From an email I sent to the author of Bound and Determined...

GMSMA is doing a program this Wednesday on V/A. Weeks and months ago, several Tops were lined up to do demos and a panel discussion on the issue. At the eleventh hour, no one seems to be available to do it. In our hashing around the issue in the Program Committee, the other men on the committee seemed to feel that I had something of a flare for it. Because we were in a pinch, I was asked to step in and do a demo, along with JoeyRope, who is wonderful with it. (JoeyRope prefers the term Verbal Domination, and I agree with him that the distinction is an important one.)

Typically, it's not the way that I play, either. Or so I thought. I generally say very little during a scene. If the bottom is an experienced player, I don't want to say anything that would interfere with him getting into the headspace that he needs to be in to enjoy things. If the bottom is inexperienced, I'll tend to verbalize more, but only to explain what I'm doing, and to offer guidance ("Breathe with me... Deep breaths..."). When I do talk during scenes, it's usually towards the end of a scene, where I'll offer praise to the bottom for his courage and fortitude.

I've usually shied away from bottoms who were looking for verbal abuse (or, in the term in which it tends to be requested, 'humiliation.') I was suspicious of it, uncomfortable with whatever might be the psychological motivations behind it. Could he be seeking to recreate an abusive childhood situation? I started to examine this attitude in anticipation of the upcoming program, and decided that this doesn't make sense. When I do a flogging, I'm not concerned that I'm perpetuating childhood abuse.

Thinking about it further, I realized that like so much of the best of S/M play, it's something we learn how to do playing with other boys in adolescence. Some of us do, anyway. A very good friend of mine whom I met in college is Italian-American, and grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood in Philadelphia. My friend Lou, from time to time, would go into this 'mode' where he was... basically doing verbal abuse. ("Y'know what, you're a loser. That was such a loser thing to say. But, what should I expect from a pussy lightweight who vomits all over the kitchen at the party at Krieger's last night. Oh my god, all over the dishes in the sink. You're a total loser, man.") Now, this was totally foreign to me. And I used to tell Lou that I didn't appreciate it and get really angry. Then, I had the chance to see him interacting with the guys that he had grown up with in South Philadelphia. That was the sum total of their interactions. They referred to it as 'busting on each other.' It was a way of bonding. The only people that you could get away with saying shit like that must be the guys who love the hell out of you.

So now that I've given myself 'permission' to play around with this, I'm finding it pretty interesting. In a way, it's *just* like flagellation. Exactly like flagellation. You start off really light, and build really slowly, and because you're playing with a safeword, every 'blow' could be the last, and every time the bottom doesn't use the safeword is a precious gift. You deliver the blow, and carefully observe the bottom to gauge how hard you just hit. And, the bottom will let you know when he's ready for the next one. The energy begins to build, and you're both catching fire.

Another interesting thing about it is that you're playing with an adrenaline response rather than an endorphin response. Endorphins tend to get all the good press in S/M circles, but I've always thought that adrenaline is a valid alternate state of consciousness that has its own pleasures. (Talk to anybody who's played contact sports about the joys of an adrenaline rush.) And, in this case, the Top gets as much of a rush as the bottom, which is not true with endorphins.

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