BDSM Beginners Kit
Advice for Novice Dominants
There are as many ways to do D/S as there are people, so you really need
to know what your partner wants, doesn't want, is comfortable with, is
afraid of, and so forth. A lot of submissives will have great trouble
telling you what they want. For some of them, this is because they don't
really KNOW what they want. Or, perhaps, they know how they want to
feel, but they aren't sure what it is that will make them feel that way.
Other submissives do have at least some idea of what they want, but
they're too embarassed to be able to tell you directly. And some
submissives know what they want but feel as if it spoils things if they
have to ask for it -- they want the impetus for the scene to come from
you, and if they ask for something, then it's as if they're
controlling the scene, when what they want is for you to control it.
And of course, more than one of these can occur at once. A person can
know only what it is sie wants to feel AND be too embarassed to talk
about it AND feel as if it gives hir too much control over things if sie
tells you.
There are a couple of ways around these problems, but they all take a
bit of work on the dom's part. For the sub who isn't all that sure what
sie wants, you get hir to describe how sie wishes to feel. You ask hir
what things in hir past have gotten hir to feel this way, even if it's
only a small and mild version of what sie really wants. And of course
you also use your knowledge of your partner to guess at what you suspect
would make hir feel what sie wants. You get hir to tell you what sie
fantasizes about (bearing in mind that fantasies are often more intense
than anything a person would like to do in real life).
And you experiment. A scene doesn't have to last for hours. In the early
stages, when you're just figuring out what works for both of you, you
can try something for five minutes. (But just because the scene is short
doesn't mean that you take it less seriously. You have to make these
mini-scenes as real as your usual ones, or they won't work as a testing
ground. Put your all into them, just keep 'em short.) Say you suspect
that your submissive would enjoy wearing a collar. You put one on hir,
do a few things with it, then take it off and ask hir how sie felt about
it. If you and sie both liked it, you can always do it again for longer.
But these mini-scenes let you try out things in the knowledge for BOTH
of you that if you hate it, it only lasts for a short time -- this takes
some of the pressure off. (When an ex-lover and I seemed to be moving in
the direction of no-safeword scenes, I bought an egg timer. The idea was
that he would have no safeword for the length of time it tooks the sands
to run down. Three minutes is not very long, objectively speaking. But
it can be a very long time to someone who's never played without a
safeword before and who realizes that this time there's no way out. I
wasn't going to do a full-length no-safeword scene until after I'd seen
how he handled the egg-timer version.)
For the sub who has at least some knowledge of what sie wants but who is
too embarassed to tell you what it is, there are a couple of routes to
go. You can ask hir to write it down and give it to you, since a lot of
people can write things that they cannot say. You can also try
dominating it out of hir -- try winding your hand in hir hair, pulling
hir head into a position that lets you stare into hir eyes, and
demanding that sie tell you what you want to know right now. Or you can
threaten some sort of physical punishment unless sie divulges the
information (only with hir permission, of course. The punishment isn't
really intended to be a motivator -- it's intended to be a way for the
sub to save face with hirself. Sie can tell hirself that it's not greedy
or forward or too bold or whatever to tell you what you want to know
because you're _makingngs you can try. You can tell hir that you aren't
promising to do any of the things that sie asks for -- you're just
asking because as the dom, you have the right to ask any damned thing
you please and to get an answer. "Since you are my property, the
contents of your mind are also my property, and you will give them to me
when I ask" is something I tell my submissive. You can tell hir that you
want the information for your own selfish pleasure -- "Making you be
submissive in a way that's good for you is likely to be more fun for me
than making you be submissive in a way that's bad for you, because the
second way makes me work harder for less return. So give me what I need
to know to get what I want."
Oh, yes, and a type I forgot to mention. Some submissives think that no
one really wants to dominate them, that you're just humoring them, and
leaving you to your own devices is sort of a test. It's as if they're
saying, "If you really want this, you'll figure it out on your own." My
own submissive had a touch of this, so I just jumped in and started
ordering him around, and once he was assured that I wanted it, too, his
fantasies started pouring out.
Once you start getting information out of the person, there are a bunch
of things you need to know.
- You know sie's interested in D/S, but what kind?
- Does sie want to do D/S for a short time in bed and be equal out of
scene, or is sie after a full-time D/S relationship?
- Does sie want this to be you and hir, or does sie want the two of you
to assume some sort of fantasy roles, like teacher/student or
parent/child or jailer/prisoner?
- Does sie want to be treated as a valuable submissive, or does sie
crave humiliation?
- Does sie go for lots of symbols, like kneeling at your feet, wearing
a collar, and so forth?
- Are there things that sie likes to be made to say? Some subs like
being made to say things like "I am yours, Mistress" or "Please use me
for your pleasure, Sir," whereas others find this sort of thing too
flowery and prefer sharper exchanges and still others get nonverbal when
in scene and find speech annoying. (I'm reminded of a woman who told me
that she could never bring herself to call a man "Master," because the
word always made her think of Igor saying "Yesss, Massster," and she
would start laughing. It wasn't that she was disrespectful -- she had no
trouble with "Sir" or "My Lord," but "Master" made her crack up.)
- What sorts of things would sie like you to say? Some submissives
like being called names by their dominants, some like hearing that they
are slaves or that they are owned, others like being told about the
various unspeakable things that are about to happen to them, others like
hearing an explicit list of rules and expectations, others like hearing
that their dominant enjoys what sie's doing -- there's a really long
list of different things that turn different people on, and I can't
cover it all. (For example, my submissive loves hearing the words
"You're my slave." Very simple sentence, but it does something to him.
He also loves hearing, when I hurt him, "I need this, and I want you to
bear it as a gift to me." To show you how different even very similar
people can be, I would hate being told "You're my slave" but I would
love being told "I need this, and I want you to bear it as a gift to
me." (To make it even more complicated, I have no trouble with "You're
mine;" it's the word "slave" that I can't stomach.) Getting a feel for
what sort of thing underlies your submissive's submissive desires will
help you get a feel for what sorts of things sie likes to hear.)
- The above point leadst you to control everything" mindset, some have
a "I want to be so desirable that you have to take complete control of
me" mindset or the "I want us to blend into one person" mindset or the
"I want to prove I love you by doing difficult things" mindset or any
number of others. Once you've talked and played for a while, you might
get an intuitive feel for this. It may be something that your submissive
can tell you, but it may not be -- sie may not have thought about it or
analyzed it to this extent. But if you can figure out what sort of
mindset underlies your partner's submission, it makes doing new things
and guiding your future play a lot easier. You'll know what new things
are likely to work and what won't because you'll understand the
underlying motivations.
- What sorts of things does sie like besides D/S?
- Is bondage okay? If so, how much and what kind?
- Is pain okay? If so, how much and what kind?
Okay. So now you know what your submissive wants. You also have to
figure out what YOU want. It's easy, when you're first starting out and
trying to figure out how to be a dom, to imagine some stereotypical
stern, sneering dominant and try to emulate that image. But not all of
us are cut out to fit that mold, and luckily for us, not all submissives
like dominants who fit that mold. You need to find your personal
style. The best style for you is not the one that's the closest to the
stereotype, it's the one that makes your eyes light up and your energy
rise and makes you feel that THIS is the alivest you've felt in a long
time. Personally, I'm a pretty gentle dominant as far as manner goes,
but manner can be deceiving. One of the things I like to do is to force
my submissive to do things that he wants to do but is too frightened to
do -- the "You are so much mine that I can make you do something that
terrifies you" feeling is quite a rush for me, but I know I can let
myself give in to that feeling because I'm making him do something that
he secretly wants. I also like mental stripping -- making my slave be
mentally and emotionally naked with me -- he must tell me anything I
want to know about him. Oh, and making him scream is fun, too. :-)
Of course, your style will be influenced by your submissive's style. The
sort of submissive who wants to be forced into submission will elicit a
different response from you than the sort of submissive who wants to lay
hir submission at your feet like a present. And of course, some
submissives can do one thing at one time and the other thing at another
time. Just to keep you on your toes. :-)
Don't worry if it feels sort of strange in the beginning. When I first
started dominating my slave, I would look at my face in the mirror and
chuckle and say, "This is NOT the face of the sort of person who owns a
man." But that "WHO? Sweet little me?" feeling wore off after a while.
That "I'm not cut out for this. I don't know what I'm doing" feeling
wore off after a while. If it's TRULY not for you, don't force yourself.
But do give yourself a little while to try it on and get used to it
before you decide whether or not it's for you. I felt silly and nervous
and out of place at first. But after a while, I came to feel that there
were few things I'd ever done that were more satisfying.
Cory
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