Suggested reading Squirms, Screams and Squirts: Going from Great Sex to Extraordinary Sex Robert J Rubel

People skills and shiny objects

People skills

When there’s talk around the campfire of BDSM skills, certain topics will almost always come up: tying knots, selecting ropes, rope treatment and cleaning, making your own canes, where you can buy the latest flogger, the latest gadget in asphyxiation, how someone has taken an ordinary kitchen egg-whisk and with just a little duct-tape and string has converted it into a full-sized A-frame, how another BDSM devotee built an entire dungeon out of match boxes, and so on.

Alternatively, the conversation may turn to the latest amazing writhing one dominant has been able to extract from his submissive, or how a particular bottom just seems to be able to soak up whatever their top throws at them, or how another master with an amazing right arm was able to flog over 200 people into orgasmic ecstasy in just one night at a party!

At rope-skills workshops we’re presented with examples of different knots, shown how to lace someone up in fantastic ways, taught how to select the right rope or cord for each occasion or body part, shown how to create various sorts of harnesses, taught quick-release techniques, and so on.

At demonstrations we’re amazed at a mistress’s dexterity as she twirls her vast arrays of brightly-coloured floggers and draws howls of exquisite agony from her victim. Likewise we watch fascinated as a master lights up his partner’s private parts during electro-play.

But at those same events we rarely hear about the people skills which go with all these things.

How is it that the most diminutive and petite of mistresses can dominate a giant of a man, push him to the ground and have her way with him? Where is the discussion of this people skill?

My point is that we don’t just tie knots, or wave floggers in the air, or stick needles into lifeless bits of meat. We tie up people, we stick needles into people, we flog people, we dominate people. The practice of BDSM is not an academic discipline which you can learn from a book. It’s also not merely a matter of being able to perform to technical perfection as many books and workshops might suggest. Instead, and above all, BDSM is about people skills.

In the world outside of BDSM, people skills have to do with not rubbing someone up the wrong way, conflict resolution, never going to bed angry, treating someone as your equal, communicating clearly, working with others as part of a team, and so on. These are, to be sure, excellent skills to have.

Indeed, the mistress of the twirling floggers will not get far if she’s an asshole, no matter how well she can twirl... even of she’s the last flogger-twirling mistress on Earth!

But in the BDSM world, people skills have to do with drawing a useful and productive state of mind out of your BDSM partner.

We can see this, for example, when experienced dominants are setting up a scene or when they’re interacting with their submissives: they talk to them, physically handle them, actually dominate them or take command of them. These are BDSM people skills at work. This is part of what sets the scene in the submissive’s mind and makes them ready and able to respond to what comes next. The fact that these skills are important is often glossed over. In fact, a submissive might line up for a flogging from a particular dominant without thinking at all about the personal interaction. But without the right words being said, the right empathy expressed, or the right touch being applied, then it doesn’t matter how technically good the flogging may be, it won’t be satisfying for the submissive.

People skills aren’t just needed by tops, dominants, and masters. They’re are also required by bottoms, slaves, and submissives. I’d like to stress this because regardless of how much a submissive gets out of a scene or their relationship with their partner, if their dominant sees them simply as a species of dead fish, then the joy, wonder, and satisfaction will be strictly one way. Bottoms, submissives, and slaves need their own type of people skills so that their response to their partner sets the scene for their partner to enjoy what’s happening. A submissive who stays immobile and silent during a flogging, or who stands equal and doesn’t shrink in the face of domly attention from her partner, will find him being unsatisfied and uninspired. A good “ooh”, a particularly expressive cringe, or a well-performed writhe can go a long way, and this may be exactly what their partner needs.

Though we might tend to see BDSM in terms of flogging, caning, bondage, piercing, keel-hauling, animal-play, service, training, dominance, mastery, slavery, and submission, we need to remember that these things are often just tools which we use as part of a greater and more important human interaction.

I’d like to suggest that while there are undoubtedly academic facts to learn and technical skills to master, BDSM is primarily a social and personal discipline best learned via experience and sharing with other BDSM practitioners---this importantly includes communicating with our partners about what they need from us, whether we are on the dominant or the submissive side of the fence.

For us to become the best possible submissives, tops, masters, slaves, dominants or bottoms, we need the richness which comes from sharing our experiences with others, and from learning what others have to teach us. Along the way we need to pick up the vital people skills of learning how to react to our partner so that they find satisfaction in being with us and exploring with us.

For a dominant, the idea of treating someone as your equal often needs to be chucked out the window and you just have to step in there and grab your partner by the scruff of the neck and compel them to your will---equality be damned! For a submissive, suffering in silence may be a virtue elsewhere, but suffering obviously and loudly can go a long way towards making it work for your top.

Likewise, standing up for your rights may be a good thing in some places, but gracefully surrendering them in the face of your leather-clad partner might be a better strategy in the dungeon; and always keep in mind that clamping your sphincter tightly shut---metaphorically speaking---can stop both of you having a good time. It needs both of you to be open for the magic to happen best.

Subtract the rational

There is a good reason why we don’t find newspapers opened to the crosswords pages, Scrabble™ games, or chess boards in dungeons. Even the best dungeons don’t have them... and it’s not for lack of space or lack of money. The reason is, of course, that a significant amount of the good stuff which happens in a dungeon has nothing to do with intellectual puzzles, or with rational and sensible thought. A lot of it is about gut feelings, and about animal passion and drives. Few submissives or dominants plan for anything like an intense debate about Socrates or Marcel Proust as part of any scene they’re going to be in. Indeed, when stepping through the doorway into a dungeon, we generally leave anything academic or intellectual behind and welcome the primal which waits within.

Part of people skills is recognising that exactly this occurs. The person we deal with inside the dungeon is not the same one we deal with outside the dungeon. Even if our partner is full-time lifestyle, when they’re in the dungeon there are different aspects of them active, and we have to recognise that talking about football scores or family finances is now out of place. This doesn’t apply just to our partners---it applies to ourselves as well, of course.

We need to recognise that we go into a dungeon not to talk about the stock market, but to address something far more primal and animalistic in both ourselves and our partner. Just as we need to surrender to the physical side of BDSM---such as through manhandling, bondage or pain---we also need Socrates, Proust, and the chess board to wait outside until we’re done.

The lure of bright and shiny objects

For many of us, BDSM is a serious endeavour. I don’t mean to suggest that we don’t take it seriously in the first place, but the most common form of seriousness that I see is the preparation for a scene, the cleaning of the gear, the checking of the ropes, making sure that there’s enough lube available, that there are antiseptic and bandages on hand just in case, and so on.

However for many of us BDSM doesn’t start and end with scenes. For many of us it is an exploration, and a development of ourselves and of the relationships we have with our partners. This isn’t a matter of simply pushing limits, but can be a genuinely profound and confronting journey leading to a new understanding of ourselves, and of our place in the world.

That said, it can also be a lot of fun, can be quite exciting, amazing and incredibly sexual.

Which prompts me to make the two apparently-unrelated points that monks usually don’t go to discotheques, and that wise men of the east usually don’t spend their afternoons in shopping malls. They both spend their time, respectively, in quiet solitude in monasteries, or sitting on their own in the mountains somewhere. And there’s a reason why they do this.

So what have monks and wise men of the east to do with BDSM? Well, probably not very much directly, but there have been a few suspicious rumours to do with monks and flagellation which might bear exploring...

My point is though, that a journey of self-exploration is usually associated with peaceful times and removing distraction. This can be in conflict with what can go on in BDSM. Howls of agony, the seductive writhing of a partner, the scent of fear, and even just the sight of a well-formed body, can be enough to drive the thoughts of the profound into the background, leaving us with what could easily be described as something very shallow, very primal, and oh so powerful.

These latter attractions are all what I call “bright and shiny objects”.

We humans are simple creatures and it doesn’t take much to distract us. I know that a nicely turned hip, a delightful wiggle-while-walking, or a well-proportioned and tastefully revealed pair of breasts will do it for me every time. But for us to take our partners, and our relationships with them seriously, this mustn’t be all that we see.

Now I just mentioned “our partners” and “our relationships with them” as two separate things. It might be that our partners are indeed “bright and shiny objects” which dazzle us and drive us to distraction. But as much as they may push our imaginations and our loins into overdrive, we need also be disciplined and spend at least some time contemplating what our time with this person is going to do to help us grow as a person, what it’s going to do to help them grow, and what we’re going to do to develop the relationship we have with them. These are all separate things.

When we are of the dominant or masterly persuasion, it’s part of what we do that we regulate how much and when. This isn’t just to stop us getting jaded, or just to allow time for the bruises to heal, but should also be to give us time to step back, find some peace and solitude and reflect on what is happening.

The time we spend with our partner, no matter how anally we might strive to be in control, is going to constantly reveal surprises and expose us to situations and experiences for which we’re not fully prepared. At the time these things happen, it might be entirely appropriate to succumb to the lure of the bright and shiny, and consequently do our best in that particular moment to get things back on track. But we should also file away these little surprises for later contemplation.

While an unexpected reaction of either ourselves or our partners might not seem to rival the excitement we get from a particularly intense writhing, or from an unusually long howl, it may be the doorway to an insight far more profound which might itself lead to far deeper and more rewarding times in the future.

And also, the lure of something bright and shiny can be a distraction from some of the more difficult parts of maintaining a relationship. If the sex is good, or the times in the dungeon are fantastic, then it can be tempting to focus on these when, perhaps, some other aspect of the relationship is not going so well. A good fuck won’t always fix every problem, in spite of how attractive that idea might seem when faced with a more serious difficulty. At best it can only push other issues aside for a while, not resolve them.

In a similar vein, as dominants or masters we’re in a position to expand the capabilities of our submissives and slaves. We sometimes call this “pushing their limits”, and we might do this to find their fears and inhibitions, and to push them through and beyond these. But while we we’re bravely pushing them forward, what are we doing for ourselves? Being able to make the choices for them is great, but it also means that we can make choices based on our own fears and inhibitions---even without realising it---which let us subconsciously avoid our own personal growth.

The times when we’re actually interacting with our partners are not the best times for profound introspection and exploration, but they are ideal fodder for later reflection. Taking a bit of quiet time on our own some short while later, and going over what happened looking for big or little anomalies, and then examining these anomalies to try and work out why they occurred, can be an excellent way of learning about ourselves.

So, for us to be serious about our BDSM, we need to both consider the scenes and intense times we spend with our partners, and to take time out from these and use the experiences we do have with our partners as fuel for helping us understand ourselves better, and for letting us contemplate our future direction without bright and shiny objects distracting us... however pleasant those objects might be at the time.