After all the years I spent as a top, I should know better than to want so much variety in our play. People like Mrs. Lion (and I in some ways) like things to be the same most of the time. Variety can mean risk and does expend energy. I’m talking about the different things we have tried over the last couple of years. This morning I walked past the cabinet where our bedroom TV audio and video equipment lives. The top of that cabinet is a kind of junk pile where we put things after we use them and intend later to put away. Of course they end up living there.
Right on the edge was the dusty shock collar that we used the summer before last. It had a lot of promise. Mrs. Lion could correct me in public at a distance. My reaction made her smile. I liked the control it gave her, if not the shocks I received. There are lots of things like that in our house. We have our own island of lost toys. I understand how this happens. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to play with them. They simply get forgotten.
Interestingly, that same cabinet top is where she keeps the toys she uses almost every time we play. There are a few paddles there, a zip lock bag of CBT toys including the dreaded dollhouse clothespins, as well as other stuff buried under the pile. Most nights, Mrs. Lion selects a paddle and her bag of CBT toys and begins our session. Sessions start at around 9pm and on most nights begin with either punishment, maintenance, or fun spanking. Then I roll over for CBT and teasing.
I’m not complaining. It’s more than most people get in a week or more. Mrs. Lion works hard to make play “interesting” for me. She succeeds very well. Thursday night I groaned inwardly when the Velcro came out of her bag. That always hurts a lot. I didn’t want pain right then. At least that’s what I told myself. My penis thought otherwise. I was hard so fast she didn’t get to put a Velcro strip on while I was flaccid. She had to settle for a semi. When I think, “Oh no! Not again!” I realize that it doesn’t mean I don’t want what’s coming. It means I don’t know my own mind.
I would like to see us use more of our toys. But I don’t want Mrs. Lion to feel pressured to remember what we have and then use the various items. There has to be an easier way for her. She tried writing activities on pieces of paper and then drawing one each time we played. That was helpful but I don’t think she really liked it. Would a menu listing stuff we have be helpful? I’m not sure it would. She would have to remember to consult it and then dig out whatever it was that struck her fancy.
From my perspective as a greedy bottom, I would love to go back to the shock collar and other toys we liked but somehow “lost”. I remember what a pain it was for me as a top to have to remember to dig stuff out to use again. The familiar is always much easier.
There’s another, more important reason why things get forgotton: If the activities are just for my benefit, meaning that Mrs. Lion doesn’t truly get a lot of pleasure from doing them, then even with the best intentions we will tend to get into a rut. When something is fun, it’s far easier to prepare and execute the activity. If it is for someone else’s “entertainment” then it can be more work than pleasure. That’s just human nature.
I think that most keyholders and tops have far less ambitious desire for play than their bottoms. It isn’t unique to us. I’ll always want more. It’s my nature. That doesn’t mean I expect more. I know better.
Topping isn’t the only life situation that involves activity that, while not unpleasant, isn’t our first choice at the moment. The way I handle those things is to look for ways I can turn them into enjoyable or entertaining experiences. One big example is winter. I always hated the cold, snowy weather where we used to live. I finally figured out how to find a way to like it. I learned to ski. I never really loved skiing, but liked it enough to turn winter into a time of year I could enjoy. I did the same with cooking. I discovered that learning to make things I never thought I could have at home became a fun challenge. I like to cook now.
The same is true of topping. An activity can become enjoyable if the challenge of becoming great at it is picked up. Similarly, even if you aren’t someone who likes power, it can be fun to “train” someone to behave in a different way. In our case, it could be a challenge for Mrs. Lion to train me to hold still for any spanking she gives. Figuring out how to do this will take research and practice, but there is real pleasure in mastering a skill.
The skill doesn’t have to be one you would choose on your own. For example, I know Mrs. Lion has no overwhelming interest in conditioning me. But that isn’t really the point. The point is setting a goal and doing everything necessary to reach it. In addition to making play much more intense and purposeful, it helps develop a very useful life skill. We all could use practice setting and meeting goals.
