What Not to Wear
So the first thing you need to know is that in our bedroom, the one my wife and I share as equal partners in life, there are two closets. And both closets are filled with my wife's stuff, because that's only fair. All my stuff is in a closet in the guest room, including about 6,000 T-shirts all folded along the high shelf, because what if I only had 5,999 t-shirts and that turned out to be not quite enough?
So basically when I need to get my clothes, I have to go into the guest bedroom to do it.
Second thing you need to know is that on the occasion I'm about to relate, Sarah was visiting us. She's seriously thinking about relocating to our area (!) and had some job interviews and was looking at some apartments, so she was staying in our guest room for about a week.
It had been probably about a year since that previous time Sarah sat on me and tickled the ever-loving snot out of me. We'd seen her once since then but she didn't torture me at all that time.
So I was upstairs changing and I needed to snag a T-shirt. I knew Sarah was downstairs so I dashed, shirtless, into the guest room to get one. I was standing there looking at all my many T-shirt choices, deciding, when I heard someone enter the room behind me.
Aw, hell.
"Oops, sorry, Wade," I heard Sarah say. I glanced over my shoulder: there she was, her arms crossed, sauntering into the room.
"No, I'm sorry, didn't mean to get all up in your room," I said. "I'll give you some space..."
"Well, you can finish getting whatever you came in here for," she said. I hadn't turned around but she was getting closer to me.
"Uh, uh, okay, thanks." She was right behind me now; I could sense it. I thought I could feel the hairs on her crossed forearms fluffing against the bare skin of my back.
"For crying out loud ," she said -- yep, she was right behind me -- "what are you waiting for?"
She knew why I was hesitating. To get a shirt, I had to reach up to the shelf. And reaching up, exposing my sides bare and undefended, would surely be too great a temptation for Sarah. Is there any way I was going to get out of this without her torturing me?
I continued to hesitate.
"Wade," she said, "I swear to God, get your shirt and get out of my room. My, you know, my temporary room."
Fine. I lifted both arms, reaching for a T-shirt -- any T-shirt -- trying to make it quick. But I wasn't quick enough. As soon as I reached overhead I felt her fingertips grazing impishly against my sides, and immediately, involuntarily, my arms jerked back down -- I hadn't even made contact with my shirts. I managed to refrain from emitting a high-pitched giggle but that was about as far as my dignity went.
"Don't," I said haplessly.
"Wade!" Sarah said, her voice an audible smile. "Get your damn shirt."
Okay. Mind over matter, right? I just have to snag a shirt, any shirt. And I know the tickling is coming, so I can just power through it. Just tough it out for the few milliseconds it will take to reach up and --
Nope. Her fingers oscillated against my ribs and my arms yanked back down again without any control on my part, this time accompanied by an embarrassing yelp.
"You’re really having a lot of trouble, Wade."
"Sarah! Stop it!"
"Okay. I promise I'll stop. Just get your shirt."
I reached up -- just one arm this time -- as quickly as I could; my fingertips just brushed against a stack of folded shirts when Sarah started tickling me just above the waist, causing my whole torso to twitch violently as my arm flew back down and I giggled sharply.
"You said you'd stop!" I said.
"It's really hard to stop," Sarah said in a tone of amused surrender.
"Damn it," I said, reaching up with both arms, looking to bring down two or more shirts if I could manage it, but there were Sarah's maddening fingers again, thrumming against my back this time, the smooth skin just above my belt, the backside of my love handles -- who knew I was even ticklish there? But it certainly had the desired effect -- my hips thrust forward and to the side, I twisted at the torso as I tried to fold my abdomen in half sideways and lower my bent elbows to my waistline. And I made a noise that sounded a lot like "HAHAHEEHEEHEE."
I tried again -- this time I felt her fingers slipping over my shoulders and paddling in the hollows of my collarbones, forcing me to hunch forward with an "eeheehee" -- then, suddenly, they were scrabbling at my ribs, making me arch my back with an "EEHEEHEE!"
"Screw it," I said, turning around to face her. "I don't need the shirt right now."
"Nope," Sarah said, both her hands darting at my stomach and sides. "Not an option."
I doubled over, twitching and lurching, my hands zipping desperately to and fro, trying to shield my ticklish spots, always getting there a millisecond too late. The giggles started to pour forth with hiccupy abandon. "No Sarah no wh-what are you DOING?"
"Not stopping until you get your shirt," she said, as if that made all the sense in the world.
"Not fair," I gasped through the helpless laughter, jerking and squirming under the relentless assault of her fluttering fingers. "That's n-not fair!"
"Rules are rules, Wade," Sarah said, beaming with such a delighted smile as she tormented me.
"FINE," I cried, spinning to face the closet again. But Sarah's onslaught didn't let up; her fingers kept spidering against my sides -- my ribs, then my waist, then someplace in between -- my arms were clamped at my sides but that did little to protect me; the spots just millimeters behind the parts of my sides guarded by my arms proved to be every bit as ticklish, and of course the sides of my excruciatingly susceptible abdomen were completely vulnerable.
"STOP," I shrieked, twitching and writhing. "STOP OR I CAN'T--!" I can't even finish this sentence, I might as well have said, but the involuntary laughter took over.
"You've advanced to a higher degree of difficulty, Wade," Sarah intoned drily.
"OH MY GOD," I yelped, doubling over again, her fingers continuing to scrabble away unimpeded at the wide variety of ticklish targets before them. There was no way I could do it. Lift even one arm, overhead, while she was doing this--? It was impossible.
"The struggle is real, Wade," she said.
As she continued to tickle me mercilessly I made a series of pitiful attempts -- flinging one arm blindly in the general direction of the shelf only to have it ricochet back as if recoiling on a rubber band. I might as well have been trying for the shelf with stumpy T. rex arms. I could just barely hear Sarah's merry laughter over the hysterical din of my own, so I must have been putting on a pretty hilarious show.
Finally I drew on all that remained of my nearly depleted resolve and self-control and I reached up with one hand -- as her fingers flitted ruthlessly across the exposed skin of my twisting, spasmodic side -- and I grabbed a T-shirt and yanked it down again, raining a cascade of T-shirts spilling to the floor but I couldn't care about that right now, I gripped the shirt in my fist and spun to face her and doubled over again, guffawing as I said "I GOT IT STOP I GOT IT."
But she didn't stop. I was still wriggling and wailing, which meant I was still getting tickled. "You gotta put it on," she said, loudly to be heard over my caterwauling.
"NO--" I said before dissolving into wild giggles again, but it's not like there was any point in arguing; Sarah had the upper hand. She was making all the rules here.
As her fingers continued to pincer and scribble at my sides, my stomach, my neck, my ribs, my stomach, my neck, my stomach, my ribs, my neck and my sides, forcing me into a constant involuntary dance and a steady stream of helpless giggling, I struggled to turn the shirt around and orient it so I could get it over my head -- no easy task when your elbows keep flying to your sides and your hands keep darting to your abdomen as if you're a marionette hanging helplessly from frantic strings.
I almost had it -- even as I kept making this maddeningly embarrassing EEheehee EEheehee sound -- I just about had the shirt turned the right way when I lost control of it and it dropped to the floor.
"Oh, Wade," Sarah said with feigned pity, still tickling away.
"Damn it," I giggled, trying to reach for the fallen shirt but having a version of the same problem that plagued me when I was trying to reach the closet shelf -- every time I extended an arm toward the floor, strumming fingers targeted my exposed sides and my hands jerked back, empty.
"Sarah, I'm... I'm trying," I said through the now full-throated laughter.
"I know," she said, busily pawing away at my assorted weak spots. "That's what's so pitiful."
I kept snagging the shirt with my hand only to have it spring back to the floor when my arms jerked back to my sides -- finally, dimly I realized that Sarah was standing on the shirt, pinning one corner of it to the floor with the toe of her shoe.
"Thahahahahahat's not fahahahahahahair," I cried, though she probably couldn't understand me.
I reached again for the shirt with both hands this time, realizing it was going to take some muscle to dislodge it, and suddenly her hands firmly grasped my rib cage on either side, delivering a merciless series of robust squeezes that dropped me to my knees as the helpless laughter kicked up into a more desperate register. I sounded like someone who was having the time of his life or watching the funniest thing imaginable -- "HA HA HA HA HA! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!" -- except for when I finally mustered the power of speech and brayed "Plehehehehease STOP!"
She did not. Stop.
I tumbled to my side on my shoulder and rolled on my back, my hands in a frantic dance of pointless self-defense, wriggling and writhing on the floor in a fit of giddy hysterics. Sarah loomed over me, fully in charge, her hands also in constant motion but in a much more controlled and strategic manner, delivering unbearable ticklish sensations to all my worst spots in a randomized series of endless mini-attacks. And the smile on her face -- which can sometimes look grim or cruel -- was bright and delighted, like she was watching a rainbow or a sunrise or puppies playing in a field.
But she also betrayed a little disgust when she finally said -- still tickling, mind you; she never stopped tickling -- "Wade for God's sake aren't you even going to try for the shirt anymore?"
I hadn't realized the game's rules were still in effect. Frankly I'd forgotten about the shirt. As I rolled back and forth on the floor, convulsing and guffawing, I gestured halfheartedly for the shirt but I wasn't even sure where it was anymore. Sarah snorted disdainfully and as her one hand kept probing provokingly at the side of my abdomen, with the other she grabbed the shirt and tossed it on top of me. Then she returned to tickling me with both hands with merciless abandon; the ball was in my court.
"Oh God," I cackled, struggling again with the shirt. Even as I twitched and wriggled spasmodically -- "HUH HEE HEE HEE" -- it was actually marginally easier to manipulate the shirt in this position, where my arms were pretty much folded helplessly at my chest and I'd nearly lost all hope anyway, than it had been when I was standing up.
I turned the shirt right-side-up -- worrying about whether it was backwards or not was beyond my current capacity -- and, even as I despaired frantically at the relentless agitation of Sarah's fingertips across the twitching landscape of my abdomen -- managed to throw the shirt over my head. Oh God, oh God, almost there. Fighting the instincts that kept bellowing at me to keep your arms down, don't lift your arms, are you crazy, we're under siege down here -- I put my arms in the shirt and began feeling around for the armholes. My head and arms were in the shirt now and all I had to do was pull it down and this nightmare would be over.
But I couldn't pull the shirt down. What was happening? Turned out, Sarah had gathered its fabric into one fist, balling it up by my chin so that it wasn't a shirt so much as a bag that my head and arms were trapped inside. And with the other hand she started rippling her fingertips relentlessly against my side, just below my ribs -- I arched my back and unleashed a torrent of delirious laughter that eclipsed whatever racket I'd been making before. Toggling from the previous situation, when my arms were at least free, to this new incapacitation added a new edge of desperation to my vulnerability. There was a new wild abandon to my laughter as it poured unbidden out of me. For the moment, Sarah had achieved in me something resembling Maximum Ticklishness, and I can only guess how satisfied she must have looked because -- well, because my head was basically in a bag.
HAHAHAHA
HA
HA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
She made a couple of detours to my defenseless stomach and the side of my abdomen, sending my stomach muscles into helpless convulsions, but with my arms trussed up she was freed from the need to keep changing targets and she relaxed into the more sustained torture, her fingers just galloping away -- easily, unimpeded, unstoppable -- against my side and sending me into a frenzy of ticklish hilarity.
Finally she released her grip on the shirt; I pushed my arms through and pulled it down over my head, flushed and panting. The torment was over, for now.
Sarah perched cheerfully on her knees next to me, her hands -- the instruments of my destruction -- laid harmlessly on her bejeansed thighs.
"Now, that wasn't so hard," she said, "was it?"
And when I went downstairs my wife glanced at me with a pleasant smile and said, "Your shirt's on backwards."
