Lately I've been kissing people I'm not married to...

SL is a strange place. You can get immediately and intimately connected with people you barely know. Now I am not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, and lord knows I am not likely to give up doing so myself, but I read a post a while ago on Salon.com that reminded me of what the unintended consequences could be for SL relationships.

Salon.com has an advice column (generally witty, always interesting) written by Cary Tennis. This offering is "Lately I've been kissing women I'm not married to," a lament from a married man who finds himself wanting to act out his fantasies of making out with strangers... here's a small piece:

My situation is this: I think of myself as happily married. My wife and I have a good relationship. Our sex life is just fine. Why have I done this? My recurring fantasy is going out with a woman from work and we end up at her place after drinks, fooling around. Pretty vanilla, I know. But that's me! The situation this week followed my fantasy to a T, which I clearly found exciting. But my fantasy always goes further than what actually happened this week. I/we stopped it in its tracks because I/we knew it was wrong. But why wasn't I smart enough to stop it earlier, when we were having drinks and were both giving clear signals to each other? I would understand if I was unhappy in my marriage. That is why I find my behavior so stupid. What is my problem? 

Serial Kisser 

Dear Serial Kisser,
What is your problem? Your problem is that if you continue to kiss women you are not married to, soon you will no longer be married. That is the usual outcome with the kissing of attractive women you are not married to. You are evidently aware of this in some dim way. That would be why this hobby of yours is not bringing you unalloyed pleasure but instead a pleasure tinged with a dollop of piquant dread. . . . I mean, it's understandable what's been happening. Get a few drinks in you and you want to kiss people. It's natural. Nothing wrong with that per se, except you're married. You know the rules. You knew the rules when you signed up. Nobody forced you to sign up. You signed up on your own. There are a lot of people you don't get to kiss now. It's tough, I know. But those are the rules. 

If Cary is correct, well, there are a lot of us breaking those rules by our actions in our SL lives. So the ultimate question becomes: is having a relationship in SL a threat to an RL relationship? I personally know of at least 2 RL couples playing in SL who have come close to the brink of separation/divorce and may yet tip over it. These are RL married couples who play separately in SL and have SL relationships with SL partners other than their RL ones. And in both cases each partner has one or more SL sweetie, someone other than their RL one. It should also be said that in each case the RL relationship was in someways dysfunctional before anyone got involved with anyone else in SL.
There are also cases of people getting involved with SL partners to the exclusion and alienation of their RL spouses. An August 10, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal, "Is this Man Cheating on his Wife?", tells the story of one guy who has in effect traded his RL for his SL, spending full days on the computer in SL with his other wife, an SL partner. Andrew Vogel's response, in his blog Spunlogic, tells us:

According to family law experts and marital counselors, though, the Hoogestraats’ deteriorating marriage is not an isolated case. The article cites that an increasing number of marriages are crumbling because of “virtual infidelity.” This begs the question, if virtual marriages are causing real life marriage trouble, are the virtual marriages all that virtual?

And there is the crux of the issue. Secondlife isn't just a game anymore. There are real people and real feelings on the other side of that avatar. Just like you can pick up a one-night stand in a bar, you can pick one up in SL. And just like that one-time good time in RL can lead to something serious so can an SL relationship become serious. 

So what is the answer? Telling everyone--telling ourselves--"Hey! Don't do that!" Oh yeah, that'll work. Look. Let's face it. There is a huge divorce rate in this country. And why? Because Americans throw something out and get a new one when it doesn't work anymore. Here's a notion. Maybe the SL relationship can save the RL one that isn't working? Don't get enough sex at home? Have an affair or hire an escort in SL. No diseases, no mess, not expensive, not illegal. But don't expect a full time SL relationship AND a full time RL one. I'm not saying you can't have both--just that you have to be able to balance what you want with what you can realistically have. And be really sure, if you find you have to choose between the two, you are making the right choice--in full understanding of the effects of your choices on you, on the people in your real life, and on your SL lovers.

Trivia night at Callahan's

I was frustrated after a long day where all my words came out wrong somehow. You know how it is on days when you just seem to be unable to say things in a way people will understand you? So to blow off steam, I went in world. Callahan's was having Trivia night. Tolkien was the subject--I could not resist. I have read the LoTR more than a dozen times, it is my comfort literature... the stuff you read and reread and reread.

I missed the first half hour of the contest. But as I walked up the walk I heard: "Seven for the dwarf lords ___________" and as I walk in the door, I automatically say "in their halls of stone." I got the point. It was pretty much a walk in the park from there.

I told them I was kind of a ringer on this so I would happily not play if they thought it was unfair. They said that in depth knowledge didn't disqualify me by the rules. There was one guy, Zonker, who had 3 points when I came in who, after a couple more questions that I took, said he was gonna give up and just stare at my avatar instead. I liked that. Puts a girl in a good mood right away when someone likes what they see. Other people here and there had a point or 2 each. Only 3 or 4 questions got away from me after that. A couple I really didn't know, a couple I was not fast enough for.

I ended the evening as the winner with the scores being: me with 14 points, Zonker with 5 or so, and other people had 1 or 2 each. I told them I didn't feel right about taking of the prize (a gift certificate for all the Callahan's books from Amazon), so next week's trivia winner (the subject is Larry Niven--do you see a scifi author trend here?) will get it. The other half of the prize was that I got to pick the trivia subject for 2 weeks from now. I took Zonker's recommendation for Robert Heinlein. Now I have to come up with 25 Heinlein trivia questions. How well do you grok Heinlein? Wanna help?

After the contest was over most people went away, some stayed and talked Scifi Lit for a while. That was fun. Turned out Zonker is a Dr. Who fan. There was another fellow had come late and missed the contest, but who wanted to chat. He was being a bit flirty and came and stood by my chair. But then he turned voice on, while everyone else was still in text--I think that is kind of rude, so I was not impressed. He just talked over everyone's text, too, the kind of guy who wants to hear his own voice over everyone else's. When Zonker stood up to leave, so did I.

The thing about Callahan's is that everyone goes out the door before TPing. It's a kind of courtesy to maintain the illusion that this is a real bar. When I left the golden boy followed me and kept talking. I just kept walking, but then he asked: "how do you pronounce your name?" Now I am a sucker for a man who asks me about my name, so I stopped and turned. "It sounds like 'sigh', " I said. It all went downhill from there.

"No, that's wrong," he said, and proceeded to give me a lesson in Chinese language as he saw it. He told me that my name should be said "da-zigh" because the T becomes a D sound as in Mao Tsetung (which he pronounced Mao Duh-zee-dung). I told him the Chinese Hanzi characters are not the same, this is a soft C sound and would be spelled "Cai" in modern Romanized Pinyin Chinese. He proceeded to lecture me on Chinese and its many dialects. I said, "I know--I speak Putonghua." He said that he didn't know that one, he was talking about Mandarin Chinese. I tell him Putonghua IS what we Americans call Mandarin! But he is off on the next topic already, India. He says many dialects there, I say many distinct languages, and I begin to list them: Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Nepali, English. . . .

It is a bad move trying to argue with him. Like talking to a wall. Maybe I should have turned my voice on, while he kept rambling off on different tangents to impressed me (not!) with his knowledge (wrong!), I could have cussed him out in Mandarin, and then Mongolian, and French, and thrown Latin in for good measure. I think that he thought this was the way to impress a woman. I also think that he's an idiot and picked on the wrong woman. Now I was getting pissed.

Next golden-boy goes off into a sort of rambling diatribe and tells me Sanskrit is written in runes. I say glyphs, and he tells me again I am wrong, because he's read a lot and knows better. We argue the meaning of the word hieroglyphs. He: "picture" writing, so Sanskrit is "runes" because it is not pictures. I say: "sacred" writing, and BTW sanskrit also means "sacred writing," and besides, runes are purely Teutonic script. And I was determined to make him see his error (though why I felt the need to prove myself to this guy is beyond me at the moment).

Then comes the clincher. He tells me that he knows all about Sanskrit (and Cuneiform, too, BTW); he first learned about it by watching the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth and I suddenly realize that I have been trying to prove myself to someone I likely wouldn't bother with in RL. Someone who is probably a kid who lives in his parent's basement with his computer, his video games, and his movie collection. Someone I would not stoop to conquer in real life. How odd is that?

Now I feel like an idiot. I tp'ed home and sat on the couch and reread my conversation with him. Why on earth did I even in engage in that exchange? Okay, I was feeling cocky and smart (having won the contest and all), and I was coming off a week full of missteps and insecurities in RL (some of that has to do with goings on at work, a coworker with whom I can't work). And some of it has to do with the way the universe has been unkind about a number of real life romance things.

But still, I have behaved like an idiot. Had to prove myself. But to whom? And why? It did neither me nor Golden Boy any good to try to one up each other. And it ruined any chance of a normal conversation between us ever again.

Here's the thing about SL. We put on avatars and suddenly we need to be larger than life. We script our own movies. We are the stars of our own melodramas. What is up with that? Are the emotions higher in SL? Hearts worn on the sleeve and all? Or are we just so damn wrapped up in the roles we play that we forget about the other people in the movie with us?

I am a firm believer in Serendipity. That there are lessons all around us if we only take the time to listen rather than trying to force our own will on the universe. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe I'll just sit and ponder on this for a while.

A Second Life. . . or why am I here?

You are asking yourself what is this woman talking about? A second life? It's true . . . but to really understand my second life, you need to experience Second Life.

I admit it, I am addicted. I'd like to blame Bobby and Amanda who first mentioned it. Or Rhiannon who got me to watch over her shoulder, but the truth is I am a sucker for a good storyline and the beauty of SL is that you can write your own story. It is role playing. It is the holodeck and the replicator (that's Trekker speak) all rolled into one. It is another reality and it is escapism.

So because it was almost summer and I had the time, I joined. Two years ago today. Next I needed money. Gotta buy clothes (don't want to look a total noob) and bling  from the designers and the scripters (because SL is also capitalism at its finest). The money here is called "Lindens," and one US real dollar is worth around 250L. So for about the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee I can have 1000 Lindens to play with in the Second Life world(s). Not bad. You don't have to really eat, or mow the grass, or do the dishes (unless you want to--just about anything can be put into gestures, a string of actions that your character or avatar can do). This includes virtual sex.  Best of all though is the dancing. Alone on a club floor, in the arms of a handsome avatar, even all by yourself in the moonlight. 

And then there is SL sex. Think about it.  No bugs to catch. You can say YES. Maybe get money for saying yes, maybe get presents, maybe just do it because you want to connect to a special someone. And you can say NO. And no one can force you. Don't like the guy who is coming on to you? Mute button. He follows you around? Delete him from of your friends list and he can't see you. Corners you? TP (teleport) out. Harrasses you? Report him to the PTB. All in all that adds up to the potential for a lot of fun, and no foul.

Beware, though, SL is addicting. Don't let SL occupy you so much that you forget that you have a Real Life (tm) too. And don't mix them or there is a big broken heart potential. Don't share RL info in SL with anyone you do not know VERY well. Don't be surprised when (if you share SL info with them) RL friends think you need therapy.

A good thing to keep in mind is that this is role playing. Your avatar (your SL body) is both you and not you. You can look anyway you want. In fact, most of the avatars look like gorgeous sexy 20 somethings. Never assume that how the avatar looks is the same as how the person looks in RL! Many of us do try to stick somewhat close to our ideal RL selves. I am, for instance, really an RL blonde, but in RL my eyes are more grey than green or blue. Some of us choose to be another gender, or another creature. I can be a smoke demon. Or a lust demon. In SL we can have any face and hair and body and clothes we want (or can afford). We can have wings, fur, feathers, elf ears, vampire teeth, horns, scales, or tails. I know of one fellow who lives most of his SL life as a Cheetah. I've met another who was a robot. And there is no way to tell what anyone's real age is. All of this is NP (no problem) if we don't lose control, if we don't forget which life is which.

A Song for Dabrin: "Dream Catch Me" by Newton Faulkner

Every time
I close my eyes
It's you
And I know now
Who I am

Yea yea yea
And I know now

There's a place I go
When I'm alone
Do anything I want
Be anyone I wanna be
But it is us I see
And I cannot believe I'm fallin'
That's where I'm goin'
Where are you goin'?
Hold it close won't let this go

Dream catch me, yea
Dream catch me when I fall
Or else I won't come back at all

You do so much
That you don't know
It's true
And I know now
Who I am

Yea yea yea
And I know now

There's a place I go
When I'm alone
Do anything I want
Be anyone I wanna be
But it is us I see
And I cannot believe I'm fallin'
That's where I'm goin'
Where are you goin'?
Hold it close won't let this go

Dream catch me, yea
Dream catch me when I fall
Or else I won't come back at all

See you as a mountain
A fountain of God
See you as as a descant soul
in the setting sun
You as the sound
As the silence is lost

I'm young

There's a place I go
When I'm alone
Do anything I want
Be anyone I wanna be
But it is us I see
And I cannot believe I'm fallin'

There's a place I go
When I'm alone
Do anything I want
Be anyone I wanna be
But it is us I see
And I cannot believe I'm fallin'
That's where I'm goin'
Where are you goin'?
Hold it close won't let this go

Dream catch me, yea
Dream catch me when I fall
Or else I won't come back at all

SL Sociology 101 by Corwyn Allen

[The following is an article written by an RL friend of mine who has recently discovered SL and who, familiar with the many masks of role-play, has taken a close look at what he sees in the world of SL fantasy. --Tsai]

All the World’s a Stage

So here I am, chatting up this lovely young avatar in Second Life, telling her how I’m going to eventually buy some land and start building a place of my own when she asks me, “So what will you be role-playing?” I had to take a long pause. I’d never heard that question asked in SL. Granted, I’ve only been playing a scant few months, but still, it’s not even a question I’d asked myself. Why? Because to me SL *is* role-playing. I mean, here we are, taking new names, creating new bodies for our avatars, and putting on clothing (or in some cases taking it off) that we’d never be able to wear in Real Life (RL from here on out). We’re creating characters that are sometimes extensions of how we see ourselves in our minds' eye, and sometimes characters that are so far away from who we are as to be completely unrecognizable by even the creators of that character. Then we create personal spaces, homes that are castles or pagodas, or high rise apartment buildings, sometimes even floating in the sky. And let’s not forget the virtual sex. It turns phone sex into a cheap date. Now if that isn’t role-playing, I’m not sure I know what is. To me, all of SL is role-playing no matter what you personally do with it.

You Can Lead a Horticulture…

I guess that needs clarification. There are many more different cultures in SL than one can ever find outside of science fiction or fantasy novels in RL. There are of course those that spill over from RL, the Goths, the Vampires, the Furries and others who inhabit Sci-Fi Cons (science fiction conventions to the initiated). These people create their own spaces and avatars that emulate what they do to a lesser degree in RL. The Nekos, or Cat People, are one example. These folks create avatars that look like Anime humanoid cats. I have seen examples of people in RL getting piercings and tattoos and even skin implants to emulate given animals, like one man who had implants put into his upper lip so he could attach cat whiskers, and then got cat’s eye contact lenses and wears ears and fur and cat makeup. And a guy who got an all body tattoo to resemble lizard scales and skin implants to make his head more lizard-like. These are considered extreme in RL, but in SL it’s all par for the course because the ears, whiskers, and even tails become part of your SL body. And you don’t need to mutilate your RL body to do it. In fact you can change your body any time you want. I only wish I had the physique in RL that I have given myself in SL. Woo-hoo!

Tripping the Light Fantasia

But let’s not forget the folks who just go for a relatively normal appearance. Ok, so there’s nothing “normal” about everyone looking like they just stepped out of Cosmo or Today’s Man, but that’s not the point. No one in SL, at least no one I’ve yet encountered, ever builds an avatar that looks enough like themselves in RL that you could put their RL picture up next to their SL picture and not be able to tell them apart. They want an idealized version of themselves. So even if they don’t go Goth or Neko or LGM from outer space they’re still a fantasy character.

So what does that mean? It means that we’re here for the fantasy. We can do things in SL we can’t do in RL. I’d love to be able to fly without having to use an airplane or even have wings. I’d love to be able to teleport from one place to another. But more than that, I’d love to be able to chat up or flirt with a pretty young woman I’ve never met without fear of getting hit with a sexual harassment suit, or just plain hit. (Ow!) But it’s even more than that. We’re here for the relationships. So let’s talk about that.

There are all kinds of things one can do in SL with a partner (or partners if that’s your thing). From simple cuddling on some cushions, to dancing to . . . well, you get the idea. And there are graphic, um, aids, that can enhance these experiences. And this leads to arousal of varying degrees in RL. I have to admit to feeling aroused while slow dancing with a pretty avatar. Just watching the avatars interact can be very stimulating. And once you get to intimate chatting with your partner the experience increases.

Only the Lonely?

So why do we come to SL to do this? I think because in many cases we simply can’t do it in RL. Oh sure, we might be able to if the opportunity presented itself, but that’s the point. For some people that opportunity is not going to present itself in RL for a variety of reasons. One person may not be what is considered physically attractive. Another may have the social skills of a goat. Yet another may simply be afraid of social encounters. But in SL you can find those opportunities in wild abundance. The chances for casually intimate (no, that’s not an oxymoron) relationships in SL are as abundant as wild flowers in a spring meadow. Let’s revisit the avatar’s appearance for a minute. Someone is going to build the most attractive avatar for themselves that they can. They've created a flower to attract butterflies. In RL they may not be that pretty flower and the people they would want to attract in RL wouldn’t give them the time of day. But in SL it’s easy. And once people come up to you or allow you to approach them the door is open to further social interaction.

But it’s not all about the appearance. That’s just the initial attractor. Remember I said that our characters are extensions of our RL selves. How we physically see ourselves in our own minds. So once the initial virtual pheromone has been sent out by way of the appearance of the avi (short for avatar) one now has to introduce the persona. We have to speak and act a certain way in order to maintain the attractiveness. Some personae, once they open their virtual mouths immediately turn other persons off no matter how attractive they are (gee, just like in RL). Still others have a way with words that enhance the visual attractiveness. This is what I call the Romance Factor.

Romancing the Grid

I think we are all looking for romance in one form or another. For some romance can take the form of the casual liaison or even just sex, virtual or otherwise (I have to pause here and quote a favorite writer, Spider Robinson, who had one of his characters comment on making love vs. just plain having sex as saying, “I tried fucking. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s just not enough right with it”). For others it’s all about how the person you’re with makes you feel by what they say to you and how they phrase it. Some people in SL are looking for a girlfriend or boyfriend that they can’t manage to find in RL. Someone who makes them feel special or cherished. They come to SL because they’re lonely and need that romantic lift in their lives. They need to be able to speak openly and freely without fear of the consequences or repercussions one might encounter in RL. Some want to have multiple and varied partners perhaps because they don’t want to be tied to one avi or because their own fantasies cover different venues, one time being an elegant Regency Period gentleman, the next a Medieval Lord or a Harley Biker with a jet pack. The roles can change in SL. They don’t have to be static. And so the Romance Factor is further enhanced.

Lookin’ for Love in all the Virtual Spaces

We must, however be sure not to confuse virtual romance with real love. And of course that brings us to an interesting question. Just what is love and how does it equate through feeling romantic in a game? I’m not sure I know the answer to that. (Anyone? Bueller?) I think there is a danger of “falling in love” with an avatar as opposed to the persona behind the avatar. I’ve known at least one real person who has come to love an SL persona, but their relationship, while totally electronic (they live in different part of the country and have never met outside SL), has been fulfilling for both and they have related on both an SL and an RL level. This is a romance between the real people behind the personae, not just between role-played avatars or those avatars' personae.

In any case, I think one should approach SL relationships with caution. Feelings can be just as fragile in the virtual world as in the real. Be up front and be honest. You may find it’s much easier in SL than in RL. In fact, SL may actually make social interaction easier for the person who is more socially inept in RL who can interact here with people up front and honestly without being overtly offensive or worse, being terrified to act at all.

The Final Frontier

In summation, what we have is a lot of people leading dull, dreary, lonely or just plain uninteresting Real Lives looking for the excitement of romance in a personally tailored Second Life. But unlike RL, in SL you can put less in and get more out of it. But of course SL isn’t inhabited by only those looking for romance. A good time can be had by all, and that good time varies with personal interests. The intent of this article is to only focus on the role-playing and romance aspects of SL.

So at the end of the day we find ourselves drawn to our fantasies, be they bodice-ripping romance novels, a favorite television show in which we become invested in the characters on the screen, or Second Life. The real world around is vast, but at the same time too constricting. We must obey the laws, whether of physics or of government. We must be aware that in RL one person’s charming conversation is another person’s sexist or racist remark. If you bump into someone you should ask their pardon, and you can’t walk under water. But in SL, if at first you don’t succeed, redraw your avi and start again. No one is going to have you arrested, or sent to court and fined, and the worst that can happen is that you can get booted off SL for abuse (see their terms of agreement). You can do a lot with SL as long as you remember it’s only a role-playing fantasy and RL is still out there waiting for you to get up on Monday morning and go to work so you can continue to pay for your SL account and Internet access. Just a final word of caution; be careful about letting your SL spill over into your RL. That man you’re kissing may just turn out to be a woman.

The Carnival is in town! A Blog Carnival!

One of the more fun things about my life in SL is that it got me to return to blogging. And one of the more fun things about blogging is the variety of people you can meet. If you don't believe me just take a look at the link list I have accumulated! All very creative people, thinking and writing and connecting and sharing.

Now some of those very creative people are getting together to create a Blog Carnival. Remember when you were a kid and the carnival came to town? All the new things to see, rides to try, foods to taste? A Blog Carnival is like that! A veritable sampler of all that is interesting in the Blogoverse. So come to the Blog Carnival and see:

The Blog Villagers go...GONZO! Carnival

on Monday, December 10th

For Your Success will be the host blog

I want to also give my very special thanks to Kilroy for letting me know about this Blog Carnival!

Quote of the week: Anais Nin

"Everything is created by the image you carry within you." --Anais Nin

Narrating the Sensual Senses

In RL we are bombarded daily with sensations: sound, sight, smell, taste, touch. In SL we are a bit more limited. All we have is the visual (our avatars and animations) and verbal (chat and IM) for expressing ourselves--although happily that verbal is sometimes now audio (the second life voice viewer is live) as well as text. But without the sensation of touch, the ability to run fingertips over skin, to let lips connect, to feel the pleasure of orgasm and ejaculation, how can sex in SL be as gratifying as that in real life? For some it can't. For those, however, who are willing to let their imaginations go, there is a a remarkable wealth of sensations that can be described and thus imagined along with the physical release that comes from the mutual masturbation that accompanies SL sex.

Think about it. Some of the most remarkable pleasures of a sexual relationship are not in the end product: orgasm, but rather are those small things that trigger imagination and desire. The warmth and strength of a holding lover's hand in yours carries with it the memory every hand that you have ever held, from the security of the parent's hand when you were a child to that first daring time you touched a member of the opposite sex, to the fingers of the most desired lover you can't forget. When you describe twining your fingers with those of your SL partner--describe the way your fingers slide into his, describe feeling the strength of his hand that could crush yours yet holds you with a touch as light as a butterfly--you evoke the memories he carries as well as your own. We connect best in SL when those memory patterns overlap, when both partners have the same sort of pleasurable memories to draw on. Another way of saying this is that you must be willing or able to connect on some inner levels with your partner. Know what he likes and dislikes.

Take scents for instance. Scents are remarkable triggers of memory. Lavender always reminds me of my grandmother, pleasant memories, but not conducive to romance. Jasmine, however, makes me feel sexy, exotic. I can trigger either scent in my own brain by its description, by merely naming it. No olfactory stimulation necessary. So if I tell my lover that I love the way he smells, like cinnamon and deep woods, and when I tell him that if he buries his face in my hair I will smell of oranges and jasmine, I am triggering my own memories of certain sexy men's colognes, of cooking in a kitchen with a lover, and of my own sexual identity.

He, too, has to on some level, think of those as sexy agreeable scents and also be able to imagine them. If he has never smelled jasmine he might be able to as least conjure an image of flowers and connect that to a romantic moment. But if cinnamon reminds him of pumpkin pie and Christmas and family things, that might not be the frame of reference I want to evoke for a truly lusty encounter. The important thing is to listen to what your lover is saying, pay attention to how he responds to your descriptive moments in IM or voice. Don't get so carried away by your own narrative that you forget to listen to what he is saying and especially what he is responding to!

If you can flesh out the narrative, clearly describing what the sights, scents, tastes, and touches are of your lovemaking, and encourage (by example) your partner to do the same . . . SL sex can be as good as (even if different from) RL sex.

Identity and Alternate Avatars

One of the most fun things about Second Life is designing your avatar. For those of us familiar with roleplaying games this is easy, we don and doff alternate personas as quickly as real people change shoes. How much or how little these avatars, our second identities, resemble us seems to depend almost entirely on how much we like who we are in Real Life (tm).

I started out with a prepackaged avatar--you can buy skins and shapes that someone has already made beautiful for you. But my girl looked a bit artificial to me. . . too "Barbie doll." And, I have to admit, I had fun redesigning my avatar. . . Tsai is now shaped more like the RL me (well, the tits and ass part anyway, though I am somewhat thicker waisted, more cylindrical where she is hour-glass). Her nose is definitely my nose (kind of pug), and the shape of the face is close, though I think I am more square-jawed. Here's the thing, if you want your av to look like your real self (albeit a bit better) get an artist to help. My artist friend sat next to me as I built my avatar. He'd look at me, then at her on the screen and say, "No, higher cheekbones. Yes. . . No, a bit more muscle in the thighs. Good." and so on. When we were done I still thought she was far too pretty. But then what is the point of making a new you if you don't make it better?

So we are drawn to recreate ourselves new and better in SL. And we go on gathering friends and having fun, and suddenly second life is work. We get jobs to support our SL lifestyles, we do business, make partnerships, or at least acquire friends and fuck-buddies. It all gets overwhelming and sooner or later we get the idea we need an "alt" (alternate avatars). C'mon, admit it. How many times have you said you wished you could clone you to do all the things you'd like to do in a day. (For a really good idea of how alternate avatars should work read David Brin's sci-fi novel Kiln People.) By alternate avatar here I don't mean just changing skins, costumes, or species. I mean a whole new account so you can be multiple different people in SL. But the problem with alternate avatars is (even if you can run multiple computers and have them all going at the same time) you still need to split your attention. Who (avatar-wise) gets to be "on"?

There are some good reasons for alts. Say you want to be different genders or different species at times. Or say you need an avatar for RL work (and, yes, some of us do), for professional reasons you might want to have a different av for fun, too. One couple I know have alts for when they want private times (sort of like turning the phone off at home--no one can find you if they don't know who you are). Then there's the fellow who uses alts to keep all his lady friends from finding out about his multiple affairs. He has created seven different alts, he calls them "brothers," and each is "faithful" to a separate girlfriend. (I do have to admit I have a problem with this use of alts, as it seems a bit sleazy even to me who makes an SL living at selling sex!)

For whatever reason, the stats seem to indicate that one in four SL residents have one or more alts, and that if you are into having alts, the average number for an alt user is five. That said I admit, I too have created an alt. But here's the interesting part. Try as I might, she isn't much different from my primary av. I made her a bit less sexy, and I really tried to find blonde hair for her that was more like my real hair (of course, now I find I would like to have that hair on Tsai, too). This leads me back to my original point about identity. How much are our avs like our real selves? Clearly if you are a Neko (the SL term for Furries, from the Japanese word for cat) your av "looks" different, but are you roleplaying or is this just the real you in a furry suit? If we strive to be more like our RL selves in our SL selves is that an indication of self-liking? Or just a lack of imagination?

All this avatar shaping has made me think about my own identity in RL as well. Are we shaped mentally, emotionally, by the physical bodies we inhabit? Does the color of our hair, our skins, our eyes, really matter? I am more comfortable when my av is a blonde--is that because I have always been a blonde in RL? Here, where I have the chance to be anything, why am I going for the same hair and eye colors?

In RL it seems like most of us aren't happy with the physical forms we are given. If we were, why would we spend so much time, effort, and money to dye our hair, have surgery to change the shape of our breasts, work out to build the perfect abs? If you are prettier or more handsome, are you happier? You might be if that sense of attractiveness could make you more confident. But if we were confident in ourselves--in our Real Lives (tm)--would we need Second Lives at all? We all certainly seem more confident in SL. Women are sexier, men are tougher, everyone is acting happy. In SL it is easy to be confident simply because we tend to stay behind our masks, never showing our real faces to each other. This begs the question: can anything in SL ever be real? Can we ever trust one another when we never really know the other?

I have no answers. I'm just thinking out loud here . . . and wondering about the faces behind my fantasies.

They call it the SL effect...

The first thing everyone does in SL is build an avatar. A persona. You, but not you. The six-million-dollar version of you: better, faster, stronger. . . also younger and prettier. All the things that you would like to be. With all the attitude and sexuality you want to display. And why not? This is a game, what is wrong with having attractive pieces. Some of us go farther. Non-humans, gender-shifting, multiple avatars and multiple persona stories. SL is all about role-playing. We can do things we'd never be able to do in real life. Live in the storylines of our fandoms. Participate in wanton sex, slave and master games, consensual violence, BDSM. Buy and sell anything, including not just our bodies, but our souls in some ways.

SL gives us the opportunity to wear complicated masks. To construct stories, behind which we are safe to escape from the complications of RL. But when does that line between RL and SL blur? When you have a mask, no one can see your real face. Or can they?

Being able to operate behind a mask gives us all a freedom that is heady and addictive. You can now be the bad-ass dude or the sexy lady. But when we act out sex and suddenly find we are falling in love, are we falling for the person or the persona? There are, in SL, a gazillion opportunities to make connections, to experience romance that we may be missing or wanting in our RLs. What happens when the RL person behind the mask starts to fall, to have real internal emotional attachment to another SL persona?

Those who say it is just an SL effect, will tell you that the emotions you are feeling are also a fantasy. You are in love in the same way anyone might have crush on an unreachable object of affection. Whether you go with it or let it go, these people tell you it will pass. And that is one way to deal with the emotions you are feeling.

But for some of us the SL persona is not too far removed from the RL persona. And the emotions, the attraction that turns to love is very real. The biological responses are all there . . . why not the psychological ones?

The irony here is that love works exactly the same in SL as it does in RL:

• You meet someone. You find them physically attractive.
  
• You flirt. You talk (most people don't realize that the largest sex organ is the brain--that conversation, flirtatious conversation, is more conducive to positive sexual experience than all the right moves in the world. This goes double in a virtual world where encounters are based, not on touch, but on narrative).
• You date (in the RL world that tends to happen over the course of weeks or months, the ease of access in SL allows that to happen over hours and days).
  
• You get even closer and have sex (in RL this takes while as we generally need to build up huge level of trust or too much alcohol, in SL however this might happen your very meeting).
• You make each other feel good. On a regular basis.
  
• You decide you can bottle and keep that feeling by tying the other person to you permanently (in RL this is marriage, in SL . . . well, people have ceremonies, but permanence ia even more ambiguous in SL)

Here is the problem. While each of us knows exactly what we are feeling, we can never--in SL or RL--know what is going on in someone else's head. Never. We can only trust in the honesty of our lovers.

I know of several RL couples who play in SL. But not with each other. One or the other partner has an SL marriage/partnership/sexual relationship with someone (or more than one) else. In the best cases all parties know and agree to allow it. are honest with each other. In some cases--and these are the ones where someone is bound to get hurt--one partner has backed off to give the other freedom to experience SL love, an SL relationship. Is that love real? I don't know, it may depend on how you define real. Love is a feeling. If you feel love it is real enough. If you love more than one person and you can't be upfront about it, if there isn't an honest attempt to make all the relationships work, you will hurt someone and likely be hurt yourself.

Love, in any reality, is based on trust and honesty. But when you open yourself up and tell honest truths, you always run the risk of being smacked down. When someone you trust is honest with you it can hurt, too. Love runs the risk of hurt because love is worth it--wherever you find it. The risk and the working through are what separates real love, wherever you find it, from shallow fantasy sexual romances.

So, yeah, I believe up-front, sometimes painful honesty. Pretty much all the time.

I also believe that there is more to SL love than just an SL effect.