Wade1
3rd Level Orange Feather
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2003
- Messages
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A friend here on the Theater has been gently nudging me to get around to relating this story for quite a while now, so I'm finally getting around to it.
Emily and I didn't date for all that long, for mostly logistical reasons; there came a time when she had to leave town to take a job across the country and I had to stay behind, and we made the decision to loosen our mutual hold and see if we wound up together or not. We didn't. But she was -- probably still is -- a delightful person: warm, smart, good-natured, politically engaged, ruthlessly ethical. And she's gorgeous -- a pretty heart-shaped face with a brilliant smile; long glossy brown hair; a lean, lovely body; slender, smooth and elegant arms that were alabaster in the winter and coppery in the summer; shapely, expressive hands and long fingers. She's by far a better person than I, and I was lucky she was foolish enough to date me.
Emily was a relentlessly compassionate person; she was politically committed to relieving the suffering of strangers, and when she found a bug or a spider in the house she would painstakingly transport it outside. And she tended to apply that kindness to her interpersonal relations, attentive to others' well-being.
This probably had something to do with why she wasn't a big tickler. If you date me, it's not hard to figure out that I'm ticklish; trailing fingertips along my side or a mouth applied tenderly to my stomach or collarbone is invariably met with flinching muscles and suppressed giggles. And whenever Emily's affectionate caresses or erotic attentions elicited such involuntary twitchiness, she always smiled warmly, maybe snickered a little, and modified her approach to mitigate my sensitivity. And unlike most women I've dated, including my spouse, she didn't tend to file that information away and deploy it to my disadvantage at a later date. My ticklishness was a weakness, and she was disinclined to exploit the weakness of the guy she loved.
With one seemingly random exception.
One day as we were talking I said something she found funny; she threw her head back and gave this loud throaty laugh of hers that I loved, and she reached over and gripped my knee in her hand and squeezed. This maneuver of course sent urgently ticklish impulses jolting through my entire body and I spasmed accordingly, every part of my anatomy jerking and writhing, a helpless yelping laugh leaping from my mouth.
She raised those expressive eyebrows of hers and her hazel eyes flashed with amusement. "Oh, my," she said, and she reached over again -- this time with both hands -- and squeezed the tops of both my knees, causing my legs to whip back and forth as I wriggled in my seat and grabbed desperately at her wrists, trying to pry her hands away from my knees, emitting a staccato series of giggles all the while.
She stopped, grinning broadly. When Emily smiled really big, not only did her dimples deepen but a vein popped out on that lovely high forehead of hers. That's how you could tell she was really entertained by something. And there was that vein.
"Those knees are wild!" she said. "We're gonna have to tame those wild knees!"
I braced for another assault but she didn't attack again -- she gave me a cute, loving, wrinkly-nosed smile and took a swig of her drink.
But intermittently thereafter, whenever I was seated and it occurred to her, often when we were alone but sometimes, embarrassingly, when we had an audience, she would announce, "I'm going to hunt wild knees."
Or "Uh-oh, it's time to hunt wild knees."
Sometimes she'd pretend to be hosting a nature program: "Today we're making our way through the natural habitat of the elusive wild knees, looking for specimens of these notoriously skittish creatures."
Whenever she said something like that, I'd go into evasive mode. Sometimes I'd be seated next to her in a restaurant booth or a coffee shop chair up against a wall or window and my options would be limited -- grinning involuntarily, my hands would fly into defensive mode, hovering readily over my knees, trying to intercept her hands, my knees swinging pointlessly from side to side. In these scenarios, her victory was assured -- I couldn't go anywhere -- the skittish wild knees that were her prey were sitting ducks. I'd try to block and stop her but her hands would dart and advance and retreat and regroup and sooner or later she'd be gripping both my knees and I'd be convulsing in my chair, whooping laughter goosed by anticipatory hysteria tumbling out of me.
Sometimes she'd be across the room and I'd be seated at a table or on the sofa; this gave me time to try to escape, though that just added an extra element of giddy dread to the proceedings. She'd step inexorably toward me, her strong and pretty fingers clawed at the ready in front of her, as I leapt to my feet and retreated from her, giggling helplessly in anticipation, saying "No no don't," looking for an escape route while Emily's eyes focused zealously on my knees, she bending slightly at the waist as she targeted my knees. You'd think I could get away but there was something incapacitating about having someone focused with laserlike attention on one of your vulnerable spots, so utterly committed to getting you there, defeat felt inevitable, Emily picking up speed as she herded me toward the staircase or into a corner or up against a bookcase or the back of a sofa, me swatting at her hands until finally she lunged and those maddening fingers of hers found their target and I sank writhing to the floor, begging incoherently through frantic laughter.
The fact that any of these scenarios always involved a period of pursuit during which I managed to evade or prevent Emily's hands from making contact meant she had time to play with her playful narrative, which may have been her favorite part of this game. It's funny that Emily was positioning herself as a hunter, since she was a vigilant anti-cruelty vegetarian, but she also grew up with parents who never let her watch any TV except for educational nature programs, so she had the patter down:
"Sightings of wild knees are rare given their shy and flighty nature, but you can see them here in the underbrush engaging in their characteristic jumpy and darting movements. Wild knees typically travel in pairs and can be identified by their distinctive yelping call, a high-pitched and ear-splitting howl that some compare to the noises of hyenas or certain tropical birds. And there it is, Marlon, there's that sound we've heard so much about, that's the cry of the wild knee in its natural habitat, this is a rare treat..."
She never tortured me for too long; the pleasure for her was in the idiosyncratic conceit of her pursuit and the involuntary helplessness of my response to the stimuli. But it became an intermittent shared joke of our relationship, and when she started talking in public about the behavioral tendencies of wild knees our mutual friends would grin knowingly, fully aware of what was coming.
Once -- this was late in our relationship; we already knew Emily would be moving away soon -- we were at a coffee shop meeting a couple of old friends of hers from college who were in town, just talking about stuff, and Emily shifted her wry gaze in my direction and started saying "Do you hear that? I think that's the sound of a pair of wild knees moving through the tall grass." I placed my hands over my knees under the table and implored her not to follow through; I didn't get up and flee because that seemed embarrassing, although in retrospect it would have been no more embarrassing than what happened instead.
Delivering her usual running commentary -- "we don't usually see wild knees in open spaces like this, these wild knees must be lost, let's listen for their famous cries" -- Emily's hands evaded mine under the table and seized my knees, delivering me into my usual paroxysms of protesting shrieks and wriggles. Then she stopped and kissed me on the cheek, and then suddenly something surprising happened --
Emily started shrieking herself. Her pale pretty face flushed bright red and that forehead vein popped out as she laughed and thrashed. Her college friend Brian, seated across from her, had reached under the table across to her and was squeezing her knees, saying "Uh-oh, there's another pair of wild knees, I think we've got more wild knees there, Emily, we must have stumbled on a herd."
How did I get this far into my relationship with Emily without discovering that her knees were almost as ticklish as mine were? Because I'm not fundamentally a tickler, I guess, and possibly an idiot, but I admit that watching her friend force that frantic mirth from her consumed me with a hot, ugly jealousy.
Shortly thereafter, Emily moved, and we each moved on. So I don't know how this new revelation of parity might have affected our knee-hunting play in the long run. But if my knowing her knees were ticklish would have dissuaded her from attacking me, I'll admit that I'm glad I didn't find out sooner.
Emily and I didn't date for all that long, for mostly logistical reasons; there came a time when she had to leave town to take a job across the country and I had to stay behind, and we made the decision to loosen our mutual hold and see if we wound up together or not. We didn't. But she was -- probably still is -- a delightful person: warm, smart, good-natured, politically engaged, ruthlessly ethical. And she's gorgeous -- a pretty heart-shaped face with a brilliant smile; long glossy brown hair; a lean, lovely body; slender, smooth and elegant arms that were alabaster in the winter and coppery in the summer; shapely, expressive hands and long fingers. She's by far a better person than I, and I was lucky she was foolish enough to date me.
Emily was a relentlessly compassionate person; she was politically committed to relieving the suffering of strangers, and when she found a bug or a spider in the house she would painstakingly transport it outside. And she tended to apply that kindness to her interpersonal relations, attentive to others' well-being.
This probably had something to do with why she wasn't a big tickler. If you date me, it's not hard to figure out that I'm ticklish; trailing fingertips along my side or a mouth applied tenderly to my stomach or collarbone is invariably met with flinching muscles and suppressed giggles. And whenever Emily's affectionate caresses or erotic attentions elicited such involuntary twitchiness, she always smiled warmly, maybe snickered a little, and modified her approach to mitigate my sensitivity. And unlike most women I've dated, including my spouse, she didn't tend to file that information away and deploy it to my disadvantage at a later date. My ticklishness was a weakness, and she was disinclined to exploit the weakness of the guy she loved.
With one seemingly random exception.
One day as we were talking I said something she found funny; she threw her head back and gave this loud throaty laugh of hers that I loved, and she reached over and gripped my knee in her hand and squeezed. This maneuver of course sent urgently ticklish impulses jolting through my entire body and I spasmed accordingly, every part of my anatomy jerking and writhing, a helpless yelping laugh leaping from my mouth.
She raised those expressive eyebrows of hers and her hazel eyes flashed with amusement. "Oh, my," she said, and she reached over again -- this time with both hands -- and squeezed the tops of both my knees, causing my legs to whip back and forth as I wriggled in my seat and grabbed desperately at her wrists, trying to pry her hands away from my knees, emitting a staccato series of giggles all the while.
She stopped, grinning broadly. When Emily smiled really big, not only did her dimples deepen but a vein popped out on that lovely high forehead of hers. That's how you could tell she was really entertained by something. And there was that vein.
"Those knees are wild!" she said. "We're gonna have to tame those wild knees!"
I braced for another assault but she didn't attack again -- she gave me a cute, loving, wrinkly-nosed smile and took a swig of her drink.
But intermittently thereafter, whenever I was seated and it occurred to her, often when we were alone but sometimes, embarrassingly, when we had an audience, she would announce, "I'm going to hunt wild knees."
Or "Uh-oh, it's time to hunt wild knees."
Sometimes she'd pretend to be hosting a nature program: "Today we're making our way through the natural habitat of the elusive wild knees, looking for specimens of these notoriously skittish creatures."
Whenever she said something like that, I'd go into evasive mode. Sometimes I'd be seated next to her in a restaurant booth or a coffee shop chair up against a wall or window and my options would be limited -- grinning involuntarily, my hands would fly into defensive mode, hovering readily over my knees, trying to intercept her hands, my knees swinging pointlessly from side to side. In these scenarios, her victory was assured -- I couldn't go anywhere -- the skittish wild knees that were her prey were sitting ducks. I'd try to block and stop her but her hands would dart and advance and retreat and regroup and sooner or later she'd be gripping both my knees and I'd be convulsing in my chair, whooping laughter goosed by anticipatory hysteria tumbling out of me.
Sometimes she'd be across the room and I'd be seated at a table or on the sofa; this gave me time to try to escape, though that just added an extra element of giddy dread to the proceedings. She'd step inexorably toward me, her strong and pretty fingers clawed at the ready in front of her, as I leapt to my feet and retreated from her, giggling helplessly in anticipation, saying "No no don't," looking for an escape route while Emily's eyes focused zealously on my knees, she bending slightly at the waist as she targeted my knees. You'd think I could get away but there was something incapacitating about having someone focused with laserlike attention on one of your vulnerable spots, so utterly committed to getting you there, defeat felt inevitable, Emily picking up speed as she herded me toward the staircase or into a corner or up against a bookcase or the back of a sofa, me swatting at her hands until finally she lunged and those maddening fingers of hers found their target and I sank writhing to the floor, begging incoherently through frantic laughter.
The fact that any of these scenarios always involved a period of pursuit during which I managed to evade or prevent Emily's hands from making contact meant she had time to play with her playful narrative, which may have been her favorite part of this game. It's funny that Emily was positioning herself as a hunter, since she was a vigilant anti-cruelty vegetarian, but she also grew up with parents who never let her watch any TV except for educational nature programs, so she had the patter down:
"Sightings of wild knees are rare given their shy and flighty nature, but you can see them here in the underbrush engaging in their characteristic jumpy and darting movements. Wild knees typically travel in pairs and can be identified by their distinctive yelping call, a high-pitched and ear-splitting howl that some compare to the noises of hyenas or certain tropical birds. And there it is, Marlon, there's that sound we've heard so much about, that's the cry of the wild knee in its natural habitat, this is a rare treat..."
She never tortured me for too long; the pleasure for her was in the idiosyncratic conceit of her pursuit and the involuntary helplessness of my response to the stimuli. But it became an intermittent shared joke of our relationship, and when she started talking in public about the behavioral tendencies of wild knees our mutual friends would grin knowingly, fully aware of what was coming.
Once -- this was late in our relationship; we already knew Emily would be moving away soon -- we were at a coffee shop meeting a couple of old friends of hers from college who were in town, just talking about stuff, and Emily shifted her wry gaze in my direction and started saying "Do you hear that? I think that's the sound of a pair of wild knees moving through the tall grass." I placed my hands over my knees under the table and implored her not to follow through; I didn't get up and flee because that seemed embarrassing, although in retrospect it would have been no more embarrassing than what happened instead.
Delivering her usual running commentary -- "we don't usually see wild knees in open spaces like this, these wild knees must be lost, let's listen for their famous cries" -- Emily's hands evaded mine under the table and seized my knees, delivering me into my usual paroxysms of protesting shrieks and wriggles. Then she stopped and kissed me on the cheek, and then suddenly something surprising happened --
Emily started shrieking herself. Her pale pretty face flushed bright red and that forehead vein popped out as she laughed and thrashed. Her college friend Brian, seated across from her, had reached under the table across to her and was squeezing her knees, saying "Uh-oh, there's another pair of wild knees, I think we've got more wild knees there, Emily, we must have stumbled on a herd."
How did I get this far into my relationship with Emily without discovering that her knees were almost as ticklish as mine were? Because I'm not fundamentally a tickler, I guess, and possibly an idiot, but I admit that watching her friend force that frantic mirth from her consumed me with a hot, ugly jealousy.
Shortly thereafter, Emily moved, and we each moved on. So I don't know how this new revelation of parity might have affected our knee-hunting play in the long run. But if my knowing her knees were ticklish would have dissuaded her from attacking me, I'll admit that I'm glad I didn't find out sooner.
