Quick warning: I know I’ve picked up quite a few subscribers and fans who love my posts on spirituality, spirit work, shamanism, and Loki. However, there’s a reason this is called Sex, Gods, and Rock Stars; I also blog about kink, both by itself and combined with my spiritual path. This is one of those posts, so if you’re not hep with the consensual BDSM or descriptions of sex, you might want to take a pass on this one.
I had stopped bottoming.
The reasons were many, and there were a lot of complications. And anything too complicated, that requires too much negotiation and limits, kills my hard on. I don’t mind if we need to take some time to figure out what works for us, but if there’s more processing than playing, I quickly lose interest.
Part of it was about being a presenter. Although I am quick to bring up the fact that I switch when it’s appropriate in my classes, most kink classes are focused on top-specific skills which sets the assumption that the teacher is a top. It doesn’t help that I’ve gained a bit of a reputation as being both a Badass Heavy Top, as well as a Dominant/Master; these are true, but it never meant that I stopped wanting to bottom. In fact, it should make it easier: “You. There. Pick up that thing and hit me with it until I say stop.”
But it wasn’t only that. I was in a relationship where bottoming was complicated. They didn’t want to cause me “bad” pain, since I was suffering so much chronic pain to begin with. I didn’t particularly enjoy the kinds of play they liked to give; and they didn’t particularly enjoy the kinds of play I liked to receive. We tried, a lot, but it never really clicked. And it only brought up the raw wound that we had started out in a power dynamic where I was the submissive, but like our play, we had very different ideas about what we wanted or needed from dominance and submission. None of this makes either of us wrong, or bad, or unsuited as a top or bottom for other people; they were and are an excellent top who has legions of people interested in play.
But it left me feeling like I couldn’t do it, not with them, and not with anyone else. I didn’t figure this out until I started dating a top who did like the kinds of play I liked to bottom to; all of a sudden the giant green eyed monster showed up and wouldn’t leave until that relationship went away. We all dressed it up as anything other than jealousy, but really that’s what it was. And I saw how hurt and sad it made them, to see me enjoying bottoming to someone else. So except for a few, very rare occasions, I didn’t do it. Not even when they weren’t there to see it or be affected by it. I just focused on other things.
Fortuitously, this happened at the same time as I was finding people who wanted to submit to me. I had gotten a bit of cache as a needle top, and played with hundreds of bottoms for a scene or two. Eventually, I started attracting submissive bottoms, who wanted to go deeper than just playing. I fumbled a lot, like most new Dominants do, and made some mistakes, but at the same time I found a well of desire within me that I didn’t know existed.
So I buried my bottoming desires and focused on becoming a Big Badass Top and a passable Dominant/Master. I found the right slave, one who fit my desires and for whom I was exactly what they wanted/needed. I sublimated my bottoming desires by giving random play partners the kinds of scenes I secretly longed for. Don’t get me wrong – I love being a top, kicking someone’s ass or making them bleed – and I also love being a Dominant.
Did I miss bottoming? Yes. Sometimes I felt the lack keenly, like reaching out for a lover who isn’t there any more. I would either try to bottom to the person I was in a relationship with, even though I knew it wouldn’t take me where I wanted to go, or I would find the very few types of scenes that I could bottom to without dredging up all the shit.
After the relationship was over, I was shy about bottoming. It had been a long time, and I had done an excellent job of completely burying those desires to a point where I almost didn’t think about them anymore. And in a fucked up way, even though I was free to do whatever I wanted, the thought of bottoming again filled me with regret and sadness about the end of the relationship. In fact, for the first few months after we broke up, I didn’t play at all. Part of it was grief; part of it was fear that I would take out all of my emotions and anger on someone who didn’t deserve it, and then I would be even more aware of my unresolved feelings about it all and possible do damage (emotionally or physically) to someone undeserving. Another part was that I didn’t know how bottoming would make me feel. A lot has changed in my body since I last took a really intense beating/caning/spanking/etc, and I was afraid I wouldn’t or even couldn’t enjoy it like I did before.
But I am blessed with a wonderful, understanding, very switchy boyfriend who listened to all of my concerns and fears about going there again. He, too, had once taken a long sabbatical from bottoming, and had many of the same fears and anxieties about opening himself up like that again; and yet, without hesitation, he definitely let me be as sadistic as I wanted during our first fuck. So I decided to trust him, and to trust myself to let go and let the experience be whatever it was going to be.
Oh yeah! I used to like this stuff!
It started out slow and private; we did a little humiliation, a little tease-and-denial, some biting and punching, mixed in with our bedroom sex. It wasn’t a scene, I told myself, although where those lines really are, are getting very blurry for me as of late. I used to be able to distinctly tell what was a scene and what was sex, but these days it’s all a big sloppy mess of feeling good. (Likely, this is partly because I no longer have to live by different rules when it comes to “playing” vs “fucking”, and some of those rules were ones I had insisted upon. Lessons learned.)
Then, I decided to commit. I asked him to bring his canes down for our next visit. He giggled with glee – he is an incredibly enthusiastic caning top, and it’s a kind of play few bottoms specifically request. Yes, I am the rare bird who prefers sting to thud; but I’m very picky about what kinds of sting and where they’re applied on my body. Needless to say, I was so blissed and happy about it, I let him take and post a picture of my post-caning ass on FetLife. If you know me, you know that’s a HUGE fucking deal, as I very rarely post pictures of me without clothes on, and I especially have self-image issues about my ass.
The next logical step, in my mind, was to try bottoming in public again. I am both a voyeur and an exhibitionist; I have a Leo moon, which makes me love theatricality and production, and playing in a play space has an energy and atmosphere that can be hard to recreate in the room I sleep and write in every day. I will admit, it was also important because people were starting to assume that my boyfriend was somehow subserviant to me (either as a sub, a slave, a boy, or the like) and that’s not only not true, but it dances some hard limits he has. So by bottoming to him in public, I was trying to send the message that this is one helluva switchy relationship, one in which I am often the bottom of.
So that I would feel comfortable, and because he likes getting beat, we started by doing a scene where I topped him. What was electric, and definitely new territory for me, was that he was not the compliant, stand-there-and-take-it bottom – he punched me back at times, or flat out told me I couldn’t do something, or grabbed my hair and yanked it. It threw some people watching for a loop, as switch play isn’t what one might expect at a public space (and by “switch play” in this instance, I mean a scene where the line between top and bottom is blurry or non existent. Many switches will decide to do one or the other, especially if they’re not playing with a fellow switch) nor is it something that I’ve done much of, if at all, in public.
Even then, during the scene where I was nominally the top, he did something he knew would open up my vulnerability. I don’t cum in public. Part of it is to take the turn on home where I can wank or fuck anyway I want without having to worry about odd rules about what a penis is and where it can go. Also, as a wise man is fond of saying, I don’t enjoy being “National Geographic”. What he means is, it turns me off if people are watching me play or fuck specifically because my body or my identity is intriguing to them; rather than watch because it’s sexy, they’re watching because they don’t fully understand or haven’t seen it done that way before. As “enlightened” as I may seem sometimes, I still have hangups about my disability, my body size, and my trans*ness as they all relate to my sexual confidence. But knowing that did not stop my boyfriend from grabbing my cock and jerking me off right there in my wheelchair. And giving in, and not asserting my boundary like a Badass Top, felt more right.
We took a break, but we saw it was getting late and the club was closing soon. I had run out of reasons to procrastinate. We found a piece of furniture that would suit our purposes, and we figured out how to bare my ass without making me feel overly naked and on display. Granted, it was a queer oriented party, so I had less “Nat Geo” issues to worry about, but some of that is too instinctual at this point to so easily dismiss. He caned me, softly at first, but harder and harder as time went on. We changed positions and my pants and underwear fell to the floor, leaving me there with my cock hanging in the wind. Normally, I would have been mortified, but instead I just stuck my ass out further and asked for more.
The endorphins came over me like a wave. Usually, they creep up on me and I don’t realize how high I am until I’m loopy. This time, I distinctly remember feeling lucid one moment, and blitzed the next. He looked down at me and commented on how happy I was. I just urged him to hit me more. We had to start ramping down, both because I was in a good place and neither of us wanted to chance going too far and ruining the scene. But man, have I missed that wonderful, floaty feeling of love, both for my partner and for myself and my body. I am in love with my body, despite how much it pisses me off sometimes (kinda like my boyfriend 🙂 ), because it can give me such elevating experiences. I was in the perfect headspace to embrace a friend who has felt a distinct lack of love lately, and share some of that warmth with her. I was pretty damn loopy the whole way home, and our plans to fuck like jackrabbits when we got home was superseded by my inevitable crash, which made me sleepy.
Oh right, I used to like this stuff. And now I love it, because it comes with no baggage, no complications, no expectations, no obligations. I can just be who I am, when and where I want, and get a good beating if that’s what I desire. I can still be a kick ass kink educator and Big Badass Top, and also float along in my own personal subspace while my problematic muscles finally relax and I feel a deep and abiding peace. “Yes, and…” as the improv performer in me says.
Yes, and.
Sex, Gods, and Rock Stars 