Here’s a curious thing. Sex is often very funny. But porn isn’t. I think that’s because, as a friend of mine once said, you can’t laugh and wank at the same time.
But I defy anyone not to giggle at the porn I’ve been watching this past month. It shows guys being tickled. They all appear to love it. And their laughter is very infectious.
I pride myself as QXMEN’s sexpert on being aware of most fetishes. But tickling is one I hadn’t come across. It’s not as if there’s a tickling night at my local bar or, indeed, anywhere.
But knismolagnia (yes, it’s got a fancy scientific name) is indeed a paraphilia. And now knismolagniacs are beginning to find each other online and at so-called “gatherings.”
It’s easy to understand how tickling can become a fetish. When my father tickled me as a kid, I laughed so much I could hardly breathe. Enjoyable/scary things like this tend to stay with us into adulthood. It’s the struggle to fight off somebody stronger that can become sexualised.
That said, tickling can be remembered as so scary that it’s a complete turn-off for about half of us. What we have here is one of the least-understood but most fascinating human responses. Let me tell you more. Including the answer to that age old question, “Why can’t we tickle ourselves?”
“THE TICKLING FETISH COMMUNITY HOLD CONVERSATIONS AND WHAT THEY CALL TICKLEFESTS, WHERE THEY RESERVE A PORTION OF AN HOTEL.”
Tickling has fascinated people for a long time. In 1897 two different types of tickling were first identified. Knismesis is the light stimulation of our nerve endings, the type done with a feather. Most of us find this pleasurable, especially during foreplay.
The other type, gargalesis, is the one that either gets us laughing hysterically or pushing the tickler away in anger. This is the most interesting type. There’s no convincing explanation why only some areas of our body (underarms, ribs, the soles of our feet) produce a violent reaction when tickled.
But the tickling business seems to be a useful early bonding exercise. Parents tickle children, siblings tickle each other. It was Charles Darwin of all people who first noticed that, for it to produce an effect, tickling has to involve anticipation and surprise. And that’s why we can’t self-gargalate.
When we flash forward a hundred years, we find the beginnings of a tickling community. It’s not widespread. It’s concentrated on the east coast of the US and is mostly heterosexual. Men like to make women scream by tickling them.
Since 2000 there’s also been a website (www.ticklingforum.com), which now claims 80,000 members. It includes a list of 155 ticklish male celebrities. You may want to know that “Mark is the most ticklish member of Take That” and that Richard Bacon has admitted, “Yes, I am very ticklish… in most places.” But otherwise the site appears pretty much 100 per cent straight.
So aren’t gay men into tickling? It’s time to meet one who certainly is, 46-year-old Californian Mike Reynolds. He was so frustrated by the lack of provision for gay knismolagniacs that, in 2004 when he lost his government job, he moved to Hong Kong and set up a website (www.laughingAsians.com).
The content varies but revolves around Asian boys being tied to a bed and then tickled by Mike as a prelude to sex. N.B. Although we use “Asian” mainly to describe people from the Indian sub-continent, the word implies South East Asia to Americans. Mike was nearing the end of a shoot in the Philippines when I phoned him to talk tickling.
“I know that my parents tickled me when I was a child but I have very little recollection of it so I’m thinking that’s not where it began,” he told me. “I do remember as a child wanting to tickle and tickling my friends and this was before sexual awareness. It’s almost like I was born with it.”
Does he like to tickle every part of the body? “Absolutely, armpits, ribs, I get a rise out of it all. But if you’re gonna ask me my favourite it’s gonna be feet. That’s the peak of it for me.” What kind of feet does he like? “Well, of course Asian. White skin does not turn me on.
I want brown or darker coloured skin. Smooth, nicely shaped, not real big feet, not real tiny feet, but average. Round toes, not too long. Plus the smoother the sole the more it turns me on.” Mike really likes to kiss and lick a guy’s feet while he’s fucking him.
Mike gives the impression that he was basically straight while he was secretly discovering the American tickling scene. “There are what they call gatherings in the United States. A big hub of the tickling fetish is on the east coast and they have tickling parties. The tickling fetish community hold conventions and what they call Ticklefests, where they reserve a portion of an hotel. It’s really big in the straight community.
I’m more of a targeted niche. Mine is about Asians, I’ve always had a liking for Asians. I had been buying tickle videos and I was never quite satisfied. I wasn’t getting what I really wanted. I could find hardly any Asian guys getting tickled. That was one of the things that prompted me to start Laughing Asians.”
Are Asians particularly ticklish? “Some are and some aren’t. I always had this fantasy that they were.” Is he a tickler, a ticklee or both? “You know I absolutely love being tickled. But I would consider myself a tickler. Let’s tickle the fuck out of this person, that’s what’s going on in my mind.
I love the flinching. I can tell when a person’s ticklish or not. When they’re not faking it, that’s what gives me a raging hard on.”
That hard on looks as though it might be a bit too raging for Mike’s cute little models (all at least 18 but generally looking much younger) to handle. “There are not many that can accommodate me,” Mike agrees. “But I’m not into pain. It’s a turn off and I can’t perform. You know what I mean?
The nice gentlemen you see on the screen is truly me because I can’t hurt these guys! If I do then there goes the hard on.” There are currently about 350 videos on Mike’s site. Who does he most like to tickle? “Absolutely hands down one hundred per cent my partner Ricky,” Mike replies.
“He was the first Asian guy I ever tickled. Damn it, I really truly think he is the most ticklish model I have, right from the first day up to the last time I tickled him.”
Mike met Ricky in the US and they embarked on the Laughing Asians adventure together. When you see Mike having sex, it’s Ricky behind the camera, and vice versa. “We were both closeted until 2004,” Mike admits. “We both had previous heterosexual relations.” So have they both discovered their real selves?
“In every single sense of the word discovery, yes. It’s who I am now. I think it’s always been deep down inside. There’s nothing better than living life as who you are, openly, honestly and freely.”
My first reaction on discovering Laughing Asians was that Mike had put the fun back into porn. “Well, thank you for that,” he tells me. “Yeah, we do have a good time. What you see on the screen, you can tell that’s not acted. The guys look at it like, ‘Hey, we can make a bunch of money and have fun doing it. Why not?’”
Image courtesy of www.LaughingAsians.com