Counting and ritual

Ritual is the cheapest intensity available. It adds nothing to the force and a great deal to the experience, and it gives the person on the receiving end something to hold on to. It also has one specific failure mode that almost nobody warns about.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Everything here is between consenting adults over 18. Ask someone why they count and they will usually say it is traditional, which is true and useless. What counting actually does is mechanical, and once you can see the mechanism you can use it deliberately instead of copying it from something you read.

What ritual is doing

Four things, none of them decorative.

It enforces a pause. A stroke, then a number, then a word or two, then the next stroke. That gap is where anticipation lives, and anticipation does more work than force does. A count is a metronome that stops a top from rushing, which is the mistake nearly every nervous top makes.

It gives the receiver a job. Without one, the only available activity is endurance, and endurance is passive and lonely. With a count, there is something to do, something to get right, and something to fail at. People consistently report that a set they had to count was easier to stay present for than the same set in silence.

It makes the thing finite. Twelve strokes counted has an end you can see coming from about number seven. Twelve strokes uncounted is an unknown quantity of an unknown length, which is a different and much harder experience.

And it moves control around visibly. Being required to ask for the next stroke is consent said out loud, repeatedly, which is why some people find it the most powerful part of the entire arrangement and why others cannot get the words out.

The forms

Counting

The simplest version is a number after each stroke. The next step up is the number plus a word: "six, thank you". The strongest version is the number, the thanks, and a request for the next one.

Counting down instead of up changes the feel considerably. Counting up builds. Counting down towards zero is a release with a visible horizon, and it is kinder. Worth knowing which one you want.

Thanking

This is the one that divides people sharply. For some it is the whole point: the small formal act of accepting what is happening, said out loud, over and over, until the acceptance becomes real rather than performed. For others it is the single most objectionable thing on the menu and they will tell you so.

What it does, when it works, is close the loop. A stroke arrives, and instead of being something done to her that she absorbs in silence, it becomes a small transaction she has to complete.

She cannot be passive. Every few seconds she is required to state, in her own voice, that she has received it and is not objecting, and after twenty of those the objection has quietly gone out of her somewhere below the level of decision. People describe that as the moment they stopped bracing.

The full form is "six, thank you, sir". Build up to that rather than starting with it, because it asks for three things at once from somebody whose attention is elsewhere. Start with numbers only. Add the thanks in the second or third session. Add the address after that.

Neither reaction to thanking, loving it or loathing it, is more advanced than the other. It is worth asking about specifically during negotiation, because it is the element most likely to be assumed by one person and dreaded by the other. And watch what it does to the voice: thanking is one of the better indicators available, because the moment the thanks starts arriving flat and automatic rather than effortful, she has gone somewhere and you should slow down and check.

Asking for the next

"May I have another, please?" The hardest of the standard forms and the one with the most in it, because it puts the receiver in the position of requesting a thing she does not want, which is a strange and interesting place to be.

It also has a practical benefit that gets overlooked. It hands the pacing to her. She cannot make it stop by staying silent, but she can slow it right down, and a person who has gone from asking briskly to taking twenty seconds over each request has told you something without either of you breaking the frame.

Formal address

Sir, ma'am, or a surname with a title in front of it. In a formal British scene this is often the element that does the most work, and it costs nothing.

The reason it works so hard is that we do not use these words any more. There is no ordinary situation in adult British life where a woman calls a man sir and means it, so the word cannot be said casually. Every time it comes out of her mouth it marks the difference between the room she is in now and every other room, and it does that in one syllable, repeatedly, without anybody having to explain the arrangement.

Which one to use is worth thinking about rather than defaulting. Sir is the workhorse and carries authority without much warmth.

Ma'am is the usual word for a woman in charge, more formal again and slightly military, and English mouths often stumble over it, which is worth testing out loud before the evening. Surname with a title, Mr Ellis or Mrs Ellis, is the coldest of the lot and my own favourite in a formal scene, because a title and a surname are how you address an official, not somebody you know.

Then decide the grammar of it, which sounds fussy and is not. Is it appended to every answer, so that "yes" is always "yes, sir"? Is it required with the count, so that six becomes "six, thank you, sir"? Is a missed one corrected, and if so how: repeating the answer properly, or an addition to the number?

A correction procedure is where this element stops being decoration and starts having teeth, and the standard version is simply the word "again" said flatly until it comes out right.

Two cautions. The first is fit. A form of address is a costume for your voice, and a costume that does not fit is obvious to everybody. If saying "sir" makes her laugh, that is a fit problem rather than a failure of commitment, and there are other options above. Some couples solve it by going the other way entirely and using an ordinary first name in a particular tone, which can be more chilling than any title.

The second is leakage. Decide in advance whether this word exists only inside the scene or applies more widely, and never let it appear where anybody else can hear it. The version that runs continuously through an evening or a weekend is a different animal from the in-scene version, and it belongs with the rest of the ongoing behaviour rules at protocol and deportment.

Beginnings and endings

Ritual is at its most useful at the edges. A stated reason and a stated number at the start. A pause before the first stroke while she holds position. A formal announcement that it is finished at the end, rather than a gradual fading out. Time facing a wall before or afterwards, which is nothing but ritual and is remarkably effective for it.

The end marker matters most. A scene that stops because the top ran out of energy feels different from one that ends because it was declared over, and the second one is easier to come down from.

Announced numbers and unannounced ones

Telling someone there will be twelve gives her a horizon, and a horizon makes almost anything more bearable. Refusing to say how many removes it, and the same twelve strokes become considerably harder.

Both are legitimate. What is not legitimate is announcing a number and then quietly exceeding it, or using the old trick of losing count and starting again, unless that particular trick has been agreed in advance. It is a fine device for people who like it. It is also, in plain terms, a way of administering more strokes than were agreed, so it belongs in the negotiation rather than in the moment.

How to use ritual without letting it hide things

Break it on purpose, periodically. Every so often, stop and ask something that is not a number: where that one landed, which of the last few was worst, what she wants more of. If the answer arrives late, or slurred, or with no content in it, that is worth more than any number of correctly counted strokes. There is more on this at reading your partner.

Listen to the tone rather than the accuracy. A count that has gone flat and toneless, or unusually fast and clipped, has changed for a reason.

And put the safe word explicitly outside the ritual. This is the bit people forget. If a receiver is in a formal frame where speaking out of role feels forbidden, she may not use plain English when she needs to, because the whole structure has been telling her for twenty minutes that only certain sentences are permitted. So say it out loud beforehand: ordinary English overrides everything, at any moment, and using it is never a breach of anything. See safe words.

When ritual becomes a performance nobody wants

The failure looks like this. One person has read about a ceremony, imports the whole thing at once, and the other person spends the evening in a costume drama they did not audition for. Both of them are watching themselves from outside the room. Nothing lands.

The reliable tell is self-consciousness. If either of you feels like an actor rather than a person, the ritual is too big for where you are.

What works is starting minimal and adding one thing at a time. Numbers only, for a few sessions. If the numbers feel good, add the thanks. If that settles, add the request, or the form of address, but not both in the same evening. Drop without argument anything that makes either of you cringe. Ritual accumulates well over months and imports badly in one go.

The other failure is rules invented on the spot. Deciding mid-scene that she should have been addressing you a certain way, and then adding strokes for having failed to, is not ceremony. It is a stitch-up, and receivers can tell the difference instantly even when they cannot say so at the time. Agree the ritual beforehand along with everything else, and if you want the experience of unexpected rules, agree that in advance too.

Why people hold on to it

The receivers I know who value counting most do not describe it as an intensifier, though it is one. They describe it as a handrail. When everything else has gone loose and wordless, there is still a number to say, and saying it keeps them attached to the room and to the other person.

That is a good thing to have built into a scene, and it costs nothing but the discipline of waiting between strokes.