The Interview
A nervous woman auditions for a tickling studio and discovers it's a lot less scary — and a lot more liberating — than she expected.
The Interview
The email had said Studio 7, 2pm, wear comfortable clothes. Comfortable clothes. What did that even mean? I’d changed three times before settling on jeans and a t-shirt. Then I’d changed the t-shirt. Then changed it back.
I stood outside the address — an unremarkable building in an industrial estate, the kind of place that could house anything. A graphic design agency. A pottery studio. A place where people filmed themselves being tickled until they cried.
What am I doing here?
I’d found the listing on a forum. Not the seedy kind — actually well-moderated, surprisingly professional. They were looking for “reactors” for their content. The pay was decent. The reviews from other performers were… surprisingly positive. “Respectful.” “Professional.” “Fun, actually.”
I pushed the buzzer.
The woman who opened the door was not what I expected. Mid-forties, business casual, clipboard. She could have been interviewing me for an accounting position.
“Emma? I’m Sarah. Come on in.”
The interior was… a studio. Proper lighting, cameras on rails, a raised platform with what looked like a dentist’s chair but more comfortable. There were plants in the corner. A water cooler. It looked like a workplace.
“First time?” Sarah asked, reading my face.
“Is it that obvious?”
She smiled. “You have the ‘why am I here and also I definitely want to be here’ expression. We see it a lot.”
She handed me a clipboard with actual paperwork. Not a waiver — a questionnaire. Medical history. Ticklish areas (rate 1-10). Boundaries. Safe words. Preferred intensity. Whether I was okay with being filmed, and if so, which areas.
“This is… thorough,” I said.
“We’re a professional studio. The performers’ comfort is the product. If you’re not comfortable, the content doesn’t work.”
The audition itself was strange. Not because of what happened — because of how normal it felt.
Sarah explained the format: a 10-minute session, filmed from two angles, no editing tricks. My job was to react naturally. “There’s no script,” she said. “Just… be ticklish.”
They started with my feet. Shoes and socks off, feet up on a padded rest. The tester — a guy named Dan, early thirties, very casual — sat on a low stool with a set of tools laid out on a towel next to him. His fingers. A soft brush. Something that looked like a chopstick.
“We’ll start with fingers,” Dan said. “Just to get a baseline. Tell me if anything’s too much.”
His fingers traced lightly across my right sole and I shrieked. Not a dignified sound. Not even close.
Dan looked at Sarah. Sarah made a note on her clipboard.
“Good baseline,” Dan said, grinning.
What surprised me was how quickly the self-consciousness melted. Within two minutes, I wasn’t thinking about the cameras. I wasn’t thinking about how I looked or sounded. I was just… feeling. The sensation on the arch of my foot, the light touch between my toes, the sudden jolt when he hit the spot just below the ball of my foot that made my whole leg kick.
“Sorry—” I gasped, pulling my foot back.
“Don’t apologize,” Sarah said from behind the camera. “That’s the content. That’s exactly what we want.”
They moved to my ribs. Then my underarms. Each area had its own character — the feet were sharp and electric, the ribs were deep and overwhelming, the underarms were… I didn’t have words. Just sounds.
At one point, Dan used the brush on my feet while his other hand held my ankle steady, and I completely lost it. Full-body laughing, tears running down my face, legs trying to pull away. It lasted maybe 45 seconds but felt like an hour.
“Safe word’s ‘red’,” Dan reminded me, not stopping.
“I know, I know, I don’t—” laugh “I don’t want to—” laugh “I just can’t—” laugh
He stopped when I said red. Instantly. No delay, no “just one more second.” Just stopped. And then asked if I was okay. And then offered me water.
Afterwards, Sarah sat with me in a small office while I caught my breath.
“How was that?” she asked.
I thought about it. “Weird. Really weird. Also… kind of amazing?”
“A lot of people say that. The vulnerability is the thing. You can’t be tickled and maintain your defenses. It forces you to just… be there.”
She showed me the playback on a monitor. I looked… happy. Not performing happy. Actually happy. Mid-laugh, eyes squeezed shut, hands gripping the armrests. It was the most unguarded I’d been in front of another person in years.
“We’d like to offer you a spot,” Sarah said. “Regular sessions, two to three times a month. You set your own limits each time. You can renegotiate or stop at any point. And you get the final cut approval on anything we publish.”
I looked at the screen again. At the woman laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“When can I start?”
Six months later, I’ve done twelve sessions. Each one is different. Some are intense, some are playful, some are somewhere in between. I’ve learned that my feet are weapons-grade ticklish, that my ribs have a delay before they really kick in, and that the anticipation is almost worse than the sensation itself.
I’ve also learned that being vulnerable in a safe space is… healing? I don’t have a better word for it. Something about giving up control — knowing you can take it back at any moment — changes how you hold yourself afterward.
If you’re thinking about it, and you’ve read this far, you already know the answer.
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