PITY THE TOPS?

© 1994 by
Stuart Norman


        There was a time when SM meant raw, rough, heavy and hard sex. In the early days of the leather/SM subculture black leather biker garb was the symbol of those men who wanted to play this game. It was worn by SMers and bikers; no others. Whether one had a leather fetish or not, SM was their foreplay and afterplay. It enhanced sexual arousal, prolonged it. The required concentration on an SM scene to produce a satisfying intensity created a mutually satisfying and very erotic intimacy, bringing top and bottom closer. SM formed strong personal and community bonds. It did not mean entertainment of a bottom by the top or vice versa. Perhaps with the growing acceptance and visibility of SM and then the advent of AIDS and safe-sex, this ardor cooled. Now there are SM scenes without sex, there are few hard cocks. Bottoms are restrained, flogged, tit-tortured, ball-tortured, dripped with hot wax, electrified, etc. Many specialize by desiring only one form of SM practice. Bottoms get off on receiving a particular sensation, tops get off on technique. There is something altogether too dry and passionless about this.

        I saw this happening more by the mid-eighties. A now-deceased psychologist friend who was prominent in the San Francisco leather/SM community at that time used to decry this decline of the erotic occurring in the SM community. I wonder whether this is SM. To me, SM is always based in sexual desire. Sexual attraction and desire should be the primary reason to initiate SM play. As my friend said, it was to get off and Get Off and GET OFF! Although there are many more ways than sexual to get off. Another aspect of SM should be dominance and submission. That inseparable continuum should be eroticized. Is SM just a flogging or a tit/ball/electro-torture session? I think it should be something more. There should be three ingredients: sexual desire, intense sensation producing practices done within a framework of mutually agreed upon dominance and submission, wherein the bottom sets the limits, but the top should call the shots. And there especially needs to be room for improvisation, spontaneity and surprise.

        What kinds of getting off are happening today? I see tops abused by insatiable, sensation-hungry bottoms. I don’t necessarily mean the traditional pushy bottom who is solely focused on self, but those who expect to be served or entertained without having earned it. Are we forgetting that SM is a discipline that takes work and dedication for both tops and bottoms? Or has the whole SM community succumbed to the pushy-bottom syndrome? Do bottoms respectfully give themselves to tops anymore? After all, there are far more bottoms than tops. More than can be trained properly. Good, competent tops are in demand, even respected. Tops should have their pick. But now tops are expected to perform, to give pleasure. However, the top persona is far more fragile and vulnerable than that of the bottom. The honored give and take of traditional SM has become diminished. It seems to me that this ritualized and highly controlled SM play has taken the place of sex and intimacy. Yes, tops and bottoms do get off, but I’m afraid it’s more of a self-satisfying kind of release and catharsis, the top and bottom remaining separate, too isolated within their own realities or fantasies instead of merging into one.

        Certainly there is nothing wrong with a scene consisting of only one kind of stimulation, one practice, or one that does not include sexual intercourse, but it is the lack of the interpersonal relationship, that breaking down of personal barriers that SM should cause, that concerns me. Sex has a way of bringing us into physical and mental closeness. SM without it provides a way to stimulation, even catharsis, but at the price of distancing ourselves from each other.