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What
is an Experienced Player?
By
Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com
Whenever a new person joins the Vermont scene, a certain friend of mine
always asks "are they experienced?" I know what she's asking,
but I still get stuck thinking up an answer. Traditionally, someone is
seen as experienced when they've been a long time in the community or a
relationship. The community thing is quite the sticky wicket because
there may not be a long–term local community to belong to. The Vermont
groups, for example, started circa 1999. Even people who are active on
the community level may not be in their personal lives (or vise versa).
Being in a long-term relationship doesn't guarantee anything either
because you could have spent the whole time spanking, and nothing but
spanking. My friend Mary adds that, "Technical expertise has
different levels. Someone may know how to use a singletail well on a
pillow but your back is a different matter. My back, skin tone, and
sensitivity is different than yours as well. So not only does the person
wielding the whip have to know how to make it connect for the desired
effect, but that person also has to be skilled in reading body language
for each individual he or she plays with."
Technical Experience
So what exactly is experience then? One way to define this ambiguous
word is by breaking it down into two areas: technical and emotional.
Technical expertise has to do with being competent with the equipment of
BDSM, such as floggers, bondage, nipple clamps, and so on. Of course
someone who is proficient with one particular toy may well be a complete
novice at another. Technical competence is particularly important when
engaging in pursuits that require a high level of skill such as
bullwhips, or are considered high risk play such as blood or breath play
because of the might higher possibility of permanent damage or even
death with these activities. Just to be clear here, I am not saying that
technical expertise is ever unimportant, only that it's importance is
intensified under certain conditions.
Technical expertise is usually more important in scenes with someone you
don't know well because it's easy to get hurt by an amateur. My friend
Stacey says it like this, "In some ways, a casual
scene/play relationship needs more 'correct' behavior because it's
a more land mine infested walk for both the dominant and
submissive. You don't know each other, so you don't know the other
person's trigger points. Kaboom. Someone who is not sensitive to that,
or smart about people, can do something hurtful or stupid simply out of
not knowing."
Writer Gary Switch would probably agree with Stacey, saying, "If
you possess great technical skill, but give every single play partner
exactly the same flogging, you have serious problems that fall into a
separate category from technical competence. A top's ability
to tailor their technique to the feedback they're getting real-time from
their bottom is far more important to a scene's success than the top's
virtuosity. You bottoms out there, which would you rather have: a simple
spanking you were dreaming of or a technically brilliant
flogging that had nothing to do with you?"
A fellow writer, Master Alan adds that, "A certain amount of
experience and knowledge is necessary to avoid legal and social problems
as well. It's not just that the person knows how to throw a single
tail, they also know how to handle problems large and small." While
I agree with all of them, I feel that the most serious emotional damage
is more likely to occur when involved in a long term relationship.
Emotional Experience
The other kind of experience is what we might term emotional experience,
or what might be thought of as the "soft" skills of BDSM.
These skills include things like emotional stability, the ability to
keep distressing emotions in check. and the willingness to listen.
Because technical skills are relatively easy to learn, I look for
emotional maturity in a partner before I look for technical competence.
My partner Griffin is very comfortable in the emotional realm. When I am
upset, he listens quietly and asks what he can do to help. In contrast,
when confronted with emotional situations, some Dominants become
defensive and try to "solve the problem" instead of just
listening. Griffin has only been in two BDSM relationships (both long
term), so his formal technical experience is relatively limited. But he
has worked hard for many years developing his skills in being present
with an open heart. Because of his training in Native American
tradition, Griffin also has what could be considered transferable skills
because he knows how to induce an altered state of awareness or
consciousness which is very much like subspace. He uses the tools of
BDSM – like floggers, bondage etc – as an extension of his spiritual
energy.
Master Alan once said to me that "Experience is knowing when you
need to take control and knowing when you need to let it go."
Surprisingly, he was talking about his relationship with his submissive
who sometimes found herself needing to take back the control in order to
protect herself emotionally. Alan was emotionally experienced enough to
understand that this was not a personal insult, but something far more
complex. He only knew this because he had been with her for many years
and understood her submissive style.
Emotional skills are less important in a single scene situation because
the kind of emotional support you can receive in the context of a single
scene with someone you don't know well is limited by definition. In
other words, it's easier to chalk up a bad scene with an incompetent
stranger than it is with someone you are deeply involved with. There are
some play party situations where emotional competence is just as
important, however. My friend Mary says that, "The first Top that
put me in subspace did not know what was happening to me and just
ignored it. I knew something had happened to me but did not know
what. Thankfully I had a friend who was able to explain to me what
had happened and why." Even with that, emotional experience is
generally far more important in a committed relationship because getting
along with someone long term requires far more trust, communication, and
negotiation. Stacey adds that, "When we know someone deeply, we
understand them, we trust them. If they do something wrong, we can laugh
because we know they're not doing it ruthlessly."
This continuum shows how types of experience relate to types of
relationships.
Unfortunately these two types of experience are not equally supported in
our community. In his classic book Ties that Bind, Guy Baldwin
writes, "The energy of nearly all of our organizations thus became
harnessed to two main goals: 1) to teach our own people how to do BDSM
sexuality "properly" which meant technically correct, and 2)
to defend and seek tolerance for our sexual practices to the non-kinky
world." There are plenty of opportunities to learn how to flog
someone, but where do you learn how to do aftercare, or how to prepare a
Dominant or a Submissive emotionally for a difficult scene? Sure, it's
much easier to hold a workshop on something that is practical and
demonstrateable, but I believe that this bias is a dangerous one. No one
ever told me that they dumped their Dominant because they accidentally
wrapped the flogger. The common denominator in the stories Submissives
tell is that their Dominant did not have basic relationship skills.
Even more challenging is that technique can be fairly easily learned.
How do you teach people to get in touch with their feelings? This can be
painful enough to do in regular life, and it's understandable that
someone might not want to dig deep in order to engage in BDSM play. This
is particularly difficult for the many Dominants who groove on
"knowing it all." It's darn hard to ask a question when you
are supposed to be all knowing (or at least appearing that way.)
Nowadays when my friend asks about some new person in the scene, I ask
her instead, "what are you really asking?" I sure don't have
any easy answers to give her. What I can say is that if you know what
you are looking for in terms of a relationship, you can make a better
decision on what kind of partner will be best for the job. Broadly
speaking, if you're just looking for a scene, then focus on finding
someone who is technically competent. But if you want a long term
relationship, make sure that person (whether Dominant or Submissive) has
their head, as well as their heart screwed on tight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REFERENCE READING
Emotional Intelligence : Why It Can Matter More Than IQ - by
Daniel Goleman
Available on www.amazon.com
Sensuous Sadie is the author of It’s Not About the Whip: Love, Sex,
and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene ( http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html
). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn,
Vermont’s first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as
well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com
or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information
freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing
in most venues.
Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications
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