Literary tickles

[ontheverge]

Has anyone ever compiled a listing of tickling in books/magazines/printed media in general? I was just looking at a copy of an old Judy Blume book, which I've had since childhood, and found a line about a woman tickling her husband's belly. In my roomful of books, I have several mainstream fiction and non-fiction titles where tickling is mentioned. Do I feel a comprehensive list coming on?

 

[Boomtown13]

Dear OnTheVerge,

I'll tell ya, I remember every tickling that ever occured in a Stephen King book, if you care about those. There aren't many. The Talisman has a prolonged tickling scene, but it features a little boy's feet. Christine has a cute mention in a paragraph, and Wizard and Glass has an old woman running a nail down a young woman's bare sole, eliciting a "screamy laugh." Those are really the only notable ones. In The Langoliers, the stewardess feels a "tickle" nagging her mind about a certain passenger. But that doesn't really count.

Ready for the greatest mainstream fiction which contains tickling?...

Ready...

Here it is...

The Babysitter, by Robert Coover.

I've posted before that everyone in this forum needs to get a copy of that short story. After you read it, let me know, and I'll tell you about when I saw the story acted out on stage here in Los Angeles.

And it goes without saying that the children's rack is a virtual reservoir of tickling. The Tickle-Octopus, Mr. Tickle, The Tickly Hand, etc. So many.

Great question, Verge.

- Booktown

 

[dig dug dog]

Boomtown--

Where can we find this treasure?

OMG--I'd love to hear about that play!!!

An-ti-ci-pa-a-tion....

dig dug

 

[siamese dream]

And it goes without saying that the children's rack is a virtual reservoir of tickling. The Tickle-Octopus, Mr. Tickle, The Tickly Hand, etc. So many.

Great question, Verge.

- Booktown

I remember this sesame street book my mom read to me when I was a really little kid... the whole book was about how Grover was getting tickled by everyone in sight. Thanks mom 😀

I swear Grover was a tickle fetish puppet...he was always getting kids on the sesame street TV show to tickle him. Which is kinda creepy, since he's a puppet and can't really feel it.

 

[daryl]

there was a play, I think Robert Hivnor was the writer, called The Ticklish Acrobat. If I remember the plot correctly, the young woman stopped being ticklish once she started having sex. Didn't know how everyone here would feel about that 🙂

 

[milagros317]

Great Catherine

Within the category of famous literature, or at least literature by famous authors, there is the play "Great Catherine" by George Benard Shaw.

The title character is Catherine the Great (Empress of Russia at the time--late 1700's). There is a visiting British military officer that she is lusting after, but he offends her by not being receptive, as he is newly engaged to be married. She has him siezed, bound, and brought to her private chambers. She then tickles him without mercy for an entire scene of the play. A lot of the tickling is by poking him in the ribs with her bare toes. She also suggests "When an Empress shows you her foot, you should kiss it." Well worth reading.

There was a movie verson made, with the same title, in the late 1960's.

 

[Shem the Penman]

The problem with literary tickling scenes is that they usually take up just a paragraph or two in the course of an entire novel. But they're still a pleasant surprise to find.

In one of Salman Rushdie's books -- I think it's Shame -- there's a story about a doctor who is called in to take care of a young female patient whose protective parents will only allow him to see the body part he has to treat, covering the rest of her with a sheet. One time, he has to brush an antibiotic powder into her armpit, and he can hear her giggling and trembling on the other side of the sheet, "for Nasreem Ghani was very ticklish." It's a great little scene.

Jane Gaskell's Atlan has a brief scene where the heroine gets her boots pulled off and her feet tickled. Sharon Green also included mentions of tickling in a couple of her older books, back when she was doing pseudo-John Norman.

 

[BigJim]

I remember that bit from Wzard And Glass! Wasn't it where Rhea of the Coos is testing Susan Delgado's virginity? I loved that when I read it. I must remember to try the same thing some day.......

 

[Novus]

I remember a long time ago I got a little book out of a box of cereal. I still remember it to this day that it was a tickling book. The book was about a brother and sister team who held kids down on the playground and tickled them. There was even a description of them tickling a girl until she started crying. Somehow they got abducted by aliens who did know what laughter or tickling was. The aliens wanted to laugh and they wanted them to make them laught. The aliens weren't ticklish so they tickled the boy and girl. I don't remember how it ended. Since it came in a box of cereal this is probably one of the most obscure tickles in literature.

 

[tklr5150]

Novus, I remember that book in that box of cereal too. I think it was a mini R.L. Stine. I was like 13 at the time but I still remember it. Weird.

Also, I remember reading on an old tickling site somewhere that the book Looking For Mr. Goodbar has a tickling scene in it, and that it was acted out pretty nicely in the book-on-tape version. Sadly, I never had a chance to find it at my library and hear it for myself.

 

[chase]

Jane Gaskell's Atlan has a brief scene where the heroine gets her boots pulled off and her feet tickled.

Thank you, Shem!! I was actually going to mention that scene in this thread, but couldn't remember the book title or Author. I was at a friend's house and he had the book. I started flipping through it and magically came upon that part of it. I asked to borrow the book, and kept it for a long time beside my bed, reading and re-reading that one sentence. Never did get around to reading the whole book! 😀
Thanks again for the ID!

Regards,
Chase

 

[Shem the Penman]

No problem. I first read the Atlan series back when I was in my early teens, and that bit had quite an impact on me as well, so I know how you must have felt ...

 

[JoBelle]

It's not a great piece of literature by any means, but TICKLE BUGS is just a great kids book!!

I think you can go to ticklebugs.com and buy it. A friend who knows about my "quirk", as she calls it, bought it for my kid!!

It's a bunch of little bugs that that tickle each other, ending in the reader getting tickled. Cute for those whose children seem to be ticklefreaks in the making. Mimi?? Mimi?? 😉

Joby

 

[renny]

I want to know if there are any books with tickling that aren't so mainstream out there. I've looked through some of those little BSDM novels and have yet to find anything.

 

[Phineas]

I still have a copy of that little R.L. Stine booklet floating about in my room, somewhere. It's called "Don't make me laugh", and yes, the two kids are kidnapped by aliens. So the kids tickle the aliens, but the aliens don't laugh, so they tell the kids they're going to execute them. The kids, naturally, freak out at this and start bawling. THIS, the aliens find utterly hilarious, and set the children free for achieving their goal of making the aliens laugh.

 

[Synful Pryde]

Nono, the aliens got PO'd because they laughed so much that it hurt. Kids ended up being up **** creek anyway, if I recall correctly.

~Syn

 

[Boomtown13]

Boomtown--

Where can we find this treasure?

OMG--I'd love to hear about that play!!!

Dog, you'll find "The Babysitter" in any bookstore. Remember, it's a short story, so it'll be in a collection by Robert Coover. I don't know the names of Coover's collections, because way back when I was a teenager, I was given a handmade anthology of three stories, and "The Babysitter" was in it. It was my friend's cute way of showing me she had picked up on my penchant for tickling. When she gave me the ribbon-bound collection of photocopied stories (as a birthday gift), she said, "I think you'll REALLY like the middle story." (which was the Coover)

So, in the story, the babysitter gets tickle attacked quite a few times, and when I saw it was being adapted for the stage, I couldn't believe it! I took my playwrite friend to see it with me (she's super-uber-hyper ticklish). Sadly, though, no real tickling happened on the stage. You'll see that the story itself is fragmented, not cohesive. It's told by each character, and none have a firm grip on reality. Everyone (the kids, the dad, the boyfriend) is fantasizing about the babysitter. (WARNING: the story gets pretty dark at the end.) So when they blocked the stage interpretation, they had everyone tell their narratives from different parts of the stage, never intermingling. When the babysitter was being wildly tickled, the actress wriggled and laughed alone at center stage. The next day, though, I ran into the actress at a hip-zing-bang organic cafe, and we talked a little about it. I brought up the tk scenes, natch, and she said, "Yeah, when I read the story I thought to myself, 'how are we gonna do this?'" I did not go on to ask her if she's ticklish or anything though. The conversation was too much above that.

Speaking of plays, there's a quick tickle in Moliere's Tartuffe. Kinda cute. Baroque tickling.

Big Jim, you're remembering the scene EXACTLY from Wizard and Glass. Good job!

- Roland the Tickler

(Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came...
For tickling.)

 

[Shem the Penman]

"The Babysitter" appears in Coover's Pricksongs and Descants.

I have a copy of it, since one of my professors handed it out for study during a writing class years ago. Now THAT was a surprise...

"The Babysitter" was also made into a movie, with Alicia Silverstone as the title character. But I'm sure more people in the community are familiar with the tickling scenes from that than the ones in the story.

 

[evilqueen]

Most porn paperbacks are short on tickling. Two that aren't:

A Man with a Maid by Anonymous, published by Grove Press. Set in Victorian England, a man wreaks his revenge on the woman who spurned him by subjecting her to many erotic torments, including tickling. Soon she is converted to lechery and helps him procure more girls, and lots of them are tickled too. A Man with a Maid Parts II, III, and IV were also released as the story evolved to include a school for the correction of wayward and arrogant young women. I think these books are out of print but can be found in used bookstores, and probably by searching online.

Tabitha's Tease by Robin Wilde, published by Masquerade Books 1996. Tortuous F/M and F/F tickling and teasing on almost every page. This is a great book and my copy of it is, um, well-read. Again, check online for copies.

 

[hiram]

Literary Tickles

When I was about 10 years old, I used to read the Hardy Boy Mysteries by Franklin W. Dixon. I think the first or second of the serries was called The Great Airport Mystery. The version I had was an original from back in the days when it was first written (1930's I think). It was originally owned by one of my uncles. In the rare case that anyone here isn't familiar with such as Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew stories, these here high school kids that took on the worst of organized criminals of their day.

Anyway, the class foil of the Hardy boys was a lad named Chet Morton. He was always complaining about one thing or another. At a graduation party he ate too much food and complained about that. His sister decided she could stand no more of his complaining so decided to teach him a lesson by tickling him, which she proceeded to do. Then she encouraged the others at the party to hold him down and gang tickle him. As a youngster with just the first drops of Mother Nature's boosters starting to course through my veins, and just barely beginning to note the fun of coeducational tickling, this was quite a scene for me.

I bought a newer edition for my son when he was about 10. Just for the reminiscence, I quickly scanned through it looking for that scene. Alas, the publishers, in their wisdom, apparently decided this was not proper grist, so they edited it into oblivion. Too bad.

 

[milagros317]

[beginning deleted]

Tabitha's Tease by Robin Wilde, published by Masquerade Books 1996. Tortuous F/M and F/F tickling and teasing on almost every page. This is a great book and my copy of it is, um, well-read. Again, check online for copies.

There is a sequel to this book, same author and publisher, entitled "Tabitha's Tickle." I thought it was even better than Wilde's first book. It was published in 1997.

 

[munchausen]

a bunch

Here are a couple I haven't seen mentioned:

In Diane Galbadon's The Fiery Cross, there's a scene in which a new husband plays with and tickles his wife's bare foot in bed while she tries to suppress giggles.

In a fantasy novel called The Book of Kantela, the title character (a princess--the author makes a big deal out of her going barefoot inappropriately) gets tickled on the ribs while making love--very brief.

Here are a bunch that I posted before in the mainstream forum--enjoy, and I really hope more people will share.

A little culture: literary tickling jackpot!
The following passages are from George Bernard Shaw's novel *An Unsocial Socialist.* Pretty interesting, whatever your politics...The entire novel is available free online through the Project Gutenberg site.

"Stuff, Gertrude," said Agatha, with a touch of earnestness. "One
would think, to hear you talk, that your grandmother was a cook.
Don't be such a snob."

"Miss Wylie," said Gertrude, becoming scarlet: "you are very--oh!oh! Stop Ag--oh! I will tell Miss--oh!" Agatha had inserted a steely finger between her ribs, and was tickling her unendurably.

"Sh-sh-sh," whispered Miss Carpenter anxiously. "The door is open."

"Am I Miss Wylie?" demanded Agatha, relentlessly continuing the torture. "Am I very--whatever you were going to say? Am I? am I?
am I?"

"No, no," gasped Gertrude, shrinking into a chair, almost in hysterics. "You are very unkind, Agatha. You have hurt me."

"You deserve it. If you ever get sulky with me again, or call me Miss Wylie, I will kill you. I will tickle the soles of your feet with a feather," (Miss Lindsay shuddered, and hid her feet beneath the chair) "until your hair turns white. And now, if you are truly repentant, come and record."

This is from the same novel:

"I suppose you think that very funny. You take good care to make yourself considered," sneered Jane.

"You cannot say that I do not consider you," said Gertrude reproachfully.

"Not when I tickle you, dear."

"I consider you, and I am not ticklesome," said Jane tenderly.

"Indeed! Let me try," said Agatha, slipping her arm about Jane's ample waist, and eliciting a piercing combination of laugh and scream from her.

"Sh--sh," whispered Gertrude quickly. "Don't you see the Lady Abbess?"

Miss Wilson had just entered the room. Agatha, without appearing to be aware of her presence, stealthily withdrew her arm, and said aloud:
"How can you make such a noise, Jane? You will disturb the whole
house."

Jane reddened with indignation, but had to remain silent, for the eyes of the principal were upon her.
Two more literary tickles
There are references to foot tickling in two other literary works that I can think of right now:

1. *The Wide, Wide World* by Susan Warner has repeated references to one girl threatening another with tickling, and contains this passage:

"You're a fine gentleman!" said Nancy, tartly.

"Have you done what I gave you to do?" said Mr. Van Brunt coolly.

"Yesthere!" said Nancy, holding up Ellen's bare feet on one hand, while the fingers of the other secretly applied in ticklish
fashion to the soles of them caused Ellen suddenly to start and scream.

This is a terrible novel, in my opinion, and you're never really sure how old the girls are, but its a tickle, and the whole thing is available for free on the net.

Also, one of the stories in Bobbie Ann Mason's excellent short story collection, *Shiloh and Other Stories*, contains a reference to an uncle threatening his wife, saying he'll "String her up and tickle her feet till she hollers 'uncle.'

Just sharing...


Here are some literary tickles I haven't seen mentioned:

1. Simplicius Simplicissimus: Old (enlightenment era) German book, lots of translations in English in academic libraries. In the chapter when the soldiers take his grandfather's farm, the naive narrator describes that his grandfather was lucky because he confessed with a laugh what others were tortured for. The soldiers tied him down, spread salt on the soles of his feet, and let their goat lick it off, which "so tickled my knan he nearly burst laughing."

2. The big-time Oprah bookclub book "She's Come Undone" has a couple of scenes when the narrator gets her feet tickled by a guy. Kind of a downer, though, because I think he turns out to be a rapist.

3. The Erskine Caldwell short story "Pa and the Grass Widow" has the closest thing to sexual tickling I've seen in a mainstream book. A young boy goes to find his pa and finds him with the grass widow, a pretty young lady who has taken her shoes and stockings off while he tickles her bare toes with a chicken feather. He dwells on this quite a bit, and the father is jumping with glee whenever her squeals reach a certain pitch.

4. A couple more comics: the japanese comic "Barefoot Gen" has a scene in which the title character is tied up and his brother tickles his feet. Do with that what you will. Also, the adult comic "Ironwood" (by the same folks who put out "The Blonde" has a brief tickle in vol. 1, when two women are having sex and one sucks the other's toes, making her yell, "stop! that tickles!"

That's all I can think of for now.

 

[Phineas]

Nono, the aliens got PO'd because they laughed so much that it hurt. Kids ended up being up **** creek anyway, if I recall correctly.

you recall incorrectly, I'm afraid. The only thing I'm not entirely sure about is the ending, which either had the kids let go, or the aliens may have decided to keep them on for future entertainment, being taken back to their planet as jesters or something.

There was also an old book called "Blind Date", I forgot the author, but it was about a psychotic girl who posed as a blind date to get revenge on some guy. There was one really brief passage where he threatens to tickle her while they're driving, but she swerves the car "accidentally" and they nearly hit someone, so he's like, "okay, okay, I won't tickle you, at least not while you're driving."

 

[ontheverge]

Keep 'em coming, folks. I'll post my list soon...I don't want to duplicate any of your submissions (no pun intended. Really.)

 

[Strelnikov]

Two from Robert A. Heinlein

Time Enough For Love: There's a scene early in the book where one character says something like, "I know all of your ticklish spots and I'll tickle every one!" and then follows through. Always pictured it as m/f, though that's not explicit (this makes sense if you read the book.)

The Puppet Masters: Sam tickles Mary's feet while they're trashed on super-speed. This has dire consequences a few pages later.

Strelnikov