After submitting a couple of stories from later in life, I feel better able to write about the girl who gave me my first scat experience. Her name was Ruriko.
It is still hard for me to see why it took us that long to get together. I was living in Tokyo, and one evening each week I met Ruriko after work near Azabu-juban and gave her an English lesson in a café, as thousands of other self-employed or income-supplementing teachers were also doing across the city. I had known Ruriko vaguely for years since meeting her when she had been studying abroad, and her English was fine, but she was feeling that her career had stalled and wanted to brush it up to improve her opportunities.
Ruriko was tiny: about five feet tall perhaps, but very pretty. She had hair cut relatively short then: a chin bob cut that she was letting grow a bit; she used to have a different fringe almost every week and I looked forward to guessing what style I would find on her. Her breasts were small, otherwise she would have been unstable; but she liked to wear gorgeous stretchy cardigans, and she often wore tight midi or knee-length skirts, pencil or pleated just slightly at the bottom, that showed the shape of her bum almost as clearly as if she had chosen to put nothing on at all.
After about three months -- really! - of meeting every Wednesday, and exchanging occasional souvenir gifts when one of us had been away, as autumn passed the thought finally took shape in my slow head that she might like me enough to meet up outside a damned café. Perhaps, creaked my mind, she had been dressing nicely and taking care to touch up her makeup in between clocking off work and meeting me not merely because she liked to be well-turned-out in general. I knew she didn't have a current boyfriend. So with nothing to lose -- I wasn't even charging her, as we were old friends -- I asked her one day at the end of the lesson, before we packed up.
"
Ne
, Ruri-chan." I was nervous; I'm not smooth at chat-up. "I see you every week here. I'd like to see you more often. Are you doing anything this weekend?"
She must have had pretty good self-control, because she managed not to show either a smile, which -- fortunately -- was her inner reaction; or the wide-eyed soulful, apologetic look of a genuine refusal, which she let me fear for a moment. She kept a poker face, and then said "Yes."
Blast.
"But not next weekend," and she leant quickly across the table and gave me a two-second smack on the lips. She was closer to the door than I was, and had stood up, shouldered her bag and left the café before I had finished blinking to check this was real. The smell of her lipstick kept me daydreaming all the way home.
This was in 1999: no smartphones. Ruriko and I had mobile phones, but personally I hardly used mine. I got a call from her on my landline, the next evening. After greetings she got down to it:
"Nigel, I'm really sorry I couldn't say yes for this weekend. I'm going out with a couple of girls from work on Saturday, we arranged it ages ago."
"It's fine, next weekend is fine. I'm on holiday next week, so I'm not busy this weekend or next."
"Oh? Aren't you going anywhere?"
"I'm going on a train trip by myself for a few days at the beginning of the week, doing some hiking in Nagano. I was going to come back on Wednesday evening for our lesson."
"Hmm." There was a few seconds' silence.
"Why, hmm?"
"Nigel...would you like to stay with me for a few nights?"
Glory, angels and trumpets. "Stay? Yes, I think I can just possibly manage that." Ruriko lived on the other side of Tokyo from me. "Ruriko, it'll be brilliant to be with you not just for an afternoon. But you, have you got holiday?"
"No. So I thought, why not cancel next week's lesson, then meet me after work on Thursday, and stay at my flat until Sunday. Can you, I mean is that OK?"
"More than OK. I can't wait."
"OK. But also, are you...quite open-minded?"
That could be code for all kinds of things, I thought. I hoped Ruriko didn't mean there would be other guys there, or that I was going to have to dress up as a superhero. "Um. I think so. Can I have a clue?"
"No. See you in a week, at the same place we usually meet. Bye."
Ruriko made a loud kissing noise down the phone -- another loud-kiss-to-end-the-conversation - and rang off. I was anxious about how open-minded I needed to be, and why. As it turned out, Ruriko pushed my limits very hard -- harder than I might have guessed I could take, if I'd been asked to write down what I liked and what I didn't. But you don't know, sometimes, until you try.
The week passed incredibly slowly, considering it was holiday and I had an interesting trip to boot. I got out of the city on the Sunday evening, hiked for three solid days (leaving Ruriko a message one evening, I'm-at-a-hot-spring-inn-wish-you-were-here), and spent Thursday morning getting home. That evening I had shaved and smartened myself up, packed some clean clothes into a holdall, and was trying hard by five-fifteen to seem nonchalant as I loitered outside our usual spot.
Ruriko appeared, looking good as usual in a white sweater with tight vertical cables and a black skirt, bang on time, squeezed one of my hands in both of hers as a kind of hello and marched purposefully into the café without a word. Bemused, I waited three or four minutes, until she emerged through the door, and I only recognised her a second before she took my arm. She had kept the sweater on, but now had on a pair of circular-lens sunglasses and a soft grey peak-cap -- very chic -- and instead of the black, cute-but-decorous office skirt, was wearing a brown leather or faux leather hip-hugging miniskirt. She grinned. "You look smart" -- that was generous, but I had a shirt rather than a T-shirt, slacks rather than jeans, and actual shoes -- "so I'm glad I decided to dress up. Walk slowly with me."
"No choice, have we, with that skirt? You look sensational, but I'd love to see you try to run."