Black Feather
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I found this story over at TMF I can't take credit for it but decided to post it anyway you guys will love this one.
Working at the Institute did have its advantages. That was hard for me to appreciate at the time,
though. The pay was lousy, job security was non-existent, being as it was, entirely grant-dependant,
and the people I worked with were, quite frankly, weird. But the Kinsey Institute of Behavioral
Sciences, located smack dab in the heart of the UC Berkeley campus, was a dream come true for me
in one respect.
You see, I'm into tickling. A strange subject to devote oneself to you might think. Yet I received nearly
75 thousand dollars a year to conduct my research. Most of it came from the National Science
Foundation, but a goodly portion was funded by the Department of Defense, The Pentagon, a fact
which had sorely puzzled me at the time. From this amount came lab equipment, computer time, my
salary (a painfully small percentage), subscriptions to relevant scholarly journals and such, buta large
part went to pay the test subjects I used. Let me tell you right now, they earned every penny!
Tickling and ticklishness has fascinated me all my life (just ask my poor kid sister). I mean, why should
a person be ticklish at all? What purpose does it serve in our physiological make-up, and in the grand
evolutionary scheme of things? Why does tickling elicit laughter, even when exceedingly unpleasant?
Why not screaming or crying (though these last two certainly can accompany prolonged tickling)?
These are questions I often asked myself, even as a child.
My kid sister was about the most ticklish person on the face of the Earth. I was merciless to her. Some
friends and I would hide and wait for her to come home from school, this was almost a daily ritual. She
came to expect it. She'd practically run all the way home, avoiding every dark corner or tree, till she got
home where she'd finally relax. That's when we'd jump out from behind some bush or something and
pin her down. I'd have the honor of unbuttoning her blouse and she would start to laugh even before I
had a chance to actually tickle her. Her armpits were the best. My friends would pull her arms up and
pin them tightly over her head while I, a wicked, wicked grin on my face, let a squirming, wriggling
finger get closer and closer to her smooth, white, sensitive armpit and she'd get hysterical. Even as she
matured, she was still always just as ticklish.
At the Institute I got paid to tickle people. My budget, as I have said, included a substantial sum used to
pay the numerous test subjects I used. The student body at Berkeley supplied by far the great majority
of them. I ran an ad in the campus newspaper every day:
Wanted: Test subjects for
experiment in behavioral
psychology. $75 per session.
Apply Kinsey Institute.
Now seventy five bucks is a fortune to a poor, starving student. I got several applicants each day and
so I could afford to be choosy. Typically an applicant would call and I'd tell her to come to the Institute
to fill out a questionnaire. If the application looked good (or the applicant!) I'd bring her into my lab to
take a picture of her. She'd take her blouse off and I'd take a picture of her with her arms raised, hands
resting on top of her head. Then I attached the picture to the application and filed it. Only after I called
someone back for a session was she paid the seventy five dollars.
I shall tell you about one test subject in particular. her name was Michelle and she seemed particularly
hard-up for cash. She was 19, a sophomore in political science, and she was BEAUTIFUL! I struggled
valiantly to retain my veneer of clinical detachment as she shyly pulled of her blouse in my office. I tried
to devote all of my attention to her application while she sat on the edge of my examination table,
waiting. I didn't want to seem too eager.
She was obviously nervous as she sat there in her bra. She had auburn hair and lovely tan skin. Her
application was even more promising. In answer to the question regarding degree of ticklishness, she
marked the highest level: EXTREMELY ticklish. She numbered the degree of ticklishness of the various
parts of her body like so: Armpits 10, Ribs 9, Feet 8, Knees 7, and on down.
I set the clipboard down. "Why don't you step over there so I can take a picture of you." I flashed my
friendliest smile and motioned to one wall of the office where I had set up a camera and a couple of
lights. She stood in front of the wall, arms crossed in front of her, while I turned on the lights and loaded
film into the camera.
"Now raise you arms and put your hands on your head, that's right, good." Her level-10 ticklish armpits
were a tickler's dream come true. They were creamy smooth and white, very much in contrast with the
beautiful tan glow of the rest of her torso. I had images of her laying out on some sunny beach, relaxed,
yet with arms at her side instead of stretched out overher head, ever fearful that her exposed underarms
would prove too irresistable a target to some wicked passerby who just might reach down and tickle
them! The skin really was the most delicate white, tender and probably not used to being touched. I
fully intended to touch them a great deal!
"Okay, thanks. Now if you could take off your shoes and socks and get one more picture we'll be all
through here for today." My voice broke on the last word. I couldn't seem to swallow. She sat down on
a chair and began untying her shoes.
"I don't understand," she said, puzzled. "Why do you need pictures of my *feet*?" She started pulling
off her socks.
"I need to map precise areas of ticklishness."
"H-how...how do you d-do that?" She was stuttering all of the sudden. Interesting.
"Well, I computerize the image, superimpose a grid onto that image and record electrical brain activity
in response to specific stimulus applied to each region on the grid." I set a chair in front of her and lifted
her legs onto it so that the soles of her feet faced directly into the camera. "Then I take the rather
complex waveform, have the computer do a Fourier analysis on it to isolate the separate elements, then
compare those elements to those of all of my other test subjects."
"You're going to tickle my feet?"
"Well, in a word... er, yes. Smile!" I took the picture.
"Uh... I-I'm su-sorry. I don't think I can g-go thu-through with this." She got off the chair and grabbed
her blouse. "I just can't deal with that."
"What? What do you mean?" I almost dropped my clipboard.
She was hurriedly pulling on her shoes. "I'm s-sorry to wuh-waste your t-time. I can't s-stand being
tickled. I'm sorry. Keep your s-seventy five dollars."
"Seventy five dollars? Did the ad say seventy five dollars? You get a HUNDRED and seventy five
dollars for this." I silently thanked my quick mind. "There must have been a mistake in the paper. I'll
have to phone them tomorrow."
"A hundred and seventy five? I'll have to think about it." She grabbed her jacket and walked to the
door. "T-tickle my f-feet... I don't think I can handle that."
"Of course you can." I opened the door for her. "I'll call you Thursday after the computer simulations
are done and set up an appointment. Bye!"
I closed the door behind her. Leaning back against it I let out a heavy sigh. My knees were weak but I
stood up again and went to develop the film.
I waited till Friday to call. I really wanted to seem nonchalant about this. For my research strictly half of
my test subjects were female. Of the men, most weren't even the least bit ticklish. But the screams that
came from my lab when I "tested" the women ... aaah.
The aim of my research was, partly, to discover the origins of ticklishness and, specifically, to discover
what differentiates a ticklish person from one who is not.
There are many popular theories to explain the first question. One says it's an evolutionary reflex to
protect humans from dangerous insects and arachnids which flourished in the prehistoric jungles, much
the same as the reflex in horses that makes their haunches twitch and tails slap at flies. This might be a
contributing factor but is wholly inadequate to explain why we're most ticklish under the arms or on the
soles of the feet, places where insects are *least* likely to land.
The theory I favor is that ticklishness evolved as a *play* reflex, like that in kittens or puppies. An
essential reflex, it teaches an animal, while young, to defend itself and to fight competitors, defending
vulnerable spots such as sides and ribs where a slashing claw might damage vital organs.
Any theory such as this is impossible to prove. One can only gather evidence to support it. As a
preliminary to my research I recorded literally days of EEG's from kittens while playing. Not an easy
task, I assure you. It's quite difficult to induce kittens to play with one another while connected to
hundreds of feet of wires all attached to a myriad of electrodes implanted directly into the brain.
Nonetheless, I somehow managed to glean two or three hours of usable data.
Much easier to answer is the second question: Why are some of us ticklish and others not? Is it merely
a matter of temperment or is there some measurable physiological difference? Children who stutter are
20 times more likely to be ticklish than those who do not. My evidence at that time seemed to indicate
that there is a particular region of the brain (adjacent to the region suspected to be responsible for
stuttering!) which inhibits ticklishness as a person grows older, or, as the case may be, fails to do so. If
this proves to be the case it would be a natural step to develop a method by which micro currents could
be introduced into the brain in such a way as to neutralize this "tickle-inhibitor" efectively rendering
*anyone* not only ticklish, but EXTREMELY ticklish.
Anyway, as I was saying, I tried to seem casual as I spoke to her over the telephone. It wasn't easy.
I've rarely had somebody who was as ticklish as she claimed to be for a test subject. It would be
fantastic for my research (I fully expected to find that characteristic 14.7 KHz ripple put out by the
"inhibitor" almost entirely missing from the fourier analysis of her EEG) but even more, it was going to
be HOT!
She said she had thought it over and had finally decided to go through with it. I could almost *hear* the
landlord banging on her door demanding the rent. So I set up an appointment for Monday afternoon
and then proceeded to have a very long weekend.
"Hello, Michelle, come in." I beamed my brightest smile (being careful to first remove all lecherous
elements from it) and shook her hand vigorously. "Let me take your jacket." She didn't look at me but
rather continued to stare at the floor. "I really want to thank you for agreeing to help me out like this.
This research requires a LOT of test subjects ... you should relax. This won't take long."
She looked up from the floor and forced a smile, following me to the door of my lab. I unlocked it and
led her into the sound-proof room, a veritable christmas tree of flashing lights and clicking, beeping
sounds. Along one wall was the mainframe computer (shared by everyone at the institute) along
another, medical monitoring equipment: EEG's, EKG's, machines for analysing blood chemistry,
galvanic monitors to record electrical conductivity of the skin. Equipment choked the periphery of the
lab.
But in the center of the room was the tickle-table. It was this table onto which Michelle locked her
gaze, her eyes slowly growing wide. Shiny, stainless steel and black leather padding, sturdy leather
straps for the wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and upper thighs, it positively dazzled in the bright lights of
the lab. She stopped, frozen at the door.
Suddenly fearful she would bolt after all, I walked quickly to the desk drawer, unlocked it and pulled an
envelope out. "I hope you don't mind if I pay you in cash," I said as I wielded the wad of twenties.
"One hundred and seventy five dollars. Here you go." I counted it into her hand.
She took another step forward into the lab and stopped again. "Come on, come on," I thought to
myself.
"What do you want me to do?" she said, finally. I smiled. The battle was won.
"Oh, if you could just sit there on the table. I need to calibrate the instruments." The instruments were
already calibrated. What I needed was to relax her some more. I turned to the EEG machine and began
recalibrating it, all the while chattering lightly about sports, politics, school, anything. I actually got her to
talk about herself, her school work, and once she even laughed. THAT was the moment.
"Okay, all ready. Now could you take of your shoes, socks and blouse?" her smiled faded. I grinned,
went to another machine and pretended to do something. When I turned around again, she was ready.
"If you could just lie back on the table... I'm sorry about the restraints, but a lot of movement could
interfere with the data."
She didn't move for about half a minute, then, slowly, she complied, lying back onto the black leather
padding. I walked around to the head of the table, gently took a hold of one wrist and pulled it above
her head, thentied it securly to the stainless steel extension with the leather strap. I did the same with the
other arm, then next secured her ankles. Only after she was completely helpless did I attach the other
straps to knees, upper thighs just below the crotch, and the elbows. They were to minimize
excessivestruggling and make her easier to tickle. I also had a metal frame which fit into a notch in the
table over her feet. It clamped around the heel and each toe, keeping her feet almost completely
motionless.
Her head was raised, watching everything I did to her feet. She had a grimmacing, helpless sort of smile
while I worked with her toes, but I don't think it was because she was happy.
"I don't think I can go through with this," she said with a voice suddenly high-pitched and cracking.
"Of course you can. It'll be over before you know it."
She was spead-eagled and helpless. I turned a small adjustment wheel at the extensions for her arms,
lengthening them. This stretched her body, as if on a rack, making her skin taut, the hollows of her
armpits deepen.
"Comfy?" I asked.
"Uh, no," she answered. I laughed as if at a joke and began attaching wires to her head and slipped an
EKG patch beneath her bra below her left nipple. I turned on the various video equipment which would
record the whole session, and then I got out my case.
To me, the case was the most valuable piece of equipment in the lab. I set it on a small metal table
which I wheeled down into position at the foot of the table right next to her immobilized feet, then I sat
down on a chair facing her exposed soles. I opened the case and looked lovingly at my assortment, all
neatly laid out on black velvet, of feathers, vibrators, and assorted brushes. All of my tickling
accessories accumulated over the years. Then I pulled out my pride and joy, my finest feather. It was
long and white, just stiff enough, with a thin, pin-point tip with just enough flexibility.
Michelle's eyes widened with horror as I held it up in the air. Her feet began wiggling, an almost
imperceptible movement, so tightly were her toes bound, stretched back. "We'll start with the soles of
your feet." I smiled and brought the feather slowly into contact with her soft, senisitve sole.
"No, NO! Don't do it... PLEASE!!" she screamed. She started pulling at the straps about her wrists
and squirming as much as she could under her bonds. It didn't do her the least bit of good. She was
totally helpless. Then I began moving the feather, slowly, very slowly down the sole of her foot, then up
again, dragging the soft tip over the white, sensitive skin.
"NOOOOO!! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha hahaha....." she started laughing, high-pitched and
hysterical, a strained, grimacing smile on her previously quiet, shy face. The EEG strip-chart recorder
continued spitting out its white tongue of paper, a meaningless scribble of myriad black lines oozing out
with it.
I took another feather, twin of the first, and pulled it up and down along her other sole. "OH NOOO!
AAAAAH HA HA HAHAHA ..." she screamed anew as she realized I was now tickling both bare
soles at once, dragging my evil feathers slowly back and forth across the underside of her immobilized
toes, in opposite directions, then down to her arches, brushing the feather tips there, first back and
forth, then up and down, then swirling around in slow, lazy circles inside of the arches of her soles, the
skin stretched tight as a drum.
When I pulled out still more feathers and began inserting them then pulling them out from between her
splayed out toes, over and over and over again, sometimes spinning them between my two fingers, her
horror at what was being done to her bare feet grew still more "OOOOOH, NOT THAT!!!!
AHHHHH HA HA HA HA...NOT BETWEEN THE TOES!!! AAAAH NOT THAT!!! AH HA HA
HA HAHAHA ..." She was shaking her head back and forth violently. her mouth stretched open in a
hysterical rictus of mad laughter.
"Just hold on!" I almost had to shout over the screaming laughter. "I only need 15 or 20 minutes more
of this for the computer." I laughed and continued tickling her feet.
Twenty Minutes??!!! "NOOOOOOOOO...HA HA HA HA HAhahaha... gasp... HA HA HA HA!!!"
She couldn't stand it, couldn't catch her breath. I discarded the feathers and brought my fingertips to
bear against her soles, skitcha skitcha skitcha, like a spider, up and down the bare flesh of her soles,
again and again, tickling her feet while she screamed helpless, hysterical laughter for twenty, long,
horrible minutes.
When I finally stopped, her head sagged to one side and the bangs of her long, auburn hair was
plastered to her forehead, sweaty. her chest heaved up and down, trying to catch a breath. I hadn't
allowed her to catch one for over ten minutes.
"No more... please.. I..I can't take it... let me loose... I beg you, pleeeease... " she gasped, exhausted.
"What?" I laughed. "That was just the preliminary. This session is supposed to be for an hour and a half.
It's all in the release you signed."
"Don't care... let me loose... I changed my mind."
"It's a little late for that now... Let's see, I think the underarms are next on my list." I smiled, this time
letting all the wickedness I could muster shine through. I advanced on her stretched out armpits, my
index fingers extended and wriggling menacingly.
She suddenly didn't seem to be out of breath any more. Her eyes and mouth opened wide and she
pulled at her restraints again, desperately.
"Not my armpits! Not my armpits! Please! Not my armpits!" She began to giggle helplessly as I brought
my fingers closer, very, very slowly, without actually touching her. This part was important. Some
people can be tickled without any physical contact. Just the threat of tickling can send them into
hysterics. I needed to see if her brainwave pattern showed any appreciable difference.
"Aaah, is poor baby's underarms sensitive?" I asked, pouting. My wriggling index fingers drew closer,
almost touching the smooth skin of her armpits. I wanted to draw this out as long as possible.
She stared at an approaching finger, moving her head, almost as if trying to nudge the hand away with
her chin, or, if possible, to bite it.
"No, ha ha ha ha ha, don't... ha ha... please don't... not under my arms... ha ha ha... not there ... ha ha
ha" she had a big smile on her face and was giggling continuously. I started moving my fingers in big
circles over her pits and this started her laughing harder. She couldn't stop. I hadn't even touched her,
yet she couldn't stop laughing.
By the time I started worming in the hollows under her arms with my fingers, she was fully hysterical.
No longer in control she let out a big, long scream before laughter took her over completely. A deeper,
constant laughter, one quick gasp for air, then another prolonged fit of laughter. I hit a switch on the
motorized tickle table which stretched her arms even more tightly over her head. The soft, white
underarm flesh, freshly shaved and stretched taut as a drum became my canvas as I slowly stroked my
softest, silkiest feathers up and down, again and again over her armpit flesh.
I chose to use her open armpits for a long, drawn-out, merciless game of cootchy coo. With index
fingers pointed and ready, a big grin on my face, I called out "Cootchy cootchy coo!!" and poked my
fingers into her soft armpit flesh, wiggled three times, withdrew my fingers, shouted "Cootchy cootchy
coo!" again, and bored my fingers into her pits, over and over and over, for nearly an hour. Each time I
did this, she'd scream. Sometimes I'd shout cootchy coo! and lunge at her pits without actually touching
her, and she'd still scream and begin laughing helplessly. To bring my game to a close I cried cootchy
coo one more time, drilled my fingers into her armpits and began wiggling and wiggling them, non-stop.
"AAAAH HA HA HA HA HAAAAA ..." she screamed, her eyes squeezed shut as she realized the
game had taken a horrible turn. Up and down her armpits my poking, drilling fingers roamed. Up to just
below her straining arm muscles, then wiggling on down to the smooth, tender hollow just above her
ribcage, I poked and wormed, finally bringing all of my torturous fingers into play. her laughter
increased in intensity, changed it's timber from a lower, throatier sound to a high-pitched, insane shriek.
I had to stop, finally, when my instruments indicated it was too dangerous to continue.
She was drenched in sweat. It formed a glossy sheen on her bare skin. Little rivlets leaked from her
armpits.
"Enough... " She still could not catch her breath. Not surprising. An hour of non-stop hysterical
screaming laughter left her blood oxygen level low and would be several minutes returning to normal.
"Please... no more. Oh God, I'm BEGGING you... please..." It was barely a whisper.
"I can't stop now," I said, rolling up my shirt sleeves. "You take a few minutes to rest. Here's some
water." I offered her the straw to a water bottle. She refused.
"No... let me up NOW... I'm through." Anger crept into her voice now that she had regained some
strength.
I sat down in my chair. "That was only superficial stimulation. We still have to conduct tests in
deep-muscle stimulation." I reached down and began turning a lever set into the base of the tickle-table.
This caused it to bend up in the middle, the ends dropping slightly. This in turn forced Michelle's chest
cavity to extend upward, causing every rib to protrude in exquisite detail. I stood up, hitched up a leg
and sat on the table, straddling Michelle about her waist. I layed my hands on her hyper- extended rib
cage, palms flat, fingers extended. She took short, panicky breaths and her eyes widened once again as
she understood just what I meant to do to her.
"Now I'm going to tickle your ribs for the rest of the session. I'm afraid I'm going to have to dig in quite
a bit, it might be a bit more uncomfortable, but just hang in there. It'll all be over in another hour."
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" she screamed again and shook her head, then began laughing, shaking her
head and begging me not to all at the same time. I hadn't even started.
"Cootchy cootchy coo," my smile swelled into a wicked grin as I dug into her ribs and her screaming
laughter began again.
I was called onto the carpet and given the boot for that one. The poor kid had to drop out of school
and was being treated for nervous exhaustion. Her stutter, which years of speech therapy had cured
long before, had returned with a vengeance, making her almost unintelligible. Okay, so maybe I went a
little overboard. But the experience provided me with the last data I needed to confirm my hypothesis
and allowed me to get where I am today.
Yes, at the Pentagon.
At this very moment, in the room next door, are twenty state of the art tickle tables, and strapped into
those tables are twenty, blouseless, barefoot WACS fresh out of the corps. Tickling is the new
interrogation technique of the nineties. Our country must be ready to employ it, develop it and defend
against it. The group of young women next door were culled as the twenty LEAST ticklish WACS in
the nation's armed forces. And this group... Ah, this group of beautiful female soldiers has been wired
with my new tickle-inducer. When those fingernails begin raking across their bared soles, and fingertips
begin to pinch like claws into the flesh of their tender sides they are in for a new, terrifying, horrible
experience and I can't wait to see their twenty horrified, laughing young faces. Now if you will excuse
me ... duty calls.
Working at the Institute did have its advantages. That was hard for me to appreciate at the time,
though. The pay was lousy, job security was non-existent, being as it was, entirely grant-dependant,
and the people I worked with were, quite frankly, weird. But the Kinsey Institute of Behavioral
Sciences, located smack dab in the heart of the UC Berkeley campus, was a dream come true for me
in one respect.
You see, I'm into tickling. A strange subject to devote oneself to you might think. Yet I received nearly
75 thousand dollars a year to conduct my research. Most of it came from the National Science
Foundation, but a goodly portion was funded by the Department of Defense, The Pentagon, a fact
which had sorely puzzled me at the time. From this amount came lab equipment, computer time, my
salary (a painfully small percentage), subscriptions to relevant scholarly journals and such, buta large
part went to pay the test subjects I used. Let me tell you right now, they earned every penny!
Tickling and ticklishness has fascinated me all my life (just ask my poor kid sister). I mean, why should
a person be ticklish at all? What purpose does it serve in our physiological make-up, and in the grand
evolutionary scheme of things? Why does tickling elicit laughter, even when exceedingly unpleasant?
Why not screaming or crying (though these last two certainly can accompany prolonged tickling)?
These are questions I often asked myself, even as a child.
My kid sister was about the most ticklish person on the face of the Earth. I was merciless to her. Some
friends and I would hide and wait for her to come home from school, this was almost a daily ritual. She
came to expect it. She'd practically run all the way home, avoiding every dark corner or tree, till she got
home where she'd finally relax. That's when we'd jump out from behind some bush or something and
pin her down. I'd have the honor of unbuttoning her blouse and she would start to laugh even before I
had a chance to actually tickle her. Her armpits were the best. My friends would pull her arms up and
pin them tightly over her head while I, a wicked, wicked grin on my face, let a squirming, wriggling
finger get closer and closer to her smooth, white, sensitive armpit and she'd get hysterical. Even as she
matured, she was still always just as ticklish.
At the Institute I got paid to tickle people. My budget, as I have said, included a substantial sum used to
pay the numerous test subjects I used. The student body at Berkeley supplied by far the great majority
of them. I ran an ad in the campus newspaper every day:
Wanted: Test subjects for
experiment in behavioral
psychology. $75 per session.
Apply Kinsey Institute.
Now seventy five bucks is a fortune to a poor, starving student. I got several applicants each day and
so I could afford to be choosy. Typically an applicant would call and I'd tell her to come to the Institute
to fill out a questionnaire. If the application looked good (or the applicant!) I'd bring her into my lab to
take a picture of her. She'd take her blouse off and I'd take a picture of her with her arms raised, hands
resting on top of her head. Then I attached the picture to the application and filed it. Only after I called
someone back for a session was she paid the seventy five dollars.
I shall tell you about one test subject in particular. her name was Michelle and she seemed particularly
hard-up for cash. She was 19, a sophomore in political science, and she was BEAUTIFUL! I struggled
valiantly to retain my veneer of clinical detachment as she shyly pulled of her blouse in my office. I tried
to devote all of my attention to her application while she sat on the edge of my examination table,
waiting. I didn't want to seem too eager.
She was obviously nervous as she sat there in her bra. She had auburn hair and lovely tan skin. Her
application was even more promising. In answer to the question regarding degree of ticklishness, she
marked the highest level: EXTREMELY ticklish. She numbered the degree of ticklishness of the various
parts of her body like so: Armpits 10, Ribs 9, Feet 8, Knees 7, and on down.
I set the clipboard down. "Why don't you step over there so I can take a picture of you." I flashed my
friendliest smile and motioned to one wall of the office where I had set up a camera and a couple of
lights. She stood in front of the wall, arms crossed in front of her, while I turned on the lights and loaded
film into the camera.
"Now raise you arms and put your hands on your head, that's right, good." Her level-10 ticklish armpits
were a tickler's dream come true. They were creamy smooth and white, very much in contrast with the
beautiful tan glow of the rest of her torso. I had images of her laying out on some sunny beach, relaxed,
yet with arms at her side instead of stretched out overher head, ever fearful that her exposed underarms
would prove too irresistable a target to some wicked passerby who just might reach down and tickle
them! The skin really was the most delicate white, tender and probably not used to being touched. I
fully intended to touch them a great deal!
"Okay, thanks. Now if you could take off your shoes and socks and get one more picture we'll be all
through here for today." My voice broke on the last word. I couldn't seem to swallow. She sat down on
a chair and began untying her shoes.
"I don't understand," she said, puzzled. "Why do you need pictures of my *feet*?" She started pulling
off her socks.
"I need to map precise areas of ticklishness."
"H-how...how do you d-do that?" She was stuttering all of the sudden. Interesting.
"Well, I computerize the image, superimpose a grid onto that image and record electrical brain activity
in response to specific stimulus applied to each region on the grid." I set a chair in front of her and lifted
her legs onto it so that the soles of her feet faced directly into the camera. "Then I take the rather
complex waveform, have the computer do a Fourier analysis on it to isolate the separate elements, then
compare those elements to those of all of my other test subjects."
"You're going to tickle my feet?"
"Well, in a word... er, yes. Smile!" I took the picture.
"Uh... I-I'm su-sorry. I don't think I can g-go thu-through with this." She got off the chair and grabbed
her blouse. "I just can't deal with that."
"What? What do you mean?" I almost dropped my clipboard.
She was hurriedly pulling on her shoes. "I'm s-sorry to wuh-waste your t-time. I can't s-stand being
tickled. I'm sorry. Keep your s-seventy five dollars."
"Seventy five dollars? Did the ad say seventy five dollars? You get a HUNDRED and seventy five
dollars for this." I silently thanked my quick mind. "There must have been a mistake in the paper. I'll
have to phone them tomorrow."
"A hundred and seventy five? I'll have to think about it." She grabbed her jacket and walked to the
door. "T-tickle my f-feet... I don't think I can handle that."
"Of course you can." I opened the door for her. "I'll call you Thursday after the computer simulations
are done and set up an appointment. Bye!"
I closed the door behind her. Leaning back against it I let out a heavy sigh. My knees were weak but I
stood up again and went to develop the film.
I waited till Friday to call. I really wanted to seem nonchalant about this. For my research strictly half of
my test subjects were female. Of the men, most weren't even the least bit ticklish. But the screams that
came from my lab when I "tested" the women ... aaah.
The aim of my research was, partly, to discover the origins of ticklishness and, specifically, to discover
what differentiates a ticklish person from one who is not.
There are many popular theories to explain the first question. One says it's an evolutionary reflex to
protect humans from dangerous insects and arachnids which flourished in the prehistoric jungles, much
the same as the reflex in horses that makes their haunches twitch and tails slap at flies. This might be a
contributing factor but is wholly inadequate to explain why we're most ticklish under the arms or on the
soles of the feet, places where insects are *least* likely to land.
The theory I favor is that ticklishness evolved as a *play* reflex, like that in kittens or puppies. An
essential reflex, it teaches an animal, while young, to defend itself and to fight competitors, defending
vulnerable spots such as sides and ribs where a slashing claw might damage vital organs.
Any theory such as this is impossible to prove. One can only gather evidence to support it. As a
preliminary to my research I recorded literally days of EEG's from kittens while playing. Not an easy
task, I assure you. It's quite difficult to induce kittens to play with one another while connected to
hundreds of feet of wires all attached to a myriad of electrodes implanted directly into the brain.
Nonetheless, I somehow managed to glean two or three hours of usable data.
Much easier to answer is the second question: Why are some of us ticklish and others not? Is it merely
a matter of temperment or is there some measurable physiological difference? Children who stutter are
20 times more likely to be ticklish than those who do not. My evidence at that time seemed to indicate
that there is a particular region of the brain (adjacent to the region suspected to be responsible for
stuttering!) which inhibits ticklishness as a person grows older, or, as the case may be, fails to do so. If
this proves to be the case it would be a natural step to develop a method by which micro currents could
be introduced into the brain in such a way as to neutralize this "tickle-inhibitor" efectively rendering
*anyone* not only ticklish, but EXTREMELY ticklish.
Anyway, as I was saying, I tried to seem casual as I spoke to her over the telephone. It wasn't easy.
I've rarely had somebody who was as ticklish as she claimed to be for a test subject. It would be
fantastic for my research (I fully expected to find that characteristic 14.7 KHz ripple put out by the
"inhibitor" almost entirely missing from the fourier analysis of her EEG) but even more, it was going to
be HOT!
She said she had thought it over and had finally decided to go through with it. I could almost *hear* the
landlord banging on her door demanding the rent. So I set up an appointment for Monday afternoon
and then proceeded to have a very long weekend.
"Hello, Michelle, come in." I beamed my brightest smile (being careful to first remove all lecherous
elements from it) and shook her hand vigorously. "Let me take your jacket." She didn't look at me but
rather continued to stare at the floor. "I really want to thank you for agreeing to help me out like this.
This research requires a LOT of test subjects ... you should relax. This won't take long."
She looked up from the floor and forced a smile, following me to the door of my lab. I unlocked it and
led her into the sound-proof room, a veritable christmas tree of flashing lights and clicking, beeping
sounds. Along one wall was the mainframe computer (shared by everyone at the institute) along
another, medical monitoring equipment: EEG's, EKG's, machines for analysing blood chemistry,
galvanic monitors to record electrical conductivity of the skin. Equipment choked the periphery of the
lab.
But in the center of the room was the tickle-table. It was this table onto which Michelle locked her
gaze, her eyes slowly growing wide. Shiny, stainless steel and black leather padding, sturdy leather
straps for the wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and upper thighs, it positively dazzled in the bright lights of
the lab. She stopped, frozen at the door.
Suddenly fearful she would bolt after all, I walked quickly to the desk drawer, unlocked it and pulled an
envelope out. "I hope you don't mind if I pay you in cash," I said as I wielded the wad of twenties.
"One hundred and seventy five dollars. Here you go." I counted it into her hand.
She took another step forward into the lab and stopped again. "Come on, come on," I thought to
myself.
"What do you want me to do?" she said, finally. I smiled. The battle was won.
"Oh, if you could just sit there on the table. I need to calibrate the instruments." The instruments were
already calibrated. What I needed was to relax her some more. I turned to the EEG machine and began
recalibrating it, all the while chattering lightly about sports, politics, school, anything. I actually got her to
talk about herself, her school work, and once she even laughed. THAT was the moment.
"Okay, all ready. Now could you take of your shoes, socks and blouse?" her smiled faded. I grinned,
went to another machine and pretended to do something. When I turned around again, she was ready.
"If you could just lie back on the table... I'm sorry about the restraints, but a lot of movement could
interfere with the data."
She didn't move for about half a minute, then, slowly, she complied, lying back onto the black leather
padding. I walked around to the head of the table, gently took a hold of one wrist and pulled it above
her head, thentied it securly to the stainless steel extension with the leather strap. I did the same with the
other arm, then next secured her ankles. Only after she was completely helpless did I attach the other
straps to knees, upper thighs just below the crotch, and the elbows. They were to minimize
excessivestruggling and make her easier to tickle. I also had a metal frame which fit into a notch in the
table over her feet. It clamped around the heel and each toe, keeping her feet almost completely
motionless.
Her head was raised, watching everything I did to her feet. She had a grimmacing, helpless sort of smile
while I worked with her toes, but I don't think it was because she was happy.
"I don't think I can go through with this," she said with a voice suddenly high-pitched and cracking.
"Of course you can. It'll be over before you know it."
She was spead-eagled and helpless. I turned a small adjustment wheel at the extensions for her arms,
lengthening them. This stretched her body, as if on a rack, making her skin taut, the hollows of her
armpits deepen.
"Comfy?" I asked.
"Uh, no," she answered. I laughed as if at a joke and began attaching wires to her head and slipped an
EKG patch beneath her bra below her left nipple. I turned on the various video equipment which would
record the whole session, and then I got out my case.
To me, the case was the most valuable piece of equipment in the lab. I set it on a small metal table
which I wheeled down into position at the foot of the table right next to her immobilized feet, then I sat
down on a chair facing her exposed soles. I opened the case and looked lovingly at my assortment, all
neatly laid out on black velvet, of feathers, vibrators, and assorted brushes. All of my tickling
accessories accumulated over the years. Then I pulled out my pride and joy, my finest feather. It was
long and white, just stiff enough, with a thin, pin-point tip with just enough flexibility.
Michelle's eyes widened with horror as I held it up in the air. Her feet began wiggling, an almost
imperceptible movement, so tightly were her toes bound, stretched back. "We'll start with the soles of
your feet." I smiled and brought the feather slowly into contact with her soft, senisitve sole.
"No, NO! Don't do it... PLEASE!!" she screamed. She started pulling at the straps about her wrists
and squirming as much as she could under her bonds. It didn't do her the least bit of good. She was
totally helpless. Then I began moving the feather, slowly, very slowly down the sole of her foot, then up
again, dragging the soft tip over the white, sensitive skin.
"NOOOOO!! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha hahaha....." she started laughing, high-pitched and
hysterical, a strained, grimacing smile on her previously quiet, shy face. The EEG strip-chart recorder
continued spitting out its white tongue of paper, a meaningless scribble of myriad black lines oozing out
with it.
I took another feather, twin of the first, and pulled it up and down along her other sole. "OH NOOO!
AAAAAH HA HA HAHAHA ..." she screamed anew as she realized I was now tickling both bare
soles at once, dragging my evil feathers slowly back and forth across the underside of her immobilized
toes, in opposite directions, then down to her arches, brushing the feather tips there, first back and
forth, then up and down, then swirling around in slow, lazy circles inside of the arches of her soles, the
skin stretched tight as a drum.
When I pulled out still more feathers and began inserting them then pulling them out from between her
splayed out toes, over and over and over again, sometimes spinning them between my two fingers, her
horror at what was being done to her bare feet grew still more "OOOOOH, NOT THAT!!!!
AHHHHH HA HA HA HA...NOT BETWEEN THE TOES!!! AAAAH NOT THAT!!! AH HA HA
HA HAHAHA ..." She was shaking her head back and forth violently. her mouth stretched open in a
hysterical rictus of mad laughter.
"Just hold on!" I almost had to shout over the screaming laughter. "I only need 15 or 20 minutes more
of this for the computer." I laughed and continued tickling her feet.
Twenty Minutes??!!! "NOOOOOOOOO...HA HA HA HA HAhahaha... gasp... HA HA HA HA!!!"
She couldn't stand it, couldn't catch her breath. I discarded the feathers and brought my fingertips to
bear against her soles, skitcha skitcha skitcha, like a spider, up and down the bare flesh of her soles,
again and again, tickling her feet while she screamed helpless, hysterical laughter for twenty, long,
horrible minutes.
When I finally stopped, her head sagged to one side and the bangs of her long, auburn hair was
plastered to her forehead, sweaty. her chest heaved up and down, trying to catch a breath. I hadn't
allowed her to catch one for over ten minutes.
"No more... please.. I..I can't take it... let me loose... I beg you, pleeeease... " she gasped, exhausted.
"What?" I laughed. "That was just the preliminary. This session is supposed to be for an hour and a half.
It's all in the release you signed."
"Don't care... let me loose... I changed my mind."
"It's a little late for that now... Let's see, I think the underarms are next on my list." I smiled, this time
letting all the wickedness I could muster shine through. I advanced on her stretched out armpits, my
index fingers extended and wriggling menacingly.
She suddenly didn't seem to be out of breath any more. Her eyes and mouth opened wide and she
pulled at her restraints again, desperately.
"Not my armpits! Not my armpits! Please! Not my armpits!" She began to giggle helplessly as I brought
my fingers closer, very, very slowly, without actually touching her. This part was important. Some
people can be tickled without any physical contact. Just the threat of tickling can send them into
hysterics. I needed to see if her brainwave pattern showed any appreciable difference.
"Aaah, is poor baby's underarms sensitive?" I asked, pouting. My wriggling index fingers drew closer,
almost touching the smooth skin of her armpits. I wanted to draw this out as long as possible.
She stared at an approaching finger, moving her head, almost as if trying to nudge the hand away with
her chin, or, if possible, to bite it.
"No, ha ha ha ha ha, don't... ha ha... please don't... not under my arms... ha ha ha... not there ... ha ha
ha" she had a big smile on her face and was giggling continuously. I started moving my fingers in big
circles over her pits and this started her laughing harder. She couldn't stop. I hadn't even touched her,
yet she couldn't stop laughing.
By the time I started worming in the hollows under her arms with my fingers, she was fully hysterical.
No longer in control she let out a big, long scream before laughter took her over completely. A deeper,
constant laughter, one quick gasp for air, then another prolonged fit of laughter. I hit a switch on the
motorized tickle table which stretched her arms even more tightly over her head. The soft, white
underarm flesh, freshly shaved and stretched taut as a drum became my canvas as I slowly stroked my
softest, silkiest feathers up and down, again and again over her armpit flesh.
I chose to use her open armpits for a long, drawn-out, merciless game of cootchy coo. With index
fingers pointed and ready, a big grin on my face, I called out "Cootchy cootchy coo!!" and poked my
fingers into her soft armpit flesh, wiggled three times, withdrew my fingers, shouted "Cootchy cootchy
coo!" again, and bored my fingers into her pits, over and over and over, for nearly an hour. Each time I
did this, she'd scream. Sometimes I'd shout cootchy coo! and lunge at her pits without actually touching
her, and she'd still scream and begin laughing helplessly. To bring my game to a close I cried cootchy
coo one more time, drilled my fingers into her armpits and began wiggling and wiggling them, non-stop.
"AAAAH HA HA HA HA HAAAAA ..." she screamed, her eyes squeezed shut as she realized the
game had taken a horrible turn. Up and down her armpits my poking, drilling fingers roamed. Up to just
below her straining arm muscles, then wiggling on down to the smooth, tender hollow just above her
ribcage, I poked and wormed, finally bringing all of my torturous fingers into play. her laughter
increased in intensity, changed it's timber from a lower, throatier sound to a high-pitched, insane shriek.
I had to stop, finally, when my instruments indicated it was too dangerous to continue.
She was drenched in sweat. It formed a glossy sheen on her bare skin. Little rivlets leaked from her
armpits.
"Enough... " She still could not catch her breath. Not surprising. An hour of non-stop hysterical
screaming laughter left her blood oxygen level low and would be several minutes returning to normal.
"Please... no more. Oh God, I'm BEGGING you... please..." It was barely a whisper.
"I can't stop now," I said, rolling up my shirt sleeves. "You take a few minutes to rest. Here's some
water." I offered her the straw to a water bottle. She refused.
"No... let me up NOW... I'm through." Anger crept into her voice now that she had regained some
strength.
I sat down in my chair. "That was only superficial stimulation. We still have to conduct tests in
deep-muscle stimulation." I reached down and began turning a lever set into the base of the tickle-table.
This caused it to bend up in the middle, the ends dropping slightly. This in turn forced Michelle's chest
cavity to extend upward, causing every rib to protrude in exquisite detail. I stood up, hitched up a leg
and sat on the table, straddling Michelle about her waist. I layed my hands on her hyper- extended rib
cage, palms flat, fingers extended. She took short, panicky breaths and her eyes widened once again as
she understood just what I meant to do to her.
"Now I'm going to tickle your ribs for the rest of the session. I'm afraid I'm going to have to dig in quite
a bit, it might be a bit more uncomfortable, but just hang in there. It'll all be over in another hour."
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" she screamed again and shook her head, then began laughing, shaking her
head and begging me not to all at the same time. I hadn't even started.
"Cootchy cootchy coo," my smile swelled into a wicked grin as I dug into her ribs and her screaming
laughter began again.
I was called onto the carpet and given the boot for that one. The poor kid had to drop out of school
and was being treated for nervous exhaustion. Her stutter, which years of speech therapy had cured
long before, had returned with a vengeance, making her almost unintelligible. Okay, so maybe I went a
little overboard. But the experience provided me with the last data I needed to confirm my hypothesis
and allowed me to get where I am today.
Yes, at the Pentagon.
At this very moment, in the room next door, are twenty state of the art tickle tables, and strapped into
those tables are twenty, blouseless, barefoot WACS fresh out of the corps. Tickling is the new
interrogation technique of the nineties. Our country must be ready to employ it, develop it and defend
against it. The group of young women next door were culled as the twenty LEAST ticklish WACS in
the nation's armed forces. And this group... Ah, this group of beautiful female soldiers has been wired
with my new tickle-inducer. When those fingernails begin raking across their bared soles, and fingertips
begin to pinch like claws into the flesh of their tender sides they are in for a new, terrifying, horrible
experience and I can't wait to see their twenty horrified, laughing young faces. Now if you will excuse
me ... duty calls.
