The responsibilities of a top

I’ve had a blogger profile for several months now, and an empty blog waiting for me to be inspired to post. I thought I’d find an opportunity to write about who I am, what drives me, why I like to have a girl across my knees for a spanking. But I’ve just spent a weekend with EmmaJane, and she’s made a very interesting post about one aspect of it. Not about the hot stuff, really: more about the difficult parts of This Thing We Do. So I think I’m going to dive in. Why talk about the easy parts, after all? The realities are much more interesting.

Well, to be fair, EmmaJane did make a post about the hot stuff. And I'm sure there will be more about that. There certainly has been in the past. But I’m feeling thoughtful tonight.

EmmaJane wrote:

We played later just before bed and Caoilfhionn was getting a very hard slippering from her housmaster, with the very scary, hurts so much it makes me and Kami cry, slipper. I got 12 to start with. And they hurt so badly. At 2 I couldn't see how I could get to 12. And at 11 I lost it completely. I screamed and jumped up in pure rage, literally stamping my feet in anger.

HH gave me a minute then bent me back over for the 12th. And that was it, we were done. But I couldn't relax. The anger had upset me. One minute I was heading for deep headspace and the next I was out of scene throwing a tantrum. And it wasn't fair on HH.

So I asked for more…

And later:

As we drove to the airport HH and I chatted about it and started a gentle argument over it. He claims the lack of headspace is his fault as a top. That it's his responsibility to create the situation where I can get there. And apply the right amount of pain, discipline and intimidation to make it work.

I in turn argued that no matter how great a top is that ultimately the bottom or sub has be open to him/her. And I told him that with all due respect I thought it was patronising for him to think he had so much power over me.

I’ve thought about this a lot in the last day or two. Of course EmmaJane is right that in general the bottom offers the top control and he takes what is offered. In that sense he can't take what isn't given - at least within the bounds of consent.

But it's not really as simple as that. Most bottoms want to be able to give in, to surrender to the scene [though that isn't quite the same as surrendering to the top – resistance has its place in role-pay (grin)]. But I'm sure that EmmaJane did want to give in this weekend: it was the fact that she couldn’t that frustrated her, and it was the frustration that led to anger - with herself as much as with me, though anger is not a finely focussed tool.

I do think that part of the skill of a good top is to facilitate letting go: to make the bottom feel safe enough to be vulnerable, to read her well enough to stop at the right time: not too soon, not too late.

That doesn't mean carrying on until she says I've gone too far. I don’t usually play with a safeword in the classic sense: something like “oranges” or “aardvark” that will stop the scene. But I know a genuine appeal when I hear it, and I’ll always pay attention if a girl uses my name. But safewords aren’t a solution anyway: in CP play, very few girls call a halt because it hurts too much. And keeping enough control to safeword is a big obstacle to letting go. Yes, the bottom can stop it. But no responsible top can/should assume that she will stop it, so I believe that "deciding when to stop" is primarily the top's responsibility.

So where exactly do the responsibilities lie? EmmaJane thinks it was her job to tell me if I went too far, and that it’s not my fault if she didn’t. I think I should have read her better during the bedtime slippering, and understood better that “I need more” meant "enough to fix the disconnect" rather than "enough to be cathartic".

But I'm not beating myself up over it: EmmaJane and I trust each other enough to talk through such things and understand them. [In fact we’ve already done that.] But this thing we do is all about the interactions between two people. We take risks, because risks give the hottest scenes. But taking risks means that scenes don't always go exactly to plan, and aren't always exactly what we hoped. When that happens, the causes are usually shared. EmmaJane says it was "because she couldn't let go", but I claim my share of the responsibility.

But still: it was a great weekend, with many hot scenes. And we learnt a lot about each other, which we will put to good use in the future. There is no substitute for communication.