BedroomBondage - Ten Tickling Thoughts

My Ticklish Background

When I was growing up, my sister and I used to have Ticklefights. The ones I recall most clearly were refereed by my brother. We would climb onto our parents' king-size bed at opposite corners. My brother would announce the round by yelling "ding!" and then my sister and I would come at each other. We'd reach out and try to tickle each other while blocking our own ticklish areas. The goal was to tickle your opponent so effectively that they would convulse so much that they'd lose physical control and be unable to defend themselves. Ticklish areas we tried to attack were necks, tummies, underarms and feet. I didn't find out until years later that knees are ticklish.

One special tickle technique we had was to grab the other person's arm and dig our chin into the crook of the elbow. This really tickled! But no one I've ever mentioned this to since has recalled any similar tickle technique like that.

Erotic Tickling

I didn't think of tickling as erotic until I was a young adult. There was a guy in my social circle who was friends with everybody but not dating anyone. One time at a party there were several of us crowded on my couch, and I was lying down at one end so my feet ended up over his lap. He asked me if I'd like a foot rub and I said sure. He began by giving me a basic, comfortable foot rub. I'm a sucker for a foot rub, for me it's really fantastic. (Some people claim that this is because I'm a Pisces and so am "ruled by my feet.") It seemed like he kept rubbing and massaging my feet for a half hour or more. I was complete putty in his hands. Then he stopped pressing and massaging, and pulled his hands away and began very lightly brushing his fingers over parts of my soles. A light touch here, a butterfly flutter there, a soft slide up the arch, on and on. My feet were always rather ticklish so normally this would've been making me jump a mile, but because I was so relaxed, the tickling felt different than ever before. It felt tickly but in an electric, sexual way. I lay there absolutely motionless, feeling these marvelous thrills in my feet and in other parts of my body. He watched my face so he knew I was really enjoying this special tickly experience.

I think any area of the body has the potential to become sexually sensitized. I once had an oriental boyfriend who would tickle and caress the back of my neck. He regarded it as erotic and he touched in such a way that it made my neck very sexually sensitive.

How Ticklish Am I?

I'm moderately ticklish to very ticklish, depending on how sensitive I am on a given day, what part of me is being attacked, and who's doing the tickling.

Some men aren't aware that at certain days in a woman's cycle, her body can be more physically sensitive than other days. For some people this affects their ticklishness, which is why sometimes it's so easy to tickle a gal and other days she seems impervious.

My underarms are the most ticklish part of my body. It's not only just below the arm, either; the skin down my side is particularly ticklish to light brushing of the fingers.

I'm responsive to the finger-in-the-ear technique and the top-knee grab, and occasionally I'm reactive to the under-knee tickle and the neck tickle.

My feet are ticklish to different degrees. The soles and toes are especially sensitive, but the tops of my feet can occasionally be tickled too. It also depends on what instruments are used. Fingers are very effective, but I really scream when anybody mouths or tongues my feet. Occasionally I've had to appear in foot-fetish videos where someone "worshipped" my feet with their tongue and I was supposed to not laugh and simply act pleased. That is so hard to do when I'm being tickled so intensely by their mouths! I just grit my teeth and tense up all my muscles and hold my breath as best I can.

Like most ticklish ladies I've seen, my skin sensitivity dulls the longer I'm tickled. This is just like any physical stimulation (for instance, if you massage one spot for too long, it no longer feels good). Some tickling aficionados don't realize that tickling one spot or one area for a long time can lead to desensitization. To really keep tickling someone and keep them in stitches, you need to vary from spot to spot. Watch her face, listen to her noises, note the jerking arms and legs, and when reactions decrease, move to another area of her body and start anew.

Tickling and Trust

I have a negotiation form that I give to ladies before I do photo sessions with them. The form lists types of bondage, gags, props, and activities that might happen during the session. The model goes through and circles her favorite stuff and crosses out anything that's beyond her personal limits.

The most common item crossed out on these forms is tickling. Whenever I ask them about it, the explanation I usually hear is, "It's too torturous."

Tickling can torment someone. But I think the underlying issue is that most peoples' experiences with tickling have been within the context of being tickle-tortured by siblings and friends when they were growing up. As adults, most of us have never experienced a sensual, sexual tickle-session -- mixing a rhythm of attack and respite -- that remains within our limits while gradually increasing our sensitivity and sexual energy level until the tickling becomes an erotic ecstatic sensation.

The ladies who fill out my forms have not, by and large, been tickled in a situation where they could trust their partner to tickle them for pleasure instead of torture.

Can Tickling be Made into an Erotic Experience?

There's a page I really like at TickleGal's website which discusses how to link tickling with positive emotions. It's titled "How to Get Your Partner Into Tickling." I think it's a great essay. It centers on a very basic theory -- that if you take an element and combine it with other happy and pleasurable things, then the new element will also become a happy and pleasurable thing for the partner.

I feel this positive-association technique can work with just about any neutral activity. (But note, it's hard to make this work with an activity that your partner initially views negatively.) I've also heard people talk about using this technique to help their partner become more excited about bondage in general... for instance, if every time you tie your gal up you give her an orgasm, then over time she may start to associate the act of getting tied up with the thought of pleasure.

And now, on to some work-related topics about tickling...

How Come There isn't a Tickle Section at Bedroom Bondage?

Once in a while I've tried photographing fetishes that aren't exactly bondage per se, or are related to bondage. I've occasionally posted photos for things like carrying, hand-over-mouth, chloroform fantasy, fem-jep and peril. These specialties have always been greatly appreciated but then a number of specialty fetishists always ended up hanging out at the site, emailing me weekly and demanding that I put up more pics of their fetish.

This is a bondage website, and I generally have my plate full just trying to make sure I post enough bondage pictures to keep up. So I don't have any plans to turn BedroomBondage.com into Chloroformed.com or whatever.

Anyway, I was very hesitant whenever I got suggestions from people asking me to post tickling photos and mpegs. Tickling has connections with bondage, but it's not a main-menu item for most bondagers. Also, I haven't felt there was a need for me to fill in any internet gaps because there are already several good websites showing tickling -- including my partner Eric's site at Foot-Fetish.com. If anyone wants to see me getting tickled, he has several old vids of me "getting it."

Is it Fun To Make Tickle Videos?

I've been in several tickling videos and tickling scenes over the years, and directed several tickle videos for Harmony and Close-Up.

As a model/victim, it's very hard to get tickled for several scenes in a row. By the end of the second scene, my stomach muscles hurt from laughing. And sometimes my facial muscles hurt too from the smiling. Tied tickling can be hard on the limbs. Generally, the wrists and ankles are tied down, and I can't stop my limbs from jerking and yanking uncontrollably. So the joints can get sore, no matter how masterfully I've been tied down.

On the bright side, it's a blast to receive all that attention from some beautiful woman who's leaning over me and running her hands all over my body and feet. And if it's a man tickling me, I like that feeling of his dominance, the control he has over me. It can even be fun to beg for mercy.

Being the director or tickler is a real charge. You feel so much power! I think the most exciting time I ever had was with Ashley when she was spread-eagled and I had a group of people tickling her, all at my beck and call. I felt like I was king o' the world!

Can Tickle-Fans Tell Who's Ticklish and Who Isn't?

I've seen this argument going back and forth in the newsgroups and on websites for a long time now. As far as I'm concerned, the answer is NO.

Sure, it's yes if it's a person who's had a lot of experience tickling actual partners -- in particular, tickling different women with individual, unique reactions to stimulus. But I've seen so many self-appointed experts online claiming that they could absolutely tell without a doubt that so-and-so wasn't ticklish, or that what's-'er-name was ticklish... And they were so wrong! I don't mind if a guy can't tell, but for him to march around the internet claiming to the masses that he knows who's ticklish... ha!

If you want to know how I can tell if a model is ticklish, well, it's not only my direct powers of observation and seeing what happens when I tickle them. It's also because the models are honest when the cameras aren't rolling. They'll tell you right out whether they're ticklish or not. Models have an admirable level of honesty going anyway; during most shoots I hear all kinds of personal stuff without even asking any questions -- they love to talk about what position they like in bed, whether their boyfriend's good at foreplay, how long it's been since they last had sex, how sensitive their nipples are, etc. etc.

And, again, I've tickled many gals, and boy can you tell when somebody's directly under your fingers...!

What's More Important:
Whether She's Really Ticklish, or Whether She Can Act Ticklish?

This is another issue I've seen discussed on the internet. Everybody spends a lot of time dialoguing about whether this gal or that gal is ticklish. They imply that it's the only important question when considering acquiring a tickle video.

Actually, I suspect that the real issue is whether a scene turns the viewer on. Not all super-ticklish gals react the same. To me the quintessential example is Ashley Renee. I've tickled her several times over the years, for various videos. She tends to reach a point of no return, where she gets so overwhelmed that her breathing seizes up and we have to stop because she can't breathe. Whenever Ashley gets to that point she freezes and she can no longer laugh or sometimes even move; she's just all clenched up. I've seen detractors claim that this frozen non-movement/non-giggling proves that Ashley is not ticklish and has just been faking it all these years! Is that crazy! I've seen her completely helpless from being overwhelmed with ticklishness.

So seeing people write that she's a faker is simply hilarious, and even a little sad, since these guys are so sure of themselves, and yet actually they're just clueless.

I think the issue isn't how ticklish; the issue is how sexy. If the viewer doesn't find it sexy to see a woman who stops breathing when she's tickled beyond the point of no return, then that's a valid reason not to want her video! And if there's some other model who's unticklish but is a gloriously fantastic faker and does an adorable squealing giggling act that gets the viewer totally hard... well, then I don't think it matters that she's a faker if she's making her fans happy, right?

I believe, though, that becoming a sophisticated tickling man does become relevant in video enjoyment. A truly knowledgeable tickle-man who has had a lot of hands-on experience can identify faking, and in his case that might detract from his enjoyment of even the most winning squealing video faker.

So What Do Tickle-Fans Really Want?

This is an interesting question to me because I've been close enough to view the argument from the front lines. My partner Eric is part of FM Concepts, a foot-fetish company that has a tickling website. Eric has long gone with the theory that tickle-fans want to see a wide range of ladies in one video. So every foot model who comes in, Eric shoots them being tickled at least once. Regardless of her reaction -- whether she's just a little ticklish, moderately ticklish, or screamingly ticklish -- her scene is added into the variety-pak tickle tapes. The buyer therefore gets a wide range of types of women with varying degrees of ticklishness and tickle reactions.

On the internet, most tickle-fans write that they don't want and don't like potpourri videos that have all ranges of semi-ticklish to totally-ticklish women. The fans claimed repeatedly that they only wanted to see truly, absolutely, totally, squealing-frenzy ticklish women.

So FM Concepts started a new video series "ST" -- for "Super Ticklish." The series was named Super Ticklish to make it clear to fans that if they only wanted to see the most ticklish women, then these videos would be the ones to buy. The law of numbers ruled; since they have to dig through several dozen models to find those kind of special women, Super-Ticklish videos naturally don't have 12 women in them; they just have a few women in each video -- the cream of the crop.

The photos on this page are from ST-2, Adventures in Tickling!, in which Chase Brocco featured two models he personally knew to be wildly ticklish. The brunette is Jewell Marceau, a sweet gal who has a very cute, soft, soprano voice. I was in the next room the day that Chase was tickling Jewell. He had her tied down to the bed and was working her over for a long time. She sounded really cute because her giggling was all high-register. I couldn't resist sneaking into the hallway and peeking in on them. Chase is really good at identifying the moment of over-stimulation and he was working on her vulnerable spots here and there and everywhere.

Watching Jewell jerk and spasm and giggle, I could see why the idea of a Super-Ticklish video would be so appealing. Why watch a potpourri tape with so much variance when you can sit and watch one really helplessly ticklish gal just get it, and get it, and get it, relentlessly.

To my surprise, though, I hear that the SuperTicklish videos don't sell at greater numbers than the regular standard all-gals-included videos. People online are always saying that they only want to see extremely ticklish ladies, but then given the choice, a lot of them still buy the smorgasbord videos. Hmm. Maybe in spite of tickle-fans' claims to being hardliners, it's still very appealing for them to see a dozen women tied and tickled, and that variety is so enjoyable that fans are indeed willing to watch various gals getting tickled even if they're not all insanely ticklish.

Maybe just die-hard tickle-men -- men who are personally experienced at tickling women -- are the ones who are into SuperTicklish type videos, since they're more attuned to the quintessential tickling experience.

Keyholder Members!
Here are a few extra tickling pictures that are more explicit...
click on these thumbnails to see Angella and Jewell!

The below pic is sized for your desktop; right-click to download as wallpaper:

The tickling images on this page were provided by Chase Brocco and FM Concepts. Special thanks to FM for allowing me to present these images here in this context. These images are not copyright-free.