Stoicism Is Not a Gauntlet Thrown Down

“I don’t make noise and I don’t react much.”

I have learned to say this to tops, on the rare occasions that I get to receive a spanking or flogging. I usually receive perplexed blinking and confused expressions in return.

What do you mean you don’t make noise?

I find that hard to believe.

Sure you don’t.

If you say so.

Sometimes they say one of these lines out loud. The ones who don’t say it, I can see the thought passing through their brains. How can a bottom not make noise? How can a bottom not react to a spanking?

Then we get to playing and…I don’t make noise. I don’t react much. I stand there and take it, absorbing each strike. My body sways with certain strikes. I might grip the top of whatever I’m bent over. My face may grimace if it was particularly painful. That’s about it for floggings or spankings.

I meant what I said. I don’t make noise. I don’t react much.

Some years back, I took a paddling while lying down on a massage table. The top seemed genuinely perplexed that I didn’t bounce all over the table, didn’t kick my feet or pound the table with a fist, didn’t screech and whine and cry out. It hurt like hell, but I took every whack without a sound and without moving.

Why? Because that is my nature.

“But tops like a reaction!” – Sure they do. I know. I’m a top as well, and a sadist to boot. However, I’m not going to manufacture a reaction. I don’t like that kind of disingenuous play acting, from either end of the flogger. My reactions are always genuine.

My former dom/husband told me, a very long time ago (19 years), not to make unnecessary noise. Not to put on a show of making noise and fuss of reactions that weren’t real. I was to make only the sounds he inspired me to make. I was to remain in place, for the most part. He didn’t like fake reactions and a put-on show.

If he wanted me to cry out and show a physical response, trust me, he could easily do that. All he had to do was get out a quirt or the cane and use the top third of his power range. I would dance and make all the noise he wanted me to, whenever he wanted me to. Our clothespins demonstration was titled “Kicking and Screaming”, because I most assuredly did both of those things while they were coming off. The pain was sudden and intense, and every sound I made was authentic. Grunting, groaning, shrieking, the occasional scream. It was all real.

There’s another reason not to put on a show of reactions. Standing there, taking it, not screaming and jumping all over the place…conserves energy. I don’t wear myself out with all that unnecessary motion and energy expenditure. Play lasts longer. I get a deeper high that lasts longer.

When a bottom says “I don’t react much”, that is not a gauntlet thrown down on the field of battle. It’s not a challenge. It’s a statement of fact, one to be taken at face value.

It’s like when I see a top say “I will make you safe word!” Nope, no thank you. If that’s your attitude, then I’m not going to allow you to touch me. You don’t have mutual pleasure in mind. Only inflicting an agony that you think I cannot withstand. That’s not at all what I’m about, even as a sadist.

“I will make you react” is the same thing. If your only goal is to make me scream, then you’re not about mutual pleasure. You’re about causing damage.

You’ll never touch me.

As a top, it’s not my goal to make a man scream. It’s my job to make him so love what I do that he wants it never to end. That way, I get to go on whipping or caning him. I enjoy caning a cock. The goal isn’t to break the cock. It’s not to cause so much pain that he’s crying out. The goal is for it to be right on that edge between pleasure and pain, and be pleasure enough that he’s got the hardest erection he’s ever had in his life.

I played with a bottom one time, some years back, who was almost completely non-reactionary. He told me that if he made any outward sign, he disappointed himself. It put that onto himself. It had nothing to do with me or anything I did to him. It was a challenge to himself, one that I did not take up in any extreme manner.

He had a huge Prince Albert ring. At one point while I was caning him, I put the tip of the cane through the ring and rang that dinner bell. Yep. He reacted, with a gasp and a shudder.

He also had a number of heavy rings around the top of his scrotum. I used the side of my cane to zip zip zip up and down those rings, sending vibrations through his scrotum, cock, pelvis. Yep. He reacted, with a louder gasp and a bigger shudder.

I tap tap tapped my cane against those rings. I think that one actually got a sound out of him.

No one had ever thought to do any of these things before. He was thrilled. He went into a huge high that took him easily half an hour to come down from enough to have his legs reliably under him.

I don’t ever go into play with the goal of making a person react how I want them to, how best pleases my ego. I go into play expecting them to react however they react, and using that as feedback for what is moderate and what is on the harsher side.

It takes no skill to make someone scream and call RED!!!! Any haphazard fool can do that.

Managing the bottom so well that you (as the top) say “okay, we’re going to stop now” and they whine or whimper “please don’t stop now!”…

That is where the skill lays.

About the Author

TylerRose. is known as Dame Tyler in the NYC public SM/Fetish scene. She is an award-winning author who has written two “lifestyle”, four cartoon, and twenty fiction books that you can find on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/TylerRose./e/B00HCPLSP2

You can find more of her work in Fetlife: https://fetlife.com/users/305828

She enjoys crocheting and baking, and will no doubt die with a thesaurus open on her thigh.