How To Be A Good Bottom For A Top
Bottoming is the ultimate act of sexual surrender. You submit to another guy. You open wide and he fills you up. You’re being “taken,” owned. You’re somebody else’s property.
Given this, most guys who want to be a better bottom for a top think their partner should be in charge. As the submissive, they believe their role is to simply respond, yield, and surrender.
The truth is far more complicated than that. Painless bottoming requires you to find the best position to straighten out your S-curve, relax your sphincter, estimate the best angle of entry, and control the pace of penetration. How are you going to do that if your partner is in charge?
I say this with love, but what your partner doesn’t know about your ass is a lot. He has no idea how it’s put together. He’s likely to do everything wrong—go too fast, use too much force, start when you’re not ready and go in at the wrong angle.
Laying back and letting him take charge is a guarantee of enormous pain. You may as well buy an expensive, heavy-duty leather strap to bite down on because you’re going to gnaw right through a cheap one.
A Central Contradiction
The submissive has to be in charge of the dominant. This is a head-rattling contradiction for people who want to know how to be the best gay bottom. How can the guy surrendering control of his body have more power than the guy he’s surrendering it to?
You can understand this contradiction by asking a fundamental question: Who has the power to dictate the terms of a consensual sexual encounter?
The guy who can say no.
This is true about almost everything in relationships. Who has the emotional power in courtship? The guy who can say no to going out with you. Who has the financial power in a relationship? The guy who can say no to a purchase. Who has the power to end a relationship? The one who can say no to it.
It’s the same with bottoming. The person with the power is the guy who can say no and that is always the guy who bottoms. He sets almost all the terms, including and especially, whether anal sex is going to take place at all.
You just have to look at your own sexual history to understand this phenomenon. Have you ever been in a consensual (not coercive) sexual situation with an insistent top you didn’t want to bottom for? It might have gone something like this:
Top: I want to top you.
You: I’d rather not the first time we get together.
Top: Come on, it’ll be hot.
You: It’s not something I’m comfortable with yet.
Top: Come on! Let’s do it.
You: No, some other time.
Top: Why not now?
You: I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right.
Top: But I can make it feel right.
You: Probably, but not tonight.
Now, who called the shots?
Who controlled the situation? Who determined the outcome?
You did. The top had to make a case for what he wanted. He had to argue the merits. He petitioned the court. The judge, you, the bottom partner, handed down the ruling.
If you want to know how to become a good bottom you have to know this: The guy who bottoms calls the shots on everything. Not just if anal sex is going to happen but how it’s going to happen. Let’s say you grant his wish to bottom for him. He wants the penetration to be rough; you don’t. Who wins?
You do.
He wants to do it raw but you’re insisting on a condom. Who wins?
You do.
He wants to put you in a position you don’t like. Who wins?
You do.
Oh, I know he can talk you into or out of any of this, but the fact that he has to persuade you is proof he doesn’t have the power to make the decision. Yes, he could force you to do it but that enters the realm of coercive sex and I am talking strictly about consensual encounters.
In the final analysis, a top is nothing but your bitch. He needs your permission to do as he wishes. That’s hardly a sign of power. I’m saying all this because you need to understand something essential:
You Are In Control Whether You Like It Or Not.
The blissful surrender you seek from bottoming comes only after you’ve set the stage for it.
What If You’re Not A “Take Control” Kind Of Guy?
A lot of guys who want to bottom blanch at the thought of “taking charge.” Especially shy guys. Or guys who may be embarrassed about their lack of experience (“How can I take charge if I’ve never done it!”). Or guys whose personality is antithetical to taking the lead.
The good news is that taking charge doesn’t mean barking out orders like some deranged drill sergeant or becoming a “bossy bottom.” You can take charge indirectly, often without saying a word. For example, want him to get on top of you? Get underneath him.
Think Of It As Buzz Management
Anybody who drinks or does drugs is familiar with the concept of “Buzz Management”—controlling the process of being out of control.
You will not have a pleasant experience with alcohol if you don’t control what, when, and how much you drink. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “I’ll have what the author on the floor is having.”
Same with drugs, if you’re inclined to take them. If you don’t control who you get it from, how much you take and when you take it you’ll end up in the ER. And as Sister Kitty Catalyst of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence said years ago, “There’s nothing fabulous about a trip to the emergency room, honey. The lighting is bad, the outfits are horrid, and they have no idea what a VIP line is.”
So think about the contradiction of taking control of your sexual surrender as “Buzz Management.” You need to control the situation to have a satisfying out-of-control experience.
Tops Have Their Own Pressures
Here’s another great reason why you have to be in charge: The guy topping you will have his own issues to deal with. Can he stay hard enough, especially if he’s dealing with a condom? Can he find your anal opening in the dark? (It’s harder than you think. Tip for tops: place a fingertip on it and use it as a guide).
Most guys who bottom assume the top knows what he’s doing. Don’t. Odds are he’s going to hammer it in like a roofing crew. Ceding control to the top doesn’t just guarantee the kind of pain resistant to medical treatment, it also transfers responsibility for your pleasure to him.
Let’s get this straight right now: The top is not responsible for your pleasure. You are. And the only way you’re going to get it is to control the way your partner’s penis goes in and out of you.
And in and out.
And did I mention in and out?
How To Be In Charge Of Your Top
You don’t want to bark out orders like a command-and-control battlefield general. You simply want to set the stage for your partner to take the lead. Let me give you a mind-blowing example of this. This will forever change the way you perceive control.
A straight guy walks into a bar and sees a beautiful woman. He waits for the right moment and goes over to talk to her. They hit it off and an hour later they go home together.
Almost everyone interprets this scene as an example of a take-charge guy who exerted control and bent the woman to his will. Almost everyone but body language researchers.
They know it was the woman who controlled the situation, from beginning to end.
Wait, what? How can that be?
See, hidden cameras would show that the woman gave the take-charge guy permission to come over and talk. She communicated “signals of interest” like a microscopically-small arch of the eyebrow, a barely detected smile, or a passing look.
The man, incapable of processing these subtle signals on a conscious level, experiences them as a gut feeling that now’s the time to bust a move. So, he “takes charge” and approaches the woman without any conscious awareness that he isn’t in control. He’s submitting to her wishes.
Once he breaks the ice, the woman then further controls the situation with more body language. When she leaned in toward him, she gave Mr. Man permission to continue talking to her (she could have leaned away, signaling displeasure).
Later, when she touched his knee during the conversation, she gave him permission to hold the touch which eventually led him to hold her hand.
This is how you control the partner who tops you—not by barking out orders, but by giving him permission. By setting the stage for him to take an action you want him to take.
This is how you become a great bottom: Knowing you are in charge of warming the path. Your partner is in charge of walking on it.