I see it's been a couple of months since my wife last decided to tickle me, but I guess yesterday she decided that was quite long enough.
I was pretty beat after a long day at work; I'd come home and sprawled lying on my stomach on the sofa, using the remote to churn idly through TV channels. My wife got home from her job shortly thereafter and made a cheerful joke about my laziness as she passed briskly through the room and went to get changed.
When she returned, having changed into soft sweatpants and a comfy, shapeless shirt, she grinned to see that I hadn't moved.
"Whatcha doin', hon?" she said.
"Nothing."
"Whatcha watching?"
"Nothing."
She smiled and shoved her baggy sleeves up on her forearms. She came over to the couch and proceeded to lie down on top of me. So now we were both lying on our stomachs -- she with her front pressed against my back, me sandwiched between her and the sofa cushions. She smooched me on the back of my head. Her weight pressing down on me was sort of burdensome, but also sort of soothing. Immobilized beneath her, with the full weight of her whole body against mine, I certainly wasn't going anywhere. Which may be what gave her the idea to do the following:
She moved both her hands down from where they'd been resting, high up on my back near her face, so that they were down near my waist, hovering on either side of me. And -- no surprise here, I'm sure -- she started tickling. The fingers of each hand started cycling playfully against my sides, through my shirt. She knows full well this is a particularly weak spot of mine, my sides just above my waist, and the effects were instantaneous: throaty, helpless giggles started burbling forth from my mouth immediately. No warm-up, just sudden and completely immersive laughter, like she'd thrown the "Laughter" switch and the stuff just came pouring forth.
Ever notice how the way the arms bend makes it nearly impossible to defend against this kind of tickle attack from behind?
I wriggled -- barely -- beneath her weight, rocking pointlessly back and forth, but to no avail -- her fingertips kept scampering merrily, mercilessly against my twitching sides. My abdominal area was seized with a desperate need to get away from the maddening, all-encompassing sensations, but there was nowhere to go -- my sides presented two helpless, defenseless targets, and tickling them was just the easiest thing in the world for her to do at that moment. So she did it. And did it, and did it.
I just laughed and laughed -- I couldn't even beg or bargain; the laughter filled my mouth and there was no room for words. I tried to say something -- "Nah -- nah " -- probably the beginning of "No, don't," but it was futile -- giggling was all I was good for at that moment.
My wife is a sweet and tenderhearted person but the spectacle of me in the implacable grip of ticklish paroxysms is hard for her to resist, and despite my attempts to signal my desperation she didn't stop -- those maddening fingertips just never stopped moving, fluttering against my sensitive sides with merciless constancy, sending intolerably giddy sensations surging through my body. One could almost describe the constant, rhythmic motions of her fingers as mechanical, except that of course they were far too human to be mechanical. Too warm, too intimate, too playful, too incapacitating.
The cyclical motion of her fingers dancing away so lightly, so disarmingly, did have one other effect -- the constant motions created an upward pressure on my shirt, which started riding inexorably up on my sides, ultimately exposing the bare flesh of my sides, and that sudden shift in intensity, as her fingers went from playing against my shirt to flickering excruciatingly against my bare skin, was immediate and exponential -- my constant, frantic laughter was goosed into a higher and more frenzied register. I don't think she changed anything about what she was doing with her fingers -- the pressure, the speed, the pattern, everything remained the same, but inflicted on my tender twitching bare skin it took on a feeling of relentlessness, of wickedness, of just a hint of playful sadism. My wife knows me too well not to know what it was doing to me, feeling those scuttling fingers playing unflinchingly against two of my most vulnerable spots, and she clearly enjoyed seeing the hysterical effects it was having on me -- I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and squirmed and thrashed and laughed and her fingers just. Would. Not. Stop.
It wasn't until my laughter began to take on a gibbering edge, to sound like a nonsense language from another planet -- "Guhuhuhuhuhuh" -- that she finally relented, removing her dreaded fingertips from my sides and replaced them up on my upper back.
She sighed, a sigh of pleased satisfaction.
"I assume you're making dinner tonight," she said.
I didn't say anything.
I felt her lift her hands from my back again, and panic jolted through me. I convulsed involuntarily and said "Yes yes yes I'm making dinner!!"
And of course I did.
