Well, the semester has begun… time to start writing in class again.
Experience is a relative thing; therefore in the circles I am exploring right now I am a very experienced player. Four and a half years in the scene lends overmuch credence to my views in these groups. Granted, I am a bossy thing and I am apt to speak with a tone that indicates that I am an authority—it’s hella funny. I don’t consider myself an expert; I know the experts… I’m not one of them. I usually feel disconcerted by people looking up to me. I still want to consider myself the smart-assed kid in the scene. But then I look around and see a bunch of people who are younger than me…. When in the hell did that happen?! A year ago I stopped referring to myself as the puppy, cause I am frequently not anymore. But I am still not ready to think of myself as that experienced or as an expert.
So I’ve had reasons to avoid hunting for partners in the bdsm scene for a little while. This has left me in the amusing position of trying to convert vanillas. (In their defense, none of them have really been “vanilla,” they just haven’t had that much experience yet and they aren’t active in what I think of as “the scene.”) Then I come along in my brash and bold way and declare myself kinkier than sin (I still haven’t figured out if I am trying to titillate or freak them out) and talk about the extreme play that I am into. Given that they like me and want to keep me around, they tend to be interested in trying to give me what I say I want… I just have to teach them how. This has happened several times in the last year.
First I must give them props for being GGG. I applaud their willingness to try something that is near and intimidating I probably don’t express adequately the depth of my appreciation, but it is there! But then I am left wondering… now what? There are two components to what they are asking and I’m not sure how much they realize it. There is D/s and then there is sm/bondage. There is the mental stuff and the physical. They are very different skill sets to learn. And I am of different minds about how to approach the two different areas.
The other morning while talking to someone on the phone it occurred to me that a huge percentage of my impatience with teaching partners is that I am generally dealing with people who are much older than I and I seem to have an inherent bias in myself, “If you haven’t tried to learn this by now you won’t ever be as interested in it as I am and I don’t want to push anyone into it.” (I said this to someone and realized what a sanctimonious snarky thing it is to say/think.) I know this is bullshit. Many people come to kink late in life. It is the most common way to approach it in fact. So yeah. Now back to my attitude towards the skill sets.
I don’t want to teach anyone how to be my top on me. I don’t like it. I did it once with James and I was incredibly frustrated because my having to be so present and directive meant I never really got out of the scene what I wanted to get. It felt hollow to me. However, I am now being a sounding board for Noah as he is learning to top on another person and I am really happy to do that. I like teaching classes and helping people learn on others, but having them practice on me as I am telling them what to do doesn’t work for me. I can be quiet and allow them to practice on me if they don’t need feedback though. I think that the difficulty is in feeling like I am topping from the bottom. So, in a nut shell: my attitude towards teaching the physical skills is that I can teach them the skills as long as I don’t have to be actively telling them how to do it on me; other people are fine.
This leads into my feelings about teaching the mental components. I don’t think I can tell someone how to be my dominant. I can’t baby-step someone through this. I can point them at people to talk to; I can point them at classes to take… but I just can’t “train” my dominant. It screws up the dynamic for me. If I am taking control of the situation then I am not submissive. That is just how it works. And I really don’t want to be dominant.
But after all this babbling I might as well point out that I am reaching a place where I understand something I didn’t understand a while ago. You can’t go into a relationship expecting to push someone into the role you want them in. I can’t get into relationships and tell someone, “I want to be submissive so you have to be dominant.” Wow is this failing. I need to think back… back into the deep reaches of time (I know I’m not that old, but it’s funny anyway) and think that Tom and I did not start out with a D/s relationship. It grew slowly over time. I should encourage people to learn the physical stuff… because I do need that… but either the D/s will be natural and grow or it won’t. I have to stop pushing.
We’ll see what happens.
(nods) This all makes perfect sense to me.
Sounds like you have all this well thought out. 🙂
First, I’m envious. I haven’t had anyone ask me to teach in ages.
Second, d/s can be constructed as easily as SM.
What can’t be constructed easily is romance. This is because romance is composed, at least in part, of projecting aspects of ourselves or our desires onto our partners. That’s not an easy thing to do consciously or deliberately.
Many people confuse the romance of d/s with d/s itself. Hand me your wallet for the evening and we’ve constructed d/s. I have power over you and you’re likely to feel some emotions over the course of the evening because of that. That’s easy to construct, but it’s not what most people mean when they speak of the charge involved in d/s.
I’ve thought about your situation with these folks some….and my conclusion is tha tthey are lazy rotten bastards. That’s my theraputic diagnosis.
See… here’s why. I’ve taught a few people i’ve been with, but they haven’t specifically leaned on me to teach them. The one or two that I do no remember saying specifically “Oh, You can teach me.” have all turned out to be fairly self involoved in one way or another. Mostly they think I am there to service them…and not in that good way. the one’s who really do want to learn and are not selfish vampires, tend not to ask me to be their one sole specific guide. Rather they simply go out, seek, and learn.
I don’t agree with this assessment. And if you ever meet Noah, you will find out why I think you are wrong. No one can ever accuse him of being a lazy rotten bastard.
First off, people often confuse “experienced”, “expert” and “teacher”. You don’t have to be an expert to be experienced, and you really don’t have to be either to teach what you know. For that you just have to know more than the person you’re trying to teach AND know when you’ve reached the limit of your knowledge.
The problem you’re running into is that you teach well, and you have so much more experience that people who don’t know how much more there is, naturally think of you as an expert. I can’t really offer you any advice on how to change that image of you, except maybe to introduce your friends to those folks that *you* consider experts.
As for not wanting to teach from the bottom, I can certainly understand that; you’re having to watch your headspace and your student’s headspace at the same time, and that’s distracting. The only advice I can give you there is some kind of exchange program. Surely there’s someone else out there who feels like you do – you can trade services with them; the one can teach, while the other just has to get into the proper mindset, and perhaps comment on errant shots and all.
And, while you can’t *teach* someone to be Dominant, perhaps you can put your expectations of what makes a good Dominant to you in writing, and offer that to said beginner. It’d be like learning to dance with the same partner, but at least they’d be learning.
I will also make note of one other thing – your needs for submission seem to be more towards the edge of the bell curve. So naturally finding someone who can match your needs there is going to be more difficult than others might have.
But you seem to know that already.
Hey, this sounds familiar to me.
I’m don’t even know enough technical things to call myself “experienced,” although I also can’t claim to be much of a newbie anymore. And while I don’t have any problem giving advice to other newbies, and even letting them practice the pure technical bondage and some sensation on me, I completely freeze up when someone wants to “learn how to be dominant.” It’s not even so much that I don’t want to be involved, but that I cannot think of how to *teach* it.
I lucked out in my kink; on my first visit to the local scene I met another experienced young dom (rare) who already knew what he wanted (in general), and we just clicked. All of our dating was just talking and making our relationship direction more clear, not one person teaching the other. I never feel like he needs instruction on how to “be more domly.” He never needs to tell me how to be “a better submissive.” We just say what we want and work it out.
When I started that relationship, I was still married, and my husband was fine with me being kinky elsewhere, as he didn’t really have the interest I did. Over time, though, he wanted more involvement, and tried to convince me that he could “do everything that K did to me,” particularly if I just taught him. I still don’t know if I got it through his head that dominance was so much more than swinging a flogger, and that the idea of teaching someone how to dominate me *just so I could be happy* just made my head hurt with all the illogical of it.
Erp. That was a ramble. Where was my point? I think D/s feelings in people can be fostered or harnessed, if they are there to begin with. I think interactions with a particular person can be honed. But, like you (I think), I think either it is natural to a person or it isn’t, and trying to force it when it’s not there is as bad as trying to restrain it when it is.