SL Sex With a RL Lover - Jenn Frank's "All the Spaces Between Us" (Part 2)

Originally published in Kill Screen Magazine and now serially featured in NWN with new screenshots and an afterword by the author, “All the Spaces Between Us - Struggling to Connect in a Pixelated World” is Jenn Frank’s deeply personal account of exploring Second Life and what she learned about identity, sex, creativity, life, and death along the way. (Read Part 1 here) -- Hamlet Au

When I asked Zachary if he wanted to have sex in Second Life with me, he said yes. He and I had been dating, rockily, for five years. He said he missed me.

I was in another state. I’d been living with my parents for a few months. I was getting scared. I still rented the apartment in San Francisco, and Zachary still had a pair of keys to it. He was taking care of my pets and plants. Maybe if he really missed me, he could let himself into the apartment and sit inside. He could even use the Xbox if he wanted. He could read my books. He could use the kitchen, he could use the shower and the toilet.

Sure, he missed me. So he said yes.

I explained that Virtual Amsterdam was a place that couples went, and that I’d—really! Really!—never been there before. But I’d read about it. We could rent a room?

Zachary said yes.

I was embarrassed. But even if Zachary were lying, even if he didn’t really miss me so much, was our curiosity about virtual sex so aberrant? After all, if countless reports are to be believed, sex is the only thing to do in Second Life, am I right?

I tried to make a little joke out of it. This is pretty dorky, I warned him.

Again, yes, he said.

So I found Virtual Amsterdam on a map, and I zapped myself into it. This part is always nerve-wracking because when you go on any cross-world trip with a partner, you have to zap yourself away, and your companion is left standing there until he receives the telegram inviting him to zap to where you are. You worry, in those moments or minutes that he’s left standing there, he will abandon you.

Now I am trying to remember how I ever coerced Zachary into joining Second Life. I mean, it just isn’t the kind of thing he’d do—he’s a pretty cool guy. I know I helped him with his avatar. I do remember that. I watched him work on it.

He picked out a plaid shirt that looked exactly like those shirts in his closet I hate. I remember finding a decent pair of Converse Chucks and dark denim jeans that hung right. I knew the perfect pair of eyeglasses. I found a skin shaded with a faint beard. The wig was nearly a match. 

After a long silence, as I watched him belabor his appearance, I asked him a strange question.

The longer you fix your avatar, do you find yourself becoming more and more attracted to it?

Yes. He said yes.

That made me feel better about being a pervert.

***

And the skin I bought for my avatar? It’s Japanese. Expensive. It’s very good, it’s almost photorealistic.

You’d never know it was Japanese if her clothes were on. When my avatar’s clothes are on, she looks a lot like me—mid-to-late-20s and white, and female. Maybe she is too feminine. Maybe the avatar’s eyes are oddly big and round behind the glasses’ lenses, but not too big, not too round.

I was ready for sex, so I removed my avatar’s clothing prims. It might have been a little like a striptease, except that the avatar’s shoes, blouse, skirt, hosiery, everything, poofed out of existence, one at a time.

Not too exciting; instead, comical. Maybe the tempo of my avatar’s getting-naked was all wrong.

She was down to her bra and panties, and her glasses. I hesitated.

I removed her glasses. My rhythm faltered. I didn’t want to go any further.

I wasn’t sure what she looked like. You know, underneath.

The bra disappeared. My avatar’s nipples were small and bright pink, like a child’s. Her breasts were small, too, and set high on her torso, though I recalled making them kind of big. Fascinated, I vanished the underwear. The avatar’s body was hairless, with a short, pink slit between her legs.

Oh, my God! I looked awesome!

Zachary was working to get undressed, too. He paused, reluctant to remove his shorts.

Then there was a shock of dark pubic hair. Otherwise he was as smooth and inchoate as a Ken doll.

“Oh, wow,” I typed to my boyfriend. Then, the obvious: “You don’t have a penis.”

In Second Life, to convey penetrative sex, the male is supposed to buy a dildo and pin it to his groin. I’m sure this part of the mating ritual—the part where the man’s boxer-briefs vanish, and now he is attaching an erect penis as if it were a clip-on tie and typing Ready when you are!—is a real scream.

We, however, were too naïve to even think of researching the science of sex. Without that essential dildo, the effect is nothing else than two mannequins falling onto each other, very exactly the way us 12-year olds used to make our fashion dolls hump.

***

I don’t want to describe sex in Second Life, but I guess I have to.

Where any coupled activity is possible, poseballs will likely hover. Here, a blue ball is floating in midair—for the boys!—and a pink one nearby for the girls, because almost everything in Second Life is heterosexual. And if the two motions are intended to operate together, the pink and blue balls will be fused together like a nutsack. Together they indicate, for instance, a park bench built for snuggling, a dance floor suggesting junior-high slow dances, or a bed probably meant for sex.

So in a rented room in Amsterdam, or in any sex room, there will be some jumble of user-made poseballs scattered all around.

First, the users must turn off their animation scripts, or else the sex won’t work. The idea is to use the animation already loaded into the poseball.

Next, situate the male avatar on the blue ball. Right-click the ball and, from the pie-shaped context menu, select the wedge instructing the avatar to “sit” on it.

Situate the female avatar on the pink ball by the same processes.

Now, with both avatars on their respective balls, they will automagically get down to business.

Of course, you can’t be sure of any poseball’s genuine function until your avatar is actually straddling it, pantomiming the moves its creator has designed. This can transform virtual sex into a shuddersome adventure of discovery.

“Oh, jeez!” I typed. My avatar was somehow on all fours, accepting sex in a way that made me uncomfortable. I right-clicked on the pink ball to make her stand up.

My boyfriend was left there, pumping his invisible penis into thin air, until he elected to stand up from his poseball, too.

“Let’s try another,” I suggested.

And now we were giddily visiting every poseball, attempting sexual positions my real-life boyfriend and I would never have dared to endeavor, all these strange looped motions some faraway inventor had configured for us. We were flushed from the innuendo.

“I’m a huge fan of your work,” I typed.

It was a jest between us. I used to whisper it doe-eyed way back when we kept the lights on, always right in the middle of things to creep Zachary out. “I’m a huge fan of your work, rock star,” or “I’m a huge fan of your work, professor.” I’d always conclude my endorsement with a disturbingly approving leer: You’ll never guess who I’m pretending you are right now.

Next: Why Second Life isn't just Sex Life.

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[arr]

for many years i pretend to be skeleton in second life what answered most questions about virtual dildos to me,,. most (still dreaming of a virtual museum in SL that shows every available penis on the grid). aand for the noobs: before you spend muchos money on attachable dongs just rez three spheres and a tube, link them together, make it sweet pink color -> ta-daaa! *enjoys reading these kill screen features*