Wolfgang

As I go through the editing of the book, I realized that the section about BDSM was weak, because I don't know very much about it.  Everything I knew was hearsay.

There are many reasons why I avoided BDSM:

1. I am fiercely independent.  Neither submissive nor dominant.  I prefer to live and let live.  You take care of yourself, and I take care of myself.
2. I don't understand why people would be willing to surrender everything to a stranger.
3. I am a minority and a woman; I've faced discrimination.  So I know what it feels like to be a second-class citizen.  Why would I want that in my Second Life also?

But BDSM and Gor have a very strong presence in Second Life, and I felt that I was doing my readers a disservice if I didn't delve in and experienced it.  So, Alt #27 was born.

A friend had chatted about a capture sim and the thrill of the chase.  I figured that would be a good place to start.  It wasn't as scary as full-blown BDSM and it doesn't require as much preparation as Gor.  As a runner, I had a chance to avoid the roleplay and have fun.  And maybe, subconsciously, I had something to prove to the doms.

What I found is that the good hunters want you to be good at evading capture.  They get bored with easy prey.  Meanwhile, the bad hunters want you to be easy to catch.

I was lucky to have found a very good hunter who decided to mentor me, probably because he saw that I had potential because I evaded him longer than most, even though I was very new to the game.  After all, I came up with my own strategies just by observing and practicing on my own in just a few days.  Besides, I have skill with moving my avatar with good precision on a fashion runway, so running like crazy is so much easier.  He gave me a few really good tips.

But I've also befriended some hunters who are new to the game as well.  And a few times, I encouraged a new hunter to not give up on me, so after a little rest, they'd start the chase again.  And, since I've befriended my captors, I never really felt the brunt of a BDSM roleplay.

Of course, I've seen a lot of immature behavior.  Considering my previous experiences with doms (long before I joined the capture sim), I wasn't really surprised.

Then, I met a very young man.  Or what I thought was a very young man.  He didn't chase me.  Instead, he IM'd me and made a comment about something I had put in my profile.  Even with his broken English, he was obviously very respectful and considerate.  He was also fairly new to the sim and to BDSM and to the type of weapon used at that sim, so he was pretty certain he couldn't catch me.  However, he claimed that he's a very experienced RPer.  But we had very different and very unpredictable schedules, so we gave up on the possibility that we could do a chase together.  As he was logging out, I told him he could friend me anyway, but he had already gone.

The next day, I had a friendship request waiting for me and a message that said, "Honored by your suggestion."  Soon after that, he sent me a couple of offline messages where he started a roleplay that he was chasing me.  I was surprised, but it was a charming idea.  And so it started.

Because I had a family emergency, I didn't get a chance to reply until a week later. My first contribution was just a one-liner.  But we continued the roleplay.  He would reply when he came online, then I would reply when I came online. I threw a couple of "curveballs" at him in the storyline, but he handled them well and very creatively.  I was very impressed.  He really is a very good RPer.

I would read his responses when I start my day, then I let it simmer in my head and respond in the evening.  As the roleplay progressed, each reply increased in the number of lines.  We were para-RPing, except we were doing it offline, asynchronously. Because we had time to think and craft our responses well, our storytelling became so vivid that, at times, I felt as though I was actually in that place we had created in our minds, even when I'm actually outside in real life.  I felt the emotions that my character would feel.

When the chase was coming to an end.  We agreed that we wanted to do the final scene "live", so we scheduled when we would meet.  I felt sad that it was ending, but giddy at the same time because of the RP story.  I had become emotionally involved, I had fallen in love, but I didn't realize it then.  During that scene, he redirected the story in a very unexpected way.  Later, when we analyzed it, he said that he became reluctant to move forward with it, because he wanted me too much and he felt that he was getting more emotionally involved than he wanted to be.  He mentioned a part where he felt there was very strong emotions in the undercurrent and that made him worried.

I agreed that there were strong emotions.  And because of those emotions, the roleplay had taken a life of its own.  It became "real".  In that final scene, I surrendered to him as his sub.  That surrender felt so much like a wedding, with the same intensity of emotions.  No, we didn't partner but we listed each other on our profiles.  He said that he had never placed anyone's name on his profile like that before.  He reiterated it a few times, in fact. He also understood that it was the first time I submitted to anyone, and he said he was honored by the gesture.

We talked about exclusivity, and after some negotiation, we agreed that Alt #27 would be exclusive to him.  But he also knows that I have other alts and other lovers in those alts, and he was fine with those.  Throughout the discussions, he never imposed his will on me.  He kept making sure that I feel comfortable stating my needs without feeling guilt. And I kept falling deeper.  We were together for eight or nine hours that night.

I experienced the bliss of D/s.

Yesterday, we met again and we continued the RP.  He was teaching me how things were done.  How to trigger a kneeling animation.  How RLV works.  How the collar works (a collar was required at the capture sim, but I picked one that looks more like jewelry).  And during the RP, he attached a leash to the collar.  As he stood there towering over me, I had this wave of emotion that was so unexpected and grew so quickly.  I asked him to wait.  He waited.  I started to cry in real life.  And I tried to explain to him what was going on as I was trying to figure it out.  I was intensely happy the previous night, I was intensely happy just a few moments prior, and suddenly, I felt something different and I kept crying.

It wasn't that I didn't trust him.  I did.  He was very kind the whole time and very respectful since I met him.  Smiling and happy.  We were behaving like a newly wed couple.  But the image of my avatar kneeling in front of a man who holds a chain attached to her neck, that was just too much.  I suddenly felt oppressed.  Not necessarily by him.

He listened attentively as I tried to figure out why I felt that.  I had to explain that I am a minority and that I was getting that same feeling of oppression as when I was discriminated against.  That feeling of being subjugated.  What made it complicated was that I had fallen in love with him.  If I didn't, it would be so easy for me to just stop the roleplay and just drop it.  But because of my emotions for him, I couldn't leave.

I experienced the oppression of D/s.

He said he didn't want it to end either.  So we talked for hours while he was trying to figure out a way to change the roleplay so I would be comfortable.  He suggested several scenarios.  I said it was just the combination of symbols and suggested that maybe I not kneel and be leashed at the same time.  It would make it appear that I am not a respectful sub.  It occurred to him that other doms would berate him about that, but he resolved that he would just challenge them and, when they're defeated, their insults and dishonor would be gone with them.  How can I leave a man so gallant, so chivalrous?


The issue hasn't been resolved completely.  And I'm still analyzing the whole psychological picture of D/s.  I had been trying to find metaphors to link the concepts to what I know.  I told him that a woman would naturally surrender to the man she loves, even if the relationship is not declared D/s.  And I also said that a sub obeying the dom is just like a wife obeying her husband.  In both arguments, he said it's more than that, because a wife would not "obey" her husband, for example.  I argued that it depends on the culture.  He comes from a culture where the norm is that husband and wife are equal partners.  I come from a culture where the tradition is that the wife defers to the husband.

Anyway, we'll see where it goes.  I could see a whole new book in all this.

Lord, have mercy.

Ji

I should have written about him a long time ago.  He had been a lover and friend for a few months now.

Since I (as Alt #11) met him, he wanted to be a lover, but during the first lovemaking, he had little habits that irritated me, specifically that he would RP what I would do and what I would feel.  It made me feel as though I was just a prop, like a blow-up doll, and that all he wanted from me was my avatar.

I was ready to end it, but he persisted.  He asked how he could be better.  I told him the reasons I was irritated.  The next time we met, he was more careful about what he said, more respectful, more considerate.  I was touched.  It touches me when men go out of their way to change themselves for me.  In his case, he didn't just change his avie for me; he changed his behavior.  I don't expect lovers to change their real selves for me; I usually just move on.  For what he did, I introduced him to Opal.

It was a long time after we met when we found something more substantial that we could talk about.  He started teaching me about Vedic astrology, which he knew a lot about.  I had been interested in learning about it for a while and I actually bought a book on it, but never found the time to read it.  I just found the book again recently.

Every lover brings something unique to the relationship.  Sometimes, it takes some time to find that something -- the unique filling in that dim sum, that brings the flavor to the relationship.

As I grew up, I learned that to "know" a person "in the Biblical sense" meant that to have sexual relationships with that person.  I don't think that was the correct translation.  I think to "know" someone is to love that person.  The deeper you know someone, the more you fall in love with them.

The Impossible happened

"That will be impossible!!!" he laughed.

He was with Alt #6, my most anonymous alt at the time.  I was telling him of my policy to let people know if they meet me as another of my alts.  However, they have to be the ones who initiate a conversation.  I would not approach them.  In fact, I would try to avoid them.

That was when he said it would be impossible because he was shy and he was not likely to say hi to everyone near him.

Actually, it had happened once before.  Only once in my five years in SL.  I had met someone through Alt #6 first, then he IM'd me while I was in Alt #11.  So I had to tell him.  But Alt #11 is still mostly anonymous also.

This time, fate seems to be at work.

I only spent one night with The Impossible (I think I'll call him that).  There was something very unusual about that meeting.  Since my hysterectomy, my orgasms didn't feel as deep as they used to.  But that night, it was though I never had a hysterectomy.  Besides that, everything else was typical of my encounters.

He was open about himself.  I found out his marital status, his age, his birthday, and his job.  We talked about his chosen SL name.

We agreed to meet the next day, but I was two hours late and he had to go.  We agreed on a time for the next day, but he didn't show up.  The day after, I saw him log in, I said "hi," he didn't respond, and he logged off.  I figured that was it.

The next time we communicated was just before Valentine's Day, exactly a month after the last communication.  I decided to clean out my friends list in Alt #6 because I wasn't supposed to have friends there anyway to avoid emotional attachments.  But before I deleted some lovers, I sent them an IM first to explain why.

The Impossible replied in an offline message and said that he understood my reasons.  He wished me the best and he reminded me of my promise to say hi if he meets my other alts in the future.  He added, "It was a great pleasure meeting you, and I really hope to see you again and talk a little."  It was a very heartwarming sentiment but I thought it was very unlikely we would meet again.

That was two weeks ago.

Sometime last year, my real-life friend Dianne invited me to Google+.  Since I limit my real-life Facebook and LinkedIn to family, friends and colleagues, I decided to use G+ for my social networking.  You know, ... when you have people in your friends list whom you don't really know except what they post on their walls.

I found someone who had shared a public circle of SL personas.  So I circled those people.  For a while, I was getting circled more than I can manage.  Then it eventually slowed down because I didn't log in much anymore.

So, when I saw the only circle notification for today, I was shocked.  Stunned really.  It was The Impossible, as his Second Life persona, adding my real-life account to his circles.

I IM'd him in SL and asked how he found me in G+. He admitted that I was in his real-life account's SL circle and he circled those same people in his SL persona's account too.  We decided to meet for a chat in SL, which we did this afternoon.

He was surprised that I knew so much about him; I told him we had met before.  I also told him that I made a promise; he said only one person made that promise to him.  He remembered the experience, but he couldn't remember Alt #6's name or the place where we met.  It took him an hour and a lot of clues from me.

But just imagine the odds of that.  It's mind-boggling.  It's like winning the lottery. I had met him through my most anonymous alt and, only two weeks after I removed him from that friends list, he circled my RL in Google+ without knowing it was me.  From my most anonymous alt directly to real life.

It was as though fate didn't want him off my friends list.  And he said that today felt just like it did when we first met.

I'm still stunned.