I AM NOT ASHAMED 05

THE MEGUMI STORIES
BY MEGUMI KATO AND FRIENDS

VOLUME 03: I AM NOT ASHAMED
BY KIMIKO KOBAYASHI AND MEGUMI KATO

CHAPTER V

Two Sisters

The next morning I woke late, even for a Sunday. The 
first thing I experienced was an extraordinary sensation 
of well-being. I stretched luxuriously on my futon, 
abandoning the modest self-effacing posture a 
well-brought-up Japanese girl is supposed to maintain 
even in bed.[3] My body felt as if it had been through 
some miraculous process of reconstruction, and I had 
never been so at peace with myself and the world. 

All at once this spiritual and physical harmony was 
shattered as memory came flooding back. Had I really - 
oh, _no_, I couldn't have done! But I _had_ - oh, how 
awful! How _could_ I have? And how could I live down the 
shame? I must have been mad! Hardly able to face the 
horror of it all, I leapt out of bed, scrubbed myself 
fiercely in the little wash-room, and deliberately chose 
my longest and most modest skirt. 

Despite what my new friend from last night had promised 
me, I felt my mother must be able to read at once in my 
face the awful truth that her daughter had become a 
shameless and perverted slut. Fortunately she left me 
alone to get my own belated breakfast. She was 
preoccupied with a lunchtime get-together with other 
ladies she had become friendly with in the PTA, and still 
kept in touch with even after all three of us had left 
school. My father had left the house early for his Sunday 
golf game. While I was trying without success to eat, my 
sister Fumiko turned up unannounced from her university, 
dressed in a filthy t-shirt and jeans and carrying a bag 
of - presumably - even filthier clothes for our mother to 
wash. 

I long ago learnt to accept that I was the dunce of the 
family. My brother Ken, as I have mentioned already, went 
to a specialist college to study film and is beginning - 
or so he tells us - to establish a career as a director. 
Fumiko is very brilliant and had no difficulty getting 
into the university of her choice where she is studying 
politics. I have no idea what she wants to do later. She 
seems to be opposed to just about everything Japanese 
society values - even cleanliness, which makes it 
difficult to imagine her with either a husband or a job. 
But we have always got on well together, ever since as a 
teenager she insisted that we form an alliance against 
our brother's bullying. 

Before she left to join her friends, our mother prepared 
us a simple lunch: some soup and some rice-balls with a 
little sour plum in the middle of each. As we ate, I 
plucked up the courage to ask Fumiko about her sex life. 
She was always very frank about such matters, but it cost 
me quite an effort nonetheless, and she looked at me 
shrewdly. 

"Why do you want to know, Kimi-chan? Have you got a 
boyfriend at last?" 

"Well, yes ..." I said, conscious of blushing furiously. 
But in a way it was true. "Do you think that's wrong?" 

"Of _course_ not, don't be silly. You're old enough to 
know what you want. Enjoy it." 

"How old were you when you ... I mean ..." 

She could see I needed information, and kindly decided to 
give it to me without making me squirm. 

"My first year at university I was sex-mad," she said in 
a matter-of-fact tone. She had finished her lunch and put 
her chopsticks aside, pulling a squashed packet of Seven 
Stars from her jeans pocket and lighting one. She leant 
back on the _tatami_ matting on one elbow. "I discovered 
sex in my first week, and realised what I'd been missing 
all that time at school. All that year I had non-stop sex 
with anyone who wanted me." 

"Was that good?" 

"It was fantastic. Marvellous. But after that first year 
I became more selective. Now we're a group who hang out 
together. Maybe ten or twenty couples: people come and 
go. We switch round as we feel like it. It's better that 
way: plenty of variety but we all know and like each 
other." She drew deeply on her cigarette. Smoking like a 
man was part of the rebellion, I guessed. "Of course," 
she went on, "sometimes I break out, go and spend a night 
or a weekend with a gang I've never met, taking them all 
any way they like - just as I used to do. That's nice, 
occasionally. But after that I go back to the group." 

"When you say," I said carefully, "you take them any way 
they like, do you mean you ... I mean, what ways ... you 
know ... I ..." 

"Ah, so that's the problem!" she said. "Your new 
boyfriend wants to do some kinky things to you and you're 
not sure about letting him?" 

I tried to answer but couldn't. I shook my head and 
looked away, blushing worse than ever. 

"Or is it that you love them, these perverted things he 
makes you do, but you're not sure if they're allowed - is 
_that_ it?" 

"Well, yes ..." I said. In a way it was; but could I ever 
explain - even to her - that it was my own desires that 
worried me, and that I wanted to know if _they_ were 
allowed? 

She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray of the 
"smoking set" kept on the table for my father's 
occasional use. 

"Look at me," she demanded. 

I gazed into her eyes, my nose irritated by the wisp of 
smoke still rising from her incompletely extinguished 
cigarette. 

"I don't ask you to tell me what it is he does to you - 
though I could guess - but do you enjoy it?" 

I was overwhelmed with rapturous memories from the 
previous evening. I suppose my face showed it only too 
clearly. I did not need to say anything. 

"Well, then," Fumiko demanded, "what's the problem?" 

"But can it be right?" I blurted out at last. "It seems 
so unnatural." 

She looked at me carefully. 

"You know, I think you're asking the wrong person. You 
shouldn't be asking me, you should ask yourself. In fact, 
I guess you _are_ asking yourself, but I don't think 
you're listening to the answer." I wasn't sure I really 
understood, but I said nothing. "Your body will tell you 
if it's right," she went on, "and if it's right it's 
natural. What does your body tell you? _Is_ it right? 
Whatever it is?" she added with a dismissive gesture. 

"Oh, _yes_!" I murmured, overwhelmed again by ecstatic 
memories. 

"But there's still something troubling you," she said 
after another pause. 

"It feels right, but _is_ it right?" I managed to say. "I 
mean, I know this sounds very peculiar, but what I've 
been doing - oh, Fumi-chan, it's so difficult to 
explain -" 

"Try." 

"Well, if I were free to decide for myself, I couldn't 
possibly do it - I mean, I'd be so ashamed. I'd be 
telling myself I couldn't do anything so perverted and, 
you know ... so, well, disgusting. But if I'm in a 
position where I can't stop them doing these things to 
me, then I'm not ashamed any more because I can't stop it 
happening ... does that make sense?" I added in a 
whisper, suddenly aware that in referring to "them" doing 
"these things" to me I had given away far more than I had 
intended. 

"Yes, very good sense. And you sound to me like a very 
lucky girl. Bondage, was it? And at an orgy? All right, 
don't answer that if you don't want to. But I think 
you're still not listening to yourself. Not your body 
this time, your mind. Your mind is telling you you love 
these things and want to have them done to you." 

"Well, yes," I managed to say, "but only because I can't 
stop it. If I could run away from it I would." 

"And how do you feel when you run away? Or would you feel 
if they let you?" 

"Terrible," I said with a sudden burst of perception. "I 
should never forgive myself for being so silly and ... 
and schoolgirlish." 

"And how does it feel when they tie you up - I suppose 
that's what they do? - and fuck you or whip you or 
whatever it is?" 

"Unbelievable. I've never known anything so wonderful," I 
said. There was no turning back now. 

"So part of your mind wants you to run away and feel a 
fool, and another part wants you to stay and experience a 
miracle." 

"Yes, I suppose so." 

"And your friends make you stay by tying you up." 

"Yes." 

"What does that teach you?" 

I could not reply. I knew where she was taking me, and 
one part of my mind wanted to go there. But only one 
part. Another was horrified at this wholesale change in 
my attitudes and beliefs. 

"Well, how does it feel afterwards? Is there harmony? 
Peace? Does it make you feel complete?" 

I suddenly remembered how I had felt in bed that morning, 
before my conscious mind had destroyed everything. 

"Oh, _yes_!" 

"And if you ran away from what you really want, would you 
experience harmony and peace?" 

"Of course not! I told you." 

"So now I think you know what is right for you. Listen to 
yourself. Then you'll always know what's right. Promise?" 

"Yes, I promise. Thank you, Fumi-chan," I added in a 
rush, "now it's all so much clearer. Next time I shan't 
need to be tied up." 

"Oh, but if you enjoy it, of course you must be!" she 
exclaimed, suddenly sitting upright again. "Even if you 
don't need it, it can still be marvellous fun. Being 
helplessly tied up, I mean. You're so lucky." 

"Do you think so?" 

I was honestly surprised. I thought I was anything but 
lucky to be subjected to such miseries of indecision. 

"Oh, yes. You've got so much to enjoy. And you've given 
me some _lovely_ ideas for what I'm going to have done to 
me tonight." 


FOOTNOTE

[3] "Boys might stretch themselves into the character 
_dai_, carelessly outspread; but girls must curve into 
the modest, dignified character _kinoji_, which means 
'spirit of control'." Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto: _A Daughter of the Samurai_, London 1933 chapter III.           - M K


[Next in Part 06: Chapter VI: The Evidence] 

For complete series so far see 
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