The College Girlfriend (F/M)

[Wade]

One of my girlfriends in college was Rachel, a cute, petite and brainy little thing with smart black-rimmed glasses, short shaggy brown hair and an open, adorable face that she never adorned with makeup. She also had these soft and nimble hands, nails closely trimmed, and pretty, slender but well-muscled arms accented with a soft golden fuzz.

Our relationship was measured in months, nothing more, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because she was always more religious than I was and as time went by we kept moving in those opposite, increasingly incompatible directions.

Rachel was also deathly, deathly, deathly ticklish--as ticklish as I was, in other words, or nearly. Which meant that we almost never tickled each other, beyond brief teasing grabs or pokes, just long enough to communicate affection and make the other person shriek.

But then it came to pass that a pair of mutual friends, who were dating each other, fell onto rocky times, relationship-wise. The girl was convinced that the guy was not to be trusted; the guy denied any wrongdoing. Rachel, being close to the girl, wanted to know the truth, and she figured I, being friends with the guy, knew something she didn't know.

Or so I found out one afternoon when I was lying on my stomach on Rachel's dorm bed as she gave me a backrub. She asked me whether Matt had cheated on Susan; I said I didn't know. We went back and forth in this manner for a little while, and then there was silence, as Rachel's big frontal lobe hatched a plan.

I felt her scooting down my back, over my butt, onto my legs toward my feet. "I need you to tell me," she said.

"I can't, I don't know anything," I protested. And that's when I felt Rachel pulling my socks off my pinned feet.

In retrospect, Rachel's thought process here was perfectly understandable, if not inevitable. She'd never engaged in tickle torture for fun, because for her being tickled wasn't fun and she empathized too much with the ticklee to do such a thing. But suddenly that same empathy was proving to be my downfall: because Rachel was so ticklish, she knew that SHE would never be able to withstand being tickled for very long, that SHE would spill the beans if confronted with just such a torture.

Kneeling on my calves, facing away from my bare feet, she said, "I need you to tell me, though."

I didn't say anything. And that's when she reached behind her with both arms and started spidering her soft fingertips up and down my helpless feet.

My reaction was instantaneous, and predictable--I tensed suddenly, every muscle convulsing in protest, my elbows jerking pointlessly to my stomach, and I started to laugh. And laugh. And laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

"Tell me, Wade," Rachel shouted over my hysterical squeals. "You have to tell me." And on my wriggling, flexing feet I felt her fingers crawling relentlessly from heel to toe and back again.

Most people don't tickle-torture you for very long; they establish their dominance over you, seal your humiliation, and move on. And someone who wasn't very ticklish herself probably would have given up on tickling me for information eventually, figuring that it wasn't going to work. But Rachel knew it was going to work. She knew it couldn't help but work. She knew what it felt like to be tickled, she knew how intolerable it was to be thrown into helpless laughter by the maddening sensation of fingers on one's soles, and so she knew however long I could take it, she only needed to go a little longer than that. And in the rare moments of silence when I gasped for a breath or careened into a spate of silent laughter, I thought I could hear her snickering... she was actually enjoying this, on top of everything else.

"Please," I shrieked, giggling and thrashing on her bed, begging absurdly at the wall. "Please please no more...!"

"Tell me and I'll stop," she said, her fingers continuing mercilessly to skid gently across my twitching feet.

By this point of course I wanted to tell her--needed to tell her, to make it stop--but was laughing too hard to articulate. "It was hahahaha. He he heeheehee. I'm telling ohnohohohoho! Please I'll eeheeheeheehee. He did do oh oh hahahahaha."

Eventually (finally!) Rachel paused in her torture and I blurted out everything I knew about Matt and the party where he'd gotten drunk and etc. etc. etc. "Thanks," Rachel said, and then tickled my feet for a few more seconds before letting me up.

This event represented something of a turning point on Rachel's choice of recreational activities. Turns out she decided she kind of enjoyed tickling me senseless. She started doing it more in public--reducing me to giggles at the cafeteria table, pouncing on me in the quad--but was particularly ruthless behind closed doors. Figuring that this was our new thing, I tried reciprocating, pinning Rachel down and tickling her sides (though for nowhere near as long as she'd gotten my feet), but nope--that was still off limits. She was furious, and made that clear by immediately attacking me and tickling me with a brutality I'd never seen in her before, stopping just short of my wetting my pants, extracting from me a fevered and desperate promise never to torture her again. Nope, as far as Rachel was concerned, I was the designated ticklee, my twitchy nerve endings supplied for her entertainment, and I have to admit there were few things cuter than when her eyes would flash mischievously and her fingers flicker menacingly in my direction, the light glinting white off the fur on her forearms exposed tantalizingly by her three-quarters sleeves.

But some months after that there was no more me-and-Rachel. One only hopes for her sake that wherever she is now and whatever she's doing, she found herself a devoted Christian husband with devastatingly sensitive feet.

 

[milagros317]

Wonderful story! I wish I had known a woman like her in college. 😀

 

[Wade]

Thanks!! Yeah, Rachel was one-of-a-kind... a sweet and demure outer shell that cloaked a spiky sadistic center. Not too many people saw that side of her come out... I wouldn't be surprised if she keeps it under wraps to this day... but something about the experience of exploiting my ticklishness definitely seemed to unleash it a little bit. There were more tickle-attacks where that one came from.

 

[RdmNm]

Excellent story! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Wade]

That little encounter definitely opened some kind of floodgates. Just a week or two later, Rachel found herself in a particularly frisky and/or sadistic mood; we'd been at dinner at the dining hall that evening and she'd come up behind my chair, essentially pinning me between her and the dining table, and suddenly I felt her fingers walking mischievously over my shoulders and down my chest; by the time I'd yanked my arms in to my abdomen in self-defense it was too late, as her fingers were spidering relentlessly up and down and across my stomach and sides, throwing me into hapless hysterics, rocking ridiculously back and forth and squealing as everyone else at the table looked on in amusement or pity or contempt. "Stop...! STOP...!" was all I could say between giggles, as Rachel smiled sweetly at everyone else and said "Wade's a little ticklish" while her fingers ran mercilessly up and down my stomach, refusing to be dislodged or--God knows--ignored.

The pleasure she derived from that public humiliation must have whetted her appetite to torture me further, because later that evening I was in her dorm room, standing at her dresser, looking (I guess) for something, when she silently appeared behind me and slipped her hands up under my shirt, lightly tickling-tickling-tickling her fingers on my love-handle areas (a particularly incapacitating spot on me, as she of course well knew).

I doubled over instantaneously, gurgling with helpless laughter. I stumbled and lurched across the tiny room, trying to escape her wicked hands, stuttering through the giggles: "What, what, what are you, what are you DOING?" Inevitably I wound up slumping against the closet door, struggling to fend off Rachel's hands, but she was quick, darting and feinting at my twitching abdomen, and she had the advantage over me already, of course, as the incapacitating experience of being tickled was already impeding my reflexes and instincts.

I slid to the floor in full-throated laughter and before I knew it Rachel had maneuvered to position herself seated on my chest, putting me in a position that has always been a particularly vulnerable and anxiety-inducing one for me; I become intensely aware of my vulnerably sensitive abdomen stretching helplessly behind her, completely and utterly available to her fingers. It's the kind of humiliating situation in which I find myself convulsing and shrieking even before she starts touching me; the acute, helpless ticklish potential of my trapped stomach and sides is as squirmily intolerable as the sensation of their actually being tickled.

So, I confess, ignominiously, I started doing that: twitching and squirming, giggling wildly like a girl, even as Rachel's hands only hovered menacingly behind her, fingers slowly wiggling, her eyebrows cruelly arched in anticipation of her own impending brutality. Of course, this situation was different from some, insofar as the person tickling me was herself desperately ticklish, and so my self-defense instinct took over: I reached up and seized her sides and started tickling. It worked, of course; Rachel's arms jerked helplessly to her sides with helpless alacrity and she curled in on herself, emitting a high-pitched and desperate giggle. She didn't stop sitting on me, but as long as she was pinning her own arms to her own ticklish sides I was safe.

She was very ticklish. Unfortunately, this also meant that being tickled made her very angry, and unfortunately this anger fortified her will power which made it possible for her to remove her arms from her sides even as I was tickling their most sensitive areas, reach behind her, and viciously start tickling my stomach. I arched my back and yelped, instinctively and helplessly removing my hands from Rachel's sides, clamping my own elbows pointlessly at my sides and giggling wildly as she ruthlessly scampered her fingers across my stomach and up and down my sides--not for fun any more, but for punishment.

Laughing hysterically, I gathered all my will power and lunged forward to tickle Rachel again, this time getting her side with one hand and her knee with the other. Again, this worked; I felt her hands abandon the helpless, twitching terrain of my abdomen and I enjoyed the respite. "Oh no you JERK," she shouted as her hands moved impotently away from my stomach and toward her own ticklish spots, but any further recriminations dissolved in her shrill giggles.

This pattern repeated itself a couple more times; every time I tickled her to defend myself it would take only a few moments for her to gird her self-control and launch a new, angrier attack on my completely defenseless stomach and sides behind her. Each of her tickling attacks was quicker, harder, more vindictive--and therefore each time she resumed tickling me it took longer for me to be able to tickle her back, and it was more difficult for me to do so. So the final outcome was probably inevitable: it was I, not Rachel, who finally found myself unable to launch a new counterattack, leaving her to grimly enjoy the spectacle of me writhing and howling on her dorm room floor, my abdominal muscles contracting and twitching involuntarily under the ruthless and vengeful tickles of her soft, nimble fingers.

It was, I think, the first time I ever uttered to a tickler the words "Stop please stop I'm going to pee." And therefore the first time a tickler responded to that plea by cackling "Ha-haa!" and not stopping. Fortunately I had more bladder control than I thought, but by the time Rachel was done with me I was a sprawling, blushing heap of a mess.

 

[milagros317]

Wonderful continuation. Thanks for sharing your experiences here.😀

 

[DGF1976]

I've always loved all your stories over in Tickletheater.

 

[Wade]

Thanks, guys. Much appreciated.

 

[Wade]

So I was lying on my back on the floor, shirtless, with a bunch of stuff stacked on my chest.

Which sounds weird until you consider that I was in college at the time, college is the time for doing idiotic and pointless things.

I was in Rachel’s dorm room, for whatever reason, with my shirt off, for whatever reason, and lying on my back I’d found myself with three hardback textbooks stacked on my chest. This led Rachel into a delighted game whereby she stacked book after book, hardbacks and paperbacks, and thena couple of notebooks, and then other random items like a stapler and whatever empty aluminum cans she could find in her room (all Mountain Dew; Rachel really knew how to live it up).

By the time she was finished, the stack reached several feet into the air. By the time we’d finished with the cans she was kneeling on the floor and giggling uncontrollably; I was fighting the urge to laugh because any undue motion of my chest or torso could bring the pile crashing down.

So finally I said, “Okay, enough, take it down.”

And Rachel, through a punchy smile, said, “No.”

I stifled another chuckle. “What do you mean, ‘no?’”

She said, “First I’m gonna play with your tickly places.”

I remained motionless but a thrill of panic surged through me. She pushed up her sweatshirt sleeves, her soft arm hair glittering in the fluorescent light, and she scooted down in the direction of my waist. The threat of imminent tickling causes any number of instinctive and unavoidable defense mechanisms, the first of which is usually one’s hands flying to defend the vulnerable spots. But fear of an avalanche prevented me from doing even that; moving my arms too quickly would have caused a crash for sure. So I found myself lifting my hands gently into the air, guiding my arms vaguely over my bare sides and stomach, the slow steadiness and control of my movements being in inverse proportion to the skittish alarm that was driving them.

“Rachel, don’t,” I said urgently. “Rachel Rachel don’t.”

“Aw, why not?” she said, now positioned down by my waist.

“Some of these books are really heavy!” I cried.

“So stay still,” she said.

Unable to lift my head, I couldn’t quite see exactly what she was doing, but I detected movement down there and took her last remark to be the final prelude to her playful assault. I let out an involuntary, high-pitched grunt and, at a loss, steadily placed my palms over my love handles, fully aware that this was an imperfect defense at best.

And so it was; immediately I felt her fingertips skittering merrily across my bare stomach. I was steeling myself against laughing but I couldn’t keep my stomach muscles from contracting ticklishly under her touch, and the tower of books and things on my chest swayed ominously.

“Stay still,” she lilted in a singsong voice. “Stay still!”

I pressed my lips shut to fight back the giggles as her fingers played at my twitching abdomen, but holding in the laughter seemed to increase the precipitous leaning of the pile on my chest. So I opened my mouth and concentrated on holding my upper body still, and an embarrassing cascade of giggles poured out of me. Down by my waist I heard Rachel cackle in delighted satisfaction.

“Stop,” I pleaded, stuttering through the helpless laughter. “Sto-o-o-o-op!”

“In a minute,” she said cheerfully.

With a slow and even motion I moved my hands to intervene between her fingers and my stomach; I managed to get in their way but she simply and easily moved her fluttering fingertips to my sides. I drove the back of my head against the carpeting and guffawed. This was more than I could take; I couldn’t possibly stay still for this. And yet I did, or still enough, anyway, to keep the tower of stuff quivering above me from toppling.

“No fair!” I shrieked, laughing with abandon. “No fair!!”

She just snickered, fingers gliding relentlessly and maddeningly over and over again against my bare sides. My every impulse demanded that I twist violently away from her touch, that I yank my overactive nerve endings out of the way of her torturous attentions. But I had to fight those impulses if I didn’t want a stapler to the forehead.

I moved my hands to my sides; she evaded them and her fingers continued their sadistic dance. I was sooooooo outmatched by her right then; it was like she was tickling a person who could only move in slow motion. Her fingers scampered up to skitter softly against the bottom of my rib cage. The sensation was incessant and intolerable. The impulse to laugh, to howl, to curl into a ball was irresistable. I tried to turn it off with my mind--what is tickling after all, just fingers on my skin, just fingers on my skin, fingers on my skin means nothing, don't have to laugh, don't have to laugh, don't laugh don't laugh! BUT I HAD TO LAUGH. “Rachel I can’t take it,” I laughed helplessly. “I-can’t-take-it.”

And she stopped. The pile on my chest settled into a comforting stillness as I tried to steady my breathing. Thank God. That wasn’t so bad. My girlfriend’s not so evil after all, I thought. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her scratching her arms, doing this maneuver she often did where she scratched both arms at the same time, each hand skritching the underside of the other’s arm.

Then, with a sudden movement, her hands shot forth and scampered tickling across my stomach. It was like a blast of cold water; only my having seen the motion a split second before her fingers made contact with my skin kept me from convulsing and bringing everything tumbling down.

I squealed like a girl; the books on my chest loomed, almost fell.

She stopped as quickly as she’d started.

“Rachel, that’s not funn—“

But before I could finish speaking her hands shot out again, tickling mercilessly up my sides, then pulling back. I squealed again. An empty Mountain Dew can clanged hollowly against the floor by my temple.

“Seriously,” I said, “you’ve got to st—“

Another lightning attack; this time my torso twisted as I giggled sharply. More cans fell, one bouncing off my forehead. The stapler fell too, missing us both.

“Stay still!” she chirped.

Another. I yelped and twitched ticklishly; notebooks slid off the stack and landed on my shoulder.

Another. I eeped. Books rained about my head.

Another.

Another.

The attacks came more quickly and more quickly; the stuff fell and slid all around me. Some of the books that landed on me hurt but I barely noticed, so consumed was my attention by the ruthless torturing about my abdomen.

The intervals between the tickling grew shorter and shorter until it was just one long tickling and the pile had all fallen away and I was curled on the floor, arms crossed, twitching and lashing out, trying to fend her hands off but mostly just squirming and giggling and praying for mercy as her fingers scribbled against my sides, my stomach, my sides, my neck, my knees, my stomach, my sides. Me giggling and shrieking and giggling.

Finally, finally, she stopped.

“Wanna play again?” she said brightly.

 

[Wade]

Her tickling had an afterlife: a prologue

Not surprisingly, when Rachel and I broke up her tickling of me came to an end. What was unusual was that in the months that followed she had, and took advantage of, a couple of opportunities to use her knowledge of my peculiar weakness to induce other people to tickle me. It wasn't a huge campus, and even though we didn't talk much anymore we still hung out in the same social circles. And, as we know, she was secretly evil.

The first time she pulled such a trick actually has a prologue--and, uncommonly enough for me, it's a prologue with M/F tickling involved.

There was another girl, Maria, who lived in the same co-ed house that I lived in. We didn't get along, particularly, so I didn't know her that well. She was sort of a serious and crabby person, easily irritated, self-absorbed and actively interested in guys who were very much not me. She was also, though, I had to admit, hot. She was incredibly petite--short, slight, semi-birdlike but with pleasing curves in the rear and chest areas and cute, nimbly muscled limbs with only just enough dusky black fur on the swells of her forearms to be tantalizingly visible, high gorgeous cheekbones, deep-set and piercing dark eyes. I don't know what her background was; I want to say she was part Latina, part Filipino, but I have no idea if someone actually told me that or if it was just a wild guess I hatched privately. But apart from her rather grim personality she was cute as hell with her coffee-colored skin and the lush quantity of black hair that cascaded amply to her shoulders when it wasn't clipped up in careless practicality or--and this was pretty irresistible--pulled into two bushy, adorable pigtails.

So, anyway, that was Maria. We'd exchanged maybe twelve words in our year or two of acquaintance up to this point. And one day I amble into the house's lounge area to find her wrestling vigorously on the sofa with a couple of guys who didn't live there but had started hanging out there a lot, doubtless because of her. They were the kind of guys Maria would like--big, athletic (I think maybe they both played lacrosse?), oafish, kinda dumb. Matt was blond and tanned with ridiculously white straight teeth; he'd have been absurdly good-looking if not for his oversized chin. Travis was goofier-looking, sort of Neanderthal--crew cut, low overhanging brow, perpetual five o'clock shadow, bushy dark body hair that swarmed over his shoulders and down his arms to his knuckles.

Anyway, as I say, Maria liked these dudes, for whatever reason, but in this instance her efforts to fight them off seemed pretty genuine: she was really struggling, and even though these guys were strong and meaty they were having trouble subduing her. It was a little disturbing to witness and my instinct was to step in--until I approached and realized she was laughing breathlessly: violent though her resistance was, it was still on some level playful. I turned to leave again.

"Hey! Wade! Hey, Wade! Little help?"

Surprisingly, this entreaty was coming from one of the guys. Matt, I think--Travis's voice was distinctively high and wheedly.

"C'mere, man, give us a hand."

I was vastly disinclined to spend time enabling the flirty play of three of my less favorite people, but what came next made me pause.

"C'mon, dude. Tickle her feet."

I looked. They'd been struggling to immobilize her legs and assault her bare feet, but she'd been putting up such a prodigious struggle that they hadn't been able to complete the mission. When Matt said "Tickle her feet" she howled "No!" and started kicking and struggling again and it was all the guys could do to keep her on the sofa.

"Help us out, help us out. Tickle her feet."

They strained to hold her calves more or less still; each guy had his beefy arms wrapped around her legs. Her petite bare feet stretched out there in front of me, twitching pointlessly in protest.

I'm not a tickler by nature, and I'm also not a foot guy. But I can attest that Maria's feet--like the rest of her--were, empirically, pretty adorable: high curved arches, shapely well-proportioned toes, smooth and callus-free.

"Dude, time's a-wasting, what's your problem? Do it already!"

Okay, these guys were incredibly annoying. And did I mention I'm not really a tickler? But for God's sake they were right there, right? Was it even conceivable that I was going to do the principled thing and walk away and say "Sorry, guys?"

Are there people who would do that?

So I perched on the sofa and scrambled my fingers softly up her soles. Her feet convulsed and shuddered like they were being electrocuted, but she didn't make any noise--what was that about?

There was a big mirror propped up against the wall across the room, a salvage from the old dance studio before they built the new one. So even though I couldn't see Maria's face from where I was sitting--there was a dense wall of lacrosse player between us--I could glance in the mirror and see her reactions there. Her lips were pressed together in desperation, her eyes were squeezed shut tight, her little hands were balled up in determined fists--she was desperate not to give us any satisfaction.

I spider-crawled my fingers down the bottoms of her feet, from the toes to the heels. Again with the struggling feet, and I could see her face, see her shuddering and struggling to hold it in.

It was really a mean thing I was doing here. But I have to admit I kind of see what you guys see in it.

I also suspect that my own ticklishness, and years of being subjected to others' tickling, probably rendered me uncommonly effective at torturing poor Maria, because it only took another second or two of the soft and steady spider-walking--God how I can't take the soft and steady spider-walking when it's deployed against me--before she burst out laughing. I watched in the mirror as she threw her head back and let forth with a stream of uncontrolled, musical laughter. Her smile was gorgeous--wide, dimpled, big white teeth--but I knew, guiltily, from experience, that it grew out of pure suffering.

"You got her, you got her man," Travis said gleefully.

I kept it up: up and down, fingertips scampering relentlessly up and down Maria's twitching soles. She was laughing too hard even to plead with me to stop, her fists clenched at her chest, her whole body struggling against the boys' pitiless grip, each cascading laugh--deceptively delighted in its tone--a little wilder and more hysterical than the one before it. I can still hear it in my memory: AAAAAAAAhahahaha. AAAAAAAAAAAhahahaha. There is something, I confess, intoxicating about knowing I was making that giddy sound happen--and, I'm ashamed to admit, that I was making it happen against Maria's will.

Her feet were there, immobilized and so ticklish, they weren't going anywhere, and these fellas clearly lacked empathy--I could have done this for as long as I wanted to. But compunction got the better of me and I withdrew my fingers from her helpless soles.

"Aww, c'mon," Travis whined.

"Dude, don't stop now," Matt said with an edge of contempt.

But I stood up and shook my head. "Pretty sure she's had enough," I said.

"Buzzkill," Matt exhaled as they released her legs.

Maria scrambled to get off the sofa as quickly as she possibly could, flailing gracelessly to regain her balance and get as far from the sofa as she could. Her top had ridden up a little on her flat little tummy; she tugged it down sharply and shot me a furious glare, her cheeks flushed a bright and angry pink.

"Hey," I said, awash in regret. "I, I'm..."

But she was gone; she stormed out off the room. I heard her resentful footfalls stomping all the way up the stairs.

"Dude," Travis said, "she hates you now."

Yeah, because that's fair, I thought, but I didn't say anything. I just expected that my every future interaction with Maria would be as terse and unfriendly as before only now with an extra overlay of guilt on my part. I didn't realize that Maria was actually going to get the chance, down the road, to get back at me in a fairly surprising way, and that Rachel was going to be instrumental in enabling her to do so.

 

[robbyman105]

YES glad to see you're writing again, Wade! Your stories are hands down the best /m anything

 

[Wade]

YES glad to see you're writing again, Wade! Your stories are hands down the best /m anything

Aw, thanks!

 

[Wade]

The consequences

So it was a weekday afternoon some time later--weeks? Maybe months?--and there I was in that lounge area again (am only just now realizing I may have logged more hours in that room in my college years than in any other single location), and it's just me and Rachel; we both happened to land there around the same time, the other people in the room happened to drift away, and there we were. We'd talked very little since we broke up; it wasn't an acrimonious breakup, particularly, but it just seemed like we didn't know how to relate to each other after having only related to each other as romantic partners. But this turned out to be a really good conversation: she caught me up on her life, I caught her up on mine, we even talked a little bit about other people we were attracted to and whatnot, we joked around, I teased her, she laughed--it was a really pleasant, really healthy, really mature exchange. It was nice to know we could get to there.

So anyway, people were tromping through the adjacent hallway as Rachel said, in response to some teasing on my part, "You shut up or I'll tell everybody how ticklish you are."

"That's top secret,"I said. "I made you sign that confidentiality agreement."

Laughter and mindless banter. But then I heard a voice in the hallway, gobsmacked and outraged: "WHAT?!?"

Suddenly Maria appeared at one of the lounge doors, her gaze fixed laserlike on Rachel. "He"--she pointed dramatically in my direction--"is ticklish??"

I didn't like where this was going, but of course Rachel was completely ignorant of all the backstory and the reason for Maria's indignant questioning. "Oh God yes," Rachel said. "He's like the most ticklish person on the planet."

Maria turned sharply to look at me. Then she leaned back into the hallway and bellowed: "Guys. c'mere! Come here! Now!"

And who should appear at her sides but frigging Matt and Travis again. "Yeah, what?"

She pointed at me. "Hold him down."

Aw, hell. I made to scoot off the sofa and head for the other door but Maria had shrugged off her backpack and was making a beeline for me, Matt and Travis close behind.

"Hold him down," she said again.

"Guys, don't listen to her," I said, sidling quickly toward the exit. But the guys cut me off and started backing me toward the sofa.

"I don't have a lot of time," Maria said urgently. "Hold him down!"

"Rachel? Rachel, a little help here...?"

But if Rachel said anything in reply I didn't hear her, because then those two brawny dorkwads were upon me, grappling with me, gripping my arms, muscling me back onto the sofa. Each had seized one of my arms with both hands; they pressed me awkwardly back against the sofa, my back bending uncomfortably against its edge, my arms gripped firmly above my head. Maria crouched over me, predatory, hands at the ready.

She tossed a question over her shoulder at Rachel: "Where's he ticklish? Where's he the most ticklish?"

"Don't listen to her, Maria," I said. "She doesn't know what she's talking about."

"Shut up," Maria said. "On this subject I'm guessing she knows exactly what she's talking about. Rachel! Where?"

Rachel had her palms pressed to her cheeks--in delight? In mortification? I have no idea. "I better not," she said. "I think I've said too much already."

Maria exhaled in exasperation and lowered her fingers to my torso. I was counting on the awkwardness of the situation, my antagonistic feelings about Maria and her idiot henchmen, and the dull pain in my back to all contribute to distracting me from being ticklish; maybe I could keep from laughing. Maria especially was probably in no mood to touch me any longer than she had to; if I could keep from laughing she'd probably drop it quick.

Then her sprightly fingers pincered trippingly up and down my sides, from my hips to my ribs and back again. Not only did it tickle but the sensation was uncommonly tickly; the effect was pretty much irresistible. I couldn't hold it in; I couldn't help myself. My back arched, my muscled contracted, and instantly I was giggling--against my better judgment and all my desires I was giggling uncontrollably.

And I'll never forget the look on Maria's face when she registered my reaction. A grimly satisfied, lopsided grin.

"Okay, good," she said. "Don't let him go," she said to the guys. And up and down her fingertips ran , systematically and relentlessly activating every twitchy point along my helpless sides. I twisted my abdomen from side to side as the cascade of ignominious giggles poured forth; Travis and Matt struggled to hold me in place. Maria paused to glance at the slender silver watch on her shapely wrist. Then she tickled my sides some more--AH! AH! HEE!--and then she glanced at her watch again.

"Shit," she muttered. "I have to get to class."

Thank God.

She stood up, turned to Rachel, beseeched her. "Do me a favor? Tickle him for me? Just tickle him, y'know, until he pukes?"

And I a surge of panic thrilled through me as, holy shit, Rachel hesitated. She was considering it. It had been bad enough being pinned and getting tickled silly by a hostile Maria, who wanted only revenge, wanted only to make me suffer. But if Rachel took up the cause, I knew all too well of her hidden, latent reserves of playful sadism. She would enjoy it. And a playfully sadistic Rachel, enjoying herself, wouldn't stop anywhere near as soon as a vindictive Maria who's just getting even. Not to mention that Rachel had logged serious time learning where and how to tickle me for maximum incapacitation.

So it terrified me a little when Rachel hesitated. But then she said "No, I'd better not." She got up and gathered her things.

Maria emitted a frustrated sound. "Please!" she said. "I swear he deserves it."

"I have no doubt he deserves it," Rachel said. She shot me an apologetic grin and then to Maria she said, "Sorry." And off she went.

That was a close one. But it looked like I was going to get away easy this time. Matt and Travis would let go of my arms and I'd just steer clear of Maria for the next ten or twenty years.

Maria let out a growl. Then she started digging in her purse.

"I," she said. "will give you guys twenty dollars"--she held out a crumpled bill--"if you hold him down and tickle him until he has a breakdown."

Who was she talking to?

Oh shit, she was talking to Matt and Travis!

But fortunately Matt and Travis wouldn't have any interest in doing that, not even for twenty dollars.

"Twenty dollars each," Matt said.

Maria rolled her eyes dramatically and dug into her purse again. "Fine!" she said, holding out two twenties. Did I mention Maria's family had a bunch of money?

"No!" I said.

"But I'm serious," Maria said. "I'm saying you tickle the living crap out of him. If I find out you blew this off you guys are dead."

"Yes, ma'am," Matt said jokily.

Maria glanced at her watch again, snagged her backpack and headed off. She paused. "And get his feet," she said. "You want to keep that money, you get his feet."

"Fine!" Travis said.

She peered suspiciously, warningly, at the two guys. Then she looked at me. And smiled. An evil little tight-lipped smile. And she was gone.

"Well," Matt said. "You heard the lady."

"Guys, c'mon, I'm serious, don't," I said, squirming in their grip. "This is so stupid. Let me go, keep the money, I'll tell her you did everything she told you to."

"Dude. But that would be lying," Matt said in mock disapproval.

I felt them both shifting their position and redoubling their grips on my arms so as to free up one hand each. Oh for God's sake they were going to do this! This was a nightmare.

For the second time in ten minutes I found myself hoping against hope that the circumstances would mitigate my characteristic ticklishness--I'm rarely in the position of getting tickled by other guys, especially in a sustained fashion; surely the fact that this context was devoid of any anxious libidinal heterosexual thrill would contribute on some level to a dulling of my ticklish senses? Surely my typically giddy involuntary responses to getting tickled, even in the most platonic situations, are driven to some degree by the skittish energy of boy-girl flirtation?

They each hugged one of my arms close to their chests and reached down; their fingers started playing roughly around my rib cage.

Their approach to tickling was clumsier and rougher than, say, Maria's; it wasn't as instantaneously incapacitating. But damn if it didn't still tickle like hell. I didn't want to move; I didn't want to squirm or writhe; I definitely didn't want to giggle or shriek. But there my body went, twisting and wriggling around--their hijacking of it was successful. My legs flailed and splayed, my abdomen twitched and twisted. And I pressed my lips together trying not to let the laughter come out but I could tell that was going to be futile; my body started shuddering with the suppressed laughter and then it burst forth, more high-pitched and embarrassing than I wanted it to be--I couldn't at least respond with a deep manly chortle?

But no. It was all hee-hee-hees for me.

Their hold on me was strong but tenuous; my compulsive and convulsive movements worked against them and forced them to have to keep adjusting and reasserting their grip. Their big blunt fingers kept scrabbling around my ribs and chest and stomach--nonogetawayfrommystomach--and I couldn't stand it--it wasn't as intolerable as Maria or, God knows, Rachel, but I hated being unable to keep from responding helplessly in this way.

"This is a pain in the ass," Matt said, struggling to keep me pinned. But they kept tickling--their fingers just wouldn't stop scrambling around, alighting on my assorted spots. I was slipping downward, using gravity to my advantage, creeping ever floorward, my torso inching instinctively away from their maddening hands. If I kept being a hassle they'd give up, surely.

But as I slid gradually downward they were each able to adjust and strengthen their holds on me; they could each pin an arm against the front of the sofa with a leg while keeping my wrist held firmly skyward. And this proved to be extremely unfortunate positioning, because now it was a strain and an effort for them to reach down and get to my ribs so the next thing I felt was Matt's fingers, dangling lazily in my armpit, starting to scrabble away in there.

Oh Jesus no not that not there are you KIDDING ME--!

That's when the giggling gave way to shrieks and whooping. Wasn't long after I gave myself away with that earsplitting demonstration of hysteria that Travis's fingertips were in my other armpit, dancing and scribbling away. My legs were kicking and flailing hopelessly; I writhed and twisted on the floor. But it didn't matter because everything from my chest on up was completely immobilized and the idiot guys had easy and unfettered access to their targets. Tickling me before was a chore and a hassle; in this new position, tickling me under my arms was the easiest thing in the world and I COULD NOT HAVE THEM TICKLING UNDER MY ARMS...!

But I didn't exactly have any choice in the matter.

As I took a ragged breath between squeals and whoops I heard Matt say to Travis, "I think we're getting better at this." And through it all those big fumbling fingers just kept spidering guilelessly away under my arms, driving me freaking insane.

They stopped--well, one of them stopped, don't even remember which, and then the other, noticing the shift in my hysterics and my struggling, also stopped.

"Guys," I said breathlessly. "Guys that's enough, cut it out right now, I'm not kidding, don't be dicks."

There was a pause.

And Matt said, "Dude."

And then they were tickling under my arms again and I was kicking and flailing again and shrieking with desperate laughter again and again and again.

At some point they stopped again.

"What do you think?" Matt said to Travis.

Silence. Then Travis said, "I don't really want her coming back and bitching that she didn't get her twenty dollars worth."

"Dude," Matt said. "Me either."

"NO--!!" I was frantic. I really couldn't have them doing this any more.

But they did it some more. OH MY GOD how could it tickle SO MUCH? It had to stop THEY HAD TO STOP.

Finally, yet again, they did. Another moment of reflection.

"Dude, I really don't want to be touching his fucking feet," Matt said.

"Yeah, me either," Travis said.

Matt leaned over. "You're gonna tell her we tickled the shit out of your feet, right?"

"Yes of course I'll tell her that," I said.

"I'm serious," Matt said. "Don't screw us here, Wade."

"I'll tell her," I said.

His fingers were dancing in my armpit again--followed shortly by Travis's--I jerked and yelped and dissolved into giggles.

"You tell her or else."

"OKAY," I cried through my laughter.

"You make it sound convincing," Travis said. "Don't half-ass it."

"FINE," I shrieked. "FINE!"

"What will you tell her?" Their fingers were still tickling away.

"Illtellherthatyoutickledmyfeet," I burbled through the hiccuping giggles.

"Dude," Matt said. "You're making like no sense at all."

They stopped and dropped my arms. I tried to scramble away in a fashion that looked as little like a beaten dog as possible.

Matt looked at Travis. "Wanna get some food or something?"

"Yeah, I'm starving," Travis said.

And they were gone.

 

[TicklesXXX]

Awesome thread.

 

[Wade]

The subsequent Travis predicament

That wasn't actually the last chapter in this particular it's-all-Rachel's-fault post-Maria Travis-and-Matt story.

Some time later I was in that lounge--yes, that freaking lounge again--and, again, it's hard to say how these tableaux came to be, except to say that, well, it was college. Anyway, I found myself sprawled lying on my stomach on an easy chair, my body and legs stretched across a pair of ottomans, and a gaggle of classmates, mostly or entirely women, had piled on top of me. (There may have been some kind of a turf war associated with the fact that I was monopolizing three pieces of upholstered furniture, I don't know--the origins of this ridiculous situation are lost to the ages.) At any rate, there I was, pressed under the weight of eight to ten other young adults sitting or leaning or lying on top of me. It wasn't terribly uncomfortable, actually, and everyone could breathe, so there we were piled, making idle conversation. In particular I was directing my hopefully charming and witty remarks to Lora, who was perched near my shoulder; I'd developed kind of a crush on her.

Then someone new entered the room; I heard his chuckle and his reedy tenor. "What's going on here? Dogpile?" It was Travis. He was of course one of my hundred least favorite people at school but mostly we could coexist in the same space without overt friction, even after that whole Maria thing, so I didn't think much of it.

"Geez, who's under there?" There was a silence as, I assume, Travis bent and peered and scrutinized the pile of people. "Is that Wade?"

"Yep," one of the girls said.

"He's trying a new career path as furniture," Lora cracked.

"Hey, buddy," I muttered.

"Huh," Travis said. "Wade sitting there under a pile of females. Guess some guys have all the luck." There was a bitter edge to Travis's attempt at light repartee; I realized that he was jealous of me. This made me happier than anything else that had happened that whole week. I understood it had been a while since Travis had hooked up with anyone; I'm sure he was particularly irked to see me of all people, so undeserving, so unathletic, enjoying any kind of feminine attention. I enjoyed making Travis envious, and I nurtured that enjoyment as I went back to trying to impress Lora.

I felt the weight of the ottoman supporting my legs shift; someone had sat down upon it. Then someone was handling my ankles; I felt someone tugging at the laces of my hightops. A pall of dread rolled over me. Surely this wasn't happening. Surely this thing wasn't about to happen.

Both my sneakers were untied now. I turned to look at Lora. "Hey, hey... what's going on down there, is someone messing with my shoes?"

Lora craned her pretty little neck and gave a quick nod. "Yeah, it's Travis."

He was tugging at one of my shoes. "Hey," I called out. "Hey Travis man, knock it off."

The shoe came off; I heard it plop softly on the carpet. Then he was pulling off the other one. I experimented with moving my legs; they were fully trapped.

"Travis, seriously, dude," I said, trying to sound intimidating. "Get off!"

I felt him peeling away my socks. Oh my God, he was really doing this.

"Guys," I murmured urgently to the women clustered on and around my torso. "Guys, get up, get off me, I have to get up now."

"What'd he say?" I heard a girl (Jen I think) ask.

Lora registered concern. "What's wrong, Wade, are you okay?"

Both my socks were off now; it was all I could do not to wriggle my bare feet in agitation, which I knew would just encourage everyone involved.

"Wade is very nervous," Travis announced, in the theatrical tones of a proclamation. "Because Wade is very ticklish."

Shit, no!

"Travis, I mean it," I yelled. But out of the corner of my eye I could see Lora's expression slip from concern to curious anticipation, her mouth slightly open in a smiling "o," craning to get a glimpse of what was going on down there below my ankles. Oh, c'mon!

If I could suppress or even just inhibit my response, I could still get out of this--Travis was likely self-conscious, insecure and/or homophobic enough that he wouldn't like the way the spectacle of him tickling another dude's underresponsive bare feet would shift the attention to him. If I could make him seem ineffectual, make his gambit seem like a failure, he might cut his losses and leave me alone.

So that was my plan, hatched in the milliseconds between when Travis said that thing about my ticklishness and the actual alighting of his fingertips on my soles: I was going to hold it in. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

Except.

However clumsy and workmanlike had been the tickling I suffered at the hands of Travis and Matt before, this was an entirely different sensation. His fingers scampered down my feet, from the heels toward the toes, and it was a tickling unlike anything I think I'd ever experienced up to that point: its effects were instantaneous, irresistible--as soon as he started tickling my immobilized feet, I exploded with helpless giggling laughter and could not for the life of me stop, could not modulate it, couldn't do anything, it seemed, but laugh wildly at fullest volume.

Over my own hysterical giggling I barely heard the approving and amused chuckling of all the young women planted on me and around the furniture. Travis was putting on a show for them, and they liked it.

My feet wriggled and twitched back and forth under Travis's relentless, dancing fingertips, but that was all they could do; my legs and ankles were firmly pinned under the weight of the others and my feet were helpless targets.

My frantic laughter poured forth in waves; every exhalation came out in the form of cascading, uncontrollable peals of laughter, pitched somewhere between a giggle and a cackle, a performance completely devoid of dignity of masculine self-control.

As I writhed and squirmed on the furniture under the weight of Travis's audience, a part of my brain tried to figure out how this had come to happen. Travis had never tickled my feet before, had never seen my feet tickled; I guess he just assumed based on my response to being tickled under my arms that my feet must be susceptible as well, and so feigned confidence on that score? Feeling insecure and at a disadvantage and somehow slighted by my brief and minor success at attracting the attention of some women, he'd rolled the dice and placed a bet on my having ticklish feet. And his bet was paying off big.

I was so out of my mind with the tickling that it took me a second to realize that I wasn't laughing any more, and another second to realize that was because he'd removed his fingers from my soles. I took a deep, sighing breath. Well, that wasn't too bad, all things considered. I weathered that okay. I chose not to make eye contact with Lora but in my peripheral vision I could see her smiling down at me, lips pressed together--a smile that blended amusement and pity.

By this point (I'd learn later) some onlookers and bystanders had stopped in the lounge to see the noisy spectacle, and one of them was Rachel, who reported to me later what was going on during this respite: some of the girls down on my legs and around the second ottoman must have asked if Travis himself was ticklish. Rachel told me he'd stopped tickling me in order to raise his shaggy, meaty arms above his head and allow those girls to poke and prod at his ribs and tummy, taking some superior satisfaction in his own invulnerability. Finally the girls gave up trying to tickle him and he lowered his arms again.

And I heard what came next. I heard him say "I guess some people just aren't ticklish."

"Travis," I started to say.

"SOME people, on the other hand..." he intoned overdramatically, and I was like "no no NO NO NO" but his fingers started dancing across the bottoms of my feet again. Again, instantly, I was howling with laughter. It was like the laughter was being forced from me as with a bellows. The people on and around me laughed some more and clapped their hands. I hated knowing that my sensitive feet were contributing to the show by twitching impotently under Travis's touch, but there was nothing I could do to control that, or the peals of senseless laughter.

Why was he such an effective tickler? What superpowers did he wield over ticklish feet? How did his oafish meathooks, used to handling lacrosse sticks and other non-delicate instruments, turn into such nimble and intricate tools of giddy destruction? If this was the effect he always had on feet, no wonder Maria had been desperate to escape him that day I came across them in the lounge.

My laughter metamorphosized a little, as sometimes happens during prolonged tickling: it became more heedless, more unhinged; it became a high-pitched rhythmic pattern of OH ho ho's. And still Travis kept tickling; Rachel tells me that even as his fingers spidered mercilessly up and down my wriggling feet he was carrying on constant conversation with the girls around him, smiling confidently and teasing them. He was using my ticklish feet as a prop in his own flirting agenda. Not cool, obviously, but it wasn't something I could think or worry about in the moment; in the moment I was just frenzied for it to stop. We were well past the point, if Travis had been a woman, when I would have been begging and beseeching her for mercy: bargaining, abasing myself, offering her anything. But somehow the fact that my tormentor was a dude made me innately reluctant to display that weakness; I couldn't bring myself to beg him for mercy (and no one would have been able to understand anything I said if I did anyway). My helpless, ignominious, defeated condition was pretty self-evident: I was lying there defenseless in a crowd of my peers, hysterically laughing against my will at the whims of my competitor an antagonist. It was pretty clear who was winning here. Still, I couldn't bear to seal that with begging.

So I just kept laughing. Wild, ragged laughter. No idea how long it went on; it seemed like days. Finally it stopped, however, and as I panted and heaved on the chair, blushing furiously, Travis stood up. "I hope you've enjoyed this infomercial," he announced, making a typically off-key and inadvertently absurd joke--which received a ripple of laughter anyway, for some reason. "Please feel free to try it out yourself."

Oh come on!!

More rippling laughter, and--inevitably--a little resumed tickling of my immobilized body by the girls whose weight was immobilizing me. Some fingers skritched and burrowed their way between my arms and my sides, forcing me to emit some embarrassing whoops and hiccups, and Jen took the initiative to start spidering her fingers on the backs of my bare knees--I was wearing shorts, it was a balmy spring--and eliciting from me some helpless gurgling giggles that were as surprising to me as they were to the peanut gallery. But none of these women shared Travis's calculating cruelty, or if they did they still assessed that I'd suffered enough, and shortly thereafter everyone peeled away leaving me to try and pretend it hadn't happened. The sadly sympathetic--but not unamused--smile that Rachel offered before she left told the whole story.

I know for a fact, as it happens, that Travis got lucky that night with one of the women who'd been sitting on me. At least it wasn't Lora. He didn't hook up with her until the following year.

 

[milagros317]

Great to see you posting again, Wade. I love your stories. 😀

 

[SilverTickles]

The original story and all of your follow-up stories were... amazing. Wow. Thank you.

 

[BlackRose27]

I agree with everyone else! Wade, you have some awesome stories, particularly the F/m ones, but honestly they're just all great. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Wade]

Thanks, guys! Means a lot.

 

[milagros317]

Thanks, guys! Means a lot.

Glad to see you posted a new story, too. 😀 (The Sarah Saga)

 

[Wade]

Like many, I am having trouble sending private messages, so I just wanted to mention here for those who've been asking when I'm going to share the next chapters in my interactions with Travis and Maria and Matt -- I will try to write and share them soon!

 

[tickler87!]

Very exciting to hear

 

[1evel]

Why didn’t Rachel want to tickle you when Maria asked? Also, with the benefit of hindsight, would you have preferred Rachel to do it over Matt and Travis?

 

[Wade]

Why didn’t Rachel want to tickle you when Maria asked?

I mean, we weren't dating anymore at that point. And I think she felt a little guilty that she had played some role in making me a target. AND Rachel was never big on being the center of attention anyway, so demurring was pretty in character for her.

Also, with the benefit of hindsight, would you have preferred Rachel to do it over Matt and Travis?

Yes. First of all, Rachel was cute and attractive and friendly while Matt and Travis were big dumb troglodytes. Getting tickled by them was just tickle-torture without a sexy frisson to leaven it. Second, I am positive Rachel would have succumbed to pangs of compassion and relented long before those dudes did; they had exactly zero incentive to go easy on me. Finally, my tickling relationship with Rachel was already established and had already tapered off at that point; she already knew how ticklish I was, and all of her most merciless ticklings of me were already in our past. But by drawing Matt and Travis into her nonsense, Maria created a pair of new tormentors in my orbit -- had Maria not recruited them, I guarantee Travis probably would never have tickled me ever, instead of sending me around the bend on multiple subsequent occasions.

 

[TKL_M28_LI_NY]

And so it goes.