Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Miss Poubelle's friend Kit used to date a big handsome guy from Brandeis. Returning from a weekend there, Kit confessed that he was torn about whether to return. His date had held him down and tickled him over and over again till he finally pissed his pants. "What was weird," Kit said, "was that he had a big hard on while he was doing it. And I got one too!"

Tickle fetish among gay men is not very well known outside a small community. But interested readers can find a provocative collection of photos and fiction at www.ropejock.com. Many of the regulars at this site are like Kit and his friend and find the idea of tickling and being tickled intensely arousing.

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Sexual tickling usually involves a victim who is tied up or restrained in some way, and so it has some similarities to bondage. The tickling often concentrates on the feet, so there also an overlap with foot fetishism. Yet sexual tickling isn't exactly either of these things. For many men, the essence of the fascination seems to be with the body's loss of control while being tickled. The victim squirms and writhes, laughing uncontrollably but also often crying at the same time. While a bottom in other kinds of SM may be encouraged to unflinchingly and quietly accept his punishment, the body's nearly involuntary responses make this impossible for a tickle bottom.

Many tickling scenes also focus on the loss of control over orgasm. The tickler may lightly tickle his victim's cock for an hour or more bringing him just to the edge, but not letting him come. A variant of this called milking by aficionados involves bringing someone to orgasm over and over, usually against his will. Other ticklers enjoy making the tickle bottom piss himself.

Why should anyone have a sexual reaction to tickling? Part of the answer may come from understanding the biology of tickle. We know the reactions we have to tickle, but it is intriguing to ask why people are ticklish and what causes the body to react as it does to tickling. The scientist Robert Provine has explored the science behind tickling in his recent book Laughter.

The tickle response that we have is shared with other primates, like chimps and gorillas. It probably originates as the body's response to the presence of an insect, spider, or snake on the skin. Think of the way your friend reacts when a spider crawls up his leg, and now think about the way the body moves when being tickled. They are fairly similar both involve nearly involuntary, convulsive efforts to get away from the source of the sensation. In evolutionary terms, it seems that primate ancestors who had such reactions to these potentially dangerous situations probably had a better survival rate than those who passively sat around while things crawled over them. And so they passed on this reaction to us.

Tickling differs from the spider reaction in being triggered by another person and accompanied by involuntary laughter. The tickler is nearly always someone who is an intimate or family member, so the tickling situation is generally a safe one. Perhaps some of the tension and release provided by tickling comes from the contrast between our body's involuntary, convulsive reaction and our mind's awareness that we are not actually in danger.

It's not hard to see how sex and tickling share many properties. They both involve close physical contact with another person and result in body reactions that are partially or entirely out of our control. You can't make yourself have an orgasm in the same way that you can raise your arm. Nor can you simply decide not to react while being tickled. In both cases, the body simply takes over and we have the sensation of being out of control.

Sex and tickling share many critical features. We like sex because it feels good, brings us in contact with other people, and takes us out of ourselves. Tickling can do all the same things. Perhaps it is not surprising that some men are aroused by tickling. What may be more surprising is that more of us are not.