Inklings: Sensation

Check back later for the Spoken version!

I am totally, completely an absolutely a sensation slut.

I am constantly searching for novel sensations across my skin. When I look at a toy, or a kitchen tool, or even in a hardware store, what I want to know is how that's going to feel when it touches me. Is it a soft, fluffy feel, is it scratchy, is it sharp, is it cold or warm, wet or dry?

Everything has it's own sensation. Floggers, for example, have the most wonderful feeling when they're softly led over the skin. Different leathers have different feels. Steel feels different whether it's a big surface or a little point (and points feel different depending on what material they are - toothpicks feel different to metal skewers, for example).

It's really easy to become a connoisseur of touch, but the worst thing is how difficult it is to describe it. I'm a person who likes to break things down, to be able to classify and categorise things. For touch, it's maddeningly difficult. How exactly do you describe the feeling of a TENS unit to someone who's never experienced it? How do you describe the difference between a lettuce knife and a wartenburg wheel?

Even science is no real help. While there are classifications for sight, sound and even taste, touch seems to be deemed "too hard" for scientists. There are so many senses involved in the one we call "touch", learning how touch sensations differ is something that just hasn't had much work done on it, and it's frustrating to say the least, and I don't seem to have the imagination to come up with a decent way of categorising touch.

 It means that no matter how hard you try, the only way to really communicate touch is to be there with someone to let them feel it. The Internet, sadly, does not assist with the communcation of touch, and it means that really novel sensations, sadly, don't get to travel very much. There's no way of posting sensations on Fetlife, alas.