I don't know what the record is for lurking, but I must own it by now. This has been nine years in the making. By the length of this post, which is unexceptional and admittedly indulgent, but all true, you might think that I am speaking of the story. I'm not. The story I wrote in an afternoon. But it has taken me nine years - all the way back to the days of ASFT, ABMET, and TickleGal's website - to finally come out. I still don't know how I feel about it. In any event, I have been a dedicated follower, and I trust that many here will find my story relatable and, hopefully, enjoyable.
---------------------------------------------------
The first time I tickled the woman who would be my wife, I was twenty-four years old. She was twenty-six, an older woman, sitting on a barstool to my left. From her purse, she removed a rubber band. She wore her hair long, almost to the middle of her back, and it was forever getting in her face. She pulled it back in a ponytail, the band dangling from her mouth, both arms raised above her head. She was very thin, with a preference for shirts that accentuated her thinness. The shirt she wore that night was no different. It stretched taut across her ribcage and the armholes of her sleeves opened like hoods to reveal a glimpse of her armpits. We were not yet dating then. I didn’t even know her that well. We had been working together, on different floors, for less than four months. But I couldn’t resist. As she was double-banding her ponytail, I reached over, my thumb and index finger pinching at the air menacingly. She smiled and flinched before I so much as touched her.
“Ticklish?” I asked, though her reaction left little doubt. Even when the answer is obvious, I like to ask the question, in part because I like to tease her, a woman I am about to tickle, especially if she is vulnerable, more especially if she is vulnerable and ticklish, and in part because I like to hear her answer. Even when the answer is obvious, some women are obstinate or playful themselves when it comes to admitting ticklishness. They might steadfastly deny it or admit to it reluctantly, almost teasingly, indicating that they might be only “a little” ticklish or ticklish only “in a few places” or ticklish but able to control it. On the other hand, some women are matter-of-fact when it comes to admission. They don’t deny it; they just answer the question, occasionally qualifying it as appropriate to the degree that they believe themselves ticklish: very, incredibly, extremely. One woman, whom I asked in college, after already confirming it for myself, told me, “I’m the most ticklish person most people have ever met.” Not this person. She was ticklish, no question, but no more exceptionally so than any other woman I had ever met. But I liked the candidness of her answer. Another woman, also in college, said, “I’m so ticklish. All you have to do is say the word ‘tickle’ and I’ll laugh.” My experiments with her didn’t go that far, but she was certainly ticklish enough when touched. As for the woman who would be my wife, she didn’t answer me then. Before she could, I gently poked her in the side, about halfway between her waist and armpits. She straightened up suddenly, yelped, then folded over like a deflated raft. That was the end of it.
Knowing her as well as I do now – it is ten years after the fact, of which we’ve been married for seven – my guess is that she didn’t think much of it, either my tickling her or her ticklishness. Only once, maybe six months after that, when I asked her, hypothetically, how she would react if I tickled her while she was tied up, did she take more than a passing interest in describing her ticklishness. Even then, she was brief. “Oh my God, I’d die,” she said. “I’m so ticklish.” And that was the end of it. This woman who would become my wife was ticklish, so much so, in her opinion, that she thought she might die if subjected to it without defense. In my opinion, which, while limited, was certainly the more authoritative of the two with respect to gauging a woman’s ticklishness, she was very ticklish, sometimes extremely so, especially in certain moods and in certain places. She was ticklish, for instance, on the base of her toes but not so much on the soles of her feet. She claimed once to be ticklish around her knees but proved only mildly so, not enough to sustain my interest. She was not ticklish along her inner thighs or in or around her bellybutton. But she could be made to jump or wriggle, depending on the circumstances, at any touch up or down her sides, and, circumstances notwithstanding, would laugh uproariously if that touch was insistent or prolonged. And she was wildly ticklish under her arms. But it would take me years to catalog all these spots, primarily because, like I said, she didn’t think much of it – she seemed neither to like nor dislike being tickled – and I didn’t think much of disclosing my decided interest in tickling her. In fact, until four years ago, I passed off my interest, when I touched on it at all, as one specific to her rather than generic to all women. So my early experiences, both in tickling her and drawing out information about ticklishness from her, were, like the first one, brief.
The second time I tickled her was weeks later. It was a more private setting – alone in my apartment rather than amongst co-workers at a bar – and I was afforded a much better opportunity. We were sitting on the floor, having just returned from another night out with our co-workers, and I was about to kiss her for the first time. She responded. I hesitate to say “hungrily” for all its associations with cheap romance novels, but it was sufficiently passionate to allay any reservations I might have had about simultaneously slipping my hands up her shirt. Her skin was soft and dry, ideal for light fingertip exploration. If that proved ticklish for her so much the better for me. But first I wanted to draw out the moment, build the anticipation, play out all the different possible actions and reactions in my mind. I love the moment before the moment when I am about to tickle a woman for the first time, even though this would not technically be the first time. The first time had come and gone, quick as a pinch and a yelp, but while it may have been memorable for me, even still, it was undoubtedly forgettable for her from the second she lowered her arms, which meant that, as far as she would be concerned, this would be the first time. This was an important distinction. If I was uneasy about revealing to anyone my interest in tickling – and I was, even still – then I did not feel so uneasy about it the first time I tickled a woman since, especially in courtship, an initial inquiry into ticklishness is mostly harmless and inevitable. Or so I imagined. Doesn’t every guy, even one with no lasting interest in the matter, know if and/or where his girlfriend or wife is ticklish?
So, to my thinking, this promised to be the first time all over again. And I especially love it when that time is premeditated, as when giving the woman a massage, working your way gradually, inevitably, from her lower back to more sensitive areas east, west and north, as opposed to the time when it is fleeting and opportunistic, as when sneaking in a tickle while she fixes her hair. So I contented myself to hold her sides, just above her hips, then to slide my hands around to her back, imagining that at any moment I might, seemingly by accident, hit on a spot, as I had at the bar, that would make her flinch or squirm or, more erotic yet, giggle while she was kissing me. All sorts of possibilities raced to mind.
And then I hit on just such a spot.
I had worked my hands up her back and around again to her ribs, now at the sides of her breasts. At some point, with her help, I had removed her bra but not her shirt. I don’t remember how or when this happened. But isn’t that telling? I can remember vividly her every quickening of breath, the way her back tensed and her shoulders twitched as I turned my hands upward, my fingers in the hollows of her armpits, and lightly, as lightly as if to dust a countertop of tiny shards of glass, tickled her – but I can’t for the life of me remember when she lost her bra. At any rate, her reaction delighted me. That she could be so responsive to so light a touch, I felt, spoke much more to her ticklishness than did her reaction to a poke to the ribs. Now I could fall in love with this woman.
In the meantime, I went on kissing her, looking for another first opportunity to tickle. This little dusting of her armpits didn’t qualify, either. It was an accident, not an inquiry. I didn’t ask her if she was ticklish. She didn’t tell me that she was. I figured I could take one more crack at it, only then I would have to move on it. If she giggled again, either I could play dumb and ask her what was the matter or I could assume what was the matter and ask, as I had at the bar, if she was ticklish. Or I could be very devilish and tease her about being so ticklish, express wonder that such a slight touch – punctuated by a second slight touch – could tickle so much, or playfully point out that now I knew where she was ticklish. The latter, that being the devilish approach, is my personal preference, but the former, playing dumb, is the approach I most often take. Sometimes it leads to further inquiry, both dialog and tactile experimentation, sometimes not. But it is less risky insofar as the potential compromise of my interests are concerned. And that, as much as the ticking itself, is what drives me.
I used the same technique in the same spot the next time, the only difference being that I approached it from the front, while fondling her breasts, rather than from the back. The only difference in her response was its severity. She squirmed, her breaths came in three short, spasmodic inhalations, and she exhaled with a little giggle. It was not exactly a laugh, but it was beautiful all the same. I love when a woman laughs continuously and hysterically from being tickled, but I love even more when she wriggles and flinches quietly, the laughter just barely escaping her like a flutter of wings. It is so subtle and so sensuous. I was about to break our lip-hold, as planned, to ask what was the matter, but she surprised me. She pulled back and smiled. “You’re trying to tickle me,” she said.
I was speechless. In no script I had ever written or privately rehearsed did I have the lead actress speaking this line. I didn’t know what to say. More than that, I was mortified. Trying to tickle her? Only someone with more than a passing interest in tickling would contemplate such a thing. She must have been on to me! Rather than pursue the conversation as I had planned, I dropped my hands to her waist and apologized.
And that was the end of it.
Years passed. We dated for three, we were married for three. During that time, I tickled her frequently. Not frequently enough for my tastes but, I sensed, more than frequently enough for hers. I liked to lay on top of her in bed and wrap my arms around her. She’s so thin, it was nothing to lock them on either side, my hands in either armpit, and give her a little squeeze. I tickled her when giving her massages. I loved when she lay on her stomach, her arms folded beneath her head, her armpits exposed. I loved it because she tolerated it and because she was noticeably more ticklish when she couldn’t see it coming. Once, when we were still dating, I sat over her as she lay on her back, alternately tickling her ribs and her stomach, while she futilely tried to cover one or the other. She was hysterical, almost in tears, by the time I stopped. It only lasted a couple minutes, maybe less, but it was the longest I had ever tickled her to that point and I couldn’t help but fantasize how she would react if I tickled her for longer, if she were tied up, arms over her head, or blindfolded or both. I imagined a time when I would admit to her the depth of my fascination, the profound impact it had on my sexuality – such as the fact that, never in my life, had I masturbated to a thought other than tickling a woman – and the extent to which it struck me sometimes as less of a fetish and more of a compulsion. I read stories, viewed pictures, downloaded video, even listened to audio off the Internet. But I always deleted all traces of it – files, bookmarks, cookies, history, cache, recently viewed documents – when I was finished. I wrote stories, too, and invariably deleted those as well. I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her everything.
But, really, I preferred the idea that she might figure it out for herself, that she might inquire about it without my prompt, that she might even instigate it. So I dropped hints. Like the time when I asked her, hypothetically, how she would react to being tickled if she were tied up. And another time when, in the heat of tickling her, I told her that I wanted to tie her up and “lightly tickle her all over”. She consented – I knew she would, for my sake, even if the idea struck her as strange – but later that week, when we had agreed to do it, she didn’t say anything. And neither did I. I incorporated it into foreplay. I ran my fingers up her sides as I gave her oral, and I tickled her under the arm she used to prop herself up as she gave me oral in return. I asked that she lay at my side and take me between her feet or calves, stroking methodically, while I tickled her toes. Unable to speak of it in explicit terms, I settled on a euphemism when I spoke of it at all with her. I called it “access”. Would she give me “access”? I asked periodically. And always she would accommodate me. And always I knew that she would, if only I could ask. She would accept it, even if she didn’t share in it, even if she didn’t understand it. It aroused me like nothing else – just to move over her as she reached overhead, armpits exposed, to take hold of the bedframe and to imagine how she would react if I tickled her as she did – and, afterwards, it shamed me like nothing else as well.
And then, finally, after six years of dropping hints, I dropped the charade.
To be continued ...
---------------------------------------------------
The first time I tickled the woman who would be my wife, I was twenty-four years old. She was twenty-six, an older woman, sitting on a barstool to my left. From her purse, she removed a rubber band. She wore her hair long, almost to the middle of her back, and it was forever getting in her face. She pulled it back in a ponytail, the band dangling from her mouth, both arms raised above her head. She was very thin, with a preference for shirts that accentuated her thinness. The shirt she wore that night was no different. It stretched taut across her ribcage and the armholes of her sleeves opened like hoods to reveal a glimpse of her armpits. We were not yet dating then. I didn’t even know her that well. We had been working together, on different floors, for less than four months. But I couldn’t resist. As she was double-banding her ponytail, I reached over, my thumb and index finger pinching at the air menacingly. She smiled and flinched before I so much as touched her.
“Ticklish?” I asked, though her reaction left little doubt. Even when the answer is obvious, I like to ask the question, in part because I like to tease her, a woman I am about to tickle, especially if she is vulnerable, more especially if she is vulnerable and ticklish, and in part because I like to hear her answer. Even when the answer is obvious, some women are obstinate or playful themselves when it comes to admitting ticklishness. They might steadfastly deny it or admit to it reluctantly, almost teasingly, indicating that they might be only “a little” ticklish or ticklish only “in a few places” or ticklish but able to control it. On the other hand, some women are matter-of-fact when it comes to admission. They don’t deny it; they just answer the question, occasionally qualifying it as appropriate to the degree that they believe themselves ticklish: very, incredibly, extremely. One woman, whom I asked in college, after already confirming it for myself, told me, “I’m the most ticklish person most people have ever met.” Not this person. She was ticklish, no question, but no more exceptionally so than any other woman I had ever met. But I liked the candidness of her answer. Another woman, also in college, said, “I’m so ticklish. All you have to do is say the word ‘tickle’ and I’ll laugh.” My experiments with her didn’t go that far, but she was certainly ticklish enough when touched. As for the woman who would be my wife, she didn’t answer me then. Before she could, I gently poked her in the side, about halfway between her waist and armpits. She straightened up suddenly, yelped, then folded over like a deflated raft. That was the end of it.
Knowing her as well as I do now – it is ten years after the fact, of which we’ve been married for seven – my guess is that she didn’t think much of it, either my tickling her or her ticklishness. Only once, maybe six months after that, when I asked her, hypothetically, how she would react if I tickled her while she was tied up, did she take more than a passing interest in describing her ticklishness. Even then, she was brief. “Oh my God, I’d die,” she said. “I’m so ticklish.” And that was the end of it. This woman who would become my wife was ticklish, so much so, in her opinion, that she thought she might die if subjected to it without defense. In my opinion, which, while limited, was certainly the more authoritative of the two with respect to gauging a woman’s ticklishness, she was very ticklish, sometimes extremely so, especially in certain moods and in certain places. She was ticklish, for instance, on the base of her toes but not so much on the soles of her feet. She claimed once to be ticklish around her knees but proved only mildly so, not enough to sustain my interest. She was not ticklish along her inner thighs or in or around her bellybutton. But she could be made to jump or wriggle, depending on the circumstances, at any touch up or down her sides, and, circumstances notwithstanding, would laugh uproariously if that touch was insistent or prolonged. And she was wildly ticklish under her arms. But it would take me years to catalog all these spots, primarily because, like I said, she didn’t think much of it – she seemed neither to like nor dislike being tickled – and I didn’t think much of disclosing my decided interest in tickling her. In fact, until four years ago, I passed off my interest, when I touched on it at all, as one specific to her rather than generic to all women. So my early experiences, both in tickling her and drawing out information about ticklishness from her, were, like the first one, brief.
The second time I tickled her was weeks later. It was a more private setting – alone in my apartment rather than amongst co-workers at a bar – and I was afforded a much better opportunity. We were sitting on the floor, having just returned from another night out with our co-workers, and I was about to kiss her for the first time. She responded. I hesitate to say “hungrily” for all its associations with cheap romance novels, but it was sufficiently passionate to allay any reservations I might have had about simultaneously slipping my hands up her shirt. Her skin was soft and dry, ideal for light fingertip exploration. If that proved ticklish for her so much the better for me. But first I wanted to draw out the moment, build the anticipation, play out all the different possible actions and reactions in my mind. I love the moment before the moment when I am about to tickle a woman for the first time, even though this would not technically be the first time. The first time had come and gone, quick as a pinch and a yelp, but while it may have been memorable for me, even still, it was undoubtedly forgettable for her from the second she lowered her arms, which meant that, as far as she would be concerned, this would be the first time. This was an important distinction. If I was uneasy about revealing to anyone my interest in tickling – and I was, even still – then I did not feel so uneasy about it the first time I tickled a woman since, especially in courtship, an initial inquiry into ticklishness is mostly harmless and inevitable. Or so I imagined. Doesn’t every guy, even one with no lasting interest in the matter, know if and/or where his girlfriend or wife is ticklish?
So, to my thinking, this promised to be the first time all over again. And I especially love it when that time is premeditated, as when giving the woman a massage, working your way gradually, inevitably, from her lower back to more sensitive areas east, west and north, as opposed to the time when it is fleeting and opportunistic, as when sneaking in a tickle while she fixes her hair. So I contented myself to hold her sides, just above her hips, then to slide my hands around to her back, imagining that at any moment I might, seemingly by accident, hit on a spot, as I had at the bar, that would make her flinch or squirm or, more erotic yet, giggle while she was kissing me. All sorts of possibilities raced to mind.
And then I hit on just such a spot.
I had worked my hands up her back and around again to her ribs, now at the sides of her breasts. At some point, with her help, I had removed her bra but not her shirt. I don’t remember how or when this happened. But isn’t that telling? I can remember vividly her every quickening of breath, the way her back tensed and her shoulders twitched as I turned my hands upward, my fingers in the hollows of her armpits, and lightly, as lightly as if to dust a countertop of tiny shards of glass, tickled her – but I can’t for the life of me remember when she lost her bra. At any rate, her reaction delighted me. That she could be so responsive to so light a touch, I felt, spoke much more to her ticklishness than did her reaction to a poke to the ribs. Now I could fall in love with this woman.
In the meantime, I went on kissing her, looking for another first opportunity to tickle. This little dusting of her armpits didn’t qualify, either. It was an accident, not an inquiry. I didn’t ask her if she was ticklish. She didn’t tell me that she was. I figured I could take one more crack at it, only then I would have to move on it. If she giggled again, either I could play dumb and ask her what was the matter or I could assume what was the matter and ask, as I had at the bar, if she was ticklish. Or I could be very devilish and tease her about being so ticklish, express wonder that such a slight touch – punctuated by a second slight touch – could tickle so much, or playfully point out that now I knew where she was ticklish. The latter, that being the devilish approach, is my personal preference, but the former, playing dumb, is the approach I most often take. Sometimes it leads to further inquiry, both dialog and tactile experimentation, sometimes not. But it is less risky insofar as the potential compromise of my interests are concerned. And that, as much as the ticking itself, is what drives me.
I used the same technique in the same spot the next time, the only difference being that I approached it from the front, while fondling her breasts, rather than from the back. The only difference in her response was its severity. She squirmed, her breaths came in three short, spasmodic inhalations, and she exhaled with a little giggle. It was not exactly a laugh, but it was beautiful all the same. I love when a woman laughs continuously and hysterically from being tickled, but I love even more when she wriggles and flinches quietly, the laughter just barely escaping her like a flutter of wings. It is so subtle and so sensuous. I was about to break our lip-hold, as planned, to ask what was the matter, but she surprised me. She pulled back and smiled. “You’re trying to tickle me,” she said.
I was speechless. In no script I had ever written or privately rehearsed did I have the lead actress speaking this line. I didn’t know what to say. More than that, I was mortified. Trying to tickle her? Only someone with more than a passing interest in tickling would contemplate such a thing. She must have been on to me! Rather than pursue the conversation as I had planned, I dropped my hands to her waist and apologized.
And that was the end of it.
Years passed. We dated for three, we were married for three. During that time, I tickled her frequently. Not frequently enough for my tastes but, I sensed, more than frequently enough for hers. I liked to lay on top of her in bed and wrap my arms around her. She’s so thin, it was nothing to lock them on either side, my hands in either armpit, and give her a little squeeze. I tickled her when giving her massages. I loved when she lay on her stomach, her arms folded beneath her head, her armpits exposed. I loved it because she tolerated it and because she was noticeably more ticklish when she couldn’t see it coming. Once, when we were still dating, I sat over her as she lay on her back, alternately tickling her ribs and her stomach, while she futilely tried to cover one or the other. She was hysterical, almost in tears, by the time I stopped. It only lasted a couple minutes, maybe less, but it was the longest I had ever tickled her to that point and I couldn’t help but fantasize how she would react if I tickled her for longer, if she were tied up, arms over her head, or blindfolded or both. I imagined a time when I would admit to her the depth of my fascination, the profound impact it had on my sexuality – such as the fact that, never in my life, had I masturbated to a thought other than tickling a woman – and the extent to which it struck me sometimes as less of a fetish and more of a compulsion. I read stories, viewed pictures, downloaded video, even listened to audio off the Internet. But I always deleted all traces of it – files, bookmarks, cookies, history, cache, recently viewed documents – when I was finished. I wrote stories, too, and invariably deleted those as well. I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her everything.
But, really, I preferred the idea that she might figure it out for herself, that she might inquire about it without my prompt, that she might even instigate it. So I dropped hints. Like the time when I asked her, hypothetically, how she would react to being tickled if she were tied up. And another time when, in the heat of tickling her, I told her that I wanted to tie her up and “lightly tickle her all over”. She consented – I knew she would, for my sake, even if the idea struck her as strange – but later that week, when we had agreed to do it, she didn’t say anything. And neither did I. I incorporated it into foreplay. I ran my fingers up her sides as I gave her oral, and I tickled her under the arm she used to prop herself up as she gave me oral in return. I asked that she lay at my side and take me between her feet or calves, stroking methodically, while I tickled her toes. Unable to speak of it in explicit terms, I settled on a euphemism when I spoke of it at all with her. I called it “access”. Would she give me “access”? I asked periodically. And always she would accommodate me. And always I knew that she would, if only I could ask. She would accept it, even if she didn’t share in it, even if she didn’t understand it. It aroused me like nothing else – just to move over her as she reached overhead, armpits exposed, to take hold of the bedframe and to imagine how she would react if I tickled her as she did – and, afterwards, it shamed me like nothing else as well.
And then, finally, after six years of dropping hints, I dropped the charade.
To be continued ...
