But fate is a trickster and often plays funny jokes on me. Within the 90 days prior to getting the invitation to write this article I tried to switch; not just once but twice. Shhhh, keep it to yourself. I know, it’s hard to believe that I could want to supplant all of that fear and terror and sadism that I wield so skillfully with the desire to give it over to someone else, feel the exquisite pain that could turn me into a smiling, walking zombie, but it’s true. Deep down inside of me there is a part that would love to go down that bottom road once again.

To really understand how significant the concept of me switching over to the bottom side is, you first need a bit of history about me.

HISTORY OF MS TOY:

I was living in Italy and dating a wonderful Italian man who came to me one night with marks on him – whip marks.

WHIP MARKS??? WHAT-THE-HELL??? WHO WAS WHIPPING MY BOYFRIEND???

That evening ended in a fierce argument with him standing in my driveway yelling curses up at me, while I, on my 3rd floor balcony, screamed obscenities down at him, while my neighbors yelled at both of us to be quiet. (It was Italy, after all.)

Eventually, the result of that torrid night was that I found my way into a wholly different, somewhat secret society where I was taught exactly what those whip marks meant and just how to make them, among other devious things. Oddly enough, the old gentleman who brought me in, taught me as a Mistress, not normally how they did it. As with many lifestyle societies of the time, supposedly you started at the bottom and worked your way up. But this Master decided to forego the norm and trained me as a top. So I ended up with all the skill and learning from the top-side but no real sense of the bottom side at all. I knew how to dish it but not what it meant to receive it.

A year or so later my work contract ran out and I returned to the USA where I played around the edges of the lifestyle for a few boring years, mainly within the context of spiced up sex. I moved from place to place and partner to partner restlessly, haunting bulletin boards and personals looking for something to fill a void in me. One evening I met a seemingly nice guy who literally turned my world upside down on our first date. He wasn’t particularly handsome or remarkable. He was, however, very strong and very self-assured. That night, while sitting on his sofa warming our way towards his bed, he effortlessly turned me from top to bottom.

I’m not entirely sure how he did it. I’ve gone over that encounter hundreds of times and I cannot point to any one thing he did that I can say turned me, but that evening it worked. Oh my, how it worked! The next day I could barely stand to wear clothing, or sit down and work. I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing, mainly because of the intense soreness that covered most of my body.

I called friends and had long discussions about what I was feeling, which was confused, dumfounded, and very unsure of myself. I avoided the nice man that invoked these feelings while I tried valiantly to sort out what was going on, not to mention giving the bruises and soreness time to subside so I could earn a living. Frustratingly, I didn’t really get much in the way of answers. Instead, I got a lot of fluffy philosophical reflection about whether playing with pain was good or bad or a sin or whatever……

……..sigh.

Only a friend of a friend, who was a bottom, seemed to say anything meaningful. She told me,“If you enjoy it then do it. There are no set rules that say you cannot switch sides and play on the bottom for a while.” While the advice was good, the information was lacking.

Quick history catch-up here: Trained in Italy, in a strict, well-structured society, then came back to USA and fiddled around some, but not involved in any real lifestyle society.

So I stayed with the guy that turned me for a while. He was much more active in the lifestyle then I was and before long I was playing in public, and learning all the right lifestyle lingo. Shortly into this period I shifted from the first guy to another, who quickly threw a collar around my neck and I became his “toy”.

This was when I first encountered the term “switch”, which seemed to bear a stigma similar to “bisexual” (which I also was, am). Switches were indecisive and couldn’t get it right. They lived outside the lifestyle structure, drinking from whichever cup was placed in front of them at the time. In many ways, switches were the lepers of the BDSM lifestyle, and because I had begun on top and now was on bottom, I had lifestyle leprosy.

As a bottom, I did well. I loved giving over control to someone else, although I didn’t do it easily. Tops who wanted to play me had to earn my respect and often they had to beat submission into me. But the end result was very powerful and profound. I was a collared slave and much like the heroine from “The Story of O”, I was on a journey of learning and growth within the bounds of my slavery. There were nights when I would come home so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, only to have to do the chores and housework that were a part of my slavery. But the hours in a dungeon that lead to my exhaustion made it all worthwhile.

Then it all came apart when the man that I was living with, that I was collared to, decided he needed to experience bottoming. He asked me to do this for him and I did, the first couple of times.

“NO, WAIT! TIME OUT HERE! THIS IS NOT RIGHT!!!!”

Everything that made any sense to me was once again flipping upside-down. This man that I loved and adored, and was collared to, was now traipsing down the bottom side and he wanted me to do him, as he had done me. It was only fair, wasn’t it?

NO! IT WAS NOT FAIR! IT WAS NOT RIGHT! NO!

While I still knew how to top, I had immersed myself into the bottom side so deeply that emotionally I was suffering a form of shock as my partner turned and tried to (re)turn me in the process. I couldn’t do it.

I felt a deep sense of betrayal as the man that held my collar was now going out and getting beaten, then coming home with that same stupid smile on his face that was supposed to be on mine. What had started out as our happy M/s twosome with the occasional guest beater, had turned into two bottoms rooming together.

What do you get when you toss two bottoms into a room with a whip? You get a nice conversation about the quality of the whip and how to use it, and two bored, un-whipped bottoms. Priceless.

Our four-year relationship was winding down and my slavery, my grounding, a huge part of what held me to the very planet was all slipping away as he explored his relationship with bottoming. We tried for a while to play together and occasionally it went well, but more often I was left emotionally flapping like a pennant in a hurricane.

We often held small, fun parties at our place where we would role-play and integrate that into BDSM. Our characters were tightly laced into our BDSM play, as were many of our friends. The privacy of the parties relieved us from some of the structure and inhibitions imposed by public play, so we were able to explore our roles much more in depth.

It was at one of these parties where the unraveling of my world really happened again. One night the vampires were over, and we were all having a really good time. I was getting wonderful beatings from various partners and loving every minute of it. At some point during the scene the female vampire was saying something about dating a new guy (another vampire). I was half listening, preferring to drift about in my own fuzzy little endorphin world when I catch something being discussed about me being required to top this new vampire boy.

Huh? Wha…?

It seems I had been drafted to be this new guys first experience in the lifestyle and I was to top him. It was a test…to see if he really wanted to be a part of our fun little group and to see if toy was up to the challenge.

Aawww….no way! Yes, way! Aawww…..

Well, I did it. Somehow, I switched out of slave mode and into top mode and I beat that guy right down to the ground and when it was done I sat on the floor and hugged him and cried. Inside I knew some invisible boundary had been crossed, that I had just done something that was going to be life changing and significant, something that I was not at all happy about.

I know, I know. What a load of metaphorical bunk, huh? But this is my article and so I get to tell the tale the way I want.

Shortly after this, I began to top a lot more then bottom. Almost on a lark, I got into Pro-Domming. It was right during this period when “toy” was traded to the male vampire that I had beaten, for a stipend and a laugh. It was also during this period when the now traded “toy” (remember - role-playing here) went nuts, escaped from the vampires and “Ms Toy” emerged from the ashes of the insane former slave. That was a long time ago in 1996. I continued to be a Pro-Domme* for a while, until it stopped being fun, then it was time to stop.

I met yet another guy and we moved in together. He was a novice and supposedly a top so I let him try to learn on me, but my experience(s) and my own attitude made it very, very difficult for him to top me. He tried and tried and it just did not work out. So, because of this, we mutually started reaching outside the relationship to find more satisfying play partners.

While I held onto that switch title, I was finding it more and more difficult to find that right combination of desire and mindset on my part and a suitable partner that could take me out of top mode and drive me into that bottom space where I longed to be. About the only person I would bottom to was the female vampire, who could take me (literally) anytime she wished, although our times together were scarce and limited. Our lives had moved along ever-divergent paths.

During this period one guy I met really stands out. For the most part he was vanilla and was an absolute novice, but oddly he could (and did) exercise almost immediate and total control over me. He could take my breath away and drop me to my knees with just a word and a look.

Whoa! Even now, years later, my heart races just thinking about him.

But after two encounters he decided he needed to be in a vanilla relationship, went out and found a Barbie doll to worship him and cook him pot roast. I was left holding an empty bag called desire.

In 1999 I met the woman that became the first slave that I put a collar on. She has since become my life partner and we live happily together. No, this is not the end of the article. It is a turning point though. You’ve had enough of the History of Ms Toy…let’s move on to theory.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I am a very skillful top. Technically, I’m exceptionally proficient. I’ve developed and taught courses in Safety and Etiquette, Signal Whip, MindFuck, and Sadism. In the BDSM food chain I am a predator with a never-ending thirst for play.

I know a lot about anatomy, where it hurts, where not to play, and where to go full speed ahead. I’m very sadistic and I’m a clown when I play. I often scream in sympathetic agony while playing with someone. If a bottom really doesn’t like the implement I’m using I’ve been known to reverse it and use the other end, just to make sure they REALLY don’t like it. I switch toys rapid fire, usually leave deep bruises (unless marks are forbidden), laugh like a madwoman and when I come out of a scene I’m sweating and panting as though I just finished an athletic event. I’m a consummate exhibitionist, sadist, evil nasty bitch.

I’m tall and strong and very much of the “cat playing with the mouse” mindset. I seldom restrain my victims, preferring to subscribe to the wonderful state coined by Joseph Bean of “Constantly Seducing Consent” from my playthings. I like to drive my partners right up to the edge of a safeword then let them slip back away from it. There are always two things I want from a partner; One is that at some point in the scene I want them to feel they may not survive their encounter with me; and Two is that I want the audience to gasp and feel some of the same fear and terror that my partner is feeling.

Scaring the bottom and shocking the audience are things that really, REALLY turn me on as a top.

I have a friend who describes himself as a bi-poly-switch and says that he is not indecisive, just greedy. He can switch back and forth between top and bottom modes incredibly fast. I have seen him do it within a scene. His ability to go back and forth amazes me. It’s a trait that I admire and cannot conceive of doing myself. I’m way too much of a control freak and that’s a large part of why I’m such a good top. I take control of the scene and of the bottom and run it absolutely like I think it should be run.

One evening my friend and I half-heartedly played, me beating on him even though my heart was only half in it. The scene wound down nicely and so he decided to try to top me. We had talked about this possibility some, so it was no great surprise. Although I tried, it just didn’t come close to working. I could not relinquish my top mode and the scene ended with us snarling at each other. Eventually we worked out a sort of BDSM Detente for the evening.

But this brings us to the very core of the article, the topic of me switching and what it takes to get me there. It’s almost impossible these days to give up the control or relinquish enough trust for someone to take it away from me. Where I can top multiple partners and change technique to fit their needs, I find it almost impossible to switch to the bottom with any ease.

I know what it’s like to bottom. There are times when I crave the cigarettes I gave up two years ago and there are times when I crave bottoming again. Often it is difficult to decide which craving is more intense. Obviously going back to smoking is not a good solution, but then is going over to bottoming?

When I was Pro-Domming I met many powerful people in leadership roles. If the scene went well and the partner seemed amiable, then I might poll them about why they liked to bottom. Most of the time the response I got was that they spent their entire lives being the boss, being in control, running a business or being in government and they needed the bottom side to balance it all out. Okay, I can buy into that. I run two businesses and I am the evil nasty bitch top in need of some balancing too, so can I get it.

“I Need A Hero” playing in the background here.

I have to believe there is the right mixture of ingredients out there to make this old broad switch but that mixture is some rare alchemy indeed. There has to be a partner willing to get bruised in the process of taking me down, tested of resolve, determined to control, and sworn to dominate or Ms Toy will not step aside and let toy out to play.

In the meantime all I can say is “Have Toys, Will Travel.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*NOTE: Domme is a bastardization of Dom, is pronounced the same as Dom, but is used here to denote gender – how un-PC of me.

The Story of O, by Pauline Reage