When I arrive home from a hard day photographing people’s living rooms I plonk myself in front of the computer, put my headphones on and for the next few hours sit ‘uploading’, accompanied by the sounds of GentleWhispering, TheWaterwhispers, TheOneLilium and pigsbum53, amongst others. No, I’m not a subscriber to some live porn website, these girls are not sat in front of their webcams waiting for their subscribers to request they carry out peculiar activities, oh, no, actually they ARE sat in front of their webcams inviting peculiar activity requests – but not the sexual kind. These girls (and boys, but it’s the girls who do it for me) have a gift, the gift of triggering ASMR. No, not Advanced Surface-Movement Radar, but Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response – in layman’s terms braingasms, head-tingles, head-orgasms, spine-tingles, attention induced euphoria.
Do you have it?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response
I have had it since childhood, and back then loved nothing more than going round to a friend’s house and playing role-play games; doctors and nurses, schoolteachers, librarians, Barbie and Ken rub up against each other with no clothes on, George’s marvellous medicine, Barbie and Barbie rub up against each other with no clothes on, Ken and My Little Pony rub up against each other . . .
Whilst listening to and watching my companion concentrating on our games and putting on the airs and graces of whichever characters we were pretending to be I would frequently be besieged by this overwhelmingly euphoric feeling, starting in the back of my skull, sending tingles all down my back, I would be totally transfixed by her banal chattering and careful movements, content just to sit there and be drowned in the sensation.
“Hannah! Lucy! – It’s time for Lucy to go home now, we are about to eat.” would be the words that broke the spell. I would be bundled out of the front door and have to run round the corner, back home, cursing them for eating dinner when I was experiencing the best moment of my life thus far.
I remember aged about seven forcing my male playmate to play doctors and nurses – I kept him shut in my bedroom and made him stroke my arms, legs and tummy with strange objects, accompanied by a doctorly dialogue and strict instructions on how delicately to speak. He didn’t seem to understand the purpose of this and his clumsy, chewed up fingers and the feeling of duress emanating from him put rather a dampener on it for me.
Upon learning that it was a rare phenomenon and one that couldn’t be forced, I would gratefully accept any fleeting moment of ecstasy, however it came. So hungry was I for the feeling that I would even tolerate going to my arch frenemy’s house, just because her mother triggered my tingles. She (the mother) was highly strung, obsessed with etiquette, angst ridden about everything and extremely strict, whilst speaking in a constrained, geisha-like whisper at ALL times. Perfect conditions. Standing in the entrance hall before entry into the house was permitted, we were all given explicit instructions on what rooms we could go in, what we were allowed to play, when our tea would be served, not to pester her beloved obese tortoiseshell cat, (tortoiseshells are nearly always overweight and unfriendly.) not to go within ten metres of the study where FATHER resided and to take our shoes off. I listened, transfixed. The tone of her voice, this nervous-breakdown-teetering whisper of hers hit me right in my ASMR. I would linger, dazed and super-relaxed in the hallway, long after we had officially been granted entry.
Other memorable AMSRvents:
Ready steady cook, when the contestants carefully emptied out their bags of ingredients describing in dreary detail, “I bought chicken because I like chicken and I eat a lot of chicken and I bought potatoes because I like potatoes and I eat a lot of potatoes.” whilst patting each item gently as they talked – bliss – I would sit as close as possible to the TV to hear the crackling packaging.
I remember a dull girl next to me in a maths lesson, during a hiatus when the teacher must have been out taking another dose of valium, drawing me a detailed diagram of her house layout and walking me through it with her pen, describing the layout of each room and drawing in each ornament. That was the best maths lesson I ever had.
Recently I was floorplanning a woman’s house while she spoke all-foreign-like to her child in lovely dulcet tones. I had finished drawing the kitchen 10 minutes earlier but I couldn’t bear to leave the room and lose the sensation in my head, so not only did I draw a plan of their kitchen – I sketched in every knife, fork and spoon, tea towel, tin of soup, and scouring pad to prolong my ecstacy.
Part of what is wonderful about ASMR is that you never know when it will hit you. A dreary day can be transformed by meeting that one special person with contrived mannerisms and voice. They will have no idea of the head orgasm they have just given you, apart from when you breathlessly gasp, ‘Thank you, thank you oh, thank you.’ It is the unpredictability of it all, the knowing it will end at any moment and cannot be relived that makes it even more covetable and can drive you to obsession.
But you can’t do it to yourself and neither, for me, can lovers. This is what proves that it isn’t sexual – my boyfriend and I discovered we had ASMR in common when we met, but can we trigger it in each other? Can we f**k – I would be worried if old ladies were more likely to give me orgasms than my man, but head orgasms – no problem, that’s standard, in fact he came home excitedly the other night to tell me that he had had braingasms for almost an hour with a librarian in the British Library. I was delighted for him.
But lately I don’t meet any of these god-like beings, and that is what led me to search on the Internet. There (once I eventually worked out it was tagged as ASMR) on YouTube they all were. I felt like a starving lion, on it’s last legs, reaching the crest of a hill on the arid Serengeti to look down into a lush valley where a vast waterhole was ringed by hundreds of thousands of juicy wildebeest – There were my tinglebeests! They had been there all this time and I had had no idea. I have since spent the last year catching up with the show and tells, lip smacking, close up whispers and make up sessions, my addled brain soothed by talk of nothing much, and the sounds of menial tasks.
As a non-conversationalist anti-social hermit, being able to listen to feminine chatter without having to respond in any way is a most satisfactory state of affairs, I subscribe to so many ASMRtists but my participation in the whisper community is entirely voyeuristic. I watch and enjoy, but I don’t comment and I don’t make videos either – I am an ASMR parasite, sucking the relaxation out of everyone and contributing nothing, that is why I have decided to try to spread the word about International ASMR day on 9th April, mind you, I have decided to do this only about five days before the actual day so my minute and tardy effort will probably do precisely nothing.
I have made private attempts at videos (ASMR videos that is) and watched them back, wincing, cringing at my not-at-all tingly voice, the way my mouth moves, how peculiar my hairline is, how dry and cracked my hands are. Some ASMRtists go for over an hour – after three minutes of my first show and tell I was getting louder and louder, talking faster and faster and hurling nail polishes and eyeshadows impatiently into a Tupperware box with loud and most un-relaxing clatters. I decided that the whisper community might not need my input.
A recent ASMR ambition of mine was to trigger someone else who has never felt the tingles before. So the very next child that partially knew me I used as a guinea pig, steering the game he was playing, ‘hammering something into a block of wood’ towards the game ‘I’ wanted to play; ‘Getting the stone out of the cow’s hoof’ which involved me using several primary coloured plastic implements from his Tomy toolset to remove an imaginary pebble from his imaginary ‘hoof’. The activity was narrated by me – the exceedingly softly spoken vet – who lightly tickled and de-stoned his feet with great concentration – I knew it was working when he lay back and just stared into space, trance-like, while I worked. As soon as I stopped he told me there was ‘nother tone in my hoof’ ‘and nother’ ‘and nother’ until, now satisfied that I had achieved my life’s goal, I was bored and wanted a glass of wine.
I hope to one day read in this child’s memoirs (the child growing up to be the foremost authority on the science of ASMR and getting stones out of cow’s hooves with plastic toys.) of the experience that set him on the way to the ‘Nobel Prize for Whispering’.
“This peculiar woman ruined my game and then insisted on tickling my feet with plastic tools. I was frozen with fear. She then announced that I bored her and abruptly walked off to get a bottle of wine. She never came back. I cried for a month and have had abandonment issues and drink problems ever since.
Perhaps in subsequent years with a bit more recognition International ASMR day could involve enormous conferences where the world’s leading ASMRtists attempt to create simultaneous mass braingasms to packed auditoriums. There will be ASMR pleasure-hunts where the aim is to experience tingles as many times as possible in one day, with visits to libraries, beauticians, opticians, schools, old people’s homes etc etc. For the entirety of International ASMR day everyone has to be softly spoken – even policemen, football coaches and scaffolders. Celebrities will naturally jump on the band wagon and each will produce an ASMR video.
Celebrity videos I would like to see:
Mary Berry does a weapons arsenal show & tell and delicately disassembles a Glock.
Sister Wendy does a mammogram role-play.
Brian Sewell chews Jelly beans whilst brushing your hair.
Nigel Slater unboxes and unwraps tampons and gently stirs them into a lamb stew.
Nancy Dell’olio performs an autopsy role-play.
Monica Bellucci wraps a severed finger in tissue paper.
Charlotte Gainsbourg gives you a binaural rectal exam, in French.
ASMRtists will become A-list celebrities, putting their voices on Sat Navs and special ‘whisper adverts’ where you will be asked to put headphones on to fully appreciate the effect.
ASMR clinics will open on high streets where you can go in, choose your role-play scenario and, in addition to aural and visual triggers, you get to experience tactile ones. I have found that a feather-light stroke of the inner forearm can increase a braingasm – many a wet-break at primary school was spent tickling each other’s forearms, “Close your eyes and when I get to the crook of your elbow with this paintbrush you have to call out, and then it’s my turn.”
I never called out.
