I have been topping for about thirteen years. I have worked and trained under some truly amazing tops, masters, mistresses, ladies, doms and dommes. I have learned things from each one and I have used what I have learned.

Even with all this time in the kink and bdsm world, I am still taking classes when I can and I still spend time listening and learning from others in the community. I truly believe that I could do this for the rest of my life and still not learn all the things that can be done and ways to do things in the kink world. There is just so much and so much that is always coming up and out.

Learning is the best way to keep yourself and your sub safe and happy. And there is no shame in saying you don't know how to do something in order to learn how to do it.

This past holiday season, I was given The New Topping Book. I pored over the book for months learning what the authors Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy had to say. They wrote tips and pointers on how to do parts of kink and did talk about some of the scenes that they have had the chance to do over the years.

But the big thing about The New Topping Book is that it goes into wonderful detail about the ethics that should be used when doing any scene, even rights and responsibilities of tops. They even talk about how to work though a bad scene or if a scene didn't go as planned. They talk about where to go to find new people to play with if you are a top that doesn't have someone to play with. They talk about how it's totally fine for a top to communicate what they want for themselves and for their bottoms. They also delve into the darker side of the BDSM world, how it works on the mind of both players, and how to do it all safely.

Safe play is the really big push of this book and the authors talk about safety though the whole book and push how important it is for them.

I have heard that Easton teaches classes at some of the play spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area. I haven't had the honor of taking one of her classes, but I would love to. If her writing has brought even more ideas and ways to be safe to me, I would love to actually hear her speak publicly.

Even though I have been poring over this book for months, I would still say that it's a must for anyone that has ever thought about topping or wanted to try their hand at being a dom/domme. It's also a must for any veteran dom/domme as well. I've picked up a copy of it for friends that haven't had the chance to read it yet.