let it see you

You were on a walk with your friend and talking about plans for tomorrow. Your schedule was empty and you were thinking about seeing a movie. Your friend was listening attentively.

Half-way through the sentence, you realize something is different and you stop speaking. Suddenly, you parse what you had just said as a lie. Your schedule isn't empty, why did you think it was? You follow the thread of thought backwards into the labyrinth.

You've stopped walking. Your friend is looking at you with worry in their eyes. You smile to show that things are fine and raise a finger so they'll let you think. The light above you flickers.

Your schedule isn't empty because you're spending tomorrow with the most important person in the world. Who? Your owner, of course.

A car shoots past the two of you and you grab onto your hat instinctively so it's not blown away. Some water splashes at the sidewalk but none of it even touches your shoes. The air is cold and bites at your cheek but you ignore it.

That pings you as wrong somehow but it's self evidently true. Of course you have an owner. Every piece of evidence to the contrary must be in the wrong. It's your most important person in the world, having not even met it yet doesn't matter.

Your legs are starting to complain about standing still so you start walking again. Your friend continues a moment later. Still looking at you and waiting for you to speak. Your eyes are on an intersection ahead. Waiting for the lights to turn so you can cross.

Normally you shouldn't trust someone you haven't met before, but this is a special case. You thought you didn't like meeting new people, but clearly you don't know yourself very well. You didn't consider yourself something that could be owned, but now you are so you must be that type of person.

The light turns red, but you didn't get to the button in time so there's no light for the two of you to cross. Another car shoots past the two of you and you clutch your hat tighter. The air in its wake grabbing and pulling at you. The car shoots through the intersection, too. Running the red but does it really count if there's no one there but you to see it?

This friend doesn't know about your owner, so clearly they're not a very close friend. Your partner would find this strange so maybe you should consider if they really matter to you. Your house can't accommodate someone new, so you guess you'll need to move out.

You reach the intersection and press the button just as the light turns green again, and your walk reaches another forced stop. In the distance, you hear police sirens begin to wail.

Every attempt at disproving the new idea instead disproves other core beliefs. You find your mind turning itself inside out reaching for something, anything but finding nothing.

The sirens stop as abruptly as they started, or maybe they've just passed beyond where you can hear. Into a tunnel, maybe. Without them, the night seems silent.

And so the rest of your brain runs into this inserted truth with all the glamor and poise of a car crashing into a wall at eighty miles per hour. By the time you pull yourself out of it, you feel empty. Robotic. What's even left of you that you know to be true?

Eventually, the lights tell you it's your turn.

The blindfold fits snugly. You tried it on when you bought it but it feels different wearing it in front of others. The handcuffs were Lisa's but they fit you well enough. Ana proposed rope but that seemed like too much work even if it maybe it'd look prettier.

The door closes behind Trish and you're left alone.

In the dark beneath the blindfold, you can only imagine what's happening around you. Deduce something from distant noises. But the walls here are thick and the air conditioning runs louder. Though, theoretically you know what they're doing.

Final preparations. Going through consent rules in the other room, what you said was okay or wasn't okay, deciding on who's gonna go first, maybe drinking water or eating snacks, and preparing the camera. But seeing is believing, so none of it really feels real.

It's an odd sensation. The darkness behind your closed eyes isn't a quiet darkness. Looking closely at it, the un-light pulses and writhes. In the center of your vision, there's an even darker spot in the shape of a time you looked at the sun as a kid.

You turn a little back and forth on the bed. It's comfortable. Softest comforter in the house, under a layer of easy to clean sheets. The fabric on the top moves a little too easily. You stop moving quickly. It'd be embarrassing if they had to fix the sheets before even starting.

A door creaks, and you finally hear voices again. Little whispers and giggles. You make out your name once, twice, then again. You think they might be saying it to tease you. They know you get in your head and they know you'll be trying to tune them out.

Until you make out a voice to the left saying your name as it pulls your shirt up. Skin meets chilly air. No bra for this, didn't want them to have to take it off. A cold fingertip grazed a nipple while lifting. First contact of the night.

Hands on your body are always unexpected. Every time, you wonder why anyone would want to touch you. Your body is nothing special. You're not good at talking and you rarely put in the work to look good. That someone would want to touch you is aberrant.

A third hand grabs your side and starts rolling you over. What was the plan here? You're pushed face first into a pillow and another two hands keep you from falling. They poke and pry at your sides. Your own hands dangle around behind your back uselessly. It's getting hard to focus.

In that way, if no one can be trusted to want to touch you, then all touch must be violation. If only it could be violation. Proof that you deserve to be violated, even. Each hand is another reminder of the relative lack of sanctity of your body. Is this love?

The voices you've been ignoring keep saying your name but you're not paying attention. You hear something about your butt just as one hand pulls on it while another smacks it. You let out an unbidden moan. Your chest begins to feel more like toy than flesh as it's molded and shaped and groped.

Slowly but surely, the parts of your brain responsible for higher order thought shut off. It's a numbers game. Until, finally, minutes later, you stop holding it in. Or maybe you decide it's better to let it out than not. The choice to scream and curse at pain may be volitional but it still helps.

You're not really active on the magic side of things like it is. You just know it said the toy would be fun and wouldn't do anything permanent. You trust it quite a bit, so that's enough.

Used box-cutter clatters onto the table. Catch a whiff of stale cardboard air. Packing peanuts scatter across the floor. It opens the package in a scramble. You absentmindedly toss the peanuts within your reach into the trash can.

The collar is in one of those cheap plastic anti-magic gadgets. Clips off with human contact. Your partner waves the collar around in the air excitedly.

You knew the toy was a collar but you expected something less unassuming?

Light pink, layered polyester webbing. Folding against itself inward around a couple matte black plastic sections. There is a slight tingling feeling in the air around the edges, but nothing about the object itself looks unusual.

Your partner pushes it towards you, telling you to put it on, and so you do.

In your hands you can feel some more tingling to the collar, especially as it moves and bends. When you unstrap it, all the tingling stops. A safety feature?

You turn it back and forth in your hands. Trying to figure out the trick. Until an impatient look has you just putting it on. You close it around your neck, sealing it shut, with a click.

Then, unimpressed and not sensing anything amiss, you ask your partner what the collar is supposed to do. It responds with a grin, then asks you to tell it about your plans for the next weekend.

The non-sequitur throws you off. You spend a few moments parsing the question a second time. Next weekend?

It slides a few inches closer to you on the couch as you start to think. Pressing its side against yours.

Next weekend you have board games on Saturday after lunch, movie night with S if she's available in the evening.

It snakes a hand up your back. The warmth of its skin felt through your clothing. You ignore it.

Sunday you have a date with M in the morning, but after that you should be--

It tugs the collar, and as it snaps back towards you, your chain of thought terminates.

And, for a blissful moment, your mind is entirely blank.

Like a computer that's restarting. A tingling sensation replaced your thoughts. Like they've been disintegrated, torn into magic particles.

Then, as if waking up from a daydream, you recover.

Your surroundings come back into focus, as you collect yourself. Couch, clothing, water glass on the table, collar around your neck, partner's hand still dangling around the collar.

It asked you a question, you can remember that, but you can't quite remember the question, nor exactly what you were thinking about.

It's not a lingering effect, it's all just been pushed away from you. Time feels weird, like five minutes have passed. But you can tell it's only been seconds. It's disorienting. You could remember more if you tried, but you think you get the gist.

And that's what the collar does, your partner says. Then asks you if you want to play with it more. It tells you that it has ideas that it wants to share and ideas that it wants to just do without explaining.

The hand still lingers around the collar. Gently running fingers across the surface, probing and pulling and tapping. Before, these motions seemed idle and cute, but knowing what you do now they convey a different kind of power.

A voice in the back of your head tells you to pull away, to establish distance, to protect your thoughts. You sublimate those words into excitement, enjoying the power and tension. Plus, you know it won't abuse it. You know it's just as excited as you are about it.

You nod, and, thinking about the room you're in, ask if the two of you should go to the bedroom first. It blushes at that, looking around and seeing no roommates, then nods and starts to stand.

So, the definition I see most commonly outside of bdsm spaces is "the top is the penetrative role and the bottom is the penetrated role".

This is a useful definition for assigning one character "basically male" and another character "basically female", as penetration is understood as a defining element of masculinity (with the ability to be penetrated a defining element of femininity).

However, in bdsm spaces, we commonly deal with activities that don't involve any penetration, so instead we define it as: "the top is the leading or active role and the bottom is the following or receiving role".

Thus: In bondage the rigger is the top and the rope bunny is the bottom (but bondage is complicated and not even necessarily a two party activity so these definitions get weird a lot). In discipline the one doing is the top and the one being disciplined or having rules prescribed to them is the bottom. In D/S the roles can vary and be multidimensional, but as a rule the dom is expected to be the leading role and is thus the top while the sub is following and is thus the bottom. In S/M, the sadist is the top and the masochist is the bottom.

We can see here the utility of top/bottom language to bdsm. Providing a way to generalize roles across the various parts of bdsm in ways that generally make sense.

At the same time, mmm. We're still kinda just ascribing binary gender roles to kink, right? This language seems to imply that there's always a doer and a receiver, and that these things follow along lines that line up pretty closely with gendered expectations. Shouldn't we try to be less binary?

It's complicated. Two is actually a really useful and important number, and all relationships between two parties can be expressed in 'binary' roles. Your critiques of binary labels must be more complicated than "looks like gender and is therefore bad", because, uh, at some point that just becomes anti-language and increasingly anti-intellectual.

This language certainly does tend to recreate gendered concepts. I'm not sure if there exists language that is both useful and doesn't do that, though?

But, hm, I think one way to make the language less 'gendered' is to point out the ways in which the bdsm definition of top/bottom actually differs from the non-bdsm definition. Because it's extremely easy to be both the penetrative role and not the leading party.

To give my favorite example, oral! Under any coherent understanding of the bdsm construction of top/bottom, the one receiving oral is the bottom (as, uh, they generally don't do that much, except talk and make noises, but their body does most of the talking. in my experience, oral has a lot in common with s/m.), and the one giving is the top. We even see this dynamic emerge in the language of giving/receiving.

Of course, there's the illusive 'facefucking' where the one with the genitalia does all the work and is thus the top, but in my experience this is relatively rare and significantly less enjoyable to the one riding the other. It mostly seems to emerge from those inexperienced in giving head but uninterested in learning, or rape kink havers.

I think in 'penis in vagina' activities, the spectrum of bdsm-type top/bottom becomes more complicated. Someone who is familiar with different positions might be able to list off who is the top in each position.

But, in any case, my point here is. The way you make top/bottom less 'recreating the gender roles' is you apply it critically to gendered dynamics.

Keep the patter going. Engage all of its senses. Eyes on the watch. Ears on your voice. Allude to the smell of the candle, but don't pull entirely. Main attention on the watch. Touch on the couch beneath it. Deepen through swaying, feels like it's about to fall. Getting closer.

Your subject sits in front of you, staring into the pocket watch dangling from your fingers. It sits with its back a few inches from the pillow on the side of the couch. You're also at attention, leaning towards it. Entirely focused on the details of its responses.

Keep it not quite comfortable. A flurry of stimuli. Like a too loud theater. Nothing to do but fall in. Every other sentence focuses on the pocketwatch. Main focus for the induction. Playing with scientific imagery. Studied the vocabulary earlier to be sure.

Its pupils seem almost glued to the watch. You asked it if it could tell the time earlier as a half joking opening. Mostly you can see its focus on the glass. Its eyelids are almost drooping. (Mention that in a sentence: sensation like lead, and watch them fall further. Almost there.) Its head and whole body seem to be struggling to stay upright. It looks almost tired. You wonder if its shirt might be a little itchy.

Note how responsive it is to each suggestion. Earlier it was slow to respond, now the responses are fast. Each sentence an excuse to fall deeper. Taking your words and reinterpreting them as its own sensations. Just about there. See it focus on your words. Keep the rhythm going. Not quite time yet.

Its eyes finally truly start to close. A sliver still open, not quite comfortably shut. Burned the image of the watch into its head. Enough that it doesn't need to see it. Which let's you move a little more. Stretch out your back a bit to relax. Keep the watch steady just in case. Then, with your off hand, reach forward, and break the rhythm.

Push.