The Blowfish Blog

[Greta Christina] Tickling a Moving Target: When Your “Yes/No/Maybe” List Changes

So the other day, I was reminded — vividly, and in the best possible way — of a very important but easy- to- forget truth about sex.

The truth: Sexual desires change. Things that last year hit all your beautiful buttons might leave you lukewarm today. And things that last year made you run screaming from the room might make you go “Hmmm” tonight. Mapping your desires can be like mapping Europe in the ’80s and ’90s — it’s a geography that could shift at any time.

Here’s the story. My lovely partner and I were doing the nasty, and by accident, she touched my belly with a light, tickly touch. A touch that, normally, would have had me hit the ceiling. And not in a good way.

I hate being tickled. I have always hated being tickled. When it comes to my “Yes/No/Maybe” list of sex acts, it has always been on my “Absolutely Not, No Fucking Way, Do That And I Am Out Of Here (And May Break Your Arm On The Way)” list. I hated it as a child, I hated it as a teen, and I hate it as an adult.

Except — as it turns out — I don’t hate being tickled.

It seems that I now rather like being tickled.

A lot.

Being tickled wasn’t just okay. Being tickled was a one-way ticket to instant nirvana. Being tickled was like having a live electrical circuit wired directly from my belly to my clit. It’s too early to tell — I’m too much of a skeptic and science geek to judge on the basis of one experiment — but it seems very likely that tickling hasn’t just moved off of my No Fucking Way list. It may well have hit the Top Ten.

Sexual desires change. Sexual responses change. As your body and life change, your sexuality can change — and this isn’t just true for adolescents and twenty-somethings. It’s true for all of us, throughout our lives. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

See, I’m guessing this new tickling thing may be part of a larger shift in my sexuality over the last couple of years. The short way to describe it is that I’m less sensitive than I used to be. I’ve always been a sensation junkie, but it now takes more intensity than it ever did to get me off. Coming has never been a problem for me, but for the first time in my life, it’s sometimes hard for me to get off even if I’m getting it exactly the way I want it. And it often takes longer as well.

This has been pissing me off. I liked being easy to please. I liked getting off without any real trouble. Losing that has been . . . well, a loss. And it’s been making me fret about what’s going to happen in ten or twenty years if the trend continues.

But now, I’m realizing there could be an up side.

Maybe, as some things slip off my radar for being too mild, other things — things that were once too intense for me — might be sneaking onto it. Maybe now, some other things I’ve had longings and fantasies about but knew were too extreme for real life, will turn out to be worth trying.

I’m clearly going to have to do some experimenting.

Part of me is still irritated about all this. I’ve long felt that one of the compensations of middle age was that I didn’t have to spend hours of precious sex time figuring out my likes and dislikes. I know what I like already, and now I can just . . . well, do it. I’m open to new ideas, of course, but I more or less know what’s up and what’s not. I’m a little annoyed at having to be back in the lab again.

But I’m also excited about being back in the lab again. What else do I like now, besides tickling? What else has moved from the “Fantasy only” part of the map — even the “Not even a fantasy” region where the map ends — and into my actual body? Piercing? It’s always scared the crap out of me, but it’s always intrigued me as well, and now I’m thinking it might be worth a try. Caning? I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with it: it got me higher than a kite, but with real anguish on the way. Maybe now the scales might be tilted more towards love than hate.

And here’s the thing. This time around, I can be in the lab without the angst. None of the “Am I a selfish slut?” anxiety about speaking up and asking to try stuff. None of the “Am I a pervert?” identity crisis about what it would mean if I tried something and liked it. I went through all that in my twenties, the last time I was spending lots of time in my erotic laboratory. This time, I can skip it. I am a slut; I am a pervert; and it’s not selfish to ask for what I want, as long as I listen to what my partner wants. I know all that, and I’m good with it.

So this time, I can have the fun, exciting, adventurous part of mapping my sexual territory . . . without any of the coming- of- sexual- age doubts and dreads.

This time, I can just play.

I guess there are compensations to middle age after all.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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This entry was posted on Friday, 13 June 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.