The Shirt-Rlated Quandary (FF/M)

[Wade1]

Every year my family would take a trip to the South Carolina beach with my aunts and uncles and cousins, renting a beach house and idling through a week of leisure.

On one of those last trips, I was a high-school sophomore. My cousin Angie was a high-school senior and my cousin Kathy was a college freshman. Angie was a slim strawberry-blonde; Kathy was a more sturdily built blonde with the healthy look of a surfer girl, even though she was from Champaign-Urbana. We enjoyed one another's company--it was tolerably pleasant, as friendships enforced by blood kin go--and had developed a repertoire of running gags that sufficiently amused us, such as the ongoing argument about which characteristics each of us embodied in the cousin continuum. Stacy liked to argue that she was "the brainy cousin," for instance, while Kathy flamboyantly insisted on being "the sexy cousin."

My Aunt Nancy--Angie's mom--had come back from a shopping-outlet spree having bought me a long-sleeved T-shirt, but as relatives are often wont to do during that period of one's life, she used my size of two years ago in selecting it. In other words: it was way too small. I tried it on anyway and my cousins and I laughed and made lame but (to us) hilarious jokes about its absurd smallness.

So then, thoroughly uncomfortable, I tried to take it off. Tricky thing was that, of course, it was small at the neck-hole and in the arms, as well as everywhere else, so I managed to pull the shirt up over my head but failed to force my head through the snug neck-hole, or to free my arms from the clinging arms of the shirt.

"Help, you guys," I said.

Laughing, my cousins grabbed the shirt and pulled with all their might (which wasn't that much; they were laughing too hard), succeeding only in fully swaddling my arms and head in the shirt's material, up in a mass over my shoulders, while my torso was left naked.

"Sorry, Wade," Kathy said.

"C'mon, you guys can't leave me like this," I said.

There was silence. Then, alarmingly, I felt the fingers of one hand scampering spider-like across my left ribs. Naturally, I flinched wildly and emitted a yelp. More laughter from the others.

"What was THAT about?" Kathy said.

"I'd forgotten. He's super ticklish," Angie said. (When we were a little younger, Angie discovered one trip about my ticklishness and mostly used it to make me lose at video games. By the next summer, she'd seemingly forgotten all about it. Until, I guess, now.)

"Well, we have to tickle him!" Kathy said.

"No!" I said through the shirt. "Seriously, guys, I'm not kidding. I'm warning you."

A hand squeezed the right side of my abdomen. I convulsed, lurching away from the touch, and laughed again.

"Or what? You'll giggle us to death?" Kathy said with amused scorn.

If I could steel myself against the impending sensations, if I could bring myself not to respond precisely in the very way they wanted me to, I might be safe. But my chronic ticklishness--along with my helplessnesss in this situation, and the fact that I couldn't see anything--worked against me.

One pair of hands--Angie's, I think--started dancing up and down my right side and across my stomach, as the other--Kathy's--tweaked at my ribs and left side. My hopes at achieving stoicism were futile; immediately I began twisting my torso in direct response to their tickling touches, doubling over and wrenching to the side, all the while producing a stream of high-pitched giggles that I couldn't suppress for the life of me.

My cousins were laughing merrily. "He's hiLARious," Kathy exclaimed.

"No, guys, please--" That's about all I managed to say. My back was against the cool fake wood-paneled wall and my laughter was a near-constant cascade as I twisted and wriggled.

Being driven mad by the onslaught of their unseen hands, I staggered to my right, lunging blindly for an escape route. I collided with the bed in the room at the thigh level and lost my balance, plunging helplessly onto the bed on my right side. My respite was brief; nearly immediately I felt fingertips--Kathy's?--skittering up and down my left side, throwing me into renewed giggles and struggling. I twisted helplessly onto my back and then Angie's hands resumed tickling my right side and stomach again. I was even more helpless now.

Even as I writhed and squealed I felt the bed squeak and sag as they sat comfortably on either side of my squirming trussed-up torso and continued tickling. All I could do was convulse and wriggle and laugh uncontrollably as they continued casually to rain intolerable touches upon my helpless stomach and sides. In fact, even in my increasingly frantic state, I came to realize that they were actually holding a conversation with each other--about what they'd be wearing to dinner that night--over my involuntary cackling din. I panicked and despaired--invisibly, under the wraps of T-shirt binding my head and arms--realizing that this could go on forever.

Then, suddenly, mercifully, they stopped. Panting heavily and still sightless, I realized only belatedly that it was because someone had entered the room and interrupted the festivities. I heard Aunt Nancy say "What's going on?" Thank God, I thought. Rescued by levelheaded adulthood.

I heard Angie say, matter-of-factly, "We're tickling Wade."

There was a moment, and then Aunt Nancy said, "Oh, okay." Then the fingers resumed and--cursing my own helpless predictability--I instantly launched back into writhing and hysterical giggling. I couldn't believe it, I was helpless and they were going to tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and tickle me and there was nothing nothing nothing nothing I caould do to stop it and--

They stopped again. I heard Aunt Nancy's voice again. Oh thank God she's come to her senses as a parent and guardian. "By the way, how's Wade like his T-shirt?" she asked.

"It's awesome!" Kathy effused, smiling so big I could hear her dimples.

"Good," Aunt Nancy said. Then I presume she left, because suddenly I was thrashing and laughing again.

I have no idea how long it went on. But for the rest of that trip I was, inevitably, designated "the ticklish cousin."

 

[AcornaMordor]

Awwwwww.. Poor Wade, he's so cute and so victimized...

 

[milagros317]

Nice story. 😀
I do hope that your cousins Kathy and Angie tickled you often during the rest of the week. 😀 😀

 

[philj1]

Can I borrow your t-shirt??

 

[Wade1]

I do hope that your cousins Kathy and Angie tickled you often during the rest of the week. 😀 😀

Well, that is what happens when you're ticklish, isn't it; people find out, and then, unfortunately, they don't forget for a while. It pops back into their head whenever they're feeling evil, or playful, or vinidctive, or bored. Nothing on TV? Let's tickle Wade. An hour till dinner? Tickle Wade. Waiting in a long line for the movie? Hey, Wade!

So, yeah, it became a running theme the rest of that week. Will share more later....

 

[AcornaMordor]

*sigh* I wish I had cousins like you, Wade.. unfortunately, my only cousin like that both fought back and got married and moved away -.-;

 

[Wade1]

*sigh* I wish I had cousins like you, Wade.. unfortunately, my only cousin like that both fought back and got married and moved away -.-;

Well... I TRY to fight back, however ineffectually... perhaps you'd like to share with me some helpful tips from your cousin's repertoire of self-defensive maneuvers!

 

[AcornaMordor]

Well it starts with him being considerably taller than I and me unwisely picking a tickle fight fully dressed in blue jeans and tee shirt by the pool....... Soggy jeans are heavy and it's hard to get away when you're half-drowning.

 

[AcornaMordor]

AND being beaten over the head (however playfully) by a floatation device (i.e. pool raft thing)

 

[Wade1]

Hmmm; doesn't sound like I can usefully apply those tactics to my attackers. Guess I'll have to stick to my old strategy: flee ignominiously. Never works, but instinct's hard to fight...

 

[AcornaMordor]

Well I was like 12, I didn't have a -strategy- then like I do now... I'm sure if he wasn't married and I got him in that basement on the couch watching Nascar, I could -probably- take him... but... unfortunately, my own ticklishness is a little hard to fight against ^.^;; I feel your pain, Wade. My instinct is to flee too.

 

[Wade1]

You feel my pain? Feel it or not, I suspect you would exploit it, given the chance! You're just trying to lull me into vulnerable complacency.

That's my cynically defensive guess, anyway... It's possible I've been tickled too much by friends and acquaintances of late and have grown jaded...

 

[AcornaMordor]

Well of course I would, make no mistake, but not as visciously as I might if I was assured your hands weren't gonna come after me in return *eyes him*

 

[Wade1]

Oh, I'll do anything I possibly can to defend myself; instinct ddemands it. That said, in all candidness, I must admit that do date I've won exactly zero tickle-fights, and resoundingly lost all the rest, so I can only conclude that my self-defense maneuvers are characterized by a certain level of ineptitude...

 

[AcornaMordor]

*ponders for a moment.. then concludes* You're the only self-proclaimed ticklee I've seen around here that -whines- about getting tickled.

 

[Wade1]

Whining? Moi?

(Not that I'm above it, God knows; whatever works...)

 

[AcornaMordor]

*chuckles, snuggles Wade* You're so cute..

 

[Wade1]

Later that same week...

It was just a short walk from the beach house our families rented to a pier and a promenade area with an arcade, cheesy beachwear shops, ice cream and the like. Naturally that's where the younger people tended to graviate to between spates of swimming or lying in the sun.

This particular year there'd been a girl hanging around the arcade who'd caught my eye: blonde, about my age, with a little two-piece bathing suit and very attractive arms. (Yeah, I've got a thing for women's arms. What's that about?) I'd only admired her from afar, but late in the week--probably around Thursday--we'd actually struck up a conversation, sparked by my otherwise useless talent at Donkey Kong.

We wandered out to the beach, chatting about whatever kids that age chatted about back then, when my cousins, boisterous and feeling playful, came upon me from behind with a burst of energy, knocking me briefly off-balance and hanging their arms all over me. Delighted to find me flirting with a girl, they were determined to engage in some serious weapons-grade teasing.

"Hi, I'm Angie!" "I'm Kathy!" "We're cousins." "We're his cousins." "Who are you?"

The girl--whose name I confess I've since forgotten--fell into stunned silence in the face of my cousins' post-lunch spazziness. They laughed and giggled and talked nonsense for a while, buffeting me back and forth under the weight of their arms, and then Angie said, "Give us some quarters, Wade."

"I don't have any," I said, hoping terseness might drive them away sooner rather than later.

"Come on, Wade, we need some quarters," Kathy said.

"I seriously don't have any," I said. I seriously didn't.

They were still hanging on me, their arms dangling over my shoulders, and inevitably one--then both--of them started spidering their fingers aimlessly up my sides and across my abdomen.

I grimaced and tried to steel myself. "Not now," I thought beseechingly. "Not here!!"

But whatever self-control I could muster for my face and mouth didn't extend to my abdomen, which twitched and writhed obligingly under Kathy and Angie's increasingly determined tickling. I tried to extricate myself from their hold but their hands seemed to be everywhere. An embarrassingly high-pitched giggle escaped my lips.

The girl was by now looking at me quizzically. Kathy said, by way of explanation: "He's the ticklish cousin."

Around that time one of Kathy's hands had settled on a desperately sensitive spot to the left of my navel and was effortlessly scrabbling away--the same spot, I realized, she'd focused on earlier that week in the beach cottage--and my already pathetic defenses melted away. Twisting and squirming, I started to sink to the sand, laughing helplessly: "No, guys, please, don't, NOT THERE!"

Cut to: the inevitable result of this encounter, namely me thrashing around in the sand shrieking and giggling as Angie and Kathy merrily tickled me senseless, countless passersby witnessed in bemusement, and the girl who was the object of my affections loomed over me, her head cocked in clinical skepticism, her gorgeous arms crossed across her stomach.

"He's very ticklish," Angie said as her hands darted lightly and devastatingly at my ribs, my stomach, my sides--any spot not currently blocked by my flailing arms.

"Verrrrrrry ticklish," Kathy said as she did the same, though she apparently preferred to seize on a ticklish spot and plant her hand there, resisting my own hands' efforts to dislodge it. "It's why he's called the ticklish cousin, you know."

Eventually they stopped; my squealing subsided and I lay sprawled in the sand, my cheeks flushing hot red. The girl was still staring down at me, clearly unimpressed. No one ever tells you what to say to salvage just such a situation. The bon mot I came up with--"Oh, these guys!"--didn't seem to make matters better.

Then the girl, for some reason, said: "Are his feet ticklish?"

Angie and Kathy looked at each other, their eyes flashing with delight.

"I don't know!"

"I don't know!"

More struggling and ignominy ensued as my cousins fought to get a grip on my kicking legs and to easily pluck the flip-flops from my vulnerable feet. As soon as their fingertips alit on my soles I was shrieking again; I believe the last intelligible thing I said was something along the lines of "No no no no no no no no no." Then time lost all meaning.

When it ended, the girl had departed. I saw her once again later that week, from afar, but she didn't see me (or pretended not to). And my cousins' laughter at my expense continued for a few more days.

 

[MistressValerie1]

Wade, this is one of the best personal-experience stories I've ever read! The tickling action is exactly the kind I love, and your writing style is so clear and vivid that I felt as if I were watching the scenes unfold in front of me.

P.S.: I wish that you had been my cousin 🙂

 

[Wade1]

Yes, I have the feeling being your cousin would be lots of laughs... few of them voluntary...

 

[AcornaMordor]

You could be -my- cousin.... I never see any of them until someone dies.

 

[Wade1]

And at those times, tickling is generally frowned upon by etiquette.

I actually don't see my cousins much anymore either. And for the most part I don't think they've tickled me since that summer. Think I won't remind them about it, just in case...

 

[Wade1]

Final recollaction: The Cousins

On the last night of our beach vacation I was in bed, dozing off. I was sleeping in my usual designated place: the bottom bunk of an otherwise vacant bunk bed on the house's top floor. It was a sleeping assignment that was way cool when I used to have it as a kid but at this stage in my life had come to feel embarrassingly infantilizing. Still, the house was big enough for me to have the small bedroom to myself, so that was a good thing.

I awoke with a start to realize my cousins were looming over me. "We're not sleepy," Kathy said. "We're bored," Angie said. And they plopped down sitting on the edge of my bed to chat idly about random subjects, figuring that if they couldn't sleep I might as well not be allowed to sleep either.

I confess that after the events of the previous several days, my first and overwhelmingly anxious thought was that they were going to tickle me. I was lying there prone, trapped between them and the wall, and the potential helplessness of my position was almost more than I could bear. Given our relative positions they suddenly seemed enormous and I felt so small; it seemed wildly unfair that they had so many hands--four hands might as well be forty given my current vulnerability. But tickling seemed to be the furthest thing from their minds as they chattered on about private jokes and disconnected non sequiturs, so I relaxed somewhat, my only residual anxiety relating to the awkwardness of lying in bed as they sat upright and robed.

Finally, eventually, Angie said "Guess we might as well go to bed, it's late." And Kathy said, "Yep, just have to tuck Wade in first!" Obnoxious and goading they both started poking at the covers, "tucking me in" with unsettling violence. It goes without saying that some of these pokes came perilously close to my sundry ticklish spots, and that proximity together with my already highly calibrated anxiety forced me to twitch in response. They noticed (of course) and were disproportionately amused--and delighted to have stumbled upon another diversion by which they might procrastinate their bedtime. Oh my God, please don't, I thought, no no, they have too many hands!!

I was firmly ensconced under a sheet and a light blanket; my arms were outside the covers and I clutched the covers to my chest defensively. So the bedding served as a measure of protection, dampening the sensations as Kathy and Angie started scrabbling their fingers around my sides and abdomen, cushioning their otherwise devastating impact. But alas, I'm ticklish enough that the covers didn't shield me from the tickling entirely. And the two of them had every possible advantage on their side: I was trapped and immobile, they were bored, and they had all the time in the world. So I was forced to watch with increasing desperation as their four hands scrambled and danced across the covers. I tried not to respond, knowing any response to the stimuli would only egg them on. But the sensations were slowly reaching intolerability, their progress to intolerability only slowed by the covers instead of blocked altogether, and my torso started to writhe back and forth in spite of my best efforts. And the corners of my mouth began to twist and twitch. Turns out my efforts to fight the torture probably entertained my cousins more than outright hysteria would have: they smiled brightly, laughing and coaxing me to succumb. "Come on, Wade!" "Come on!" "You can't do it! Look, he can't do it!" "Tickle tickle!"

Their efforts were, inevitably, successful; soon I was quaking with suppressed but helpless laughter, the relentless fingers having assiduously broken through my defenses. Every finger-stroke was muted by the layers of bedding but still maddeningly ticklish. "There he goes." "I knew you couldn't hold out." "What's it like to be so ticklish, Wade?" "Tickle tickle!" I rocked back and forth, helpless to fend them off but struggling not to make too much noise in the otherwise slumbering house. My arms jerked and flailed as my hands darted to repel theirs, but it was a losing battle--I mention they had a patently unfair four hands between them?!?

I was pretty much beside myself at the incessant scampering of their fingers, and my desperation was only compounded by the knowledge that they might just never stop--they certainly didn't show any signs of getting sleepy anytime soon. Angie's slender fingers and tapered nails lifted and descended with playful and balletic lightness, skittering maddeningly against my barely shielded abdomen with frivolous pincer motions. Kathy's blunter, stronger fingers opted instead for a more constant torturousness, scribbling in constant motion back and forth across my largely immobilized stomach and sides. They both smiled, looking--and this was the terrifying part--thoroughly diverted, like they were playing a particularly engrossing video game. Though their enjoyment was predicated upon my suffering it was also, by this time, completely separate from it, eliminating the already slender possibility that they might eventually cease out of pity. Every passing second was, for me, exponentially more frantic; every passing second was, for them, pleasantly entertaining. So this is what they mean when they talk about relativity. I tried to shoot them beseeching looks through my mostly squint-shut eyes, but they didn't even meet my gaze, so focused were they instead on the trembling and wriggling landscape that was my blanketed torso. So my momentary glances won me only glimpsed details that filtered impressionistically into my frenetic consciousness: the blue rubberbands holding the two little blonde pigtails that Angie had put her hair up into for bed. The interlocking pattern of the springs supporting the top bunk above me. The way the porch light streamed in through the window and glinted off the fluffy blonde hairs on Kathy's arms and wrists--had Kathy always had such furry arms? But such stream-of-consciousness musings did nothing to effectively distract me from the consistently urgent sensation of being tickled by my ruthless cousins.

Relatively quiet though I was, I thought it was pretty clear how miserably I was suffering. But clearly--after my more shrieky performances earlier in the week--my cousins were disappointed and felt compelled to humiliate me more thoroughly. Angie said, "Let's get his ribs under the covers." Momentarily heedless of the late hour I impulsively shouted "No!" Angie and Kathy dissolved into giggles and shushed me in unison, and then both of them started grabbing and clawing at the edges of my covers. My self-defense impulses went into overdrive as I lunged to hold the covers down and prevent their insidious fingers' entrance into my bed proper. I was only wearing a T-shirt and boxers, so I probably ought to have been worried about modesty, but first things first: my mind was already anticipating the cruelly palpable feeling of their fingertips brushing directly against my sides and every instinct in my being insisted that that NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.

My cousins giggled, delighted at the newly urgent effect their plan had had on me. And because a healthy competitive relationship had always thrived among us, their short-term goal suddenly had less to do with tickling me and more to do with getting under my covers, expressly because I so didn't want them to. They pulled and tugged at the blanket and sheet as I strove to seal it against their intrusion. Unfortunately, their unfair quantity of hands conspired against me yet again, as two of their hands could tug at the blanket while two others tickled me through the covers. My efforts were pretty much doomed, and before too long--momentarily distracted with fighting off a pair of hands that were fiercely squeezing my left side through the blanket--I suddenly felt nimble fingers trickling across my right side, nothing but my flimsy T-shirt between them and my desperately ticklish ribs. Between the intolerably ticklish sensation and my anxious anticipation, the breaching of my defenses threw me into a brief hysteria; I threw myself involuntarily back against my pillows and emitted a high-pitched strangled cry that was part giggle, part protest, and part animal utterance. Both my cousins widened their eyes in amazement and disapproval, and they shushed me again, more sternly this time.

"Shhhhhhh!! You'll wake someone up," Angie said even as her hand poked and tweaked at my twitching side under the covers.

"If. You. Wake. Anyone. Up." Kathy said, punctuating each word with a cruel poke at my ribs, then continuing brightly: "we'll tickle you till you pee."

My defensive lines completely overrun, my cousins' hands crawled unimpeded under the sheets and wandered mischievously along my sides and across my stomach. Kathy's hand settled at that spot left of my navel that she'd found to be so reliably crazy-making in the past. And desperate not to wake anybody up and,what, get MORE tortured? Like I could be any more tortured than I already was?--I wasn't thinking very rationally, obviously--I plunged my face into my pillow to muffle my guffaws and succumbed to helpless hilarity. Like so much that pertains to tickling, it's probably a purely psychological phenomenon, but it was on this occasion that I first discovered that tickling fingers beneath bed covers have a unique power to drive you silly. My arms were still outside the covers--clamped to my sides, bent at the elbows, my fists clenched helplessly at my chest--and the effect of my cousins' invisibly scampering fingers under the sheets was comparable to that of being tickled defenselessly from the inside. Meanwhile, the way my body lurched obediently from side to side, and the way my abdominal muscles obligingly contracted at every fingering, struck my cousins as endlessly entertaining.

When it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to maintain anything resembling quiet any longer--my cousins genuinely didn't want to wake anyone else up and get in trouble--they stopped and looked down at me in amused superiority. "Yep," Kathy said, "You're definitely the ticklish cousin."

"Good night," Angie said.

"Don't let the bedbugs bite," Kathy said, running her fingers playfully along my neck and eliciting another ticklish spasm from me.

My cousins left and I stared at the top bunk, entirely too keyed up to sleep.

 

[milagros317]

Thanks for posting the conclusion of your encounters with your cousins, Wade. I envy you having such cousins. 😀

 

[Wade1]

Actually, it occurred to me that the beach vacation in question has at least one more anecdote in it--namely the seventeen-hour car trip back home at its end, during which my cousins had a tendency to get bored and to turn to me as unwilling entertainment...