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I am afraid that more experienced would approach me and tell me what I did wrong or what I may have forgotten.

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For those of you that enjoy public play, do you ever feel performance anxiety as a top or a bottom? If so, do you feel like that need to prove yourself is part of being accepted as a capable switch that CAN do both? Or maybe that is not really related to identifying as a switch at all, but just something many newer people experience?

Good discussion so far. Before I answer, I need to clarify that public, for me, means that at least one other person was present and watching.

That said, to date, every scene in which I have topped someone has been public. I don't own a slave of my own, so the opportunity for private simply has never arisen. The only time I felt any level of anxiety over it was the very first time I topped someone, but even then, the nerves were more a result of wanting it to be a good experience for the bottom than whether or not someone watching thought I was doing it right.

I don't worry about "uber dom" interfering with my scene. I've had enough bottoms walk away from a scene with me happy and smiling (and occasionally telling total strangers that I definitely know what I'm doing) to be confident in my own abilities. In fact, I've not once had another dominant attempt to interfere or to tell me I was "doing it wrong." Not sure why that is, but male dominants tend to leave me alone.

On the bottom side, however, I was a nervous wreck the first time I played publicly. It stemmed almost exclusively from deep-seated body image issues. However, once I saw I wasn't the only large woman in the room, and the blindfold was put on me, I completely forgot about everyone watching and settled into the scene. From that point forward, I've been something of an exhibitionist when I'm bottoming.

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Not really the type of person that you should grant power to affect your decision to scene in public or not, right?

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Its public bottoming that freaks me out,

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For those of you that enjoy public play, do you ever feel performance anxiety as a top or a bottom?

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ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross

However, it also attracted every "experienced uber dom" to come over, talk about it and give their own little "mini safety talk" to me and the people around me.

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ORIGINAL: Guilty1974

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ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross

However, it also attracted every "experienced uber dom" to come over, talk about it and give their own little "mini safety talk" to me and the people around me.

That's just plain rude. Sometimes, I have the urge to go up to people after their scene to give them some advice on bondage, because I have the feeling that their play could be better than it was, but I always ask if such advice is welcome. If not, fine with me.

What's worse than you have experienced is the uber dom's (nice word) NOT comming to you, but discussing their opions amongst eachother up to point where opinion ends and gossip begins. To quite an extent, i think every public player will have to learn to simply ignore such people.