nontkl said:
Oh my goodness! You brought Angelica? You sure brought the right girl, Jeff!!! Bravo!!! I can't even believe such a thing has happened?!!! No doubt, the mainstream has caught on! PLAYBOY, after almost 50 years has caught on!!
Since I don't get the Playboy channel, I must ask....how much of the segment showed Angelica? I would think she could sell anybody on a tickle fetish!!! She's not a woman, she's a CONVERSION machine!!! (lol!)
What did they interview you about? What were the reactions of the film crew when you started filming? You mentioned it took all day to shoot.....did the girls like all the attention or was it boring and drawn out (like most film sets!!!)? Man oh man, I can think of a THOUSAND questions....but I better not bombard you.
Angelica! Great choice!!! I hope this boosts your sales!!!
I would have to agree about Angelica. As a sidenote, her and Sabrina became a couple for a little while after that day, and much tickling ensued by all accounts
I've gotten a lot of questions like this about the details of the show, so I kind of polished up the notes from my journal that day and some of the days leading up to it into one telling of the days events. Comments and questions are extremely welcome
--- 5/24/2001 --- 9 PM
Today was the day of the Playboy shoot, and I’m just getting home after being at Leonard’s studio for about 9 hours. I am completely drained, emotionally, physically and mentally. I just hope they don’t make me look like some kind of freak in the final edit (when they condense nine hours of effort into nine minutes of television.)
The whole thing started a month ago when I got an email from Jonathan Stein of Eleventh Day Entertainment, which is the Production Company that makes Sexcetera for Playboy TV. He gave a brief sales pitch about wanting to look at the tickling fetish for their show and asked me to give him a call. I talked to him and basically said I was interested but cautious, and would like to see some samples of their work. He didn’t seem surprised or offended and agreed to send me some tapes. I’d never seen Sexcetera, but it sounded like HBO’s Real Sex, taking a look at various sexual interests around the world. My concern was that I personally think RS sometimes shows people and their interests in a very unflattering light. To some extent that’s probably the fault of the subjects, but a lot of it has to do with the editing of the tape, which is determined by the producers’ agenda. For Real Sex it seems to be kind of like a sideshow of sexual oddities, and frankly I didn’t want to be seen that way or allow someone to portray tickling that way with my name attached.
After viewing the tapes, though, I was much relieved. It was obvious that the producers were going far out of their way to make everyone look sympathetic and to make their interests look like something anyone could and should try. Which is probably why Sexcetera is the most popular show on Playboy and Real Sex is an afterthought of HBO. So anyway I called Jonathan and told him that I’d do it, and he said he was now passing me down to the segment producer, a woman named Pamela. He said she would call me soon to talk about the details.
After talking to Pamela for a while, I could see this was going to be a lot more complicated than it first seemed. For one thing, because it’s Playboy they wanted sexual activity between the girls. That wasn’t automatically a problem, but it wasn’t something I’d done before either, and I suspected, correctly, that it would be a lot more expensive to pay a girl to play naked than to play clothed. They also wanted to have as many girls as possible, and I could see right away that this was going to cost me a lot of money for something that had no tangible payback. The third possible rough spot was location. They weren’t enthusiastic about using my house (although I noticed later when I got to see the entire episode that they were flexible about that with other people.) They also had a problem with using dungeons because it’s done so often. In my head I was thinking, “Who do they think I am, Stephen Spielberg?” but I told her I’d do my best to come up with something else. I also said that they had to realize that they were the ones who came to me, and that my small size/limited resources were part of that package. She agreed and asked me to try.
Pretty much the only person I knew who had a studio that wasn’t a dungeon was Leonard, known as Master Len, who is a very skilled BDSM dom, and a really talented photographer. He is also the only person I’ve ever met personally who really deserves the title Master in my opinion. He can tie any knot, handle any tool or device, and can literally flick a cigarette out of your mouth with a bullwhip.
But I digress. In this context, Leonard was the owner of an extremely cool studio that had sets for schoolrooms, bedrooms, dungeons, locker rooms, and several other options as well. Obviously this would be ideal, but I knew already that because of his specific business, Leonard had no use for advertising of the studio, which was one of the selling points Pamela suggested I use when trying to find a location, and that he didn’t usually rent it out to people. I called him anyway, and surprising me immensely he agreed to let me use it, and at a significant discount. Whew!
The next question was who to include in the shoot. This was a far more complicated question than I’m used to because every girl had to be willing to get naked and sexy with other girls. This is not normally something I have to ask my models about, so I was really nervous making the calls. Now I don’t know how heavily this is slanted because of how I already knew these girls, but the incidence of bisexual 19-20 year old girls in Las Vegas has got to be some kind of national phenomenon. In the end I chose Angelica, Phoenix, Sabrina and Shannon. I hoped these four would give us a nice mix of body types, looks and tickle-interests (Sabrina for example is a ler only, while Angelica is a lee.)
But I digress. With that all out of the way I started saving my pennies for the day when I’d have to pay all these people, and tried to keep the butterflies to a minimum.
Which all explains how I ended up waiting outside Leonard’s studio at 9:45 this morning in the summer in the desert. Fortunately I was smart enough to bring two shirt, really in case I spilled coffee, but any moisture was reason enough to be glad I had it
Leonard and Sabrina showed up first, together. Sabrina, bless her heart, was a nervous wreck because she was afraid no other models would show up and she would end up having to get tickled. Sabrina is one of those people for who being tickled is a hard limit, and for her to be willing to do that for me was a true gesture of friendship on her part. Fortunately or un depending on how you look at it, everyone showed up on time and ready to laugh.
Pamela showed up with her team about ten minutes late, which was pretty amazing considering what a maze of nonsense Vegas is. She suggested doing my interview first thing because she knew the day would only get more wearing. It was surprisingly easy to do the interview (and I made note of some of their techniques for my own interviews!) and she said I did very well. I thought she had asked some very smart and penetrating questions that showed she had done some research and put some thinking into the subject of tickling specifically. She asked about growing up with a fetish and how I got into tickling as a business of course, but she also asked me to talk about how tickling fits into relationships, and what the sexy aspects of tickling are. I was skeptical about it still, again because I knew it would depend mostly on how it was cut and reassembled later.
While we were doing that, the other girls, Angelica, Shannon and Phoenix, had all arrived and were downstairs waiting for us to finish. Shannon had brought coffee and we all sat around brainstorming how to set things up for the various aspects of the shoot. I feel compelled to mention here that Shannon is a nudist and pretty much anytime her name comes up you can feel free to picture her naked.
Pamela had sketched out in a notebook how the final segment would look based on our talks. Basically what she wanted to do was show some traditional tickling, some unorthodox tickling, and some sexual tickling. She also wanted to show tickling in a learning context using Leonard’s schoolroom set. Her plan didn’t seem like it would be that difficult to execute really. I also thought it would fit in with my own agenda for the day, which was to push the idea of tickling as something inherently fun and intimate. I hoped in some small way to sell the idea that while it can be taken too far and made into something negative, tickling can also be taken into a deeper level of eroticism and made a part of just about anyone’s relationships. Right now I have serious doubts about how well that came across, but time will tell. (Jeff of the future: At the time of this writing I was really exhausted and not feeling too optimistic. When I viewed the final cut I thought Sexcetera did an admirable job of preserving the core of my message while they pursued their own.)
The schoolroom was already set up so we had the girls get changed into some more appropriate clothing; Shannon in a schoolgirl costume and Phoenix dressed as a cheerleader. Pamela was very clear about what she needed to get for the shoot and I thought she took my opinions very seriously when we talked about tickling on the phone, and since I don’t know anything about producing a television segment, I pretty much kept my mouth shut other than saying “O.K.” a lot. She had Shannon and Phoenix act as models for some short sound bytes about ticklish spots and different tickling techniques, then she had Shannon get naked so I could help Scott do a demo tickling on her
That would be the last time that Shannon had clothes on for the rest of the day. It was really a lot of fun watching the girls try to hold poses for several of the same shots being tickled. I know Phoenix felt a lot of anticipation when she had to stand with her arm raised while Scott walked over and stroked it with a finger for the fourth time in a row.
Scott quickly got into the tickling, and impulsively decided that we were going to tickle Shannon until she said “Scott’s the King,” which she eventually (and I do mean eventually, it took the two of us ten minutes) did. What I didn’t know then but found out later and some of you will find interesting was that Shannon considers herself to be an extremely strong-willed and stubborn person, and in her mind there was no fucking way she was going to say “Scott’s the King.” In fact she was a little mad at me after that and I couldn’t figure out why until Leonard mentioned to me that she had told him about it.
Then Pamela wanted to move all four girls onto a bed for some tied-and-tickled-to-orgasm shots and I began to see how complicated this was going to get. It took us about an hour to get all of the lights and gear cleared and moved and settled for this new shot. Meanwhile in my head I was thinking “I just paid four girls one hours model pay each to sit around drinking coffee and flirting with each other while I moved furniture. Ouchie.”
Once we had the bedroom set up, Pamela played musical girls, trying out different combinations and set-ups. The best scene was when she put Shannon and Angelica tied on the bed with Phoenix and Sabrina on top of them, tickling and teasing them, with a lot of very adult touching, much of it, I have to say, unprompted and seemingly spontaneous. A lot of that is apparently background footage, to go under dialogue from my interview. Again, I placed a lot of faith in Pamela’s judgement, which isn’t something I’m really used to having to do. They also took some shots me of “filming” the girls. (futue Jeff again: alert viewers will notice that the camera is not connected to anything and there’s no battery in it.)
At this point things started to go awry. Pamela realized she needed some talking shots of Scott back on the schoolroom set. This required another 90-minute delay while the clock was still ticking on the girls. But we got it done and then while it was set up, we shot some scenes of Phoenix getting tickled by Sabrina while some people broke for lunch, then the rest of us stopped to eat too.
After lunch I talked to Pamela about my concerns that the shoot was dragging out too long, cost-wise and she was very understanding about it. So the next few segments were filmed in a small garden-spot set at the end of a hallway in the studio. This was already set up as much as it needed to be, and so we were able to shoot several scenes consecutively. I especially wanted to shoot everything that would require Phoenix, because she had someplace to be, and also she is a professional model, which means she was costing me the most for sitting around and waiting. (future Jeff: Phoenix appeared in Hustler in what is now last summer, July I think.)
Finally they wanted to get some shots of me tickling someone. Angelica and I have always had good chemistry so she put on a very cool open kimono-style robe she had brought, and we hung her from the ceiling in loose bondage. I was thinking of this as being a demonstration of technique, so I really indulged myself, tickling her just about everywhere. I started at her hips, tickling her waist and tummy as well, using a light touch because Angelica is a very delicate girl and it’s easy to bruise or hurt her. I tickled one side of her ribs, but the other was freshly tattooed with a gigantic anime girl, masturbating of all things, so I couldn’t touch it. I did spend a lot of time lightly stroking her armpits though. When Angelica is being tickled, in addition to laughing in a very high voice, her face turns into a mask of ecstasy and agony that looks like someone having an extremely intense and painful orgasm. I’ve reached the point now where I don’t really like tickling when I’m working because I’m so distracted with other things that I can’t enjoy it, but tickling Angelica is never anything but fun, and she can never get enough, the greedy girl
Looking at the clock at that point, we were all equally stupefied to discover that it was four o’clock! Pamela still wanted to shoot some interview segments with the girls, so while she was doing that I helped Leonard put everything else away in the studio.
By the time we were all sitting around the main office, drinking yet more coffee, it was six o’clock and we felt like we’d just pulled an all-nighter. Hugs were exchanged where appropriate and we all slouched off into the night.
end.
P.S. For those who have seen or see the actual Sexcetera show, when Scott says in the wrap-up that he wished he had more time to hang out and play, he's talking about Sabrina, who he hit on heavily and gave his cell phone number to
