Whose Pleasure Is This, Really? — A Top’s Perspective
At the end of my last workshop on impact play, we briefly started discussing whose pleasure we actually center as impact tops. My insanely experienced co-facilitator (who is, incidentally, even more insanely popular for his impact tools and skills at BDSM parties…) straightened up a little and said, “I’m a sadist, so I expect people to suffer for me”—with that smile only true sadists can display.
I, on the other hand, get paid to make people happy, so by default I consider myself a service top (all right, maybe 80%. I like to keep 20% for my own fun, but psssst…). It matters to me that I provide a high-quality service for a fair amount of money. Of course, I can frame it as dominance, even as sadism—but that’s mostly because I respect that some people need a D/s dynamic in a pain context to have a more holistic experience. It’s an art on it’s own - how to frame a situation that it doesn’t feel as service topping, but instead as dominance. And I’ll admit it takes a lot of energy out of me. I focus my full attention on one person for two hours or longer — cognitively, emotionally, physically and sometimes spiritually too. I love doing it, but it’s exhausting. That’s why getting paid feels like a fair energy exchange to me.
My friend M. doesn’t get paid for it, so his energy exchange has to come from his own pleasure. I can absolutely relate to that. When I flog someone privately, I also want to have my own fun—so 80% of the time I do what pleases me. My partner gets that 20%—after all, I want them to last longer and trust me, because that ultimately brings us both deeper into the play, which means more fun for me in the end. I choose people who are aligned with that dynamic, so in practice it evens out to something like a 50–50 split of pleasure.
And that’s an important point: you need to find the right person for your own kind of fun. As a professional, I can serve about 90% of the people who come to me for a session. Privately, I probably accept closer to 10% - the ones that I feel can serve me by receiving.
M. sometimes adds that he’s a reaction fetishist, on top of enjoying making people suffer (which, of course, are closely related— he has about two decades of experience playing consciously and safely…). My own happy place is being a bit of a scientist. I’m genuinely fascinated by how different bodies are, how individual pain pathways lead into people’s souls, and how each body part responds and how that sensation outputs - through movement and voice. Sometimes I’m purely drawn to the technical challenge—flogging a 3D object, delivering sensation exactly the way I want it - with the tip of the falls, with a larger surface, upside down, wrapped around the body, etc.
Fairly often people ask me what exactly pleases me in being an impact top. In general, I go through phases with my own pleasure focus. In the beginning, I had a high-pain-threshold phase because I was fascinated by how much people can take before they call red on me. And for that I needed people whom I absolutely trusted for using the agreed system of brakes. Then I went through a “beginners” phase—I was obsessed with giving people their first flogging experience, trying to crack their bodies open, even though those bodies often started in fear and anxiety that only gradually dissolved. Success was my pleasure. Later, I had a phase where I loved flogging she/her bodies, because the wavy nature of pleasure often feels more natural and accessible there than in he/him bodies. Then came my nipple-pain phase (which, to be fair, isn’t entirely over yet)—a kind of ultimate technical challenge with eye contact that already narrowed the group of people I’d play with privately, because, well, not everybody likes nipple pain.
These days, I’m honestly fascinated by penis flogging. I love how the penis reacts to my floggers, and how precise I have to be with force, area and even with the angle of impact to do it well. At this point, skipping penis flogging at Atrium isn’t optional with me (or nipples, if I’m having a softer day…). And there we are—my own pleasure within a professional session. Do they know it’s about my pleasure? No. Do they enjoy it? Yes. That’s why I love this job.
In the end, I think what really matters is finding your own fair energy exchange. It’s simply not sustainable if you feel depleted after an intense session of flogging someone. Find your own pleasure as an impact top, and receivers will find you.