether you choose to include sex in your scene depends partly on the nature of the scene — it may not be appropriate for a mommy to fuck her baby, or for a footstool to get fucked at all - or it may be a function of your own, or your top's, individual limits. You can choose to have sex within your scene if that seems appropriate, you can finish the scene and the role and then have sex out of role, or you can choose not to have sex at all (at least not with your partner at that time...

you can always have sex with yourself later, fueled by hot memories!).

Sex is often overlooked or underemphasized during negotiation - many of us are still shy about forthright discussion of our sexual needs, wants and intentions. But it deserves and needs full negotiation and attention or someone's feelings are likely to get hurt when what she gets isn't a good match for what she expects, needs or wants. And we all need to master clear communication about sex to maintain our safer sex standards.

**Bondage**

In a pure bondage scene, the heat comes mainly from the top's control of the bottom's movement and/or senses.

The trip for a bottom in such a scene is receiving permission to do absolutely nothing except experience sensation... "Wow, my top wants me to feel all these intense things." The delightfully passive and helpless feeling of "getting done" often also includes a strong sense of being desired and desirable... "I'm tied up and helpless and she's still sticking around to do all these marvelous things to me." Bottoms often feel very taken care of in such scenes.

The bondage itself contributes to the turn-on: many people build up a lot of muscle tension as they approach orgasm, so having the rope or chain to pull and yank on lets us build up a more intense state of arousal. Many are also turned on by the sensuousness of rope and the intricate complexities of knots. There can be a surprising, trancelike eroticism in the experience of immobilization. Or the bondage may be secondary, a way to get you to stay put for whatever other stimulations your tops may have in mind for you.

Sensations during bondage may range from no stimulation at all - which is called sensory deprivation — to the gentlest and lightest of stroking, to intense sexual stimulation and/or pain. Many tops love to boast about how long they can keep their bottoms orgasming, or how many orgasms they can give a bottom. Being brought to orgasm "against one's will" is such an overwhelming feeling that some bottoms perceive it as intrusive or even painful, and others find it intensely delightful.

Bondage for a lengthy scene, whether it's about pain, sex or both, needs to be comfortable, so that you can set up the bondage and then stay with it for a while. Those wicked-looking leather cuffs with the studs are often padded or fur-lined to coddle your wrists and ankles, so you can yank on them to your hearts content. Let your top know if your circulation is being cut off, or if a muscle is being painfully stretched. We find it worthwhile to spend some time fussing over the bondage at the beginning to prevent interruptions later.

Bondage can also be supportive. Standing bondage, where the wrists are tied to something overhead, lets you rest your weight on the restraints, and lying on your back with your legs tied up is much easier than holding them up by yourself. Bondage is supportive on the psychological level, too: when your top ties you up, it gives you clear permission to bottom.

Bondage can be purely decorative, and those of us who are turned on to rope can spend many happy hours making a rope body harness, or a corset, or duplicating Japanese or Bcttie Page bondage from pictures.

Bondage can in itself be painful or demand endurance - eroticizing endurance is a major component of Japanese rope bondage. One way to play this is to put someone in fairly constricting bondage, then tighten a part to the point of pain, then demand that the bottom deal with it for a short period of time, perhaps a count of five. Or you can be placed in bondage which starts out relatively comfortable and grows more strenuous the longer you stay in it (with frequent check-ins to ensure that nerves and blood vessels are not being dangerously constricted).

Take care not to stretch joints and muscles too far: we don't want to achieve bondage by Ace bandage for the next two weeks.

Bondage can also play an important role in capture and captivity scenes, which we'll discuss under "Rough and Tough" later in this chapter. After all, how can you possibly capture someone without tying them up?

Total immobilization is technically difficult and requires lots of practice... but trying to immobilize somebody can be hot in and of itself, and as even a partial immobilization can be very effective, who's to say the time we spend learning is wasted? Dossie has been in bondage so complete that she just plain forgot that she could move for several hours. Mummification, as you might guess, is immobilization by wrapping the body entirely in rope, Ace bandages, strips of cloth, duct tape over plastic wrap, or plastic wrap alone (don't forget that you will want to breathe!). Bandage scissors should be kept nearby, both for quick release in emergencies and to open up the mummy at sensitive spots to apply whatever stimulation seems appropriate. Full body bags of leather, canvas and other sturdy materials are also a very hot way to mummify, but can be a big investment.

Bondage Safety. It is possible, although uncommon, to get injured if you and your top aren't careful with bondage. Be sure to tell your top about any unpleasant-feeling pull on muscles, tendons or ligaments. Although pins and needles or numbness in your hands and feet aren't a major emergency, they're a good reason to readjust the bondage to prevent nerve injuries - and any bondage that hurts in a bad way should be adjusted immediately.

If you're tied up, you are helpless to at least some degree, and vulnerable to real-world emergencies like fires and earthquakes: nobody should ever be left alone while in bondage, especially very restrictive or standing bondage.

Standing bondage is demanding on the circulation, especially when your top is busily attracting all your blood to below your waist: there may not be enough left to operate your brain. Tell your top if you start to feel dizzy or nauseated. You may be tempted to carry on a little longer because you're having such a good time, but you wont be able to carry on at all if you throw up or faint... so let your top know what's going on with you; you can always continue the scene once you get horizontal.

Use padded wrist cuffs with your arms spread apart, so if your weight falls suddenly you won't break a wrist or dislocate a shoulder. Don't allow any vulnerable parts of your body, like your neck or your genitals, to be tied to a stationary object like an eyebolt, unless the rest of your body is well enough supported to protect them if you fall.

Many tops like to add "panic snaps" to standing bondage so they don't have to lift their bottom's weight in case of a faint; a winch, so you can be lowered gradually and comfortably to the ground, is an even better idea.

Fainting is also common when the scene is over and your arms are let down, so be extra-careful during this time.

Collaborative Bondage. Some bondage scenes arc so technically demanding that they require full cooperation and ongoing communication between the top and the bottom - full suspension bondage, in which ropes must be placed with tremendous care and precision, is a good example. In such a technically complex scene, the top and the bottom may work together toward a mutual goal of sensation, and neither of them may feel the need to go into role or to get out of intellect in order to do it.

Dossie has participated in full-body suspension scenes requiring as much as five hours to set up and enjoy; throughout the scene, she was required to communicate in accurate detail about her sensations so that the ropes could be placed in the proper locations and with the proper tightness.

Many bondage scenes start out collaboratively, then shift in tone - applying bondage safely and thoroughly requires considerable cooperation from the bottom. Once you arc securely tied up, you may play a non-collaborative scene that involves struggling, squirming, begging and other delights, and having comfortable bondage will add immeasurably to the pleasure of such a scene.

The benefit to collaborative scenes is that they offer a safe way to experience mind-blowing sensations. They are

easy on the top in that she doesn't have to wonder about the bottom's state of mind or whether consent is still meaningful. Such scenes may be the best way to play with someone for the first time, particularly if you're feeling at all unsure about the person or if either of you is a novice.

However, they do require that you stay in your mind and body; you may or may not find that you can still get

"trancey" and high as you give good feedback to your top. In Dossie's aforementioned suspension scene, after literally hours of trial and error, with much discussion, the suspension was finally accomplished and Dossie was hanging in the air in a web of rope. The top rang a chime in her ear, and she instantly shot off, entranced, into a deep and meditative bottom space.

Sensory Deprivation. Bondage often goes with sensory deprivation: with earplugs, a blindfold, possibly a head hood, and plastic wrap around the fingers and toes so you can't even feel your own skin, you will not know where your top is until he touches you or speaks near enough to your ears so that you can hear. Bottoms lose their time sense in the altered state of sensory deprivation, so we recommend that tops make contact frequently the first couple of times you try this scene, until you learn what your limits are.

Sensory deprivation can also be much simpler: a blindfold is a very potent toy. Taking away the visual sense makes the bottom less powerful and more dependent, gives her a gratifying sense of helplessness, and tends to turn off verbal and intellectual consciousness. The focus goes inward, and any touch, painful or sensual, becomes terrifically intensified. For an added attraction, blindfolds offer some protection to new or nervous tops, as their bottoms can't see them fumbling with an unfamiliar toy.

Earplugs provide a feeling of floating, totally disconnected from reality, completely focused on sensation.

Earplugs actually only cut some of your hearing - even if you use the foam ones from the drugstore, and add fur earmuffs over, you will be able to hear your top when she is close, but not when she is farther away than about four feet. In a scene with more than one top, the tops can hold conversations out of earshot of a person wearing earplugs. Earphones with music can provide more complete isolation.

A few players get a heady rush from breath control, by choking with the hands or cutting off air in a gas mask, often simultaneously with sexual stimulation. This is advanced and very risky play; such constriction can cut off impulses to the nerve that controls your heartbeat, landing you in a coffin and your top in prison. If breath control play turns you on, we suggest that you learn a lot about it and then proceed very slowly with great caution. Taking choking to the point of blacking out is dangerous, and multiple blackouts extremely so. Some people practice autoerotic asphyxiation by putting themselves in bondage that constricts the neck and masturbating. Autoerotic asphyxiation kills hundreds yearly, and we do not advocate it under any circumstances.

Gags, a safer alternative, change the senses not only by removing your ability to speak (you can usually still grunt and moan) but also by forcing you to breathe more slowly, and thus relax more. The intrusion of the gag into the mouth changes perception by providing a constant stimulus in a place you normally have as your own.

Gags also give you permission to bite, in much the same way that bondage gives you permission to struggle.

People vary widely in their physical ability to tolerate gags. A sore jaw is a good reason to limit either the length of time gagged, or the size of the gag. If your nose is stuffed up, either get a good shot of nasal decongestant spray beforehand or don't allow yourself to be gagged at all. Your top should stay extra-close to you at all times when you're gagged. Remember to negotiate a non-verbal safeword before the gag goes in!

All forms of sensory deprivation can be both sexy and entrancing, and can get the bottom, and vicariously the top, into a transcendent state of altered perception where the lightest touch can feel like a miracle, and a sexual stroke becomes the only event in the universe.

**Dominance and Submission**

This is an incredibly broad category that can include all forms of giving up or taking power, from an hour of teacher/schoolboy roleplay to a deeply felt owner/slave relationship that lasts for decades. What all the scenes

we'll talk about here have in common is that they draw their heat from recreating the power-over situations of the real world, but in ways that feel safe, sexy, growthful and enjoyable for all concerned.

In order to play safely with power, it's important to have a clear understanding of where the power disparity between you and your top begins and ends. Are you doing it for the duration of a scene, for a day, for a weekend, a month, a year? Will the dominants power end at the dungeon or bedroom door, or will it extend into other parts of your life like your work or relationships? What kinds of power do you want to give to your partner, and what kinds do you want to keep for yourself?

We have seen players come to grief by assuming that the only "right" way to play with power is to give as much of it away as possible - they leap from "Hi, my name is Susie" to a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week owner-slave relationship with no intermediate steps at all. Later, they discover that some aspects of this kind of relationship don't work for them or their owners, but they don't believe that it's okay to just change the rules of the game ihcy arc playing. So they struggle to achieve the impractical, and both lovers wind up feeling like terrible failures for not having lived up to an ideal that isn't a good fit for them.

We suggest instead that you start by giving your dominant one or two pieces of your power in areas of your life where you already feel pretty secure - the power to place certain sexual demands on you, to give you certain sensations, or to require you to perform certain duties, for example. Then, when that's gone well for a little while, you can experiment with adding to what's already working. That way you have a pretty good chance of success with each power exchange you try... which we assure you is a lot more fun than feeling like a failure at your own fantasy!

We think it's a good idea ro ask for what works for you, rather than trying to force your submission to fit into a pattern created by other people to fit their needs and not yours. One submissive woman of our acquaintance describes her D/S script like this:

I want to be a good girl. I want to struggle heroically to get everything just right. And I want my top to make that hard for me - so I can feel that I've conquered incredible odds.

We're afraid we're going to disappoint some of our readers when we emphasize here that submission is not a

"cure" for a life that seems out of control, and it should not be a way to avoid the hassles and tribulations of life as an adult in the 21 st xcentury. We've certainly had such fantasies, and maybe you have too - life is often difficult and complicated, and the urge to dump all your problems in the lap of an all-knowing and omnipotent top can feel very strong indeed. But we don't think a loving erotic relationship can or should take the place of human growth and responsibility. If you are having trouble with your life, work toward straightening it out —

perhaps with the help of a good therapist, credit counseling service, employment counselor, substance abuse clinic or whatever other professional seems appropriate - and then you'll have a real gift to give to the lucky dominant who's fortunate enough to own you.

So, what are some of the kinds of ways in which people play with the exchange of power?

Giving Service. Some dominants and submissives enjoy power exchange that include some aspect of service —

the submissive gives some kind of valuable effort to the dominant. This may be sexual service, personal service such as massages or pedicures, house service such as cleaning, cooking, butler or handyman chores, or outside-world service - Janet once met an investment-counselor slave who had made his mistress a very wealthy woman.

Bottoms who enjoy giving service may find it erotic, or fulfilling in other ways that often have to do with competence and caretaking. For them, it is a good way to show their respect to give energy back to the top, and to clarify roles.

The most important thing to remember is that if you have agreed to give service, give it wholeheartedly and excellently. Almost nothing annoys a top more than the bottom who decides that the task he agreed to do isn't

erotic or fun and thus slacks off - except perhaps the bottom who does it wrong intentionally in order to get punished. This isn't a service scene, it's a SAM (smart-assed masochist) or resistance scene and needs to be negotiated as such. Otherwise, you are guaranteed to disappoint or piss off your top... and a competent top won't punish you, she will send you away and refuse to play with you again without serious renegotiation.

If your dominant wishes to train you to perform the service in the way she likes best, recognize that the time she puts into training you is an investment toward your future value as a submissive. Accept that training with gratitude and eagerness.

Do keep in mind that service-givers get to have limits, and to ask for what they want, too. If you eroticize the simple act of doing your top's dishes, that's great - but if you don't, be sure to ask for what you do want, or you're likely to wind up frustrated and with dishpan hands.

Discipline, Reward and Punishment. "Discipline" as a codeword for flagellation is, perhaps unfortunately, well established within the leather community, particularly as part of the phrase "bondage and discipline." As a result, players sometimes get very confused when trying to distinguish between erotic "discipline" (e.g., spanking, whipping or flogging in order to create pleasure for your dominant and/or yourself) and discipline which is actually intended to exert control and/or shape behavior.

Within the context of a dominant-submissive relationship, it is pretty much axiomatic that the dominant will have the right and the desire to control some aspects of the submissives behavior. Discipline in this context has a much broader meaning, and includes a variety of feedback mechanisms, including reward as well as punishment.

Some players, for example, distinguish between "good-girl spankings" and "bad-girl spankings" (or, of course,

"good-boy/bad boy") - the former includes lots of warmup and plenty of affectionate and/or erotic stimulus, and might be used as a reward; the latter is harsher, is designed to communicate the dominant's genuine displeasure, and is used to punish for an infringement of rules or agreements.

Some submissives are so distressed by punishment that it can shatter the bond of trust between the partners.

Others are so turned on by the whole idea that it becomes reward and works in the exact opposite way from its intention. For others yet, the mere knowledge that they have disappointed or displeased their dominant may be enough to dissuade future undesired behavior.

Many bottoms build a whole fantasy structure around the idea of getting punished (Janet is one). A great deal of S/M literature, particularly flagellation literature, revolves around punishment scenes. There's no question that getting punished can be a marvelously healing way to play with the powerful emotions of guilt and shame.

In the real world, punishment is not intended to be erotic. We feel that the only place non-erotic punishment has in the BDSM world is in a full-time or ongoing dominant-submissive relationship: if you don't own me, what right do you have to punish me?.

For those of us who love to play with punishment but aren't comfortable with being punished for real-world errors, what's a safe way to do it? It can sometimes work to punish for litde transgressions like forgetting to pick up the laundry... they're lighthearted enough not to cause too much trouble. We also know some tops who punish their bottoms for saying self-deprecating or self-hating things: "I heard you put yourself down, and you're in serious trouble!" The underlying tone of love and concern in such an action seems to us to have a healing value.

A very safe way is either make up something you're supposed to have done and play it out as a script (the

"caught smoking in the boys' room" kind of thing), or ask your top to punish you for mistakes made during the scene. Some tops enjoy giving the bottom an impossible task ("hold this cane in your mouth and don't drop it while I make you scream!"), knowing that she will fail and thus "earn" the punishment, a deliciously shameful feeling. Such punishments can be very erotic and great fun — a chance to sin, atone and be forgiven, all at once.

Contracts. If you and your top are in a committed relationship that involves frequent authority play, you may wish to define both of your obligations, limits, commitments and rules in a spoken or written contract. The most

common form of agreement is a master/slave or mistress/slave contract.

Do not enter into a contract frivolously. Yes, a piece of paper defining you as owned chattel is a hot fantasy —

but it represents a tremendous moral, if not legal, obligation. If you do decide to enter into a contract, we strongly suggest it be for a pre-defined length of time, perhaps no more than a month to start with. At the end of that period of time, you and your top can re-evaluate and refine the contract and, if you like, extend it for a longer time. We also suggest that, human memory being the frail thing it is, your contract be written rather than spoken.


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Some of the subjects your contract should define are the bottom's and the top's duties, rights and obligations, the top's authority, the nature of both partners' sexual and social commitments to one another, and both partners'

needs and limits - too often, contracts define the slave's responsibilities and limits, but not the owner's. Your contract should definitely include some provision for how you will deal with disagreement. We also suggest that your contract include clear definitions of when the two of you are entirely in role or partially in role - for example, it's a good idea to reach some understanding about when your owner does and does not prefer to be called "Master" or "Mistress."

Many contracts require one or both people to write in a personal journal at certain times: daily, weekly, monthly, or perhaps after a scene. The journal is a "free zone" where the dom or the sub can speak their minds without fear of judgment or reprisal. Usually, the other partner may read the journal: this can be a way to communicate things that might not fit into the roles.

Do remember that no contract can cover every contingency, so you need to build in some wriggle room. One creative contract we read gives the slave a certain number of "get out of jail free" cards per month - a limited number of occasions on which the slave can break certain rules without reprisal. Neither the contract nor the relationship can possibly control every aspect of your life, and it's not possible for you to have no control whatsoever - you still need to breathe for yourself, and otherwise be responsible for your own life.

The contract does not exist just to turn you on; it represents a serious commitment. Enter into it with the same care and forethought you would give to accepting an employment contract. The rewards of a master/slave contract lie in the deepening of roles, an intense security in those roles, and an ultimate feeling of belonging: you must be very valuable if your beloved wants to own you!

**Pain (The Good Kind)**

A lot of play centers around the generation and enjoyment of pain, commonly brought about by whips, paddles, canes, hot wax, the placement and removal of clips or clothespins, and many other techniques. We don't believe that masochists are very different from other people, but rather that most people are physiologically equipped to enjoy masochism if they so choose.

Many people see pain in S/M as a "punishment" and are surprised to discover that pain can be immensely rewarding in and of itself. (Or, in the words of a novice we know while receiving her first caning, "Why do I like this?") One of the rewards lies in the body's defense against pair-When our bodies perceive a painful stimulus, they respond by producing neurotransmitters called "endorphins" that are chemically very similar to morphine.

Endorphins generate a "high" that is really an altered state of consciousness, and can change the way we perceive pain so that the experience really becomes pleasurable. At least, that's what we think happens: this is a theory that fits our experience, and the medical establishment is very unlikely to subject this to scientific research, so we just have to believe in our own sensations.

Pain can give you an "excuse" and open up a pathway for emotions that are too strong and frightening to let loose in other contexts. You may experience a state of catharsis in which you feel terrifically powerful. Dossie may turn into a tigress and growl and snarl a lot. Janet perceives herself as absorbing the energy of each blow and transmuting it into strength and power. These are just some of the cathartic and empowering ways in which pain may equal pleasure.

Pain in S/M doesn't mean just any old pain. We don't enjoy stubbed toes any more than anybody else does.

Stimulations are carefully chosen to feel both right and tolerable. And we like to create an environment that feels safe so that we can let intense stimulations in without tensing up or panicking. So when you read our suggestions for painplay here, you can see them as examples of types of pain that other players have both enjoyed and felt safe with.

Start easy with any new stimulus, and build up gradually so you can become familiar with the sensation you're dealing with. For many players, context is everything: in the words of one friend of ours, "Any fool can hit me with a two-by-four - but it takes a real genius to make me like it."

Most pain scenes begin with a warm-up, such as a sensual flogging, to give the body some stimulus and time to build up endorphins, which takes about twenry minutes. Experienced bottoms become adept at bringing up the endorphins, and might warm up much faster. You can tell you are warmed up when a stroke that hurt too much five minutes ago doesn't hurt enough now.

Please do remember that in changing your perception of pain, you may also lose your normal way of knowing when your body is being damaged. The top must keep a close eye on physical safety, because you may not be able to. Tops may also find that as they hit harder and harder in response to your increasing excitement, their control and accuracy may diminish. We suggest that tops in these scenes regularly check the red marks on your hide to make sure that whips are landing on well-padded body parts.

When you come to the place where you actually want things to hurt more, you are ready for really intense stimulation. Now is the time for your top to break out the sting-iest cat, or the heaviest canes and riding crops.

An excellent stimulation for the "pain slut" is a brief, very intense pain followed by some recovery time, during which the bottom can actually feel the endorphin release: many bottoms go down with a scream and come up giggling. We especially like canes for this.

It may help you to know that there is an end point, so you can choose to stretch yourself to handle a greater intensity as long as you know its not going to last forever. So a caning scene might start out at one at a time, then the top might suggest three at a time, then maybe five... always with the reward time in between, so it becomes like going on the roller coaster, getting off staggering, and getting back in line to go round again, and again, and again.

Another way to do a pain scene is with clothespins or any other clip or clamp that will hold a pinch of skin.

Clips can be placed just about anywhere you can pull up a pinch of skin. Sometimes a clip gets put on a particular spot that is intolerable, maybe because there is a nerve there. It is normal and acceptable to request that an overly painful clip be moved to a better spot, often only half an inch or so away.

The interesting thing about clips is that they hurt somewhat when they are put on, and then that spot gradually becomes numb as the circulation is reduced. The most intense sensation comes when the clip is removed, gently or harshly, and blood flows back into the area. (Clips with teeth or ridges should not be yanked off.) So putting the clips on becomes the warm-up and taking them off is the roller coaster... frequently with a bit of sexual or affectionate touching during the break between clips.

As in a caning scene, the bottom may want some resolution time after each clip is taken off. This time may be an excellent opportunity for some sensual touching or sexual stimulation between the moments of agony. A particularly nasty way to intensify the sensation of clips being removed is to tie them at intervals along a cord so you can yank several of them off at once; these are called "zippers." What we like about zippers is the contrast between the flash of excruciating pain as they come off — pain that's over so fast that by the time we realize it happened, were already screaming - and the intense endorphin rush afterwards, that often leaves us giggling uncontrollably and feeling very silly.

Other pain sluts prefer long, slow-building, intense pain, without the roller-coaster effect. Clips can give these bottoms the unremitting sensation they need. To build intensity, the top can pull on the clips, weight them or

attach them to another body part with tension in the attachment; she can also twist them or use fingers to stretch the skin on either side of them. Removing a clip and then replacing it on the same spot is extremely intense...

replacing it with a heavier clip is even more so. Yanking a clip off is a "jolt" of pain that may not work as well in this type of scene, since it may interfere with sustained slow build-up.

Whips. The impact of whips on flesh can provide an immense range of sensation — from gentle and sensual, through deep massage, all the way out to full-tilt-boogie thrash-and-scream intensity. So if you have never tried them, the first thing to know about whips is that they don't need to hurt at all. Soft doeskin and glove-leather whips can be purely sensual, or can thump like a firm massage, or warm up skin to make it rosy and sensitive with no pain. Dossie recalls:

When I first came out into S/M, I had very negative feelings about whips. I am an abuse survivor, and the idea of being hit made me a little sick to my stomach; my fantasies were about bondage, intense sensation and nonconsent. I remember at my first Janus meeting tremulously asking the assembled scary-looking leatherpeople if I could be into S/M if I didn't want to get hit. They gave me good support, and agreed that I could. My first experience with a whip, more than a year later, was actually with a belt, administered by a top who understood how scared I was - and was I surprised! This didn't feel bad, it didn't feel like punishment, it felt nothing like the abuse I had known - it did feel intensely warm, sensual and deeply sexual.

So whips do not have to be about pain and punishment. They can be sensual and sexual in and of themselves, and they don't need to hurt unless you want them to.

Basic safety info about whips: don't allow yourself to be hit with anything hard on bone or over organs, or on any other part of your body that could be easily damaged; save heavy whips for well-padded flesh like the ass and thighs, or the big muscles of the upper back. Safer sex requires that whips be cleaned between uses, particularly if skin has been broken or abraded, or if they've come into contact with semen or vaginal fluid.

Remember, you can't always know for sure whether a whip has been contaminated, so when in doubt, clean. If you cant clean it, put it aside for a month in a dry, cool place.

Sensation sluts tend to collect lots and lots of whips, because each has a slightly different feeling when it lands, and when you keep changing the feeling you can make a whipping interesting for a really long time. What this means for the novice is that if you don't like the feel of the whip that is being used on you, just try a different one. With any new toy, start out with light taps and build up as you get to know the feel of it.

You will probably eventually want to own some of your favorite whips - that way they'll always be on hand, and you can take responsibility for their cleanliness. Most new players start out enjoying thick heavy (loggers with lots of tails, and avoiding thin stringy whips that sting - sting is a taste which some acquire quickly, some later, and some never acquire.

Dossie, in her pilgrims progress from terrified novice to pain pig, for a while said that she didn't like pain but did like intense stimulation. Toward the end of this period, a potential top introduced herself at a party, saying that a mutual friend had told her that Dossie was into pain. Dossie replied, "No, I'm not, but you won't be able to tell the difference.''

She notes:

Recently I received a lengthy flogging on my ass with a deep thuddy flogger, so I could feel the reverberations of the strokes deep inside shaking up all my sexual parts. To my amazement, and with no other stimulation, I came three times.

Surfing the Pain. There is a particular way of breathing and timing that works well in pain scenes; Dossie calls it

"surfing the pain." Make your top read this part too -you II need someone to remind you when to do what, like a labor coach. This strategy involves relaxing your body so the pain sort of flows through you: you 11 find you can ride it like a wave.

The most important single physical skill for the pain slut, we think, is breathing. Its almost impossible to get in trouble in a scene - panicky, hysterical or out of control - if you re breathing deeply and regularly. If you sense yourself losing control, the first thing to do is try to regulate your breathing. Sometimes your top will remind you verbally to breathe, or place a hand on your chest to remind you to breathe, or simply breathe the way he wants you to, encouraging you to pace your breathing together.

You are at your most relaxed physically when you breathe out, so your top can tell you — in words or by example - when to inhale and exhale, and arrange to hit you or pull off a clip while you are breathing out.

Striking at the very end of an exhalation has the added advantage of helping to prevent screaming if you don't have a soundproof playroom - its hard to shriek if you have no air in your lungs.

Making sounds such as screaming or moaning can keep your breathing regular and help release some of the energy your body is taking in. (If you're a screamer or a moaner, and you're playing in a non-soundproof environment, ask for a gag, a pillow, or a piece of leather or cloth to bite, and make all the noise you want into it.) Janet says, "The pitch of the noise I make is a reliable indicator of how tense 1 am: A deep moan or growl means my neck and throat muscles are relaxed and I'm basically dealing well with the sensation, whereas a high-pitched scream means I may be heading for trouble."

Along with deep, regular breaths, focus on relaxing your muscles. You might be tensing up muscles in the area that's receiving sensation - say, for example, your ass. The taut muscles make the area being stimulated feel

"harder," and may make the sensation tougher to take. Or you might be tensing muscles elsewhere in your body, typically your neck and shoulders, stomach or face. This tension makes your breathing shallow, increases the likelihood that you'll panic or suffer an emotional upset, and prevents you from accepting as much sensation as you'd like. With practice, you can stay very still and relaxed and achieve a trancelike state. A good top can help you relax by placing a hand on the tense part and sending some energy into your muscles, possibly even moving the pan back and forth to loosen it up.

This can serve to move your attention away from the focal point of pain or sex, and get you reconnected to your entire body, not just the spot that's getting done to. You can do this yourself by taking in and releasing your breath, and letting your attention cruise your whole body, starting out with toes and fingers and gradually letting your attention move back into your center. You may find interesting sensations out there on the periphery that you haven't been noticing: Do your toes tingle? Do your fingers itch to knead something, like a cat? When you're ready to focus back on the sensations your top is providing, you'll be surprised with a happy increase in intensity.

Once you have learned to surf the pain by staying relaxed, it is interesting to tense up your muscles on purpose, in order to feel the strokes even more intensely. You can do this yourself, or your top can instruct you when to relax and when to tense. So you can let the play come in waves, each convulsion of pain followed by feelings of warmth and pleasure. This is how some bottoms giggle or laugh with joy in the midst of horrible "torture." Such bottoms can go on for a very long time like this, so tops should be prepared to have stamina or put together a relay team.

If the sensation you're feeling is strong, particularly if its a rhythmic or steady sensation without too much variation, you may be able to leave your body for a while, assuming this is OK with your top. Music provides a convenient, friendly "boat" on which you can float away. Or focus on a light, an object, a mantra — anything that lets you drift. It may help to imagine that the sensation is happening to someone else, not to you. (A warning on leaving your body: It's very easy to lose touch with what's going on to the point that you allow damage to be done to you. Be sure you trust your top, and that you've negotiated limits very thoroughly, before you go on any pleasure cruises.) Your top can bring you back into your body with hands on skin, massage, physical closeness or calling your name.

As we mentioned earlier, all these skills can be consciously learned as "head" skills. Your body also learns to process sensations differently over time: both of us have noticed that our endorphins flow much quicker than they used to.

Most bottoms also find that they bruise much less as they bottom more. However, if you get to where you enjoy heavy pain scenes, you will sooner or later have to face the reality of bruises, welts and scratches — commonly referred to as "marks." Some bottoms love marks and feel disappointed if they don't have any after a session: we know one who keeps a scrapbook full of Polaroid photos of the aftermath of her pleasure. But if you don't like to be marked, you have a dilemma — we don't know any way to play with heavy pain without running a risk of marking. You can reduce the probability of marks by avoiding aspirin and other anti-inflammatory drugs the day you play, and by putting ice on the affected areas immediately after the scene.

Your body may let you know that you've gone far enough with symptoms of dizziness, nausea or trembling. You need to let your top know when this happens, and either take a break, change stimulation or bring the scene to a close. Sometimes changing from a standing to a lying-down position will solve the problem and you can continue without difficulty. A drink of water, and perhaps a bite to eat, can be a very good idea too. Other times, these are symptoms that you are getting ready to faint, which is kind of rude. You may be shaky and cold after an intense pain scene - we recommend blankets and warm bodies.

The reward of a good pain scene is a transcendent and blissful high that persists for at least an hour or two, and maybe even into the next day — be prepared to relax and enjoy it. This may not be a good time to drive a car, but it is probably a great time to make love.

**Body Modification**

Body modification refers to piercing, cutting, tattooing, branding and scarification, as well as body sculpting through corsetry and related practices, often intended to permanently mark or alter the body. These practices are currently very popular, and piercing and tattooing "parlors" are now found in most large and many smaller cities.

People who are into piercing, cutting and tattooing may or may not be into S/M, and may or may not take masochistic pleasure in the sensation involved. Some mark important events or transitions in their lives by having another tattoo or piercing, while others acquire multiple piercings and cuttings over time just for the sake of having the decorated body that results.

Rings in permanent piercings through the nipples or parts of the genitalia can also be looked upon as installed toys: interesting sensations result from pulling or twisting, or warming the metal by dripping wax from a white paraffin candle on it. Piercings tend to increase the sensitivity and arousability of the part of the body they inhabit, and some people get rings installed so they can feel more sensation in that particular area. We also find the gleam of metal in unlikely places very attractive.

Piercings, cuttings and brands can be temporary or permanent - some people play with tattoo needles with no ink

\- but It's important to remember that you can't really predict how your body will heal, so don't count on a shallow cutting or temporary piercing disappearing without a scar. Safety is a major consideration in any form of play that opens the skin, so please do not attempt this at home without taking the time and trouble to learn about how to do it right. It's best to take a workshop or consult with one of the professionals in your area to find out if your plan is feasible and safe. We are not going to tell you how to do body modification scenes in this book because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and there is a lot to know before you attempt a body modification. If you want a permanent piercing or scarification to come out well, consult a pro.

Playing with cutting might involve a shallow decorative cut, no deeper than a cat scratch, done for the experience itself and not intended to leave a permanent mark. Play piercing involves placing needles through the skin (not deeper). Thread or string can be laced around the needles to hang weights on, or to tie the needles together so the piercings get pulled every time you forget to hold still. A white paraffin candle can be used to dribble hot wax on the needles, which warms them up under the skin until the sensation is barely tolerable - oh, my!

Very elaborate play piercing scenes can be done with lots of needles and strings attached to some sort of frame that winds up being a form of sculpture. Bottoms will enjoy the sensation of being able to pull on the needles by pulling against the strings; you'll be surprised by how hard you can pull with no damage. A steady pressure can

feel very good, and to this end small weights are sometimes hung from play piercing needles.

Piercing, cutting, branding and tattooing can all give the bottom tremendous endorphin rushes. In planning this kind of play please remember that you may get very high, so plan on some recovery time when you don't have to be responsible and can enjoy the experience. Please don't drive until you come down.

Physical safety note: play clean, with sharps containers, gloves, and lots of alcohol (oooh, sting!). Emotional safety note: when you open up the body by cutting or burning or piercing the skin, there is often a genuine opening of the mind, emotions and spirit as well. This opening can make you very vulnerable, which feels wonderful and has certain inherent dangers. If you're going to be all open, with no defenses, take care to be with people that you like and trust, and make provisions for your emotional as well as physical safety. On the positive side, sharing this profound opening with people you love can be an experience of intense connection and deep intimacy.

**Lookin' Good**

Costumery and Drag. Lots of us love to get dressed up. Costumes we have seen and worn for public play range from a few artfully draped chains on an otherwise charmingly naked body to full military uniforms and prom queens complete with crinolines and tiaras. We call all of it drag, to honor our outspoken elders, the drag queens, who paved the way for public outrageousness through very conspicuous personal appearances. Drag is also a word that implies bringing out an alternate persona - when we do business, your authors get themselves up in corporate drag that brings out the businesswoman within. Similarly, to call forth any inner self who plays a role in our fantasies, we can wear the costume to help us become the character.

S/M drag has many forms and many purposes, and the reasons a player might choose to dress up are as diverse as our fantasies.

There arc practical reasons for dressing up. For example, some of the better play parties and clubs in San Francisco won: let you in the door in normal clothes, thus helping keep vanilla gawkers out and maintaining a festively pervy atmosphere.

Warmth is a good thing. One of your authors discovered the joys of lingerie, particularly thigh-high stockings, when she was living in the mountains and heating with wood. Lingerie was clothing you could have sex in that would also keep you warm. Another player at an S/M camp out in the high and chilly mountains found a hundred ways to eroticize a union suit.

There are other practical limits to drag that you want to keep in mind. Elaborate antique clothes are too fragile to wear for most scenes, and whatever you wear needs to be calculated to work for sexual accessibility. If you like for your partner to take your clothes off you, it behooves you to select clothing that will make this fairly easy.

Strapless dresses, for instance, are essential if you want to have your clothes removed while your hands are tied.

And if your dream scene involves your wicked ravager cutting your garments off with a very sharp knife, it is accepted and conventional to pick up a set of something cheap at a thrift store for the purpose. A helpful hint: nylon tricot, the stuff most slips are made out of, is just about impossible to cut with a knife. Scissors work.

Shopping can be foreplay. If you love to shop, drag is for you. Major money is no requirement: many of the best drag queens excel at creating magnificent ensembles from the thrift store, and there are advantages to the fact that discount stores often feature rather trashy fashion. Tawdry is another fantasy, right?

Drag can be for you regardless of your age, size or gender: this is sex, and we all want to look our best. Lots of wonderful clothes and undies are designed to enhance and uncover our innate sexiness: stockings and heels, chest harnesses, corsets and codpieces, whatever makes you look, and feel, like your sexiest self. And by wearing sexy garments, we present ourselves to the world as sexual beings.

Fetish wear is fashion designed specifically to please a sexual fetish. Clothing made of leather or spandex or

rubber, chains or ropes, textures and tastes and smells can evoke a particular eroticism in the wearer or his partner. Impossibly high heels may enhance a feeling of helplessness, leather garments next to the skin may bring out the primitive. Costumes can make you very aware of your body by restricting certain movements, or by exposing parts that don't normally get out in the open air.

Clothing can shape your body and change the way you move. Corsets and waist-cinchers, push-up bras and posture collars can sculpt the body of your dreams. Broad-shouldered jackets and heavy-soled boots give the timidest wearer a powerful butch swagger. Constricting the body can also cause what feels like release of endorphins: the first time Dossie got strapped into a waist cincher, she was surprised and delighted to experience an almost instantaneous shift in consciousness, from everyday awareness to highly excited and happy.

Women's lingerie is often specifically designed to be sexual, in appearance and texture and in what is revealed: maybe that's one reason so many men love to cross-dress. Many women are turned on to shorts and briefs and undershirts to express and sexualize the male parts of themselves.

We can dress for our loves. If what we wear turns our tops on, that works for us. Sometimes dressing is a major part of play. A body servant can lovingly dress and undress his mistress, a Daddy top can play dolls with her little girl. Drag changes who you are to each other, and can be a way of announcing to your lovers that you are in a particular frame of mind, or looking for a particular scene. If you wear your police uniform, does that mean you want to arrest me?

Make new connections: Dossie loves costumes, the bigger the better, drag is a necessity of life to her. She has been constantly amazed and delighted to watch the different people who respond to her in her different presentations (yes, presentation, like a yummy dish). One time she went to a play party all done up as Scarlet O'Hara in red satin, corset and crinolines, and to her amazement attracted and played with two gay men in exquisitely tailored uniforms. Surprises are so nice.

Costumes change your awareness of who you are. When you wear something out of the ordinary you get to be someone out of the ordinary. If you present yourself as the Princess of the Playroom, that is how other people will see you, respond to you, and treat you. So if you want to make your fantasies come real, dress yourself up in your favorite fantasy, and watch everybody else relate to your fantasy self.

Set the stage for drama. Players may put on costumes to play a particular scene, like the naughty schoolgirl or

-boy, the stern bitch governess, the drill sergeant, the buck (later naked) private. And putting on a costume can be a window to bring forth an alternate persona, a piece of our character, that we want to play in a particular scene. You can experiment with costumes on your own — how do you feel in a white nightie? Is there a vampire in your fantasies? A popular costume scene discussed further in the section on precious inner beasties is the pony boy or girl, tricked out in elaborate, and confining, harness bondage.

Uniforms can make you feel powerful and grant you membership into a community of like-minded souls. There are longstanding traditions of initiation in leather and motorcycle clubs, where you undergo various initiations in order to earn your leathers. Some bottoms enjoy getting initiated over and over - boot camp, after all, might be more fun than anything that comes later.

Humiliation: to be dressed up as a little girl or boy, a baby, a sex toy, a puppy dog - how delightfully embarrassing! We know a top who likes to humiliate her bottoms by dressing them in frumpy clothes they would never choose to wear. This may sound dreadful at first, but when you understand that her purpose is to take her bottoms beyond worrying about how they look by forcing them to overcome challenges in the body image department, you can see how it could be a profoundly affecting experience to be sexualized by your lover when you're looking your worst. Other tops delight in hauling their hapless bottoms to the local leather store or maybe Fredericks of Hollywood to embarrass and delight them by forcing them to try on lots of sexy stuff, and maybe making a present of a particularly fetching outfit. Poor bottoms!

Dressing and disrobing can have spiritual significance, and again support a shift in consciousness from the

mundane to the other-worldly — drag becomes vestments that heighten spiritual awareness and set the stage for ritual.

We hope that someday you have an opportunity to attend a large leather event where a group of S/M people entirely occupy a conference hotel, so there is nobody there but us chickens. The constant parade of costumes is a powerful reminder of our collectively wonderful and infinite creativity, and the marvelous ingenuity our people engage in when they set out to be the sexiest they can be.

Body Worship and Fetishes. A fetish is an object or body part that a person has eroticized and made part of his or her sexuality. Common fetishes are leather, latex, high heels, boots, gloves, fur, lingerie, handcuffs and automobiles. Mythology would have it that a fetishist is some pathetic soul who cant get off without his or her teddy bear and who also cant get off with another person. The fact is, however, that we all eroticize objects - if you have a particular item of clothing, toy, piece of furniture or whatever that makes you feel sexy, you are to some degree a fetishist. Many of us collect vibrators, whips, costumes and other sex toys. Most of us love to share our toys.

Many people also fetishize body parts: hands and feet, breasts, buttocks, male or female genitalia, hair, ears and so on. Most of us have a special affinity for some body part or another; kinkyfolk are often inveterate butt-, crotch-, foot-or breast-watchers. Keep in mind, however, that there's a person attached to the body part of your dreams, and that she may start to feel bored or left out if you pay too much attention to the body part and not enough to the human being.

Many people are eroticized to body fluids such as blood, menstrual blood, spit, piss, shit and sweat. If this is you, some research and some creativity will be involved to make sure you don't expose anyone to harmful microorganisms. We can't go into lengthy detail on safer-sex precautions here, but check with your local AIDS

prevention group to learn how to play safely with other peoples body fluids — for instance, it's completely safe to taste your own blood.

"Body worship" may be a subset of fetishism, or may be a kind of service. It means playing with your top's body, either particular parts of it or the whole thing. It may be a euphemism for fellatio or cunnilingus, or it may involve worshipping - stroking, touching, licking, sucking or massaging - other body pans such as feet or breasts. Bathing or massaging your top may be a form of body worship, as may personal services such as manicures and hairbrushing. Janet has played with a bottom who delighted in sitting at her feet painting her toenails while she wrote and chatted on the phone - a charmingly decadent scene.

Bootblacking, the ritualized spit-polishing of boots and shoes, is so popular a fetish that there are public events where contestants compete for the title of best bootblack. Here a fetish is combined with service bottoming -

with delightful results, including perfecty shined shoes.

Body worship can create an excellent script for bottoms to offer some sensual or sexual stimulation to their tops, and the chance for cops to lie back and get done to as though they were gods.

**Let's Pretend**

We feel some hesitation about putting this into a separate section, since we think all of life is a role-play -were playing "author" right now, for instance. But scenes that are like theater, in which the players get to pretend to be someone other than their day-to-day selves and maybe to act out a hot erotic fantasy story, are a particular subset of BDSM that warrants a closer look.

Some novices think that all BDSM play has to be role-play, with elaborate narratives, props and costumes. Since we find that role-playing is one of the most challenging types of play, we think of it more as a special-occasion production number. Trying to remember what your role is and how you're supposed to behave, at the same time as you enact a fantasy and manage whatever props and costumes you've set up and take care of your own and your partners turn-ons, is a high art. Getting around the shy self-conscious place where you feel a little bit silly

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

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

rebelliousness, dependency, subservience and so on.

We suggest that role-players adopt some tangible symbol to show when the scene has started and they're in role, and when it's over. The collar, of course, is a classic, but may not be appropriate for many kinds of role-play -

for example, governesses rarely collar their students, but they may force them to wear a neatly tied school tie.

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

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

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

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

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

The top in such a scene is most often an adult (parent, teacher, governess, nurse, babysitter), but once again variations may range further: a regression scene could involve two ten-year-olds playing doctor in the woods.

Dossie once played with water pistols with another baby in a playpen... foolish adults who ventured within range got wet too. {Bad babies.) She has also played as a teacher being topped by two nine-year-old boys who were actually thirty-year-old dykes and utterly vicious - the kind of kids who pull wings off bugs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gender transformation is erotic in and of itself for many players, and the scenes they play might be entirely about crossdressing: a fantasy so popular that many professional dominants keep a stock of make-up and costumes for "transformation" scenes. For other players, gender play may be an important part of a larger script.

Some players have gender roles or personae that they only bring out in scene space, while others find support in the leather community for exploring how they want to manifest their gender in their complete life: the term

"transsexual" refers to people who live full-time in a gender identity other than that determined by their chromosomes, and differentiates them from "transvestites," who crossdress mainly for erotic purposes.

"Transgendered" is an inclusive term referring to anyone who lives in more than one gender, or perhaps somewhere in between.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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