Hello,
I've been a lurker for a while, but hadn't really had the courage to come out of the shadows and contribute to the discussion until recently. I thought I'd "introduce" myself by sharing a brief experience that I had when I was in college. It wasn't a very long tickle, but it had a profound influence on my view of tickling going forward.
Prologue: As the youngest of four kids, and being small for my age to boot, I was on the receiving end of a lot of tickling as a young child. It was always a horrible experience for me - I couldn't fathom why my siblings seemed to take such perverse pleasure in torturing me like that.
Tickling always carried a negative association for me. Even Saturday morning cartoons were like that - there were a few cartoons I watched where the villian would torture his victim(s) by tickling them, but the heroes would never use a tactic as diabolical on the villians. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to be that evil. (I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes too. Whenever my friends and I played cops and robbers, I was always a cop. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to be a robber, even though there were always some kids who eagerly volunteered for that role.)
Thankfully, something happened that helped me change my attitude toward tickling in a positive way. But that is another story...
After my attitude towards tickling changed somewhat, I went from the boy fearful of all things tickle-related to the kid who looked for opportunities to tickle my friends whenever I could. This happened more after my teen-age growth spurt, after which I could hold my own in tickle fights far more than I could previously. Strangely enough though, even though I would get excited by tickling encounters, I never really associated tickling with sex or foreplay until I got to college. I had tickled girls I dated in high school, but none of them was really into it like I was, though one tolerated it occasionally because she knew I liked it. But it wasn't a shared interest.
The experience that opened my eyes to this side of tickling when I got to college happened in my second year. I was living in a boarding house and a long-time female friend had come over for dinner. After dinner, we were in the downstairs common rec room cuddling and watching a movie (we were the only ones there). The movie was boring, though, so eventually a tickle fight broke out. And in sharp contrast to my younger self, I eagerly embraced the opportunity to participate.
And so did my friend. Of all of my friends, this was the one who actively enjoyed tickle-fighting, and we had some doozies over the years. She was feisty and mischievous, but I was bigger and stronger, so inevitably I was able to achieve the upper hand. I had maneuvered her into a position where I was sitting on the couch and she was lying on her back on my lap, with her feet to my left and her head propped up on a cushion to my right. Most importantly, her arms were pinned behind her, held in place by her own weight, but also by my hands at her sides keeping them immobile. From that position, though, I could hold her arms motionless by my four fingers on each hand, but it left my oppose-able thumbs free to probe her excruciatingly ticklish sides. There was a pregnant pause in the action while I leaned down and grinned at her, letting her revel in her helpless situation for a few seconds before I launched my undefendable tickle attack.
And then, she kissed me.
It was a deep, sensual kiss, sending waves of endorphins flooding to my brain. I remember my last coherent thoughts being that I figured that she was only kissing me to keep me from tickling her, followed by the thought that if that was true, I was completely okay with that! I released her arms and held her gently, and rather than take the opportunity to take advantage of my distraction and resume the tickle fight, she returned the embrace and we had a long, wonderful, make-out session.
It was incredible! Here was a girl who was as turned on by tickling as I was! And it was in that moment that I came to realize how wonderfully tickling could be incorporated into a sensual encounter. It was bizarre to me that I had never realized it before.
My relationship with that friend never progressed farther than that night. We both independently realized that were great as friends and didn't want anything more out of our relationship than that. But we did engage in some fun tickle fights, and though they never amounted to anything more than that, they always stirred in me memories of my first truly sexy tickling encounter!
I've been a lurker for a while, but hadn't really had the courage to come out of the shadows and contribute to the discussion until recently. I thought I'd "introduce" myself by sharing a brief experience that I had when I was in college. It wasn't a very long tickle, but it had a profound influence on my view of tickling going forward.
Prologue: As the youngest of four kids, and being small for my age to boot, I was on the receiving end of a lot of tickling as a young child. It was always a horrible experience for me - I couldn't fathom why my siblings seemed to take such perverse pleasure in torturing me like that.
Tickling always carried a negative association for me. Even Saturday morning cartoons were like that - there were a few cartoons I watched where the villian would torture his victim(s) by tickling them, but the heroes would never use a tactic as diabolical on the villians. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to be that evil. (I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes too. Whenever my friends and I played cops and robbers, I was always a cop. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to be a robber, even though there were always some kids who eagerly volunteered for that role.)
Thankfully, something happened that helped me change my attitude toward tickling in a positive way. But that is another story...
After my attitude towards tickling changed somewhat, I went from the boy fearful of all things tickle-related to the kid who looked for opportunities to tickle my friends whenever I could. This happened more after my teen-age growth spurt, after which I could hold my own in tickle fights far more than I could previously. Strangely enough though, even though I would get excited by tickling encounters, I never really associated tickling with sex or foreplay until I got to college. I had tickled girls I dated in high school, but none of them was really into it like I was, though one tolerated it occasionally because she knew I liked it. But it wasn't a shared interest.
The experience that opened my eyes to this side of tickling when I got to college happened in my second year. I was living in a boarding house and a long-time female friend had come over for dinner. After dinner, we were in the downstairs common rec room cuddling and watching a movie (we were the only ones there). The movie was boring, though, so eventually a tickle fight broke out. And in sharp contrast to my younger self, I eagerly embraced the opportunity to participate.
And so did my friend. Of all of my friends, this was the one who actively enjoyed tickle-fighting, and we had some doozies over the years. She was feisty and mischievous, but I was bigger and stronger, so inevitably I was able to achieve the upper hand. I had maneuvered her into a position where I was sitting on the couch and she was lying on her back on my lap, with her feet to my left and her head propped up on a cushion to my right. Most importantly, her arms were pinned behind her, held in place by her own weight, but also by my hands at her sides keeping them immobile. From that position, though, I could hold her arms motionless by my four fingers on each hand, but it left my oppose-able thumbs free to probe her excruciatingly ticklish sides. There was a pregnant pause in the action while I leaned down and grinned at her, letting her revel in her helpless situation for a few seconds before I launched my undefendable tickle attack.
And then, she kissed me.
It was a deep, sensual kiss, sending waves of endorphins flooding to my brain. I remember my last coherent thoughts being that I figured that she was only kissing me to keep me from tickling her, followed by the thought that if that was true, I was completely okay with that! I released her arms and held her gently, and rather than take the opportunity to take advantage of my distraction and resume the tickle fight, she returned the embrace and we had a long, wonderful, make-out session.
It was incredible! Here was a girl who was as turned on by tickling as I was! And it was in that moment that I came to realize how wonderfully tickling could be incorporated into a sensual encounter. It was bizarre to me that I had never realized it before.
My relationship with that friend never progressed farther than that night. We both independently realized that were great as friends and didn't want anything more out of our relationship than that. But we did engage in some fun tickle fights, and though they never amounted to anything more than that, they always stirred in me memories of my first truly sexy tickling encounter!
