He found most of his tickling partners online in fetish forums. He didn’t have a ton of options because the forum was heavily skewed with men.
With the absence of many willing partners, Ryan occasionally hired women to tickle him.
“Wait, wait, you pay people to tickle you?”
“I mean, yeah, usually other people with a tickling fetish. We meet at hotels and don’t have sex or anything. We don’t even get fully naked,” he said.
“You tickle over your clothes?”
“Yep. Fully-dressed tickling,” he said.
“No one gets off? You meet up, tickle each other senseless, and then everyone leaves?”
“Pretty much.”
He was being a good sport about answering my questions.
“Fascinating,” I said with wholehearted sincerity. I was thrilled to learn that this fetish existed. It was proof that there was still a ton of stuff out there for me to discover.
“If it’s just tickling, why the hotels?” I asked.
“Would you want your roommates to walk in on you non-stop laughing for thirty minutes?” he said.
Touché.
“If you ever want to try it, we could have a tickling session,” Ryan offered at the end of our meal.
I politely declined. There was no way in hell Simon would be okay with that given his total one-eighty about me trying foot modeling.
Later that night, I called Simon and told him about my lunch and casually mentioned that Ryan had offered to do a session with me.
“You should definitely try it. It’s a great story,” Simon said.
“What? Are you sure you’d be comfortable with that?”
“It’s just tickling, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s it,” I assured.
“And you and this guy are totally platonic?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Then you should try it; it’s a cool opportunity.”
I definitely did not see that coming, but one of my favorite things about Simon was that his curiosity was almost as insatiable as mine.
Four days later, Ryan was standing in my room pulling out his bag of weaponry. Weaponry was the term for the tools used for tickling. His bag included hairbrushes, feathers, and toothbrushes.
I was surprisingly relaxed. There was an easiness to my friendship with Ryan that made me feel comfortable. We approached it like he was giving me an insider’s seminar on Tickling 101.
I was going to be the Ler for the first round, which meant Ryan was going to be tickled first. I was happy that I could do this for him and that he didn’t have to pay someone.
He went over the weapons and the basic protocol. He advised me to use my fingers first to explore which areas of the body were sensitive. I’d start at the feet and move upward toward the knees. After that I’d tickle the stomach, armpits, inner thighs, and the collarbone. Once I mastered the light touch, I’d experiment with weapons.
While I was examining the weapons, Ryan stripped down to his boxers and laid down on the bed.
I was taken aback; I’d expected this to be a fully clothed session. My mind immediately went to Simon. Even though he knew about the lesson, I wondered if he’d be upset if he knew there was a half-naked man getting tickled in my bed.
If it had been anyone else I probably would have said something.
It’s just tickling, I thought, pushing Simon out of my mind.
But was it? I wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was naive of me to think it was wholly platonic.
At Ryan’s request, I blindfolded and handcuffed him to prevent any involuntary elbowing if the tickling got too intense.
I grazed his foot, gently running my fingers across the soles. Ryan squirmed, and while I thought he might be trying to escape his face was unmistakably happy. Joyous even.
I moved to the back of his knees. No response, so I mentally crossed that off the list of places he enjoyed.
I inched toward his belly and spider-fingered my hand across his stomach. My movement was met with an outburst of squealing laughter. It wasn’t a chuckle or a snicker, it was a full-on chortle.
Emboldened by his response, I prematurely grabbed a toothbrush and rubbed the bristles across his armpits and collarbone. With every movement of the brush, Ryan’s body responded. He twisted and turned to the stroking, laughing helplessly the entire time.
I laughed too. Partially, because the whole thing was unusual but also in part because it was fun. It was joyful to watch another human being shake with infectious laughter.
Within three minutes we were both roaring loudly. I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t breathe.
I noticed that Ryan was slightly erect and thought of Simon again. I suggested he put on pants and we continue with me as the Lee this time.
“Do you want the blindfold?” he asked as he handcuffed me.
“Hell no,” I said. Not being able to see was a control freak’s worst nightmare. Being handcuffed, which was necessary to prevent elbowing, was already a huge push for me.
I lay down fully clothed on my bed and waited. I hadn’t been tickled in years, so I had no idea how this was going to go.
Ryan tickled my feet. No reaction. All my weird chemical foot creams had probably temporarily desensitized them.
He moved from my knees to my belly.
Nothing on either. No reaction or movement on my end.
I was disappointed. Perhaps I just wasn’t ticklish anymore. Maybe it was something I had grown out of.
He snaked his way up to my armpit. An outburst of giggles escaped from my mouth.
Jackpot.
I laughed until I was out of breath.
He stopped for a minute to give me a break and moved to my collarbone, this time using the toothbrush.
The bristles grazed my skin and I erupted into a fit of laughter again. Every time I laughed, he laughed. I was surprised by how much I was enjoying myself. Ryan was masterful at the pacing, bringing me right to the edge of painful laughter before releasing me back to normalcy and then back to the brink again.
I was loving it.
I had no idea if, for Ryan, this was erotic and arousing. Maybe his mind was wandering to sweaty, naked places.
For me, it was lighthearted and jolly without being overtly sexual. Perhaps because I was only interested in Ryan as a friend.
Ryan finished tickling me and we both stood in my room, exhausted and sweaty.
Our faces were plastered with grins.
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” I said, smiling at him.
“No, thank you!” he said. “It’s hard to find someone willing to tickle with me.”
I could tell that it was important to him, that it was a part of his identity, a part that was often hidden and unfulfilled.
“Don’t pay someone. I’ll tickle with you again if you want,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely.
“Do you mind if I write about this?”
“Not at all! Just change my name,” he said.
Easy enough.
When I started out, I thought fetishes were a weird subset of sex that most of the population couldn’t relate to. I lumped all fetishes and kinks together. I thought that people who had them were unrelatable non-conformists who lived on the fringes. Whoever they were, they weren’t like me. I was wrong. In fact, like most things I had learned so far, I had no fucking idea what I was talking about.
There were hundreds of fetishes and kinks. The people who had them were bankers and students. Comedians like Ryan. Writers and artists like me. Accountants. People who shopped at Target, responsibly filed their taxes, and raised respectful children.
And yet, Ryan didn’t want anyone to know that laughing and tickling turned him on. In some ways it was reassuring. I knew that I was sexually repressed, but so was society at large.
I didn’t know what to explore next but the realization that I might be into some of the kinkier stuff opened a whole slew of doors that had previo
usly been closed.
I pondered what it would be like to try tickling with Simon. Maybe not as the main event, but definitely as a fun lead-in to playful sex.
I made a mental note that it was definitely something we were going to try.
APPLES AND ORANGES
All the pieces in my life were finally coming together. I had my own room, a job with health insurance, and I was dating a smart man who cooked me French toast.
And finally, for the love of God finally, the curse upon my vagina had been lifted.
Simon and I had been dating for a little less than three months. It wasn’t long for most people, but it was an eternity for me.
It was everything I wanted. Everything I had asked for, and yet, I couldn’t suppress a tiny, nagging feeling that somehow it was all wrong.
My instincts were right, since a few weeks later Simon started acting odd.
Something was up.
He still hadn’t officially called me his girlfriend and his communication had become unreliable. Our daily texts became every-other-day texts and he hadn’t initiated plans in a while (not that he was ever good at planning). I had no idea when I was going to see him and that frustrated me. The worst part was that we stopped being as physical. He was too tired or not in the mood.
Reverse cowgirl felt like a distant dream.
When we were together we had a great time. The moment he was gone, I felt anxious and afraid that it might be the last time I’d see him. I’d get all worked up and then try to convince myself that I was overanalyzing everything because I hadn’t ever been in a real relationship.*
I was constantly evaluating the status of things by checking neat little boxes in my mind. If I made him laugh during a phone call, I’d place a mental check in the “Things Are Fine, You’re Thinking Too Much” box. If he didn’t text me for a few days, I’d place a check in the “He’s Over It” box.
We hadn’t been dating very long, but the short honeymoon was over.
“Hey! What are you doing this weekend?” I texted even though I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to initiate plans. I hit send with a certain amount of self-loathing for breaking my promise.
He invited me over to his house and offered me leftovers.
He was distant but hospitable.
He was also sick. Simon had been sick for the majority of our relationship. He always had some sort of cold, virus, or sinus infection.
We got into bed and had lazy and unsatisfying sex. When we were done, a breeze blew in through the window. He got up to put a shirt on and so did I.
“Damnit. My tooth hurts,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his cheek.
He had been complaining for weeks about how much his tooth hurt.
“You should make a dentist appointment,” I suggested, putting my pants back on.
“I can take care of myself,” he snapped, standing up and walking over to grab a bottle of aspirin.
It was the first time he had snapped at me.
He wasn’t done yet, though. “I’ve had a long line of women telling me what to do and the last thing I need is another one. Obviously, I have never listened,” he said gritting his teeth.
His tone was sharp, and his message was clear: he didn’t want me taking care of him. He could take care of himself.
Except he was doing a terrible job at that. He was sick, sad, and broke. He was depressed and anxious. He couldn’t or wouldn’t prioritize his health.
I didn’t know how to deal with anger so I excused myself and cried in the bathroom. I thought he might come after me, but he didn’t. When I was done, I crawled back into his bed, where he was already asleep.
When I woke up the next morning he wasn’t there. I walked in the kitchen and saw him sitting at the table with scrambled eggs and a glass of Jack, even though it was only 10:30 a.m.
I looked at the whiskey.
“It’s for my tooth. I made you an omelet, it’s on the stove,” he said.
I grabbed my breakfast and sat down, quietly pushing my eggs around my plate, trying not to cry all over again.
“Sorry for being such a jerk,” he said, before I could say anything.
“It’s fine,” I said, blowing it off.
It wasn’t fine, though. I was worried about his health. I was worried about us.
He blamed his anxiety on anything and everything: his lack of stable employment, his move to NYC, being alone too much, and a whole host of other things. From my perspective, it seemed like his anxiety came from his divorce. He punished himself by not allowing anyone to care about him. But I wasn’t a psychologist, so I didn’t say that.
We left his place and walked to the deli to grab coffee.
“Are we okay?” he asked, glancing at me sideways.
“We’re okay.” I said, grabbing his hand and giving it a squeeze.
I saw Simon the next day and everything felt normal. We laughed, kissed, and made love like nothing had happened at all.
I left for a wedding in Ohio a few days after that and even though things had been normal the last time I had seen him, I was still rattled from our fight.
I didn’t want to seem needy so I resolved not to contact him and let him contact me.
Four days in to my trip and I hadn’t heard a peep. No calls. No texts. Not even a “like” on Facebook. I wanted him to miss me, but the absence of communication made it seem clear that he didn’t, at least not at the level I wanted. I checked my phone every five minutes. I checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally blocked him. I made my friends text me to make sure my phone wasn’t broken. The reality was: Simon hadn’t/didn’t want to contact me.
On day five he sent me a link to a song called “Emotions and Math.” I listened to the lyrics and felt reassured.
On day five he sent me a link to a song about a man missing a woman and how he was counting down till she got back.
Oh, he did miss me.
I sent him three heart emojis and told him how perfect the lyrics were.
“Oh, I didn’t really listen to the lyrics. Just thought you’d like her voice,” he wrote back.
My heart dropped.
Seriously? Could he be that oblivious?
“The lyrics are about someone being away and someone else missing them.”
“Oh. I didn’t really think about it.”
I sat cross-legged in my childhood bedroom and stewed, feeling foolish for believing there was some sort of hidden meaning in a song, or that he even cared enough to send me something emotionally vulnerable. I didn’t respond to his text and went to bed, worrying and thinking. Thinking and worrying.
Somehow it was all wrong.
He didn’t text me for the rest of my trip.
I got back on Monday and texted him and he responded with curt replies and no plans to see me. I suggested we meet up on Thursday and advised him to call when he knew his schedule, which, of course, he didn’t.
Thursday came, and I was glued to my phone, waiting for him to text. I could have contacted him, but I had too much pride.
His radio silence, also known as ghosting, made it clear that he was trying to end things.
We hadn’t dated very long but, goddamnit, we were adults and I deserved better than that. It was cowardly. I wasn’t going to quietly fade into the background while he self-destructed and refused to acknowledge my existence in his life. We had been intimate, both emotionally and physically, so the least he could do was muster up some motherfucking courage to actually break up.
“We need to talk,” I texted him the next day.
He responded immediately, “Are you free tomorrow?”
We met at the farmers’ market by the park. He didn’t kiss or hug me, which I was both upset and not upset about. I still thought that maybe, just maybe, this was fixable. We could make this work.
With more communication, I’d feel less anxious. Maybe he’d get a better job and feel more confident. Maybe I could talk to my therapist again. If we could fix a
ll these other variables, then we could make our relationship work.
My brain was running through all the scenarios, though in the burrows of my intuition, I knew that there was only one variable that mattered. He was emotionally unavailable and that made us incompatible. Nothing was going to change that. He was an apple. I was an orange. We made a nice fruit basket but not a great pie.
We sat on a park bench and talked about a bunch of benign topics like the weather and the forages of the farmer’s market, both of us too cowardly to start the breakup. It was par for the course, we had spent the majority of our relationship on park benches, bantering about nothing and not saying what we needed to say.
After an hour, I couldn’t believe we were still pretending like we didn’t know exactly why we were there.
“C’mon, Simon. We need to talk about what’s going here,” I said, making a gesture toward both of us.
He looked uncomfortable and emotional.
He didn’t make any excuses for his behavior and said, “I can’t be in a relationship. Obviously, I’m too unstable and my life is too much of a mess to be with anyone right now.”
I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true, but he was right: his life was a bit messy at the moment.
Even though he was breaking up with me, I was more worried about him than myself.
I had a lot of friends and a strong social circle. After six years in NYC, I was settled. I knew the bars I’d go to drink to forget him. I knew the men I could make out with to rebound. I’d land on my feet. Simon was still relatively new to NYC. I was afraid that he was going to sit around and drink himself into oblivion, that his health was going to get even worse.
We talked, and then talked some more, but I didn’t try to convince him to stay. I learned a long time ago that you can’t convince someone to stay if they want to go. I could wear my sexiest dress and tell my funniest jokes but no matter what, I couldn’t force Simon, or anyone, to love me.
Beneath the surface-level disappointment, I was relieved. In my gut, I knew he wasn’t my forever person. He was giving me an out before we became too entangled in each other’s lives. I had taken on the burden of making him happy and he was absolving me of that responsibility.
I was grateful for that because, ultimately, you can’t make sad people happy. They will only make you sad too.
The Coitus Chronicles Page 11