The New Topping Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

working, someone’s in trouble. We establish a code word because many of us become incoherent when we are very excited – we recommend safewords that are short and easy to pronounce when breathing hard. We use code because many scenes are based on a fantasy of nonconsent, and yelling “nononononono” may be part of the script.
    Tops safeword too. Dossie tells the story of a time when she safeworded out of a major scene:
My lover had wanted me to brand her for a long time, and we had planned, collected information, researched everybody else’s experience and our own personal symbolism, and set up to do a ritual branding. We lived in the country, and had invited friends to come down to support this event, so there were witnesses. I had been practicing branding and felt somewhat insecure about my facility with the procedure, but spent the morning up in the ring of redwood trees over a very hot hibachi gamely branding slices of potato and turkey parts until I felt I could touch her with hot metal and not burn all the way through her. During this time, the houseguests were keeping her amused, and when we started up she was already entranced. Our ritual included a flogging to bring up the endorphins before the actual branding, but when I started to flog her it became apparent that something was wrong. Nothing I did seemed to be right for her, a very gentle stroke was too hard, she was not comfortable and neither was I. She wanted to go ahead anyway, but I decided that I could not brand her when I couldn’t make connection, and that there was no way that I was going to put a serious and permanent mark on her body when things were feeling unpleasant. So I safeworded, big bad brander that I am. I felt like an idiot. Here we had brought all these people together and I had chickened out. And my lover wasn’t happy about it, and it took awhile to bring her back down onto the planet from her tranced-out space – it was dire. I must have apologized forty or fifty times to our guests, who were very supportive and reassuring, bless their hearts. I reminded myself over and over, as I remind you now: it is possible, actually not very difficult, to have an experience of extreme public embarrassment, live through it, and be fine afterwards. Which we were. I now think the first time was a rehearsal, and perhaps we both needed to know that we could back out. About a month later, we got together with two friends and pulled the branding off without a hitch, and with much delight.
    Whenever a player safewords, this is an occasion for mutual support. We understand that nobody safewords from a happy place, and that all of our egos feel frail and kind of runty when we need to back out of a scene. It is completely unethical to respond with scorn or ridicule to a person who has safeworded: S/M is not a competition, we are not playing against each other.
    As tops, we have noticed that if we are having a good time and our bottom safewords, our initial feelings may not be happy. Whaddaya mean you don’t like that? I do all this work and you don’t appreciate it? I’m hot for being in control and you want me to stop? We have felt real anger and felt challenged in our top role… and, on a deeper level, we have felt put down, hurt and rejected. It is okay to have these feelings. It is not okay to act on them. Take three deep breaths and everybody start taking care of each other.
    Sometimes bottoms get so deeply engaged in a scene that they fail to safeword, or forget, or so profoundly believe in the fantasy that it doesn’t occur to them: many of the techniques we play with, like interrogation, function in the real world to undermine volition. Dossie remembers a scene in which a top offered her a choice of something or other: “I felt very confused. Some distant part of me vaguely remembered having made choices, but the response from my state of consciousness at that time was, Choose? I am not a thing that chooses.” So then what is the top’s