When I first entered Second Life, I was far more interested in the business applications of the world, and of course the music… (and the shoes…. and the clothes. Oh my, and skins, bodylights, prim hair, but the SHOES!)
Last year, I’d met a few friends who flirted with me, but I just as demurely as I could deflected their interest, and just maintained my distance while remaining friends.
This I think was my emotional state at the time. The fall out from my last relationship in real life was so personally life changing and crushing in its weight, no one could get through the door with me. What’s more, I have been largely reclusive since I got pregnant. For the longest time, I’ve hardly gone out, for obvious babysitting concerns.
This was my real life, and extended to my Second Life as well. I stopped logging in to Second Life in December to do more than pay rent and tier. My real life became too demanding and stressful for me to do more. As the stress levels built and built, and my professional life began to change shape again, I realised I missed the release I got in Second Life. It had provided a pressure valve for me; the music, my friends and the adventuring we all get up to in there.
I wanted to have fun with it again. For me partying in Second Life, is like tuning to a radio station with a live chat and visual stimilu (dancing). I don’t party in real life so in a very real way, I live vicariously in Second Life by going out every weekend. I am a party girl in SL. I have DJs I follow and enjoy, clubs I frequent, and a whole social circle I hang out with. I’ve met some really great people from all over the world, and believe the hype. SL is a lot of fun.
It’s impossible to move through SL, and not meet people who have paired off in-world. I didn’t really understand the whole SL sex scene, the dating, the partnering, the weddings, the babies, the whole SL family unit things. I have SL friends who have gotten together, broken up, gotten married, getting married, divorced, living the bachie life, had terrible, terrible experiences, and this includes just about every configuration of human and furry you can imagine. I think it’s sweet for the most part, but it wasn’t for me.
This time around, I again was not looking for anything along those lines. I just wanted to have fun again, go to parties and so I started tentatively knocking around SL again. I caught up with my old friends (who were so glad to see me again, it made a sister feel special) made new friends, and for the very first time, managed to find myself embroiled in some SL drama, trying to mediate, failing to do so and ultimately making a decision to drop off one particular scene. #160
As I spent more time in-world, I began to remember that there are those who treat it like a game and those who treat it like they would life. I am in the latter category. Second Life is a medium for human interaction, and in that way it is as real an experience as any, with its own validity and weight.
Just over a month ago, I was partying in Citibar (a night club in Second Life), and saw an av across the crowded floor with flowing locks… since i see so few black male avs with hair, I complimented him on his. He said thank you, and we added each other to our friends list.
We chatted a couple of times subsequently, and almost before I realised what I was doing, I discovered I remembered how to flirt. In retrospect, I’m sure he planned it that way. We talked. Intelligently. Repeatedly. Sparks began to fly. I found myself wanting to get to know him better… so I asked him out on a date. Yes, it was me…. I did it.
This… this is the point at which I crossed into the land of no return. As a rule, I do not cyber-date, I also do not frequent dating sites. This is not to say I haven’t at least registered with a few in the past, but lets just say in the two or three cases where I explored the online dating scene, I’ve come away from it disappointed and with a funny taste in my mouth and thoroughly put off by the fast food language and atrocious spelling most men employ to ‘entice’ me.
All my life, I’ve met men while I am in motion, traveling through my life, often at light speed. This is no less true is Second Life. I remain largely immune and often deliberately oblivious to male attraction to me, but as I got older I began to be more aware of the signs. As a younger woman, the predatory instinct that some men give in to when dealing with women, and their often serious emotional weakness is a put off.
It is still only in outre circumstances do I even pick up on what’s happening. I think this is because I so rarely see that which I find attractive in the men I meet. When I have experienced an instant mutual attraction, it’s usually been something that peters itself out, when all those other qualities I have issues with begin to become apparent.
I’ve come to accept that I have physical traits that appeal, even at those times when I was uncomfortably big, or so emotionally distressed, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could find me the least bit interesting. I have some quality in men find attractive, and its partly the pretty face, the big breasts and the big ass, but I’m not so naive to know its something else too. That’s ok. I think I’ve reached a level of maturity and understanding to know that God put woman here for man, and man here for woman.
I just haven’t seen myself reflected in anyone… and atavistic attraction aside, psychological mind-fuck fuck-witted games aside, all the trials and tribulations I have gone through with men and relationships on the few occasions I have allowed myself to open up enough to let someone in aside, I simply have never met my match in anyone, and TMG is still the only man I have ever loved.
This connection is so riveting, that it’s withstanding bad Internet connectivity, a 13 hour time difference, SL-weirdness, two extremely busy professional schedules, and well, all the other emotional inconsistencies that goes with relationships. The unsureness, the uncertainty, the need to be emotionally open while still maintaining a grip on pragmatism, even if only superficially.
In the just-over-a-month since I met QuietStorm, I’ve allowed myself to be interested in someone again… and it totally sneaked up on me. Innocent comments turned into something else, a kind of snowball effect that turned into something that is frightening me with its intensity. I think it’s totally cool he’s got no problem with intensity.
All of a sudden, a lightbulb has come on in a very dark room. My sexuality, sensuality, buried emotional centers, which have been simmering for years without finding adequate release have suddenly blazed back into life, the likes of which I have not felt since YMK and parts of my heart are waking up in a way they haven’t since TMG. And that’s saying something, considering lack of a physical body to work with.
Right now though, believe me… the voice is doing it. SL Voice is wonderful, and so is Mr. Jaxxon’s. Thank you Linden Labs.
I’m not completely immune to the somewhat insubstantial, tenebrous and tenuous nature of online relationships. Like I said, previous forays have always left me feeling like people create a personality for themselves online that doesn’t stand up to real life.
I have been investigating SL relationships, as assiduously as I research anything I become interested in, and the aforementioned gamut made me realise that our concepts of what is real and what is not are in themselves illusions. Which is not to say SL isn’t as immune to the folly most people approach everything they do.
What is real? I point you to the holographic model of the universe theorised and studied by Pibram, Bohm and Bohr. They, like the ancient Hindu, the Australian Aborigines, #160and many other deep thinkers of our human history, come to believe that reality in itself is only being perceived by the brain. The brain is what is making everything around us real. At the sub-atomic level, all we see touch and interact with is somehow responding to us.
I think this explains a lot of stuff, but this is not the body of this post. Taking stuff like that in consideration, that what we believe is real is only what the mind makes real, and other signs… deeply shaking signs…. this is coming and happening at a time I know I need to pay attention to it. Not to underestimate it. Not to let it slip by without seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes.
This, this… this is different. We live on opposite sides of the world, but we speak the same language. We have disparate schedules that make what time we spend together precious somehow, and I ache and wait and yearn for it and will drop everything and everyone for it. This is because, while he isn’t physically touching me, he’s touching my mind in ways I didn’t expect, and in ways I am becoming addicted to. It’s hard even for me to admit that.
I have this kinda spooky eeirie tingle in the back of my head that tells me, should the Universe move sufficiently, and we do meet in real life, that the brother would not fail to back up what’s currently happening in a digital space. He strikes me as the kind of man who does exactly what he says he will.
I have these moments where I feel a little weirded out that Second Life is the medium through which I am experiencing some of the most powerful lust I’ve experienced in years. Sometimes, I think I’m turning into ‘one of those women’, but then he logs in and we talk, and it seems to make sense to me, because its not about Second Life, where or how we met. It’s about me and him, and whatever space we make for our interaction. It’s more than the attraction too. There are things about him that impress me. He impresses me. A man has not done that in so long, that quite frankly it’s almost heart-stopping.
I am taken…. being taken willingly, and everytime I think I’m not going to make it past some point in my head, he seems to know exactly what to say to keep bringing me on. I confess I forgot what this feels like. I forgot what its like to be set on fire just by words… because I haven’t felt like this years. Not even with YMK, because sweet though he was, he was no intellectual match for me. QuietStorm can keep pace in conversation, and our intellectual energy is what has me right now.
So, yeah… Big Mami is feeling it again. From the head to the toes, and across every inch of skin. This man, with a brain as sexy as #160his liquid chocolate voice, and his quiet intense demeanor… this could be the Lion I’ve been waiting on.
It’s no small thing that he calls me queen and I call him king. Our theme song is all one minute and forty-nine seconds of “Crown Royal” by Jill Scott, which I now declare to be the finest one minute and forty-nine seconds committed to binary in recent memory.
I want to say I know where this is all heading, but I can’t. All I can say is that I am alive with possibility for the first time in I cannot tell you how long.
QuietStorm Jaxxon, with gentle encouragement and his efforts to be in a space with me, has made a sister start looking seriously at renewing her passport, restoring her crown, growing up some more and not fearing the light burning inside me. Because for the first time, this is someone that doesn’t seem too intimidated by me, and is as fierce as I am. If he is reflecting me right now, I’m kinda liking what I see.
I must be a sexy bitch in heat and I do believe I see a Lion on the horizon.
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