My question is, if more aftercare is required, do you receive it?
I do think it's important to communicate about aftercare needs. In fact, the other night I fucked up because my bottom needed aftercare and I didn't realize it. I should have been better about communicating with her and more attentive to her needs. We talked about it, and in the future I'll do better.
That's communication. And it's not a BDSM thing. It's a thing everyone doing sex needs to be doing. Negotiating is a BDSM-ism. It means setting a limit on the amount of aftercare you're going to give. It's when a top says, "no, I'm not going to give you what you need because you didn't specifically ask for it and then put out for it." Negotiation is defensive, not loving.
Even if the bottom's negotiation was to say "I need you to do at least this thing for me," the fact that they had to say that defensively is a problem. Negotiation is like trying to write a contract with someone who you know is going to try to find loopholes and fuck you over. Why would you play with someone like that?
If the bottom's negotiation is "give me everything I need -- period", then why does that need to be said explicitly? Isn't that part of decency?
This is part of a larger criticism of the attitude of this author: the "there is no one way" bullshit. There is a one way: the top gives the bottom everything they need. It's okay to fuck up -- the top is human. But it's important to recognize that anything less than 100% is a fuck-up and it needs to be fixed.
"No one true way" has become meaningless -- but that's a whole other rant.
There are tops whose "negotiation" is saying, in advance, "I don't do aftercare." So I guess if you play with that person and then you realize you need something afterwards, you're in trouble? But then, you agreed to no aftercare, so I guess you're screwed.
That's not a corner case; things come up in play all the time that weren't anticipated in advance. I'm sure you agree with that. In fact I'd say it's the norm rather than the exception. Negotiation isn't a good enough model.
From now on it's going to be part of my after-play MO to ask the person what I can do for them. That also means, in theory, not committing to more than one play date at an event. (But I don't think I'm going to do events anymore anyway.)
One last thing. The aftercare article also brings up this "arrange for someone else to do aftercare if you can't" thing. That sounds okay, but I've seen what it looks like in practice. A top who leaves their first bottom in pieces to go play with their second bottom is not someone I can trust.
Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone runs into unforeseen problems. I think this is about the attitude people take towards their mistakes. And what they do when an unexpected problem happens. The mainstream BDSM community's answer is not sufficient.
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