Warm up is an art. It really is. That being said, I don’t have the best warm
up skills. I am not the most patient of
people and I catch myself going too fast to soon and having to back track more often than I would like. While we were playing the other day I really wanted to focus on the warm up, and soak
all of it in.
I realized that because warm ups are not as glamorous as the
other parts of play, that they are often taken for granted. I do them, but I
want to do them better, more effectively, and more thoroughly. I want to set
the stage for the meat of play with clear intention and sharpen my assessment skills
of her reactions.
I thought maybe that
I would be bored by concentrating on the simple things. But that didn’t happen
at all. By relaxing into the warm up I surprised myself. I was able to
realize that I really have come far in my play. I could sense where she
was. I tried to really attune myself to her, feeling her out, not just physically,
but emotionally.
My slave has the cutest butt and it completely relays where
she is in her relaxation. So that makes it easy- but I loved the fact that I tuned
in to her moans and wiggles and that they went right to my crotch.
Refocusing on the warm up took away the pressure that play can
sometimes put on me to perform, and it allowed for other
things to come forward.
It might be a surprise to some to find that the Top
identified person feels some pressure to perform. I think it is more common
that is discussed.
It isn’t that there isn’t love in the play, or skill, or
that the play doesn’t get us off, it does all those things. But like sex- there
is a “thrusting “partner and that is the one that drives the feeling of the
players time together.
So like sex- there is a
certain amount of performance
that happens that can create a really
powerful time, a mediocre time, or a “well that was
an ummmm” time.
Part of creation of an experience is, in my opinion, formed by
the connection between the players, the Tops ability to read the bottom, the
type of toy used, the setting, the negotiation, and the overall feeling.
But then there is something deeper, something less describable,
something that when it is there you feel it and know it and when it is not you feel its absence just a much--
It is the thing that the Top brings to the scene, sometimes through
flourish, sometimes through skill, sometimes through raw and open emotion. That
thing that makes both players fly- that thing that makes scenes memorable (for a variety
of reasons, good and bad), that thing that makes the players masturbate to the
memory of that scene for months, even years later.
So if the Top person isn’t careful the weight of creating
that thing can take over the scene itself and the rest gets lost in the
pressure of the creating. The need to be seen as skilled, creative, fierce,
imposing, tough, a “real” player, a real “Top”, by their bottom or the community. This can lead to a glossing over
of warm up time and a sense of competitiveness with other Top identified
people.
And- by the way- whether this is real or imagined is irreverent
to the feelings it creates.
So when I went back to the basics by re experiencing warm up, it brought all of that to the surface. I have
felt the competitiveness in my head, I have let the pressure of what I thought I
"should be" doing allow what I "could be" doing to take a back seat.
So making the warm up be the play has changed my focus. It
has allowed me to fall in love with her body all over again, to give me the ability to return myself to her moans, and her clues. To refocus on her, me,
and my crotch, as it should be! To release the pressure and follow my lust and
her moans to be the things that create the scene.
It was really neat. It was really - beautiful.
