"I need be your captain again"

"I need be your captain again."

That's what he said tonight. After a long absence from SL, he's back.

I told him that, because of my RL surgery, I can't have sex for six weeks. After joking that I still think the same way :D , he said that sex wasn't what he came back for, primarily. He came back for me. For our conversations.

He'll join my RP alt again because he still thinks she's "enigmatic". And we'll continue our RP.

He still won't be in very often. Maybe once a week. But that's enough. I need time for my other lovers anyway. ;) But I'm very happy he's back.

Nesting... in a tree

A glass house... a New York studio apartment... a ship... These were homes I had shared with lovers.

The glass house is now a gallery of sorts for my morphing portraits. The last time I called it "home" was in my first month in SL. The NY studio (Alt #9's home) is back in another alt's inventory, and the ship (RP alt's home) will be back in my inventory this week.

Opal's home is set to my work loft, which is mostly bare. After all, when I'm alone, I work. And I'm mostly alone.

But I'm nesting again. This time in a tree. A tree house to be precise. On a floating island. It would be the home of my RP alt and her new elven lover.



There is something very heartwarming about setting up a home with a lover. There's a sacredness to it. And as time goes on, the place is imbued with meaning and sentiment because of the moments you share in it.

I've had to sell the parcel where the ship was and I sent an email to the Captain to let him know that he would have to pick up his objects. But when I went there to gather up my objects back into my inventory, I became intensely emotional and I literally could not take anything back. So, instead, I moved the ship next door to the same parcel as my work loft, and sent the Captain a new message to move the objects instead. Of course, I forgot to turn off the auto-return, so his objects were returned to him anyway.

The NY studio wasn't as difficult, probably because all the objects were mine, so I could easily just rez it if I miss that time in my life. But the Captain owned the gardenia bushes and those had a predominant presence on the ship. It just isn't the same without those gardenias. I don't really want to bother him to come back into SL to set them out, just because I'm feeling sentimental. So, I'll be taking the whole ship back into my inventory to free up prim space.

Hopefully, I won't be feeling sentimental for a long time, because I'd be too busy creating new sentiments in this new home.

The light changed

I've never met a lover through my RP alt. She was created for a lover and I've moved another lover to her, and both times to hide from the cricket. But I've never met a lover through her. Until now.

I met him a week ago. He came back the next day, and the next. He's a busy man, and we both established that neither of us can log in often. But he is compelled to come back to me, so he returns even for just a short time, and I go there to be with him.

When I met him the second day, we found a quiet place that had a bench where I could lay my head on his lap. The intensity of those few hours... the emotions... the words we exchanged... made me heady in real life, like a deep infatuation. I had not been romanced like that in SL before. I thought, if I gave him sex, he'd be satisfied and move on. But he came back with the same intensity, focused on the romance.

At first, I thought it would only be roleplay, but we're discussing the possibility of moving out of the roleplay now.

"When you appeared and spoke to me....the light changed...," he said today, remembering the day we met, "no one in [RP sim] that day mattered...I could not see past you." He said it out of character.

The things he says, they fill my heart with comfort and quiet joy. I'm afraid to hope. But I am grateful to have met him anyway, even if it doesn't move out of roleplay. I'm just savoring every moment while I can.



"It must be time to move on now
Without the fear of how it might end.
I guess I'm ready to love again."

Another goodbye... and a "Hello again"

A dear friend of my RP alt sent out a notecard today that he'll be leaving SL to heal his RL. :( We didn't meet often but he's a catalyst in my RP alt's story. *sigh*

But, on a good note, an old flame returned to SL today. How old? He was one of my flavors of the month during my first six months in SL. But he's in a new alt, of course. His old alt was long gone.

I took him around to fix up his alt today and that brought back memories from when we first did that. Erm, naughty memories. LOL Well, he kinda looks like HiHo now. :D

We don't know if we'd pick up where we left off. It's been more than two and a half years and we're both different people now. But we decided we'll explore things and see how it goes.

At the very least he'll distract me from missing the Captain. *sigh*

Avatar lookalikes

Almost two years ago, I had this conversation with Lora (I was wearing one of my mermaid tails.):

[2007/08/29 20:44] Lora Chadbourne: I saw a woman at the store today who looks like your avie :)
[2007/08/29 20:44] Lora Chadbourne: with legs
[2007/08/29 20:45] Opal Lei: What's the name.
[2007/08/29 20:45] Lora Chadbourne: RL honey
[2007/08/29 20:45] Opal Lei: Oh. :D
[2007/08/29 20:45] Opal Lei: lol
[2007/08/29 20:45] Lora Chadbourne: I did a double take
[2007/08/29 20:45] Opal Lei: You mean she didn't have a tag over her head? lol
[2007/08/29 20:45] Lora Chadbourne: it was like, there's Opal! :)
[2007/08/29 20:45] Lora Chadbourne: lol
[2007/08/29 20:45] Opal Lei: lol

Yesterday, the Captain said he saw a young woman (probably in her mid-twenties) who looked just like my RP alt, with the same face, the same hair, and the same "hippy skirt" as he calls it. He didn't get a very good look because he saw her for only about a minute. He said she must have felt uncomfortable and so turned away from him.

What's with these real life people imitating my avatars?!? ;)

The Captain said he would let me know if he sees a RL woman who looks like my sex alt. :D I said he wouldn't. Because his heart is bound to my RP alt, not to my sex alt.

He had been away for the whole week, popping in briefly once on Thursday. He was so busy, he didn't even have time to RP via email with me. And when I talked to him via Skype yesterday, he was sniffling; he has a cold. Poor baby.

And to top all that, I had to give him some news -- that I met someone.

The Captain took the news calmly as I knew he would. He wanted me to promise him I would be happy. I said I couldn't promise that, but I promised I would try. His generosity of spirit still overwhelms me.

I don't know how serious this new affair would be and it wouldn't change things much yet, except that I may not be as available to the Captain. Right now, the only reason I'm entertaining this new affair is that this new guy is unattached irl -- a widower. So I won't have to deal with the cricket there.

Giant gardenias for St. George's Day

He asked me what my favorite flower was. The first man to ever ask me that question in SL.

Then, today, I got a huge bouquet of giant gardenias, because he can't log in on Saint George's Day (April 23), which is apparently the equivalent of St. Valentine's Day in his country.

*sigh*



"He" is a new lover. Well, not so new really. I first met him in early March through my sex alt. Very kind, very gentlemanly. And a sexy avie even with newbie skin and system hair! (Well, we've updated him since then, of course.)

For more than a month, he didn't know anything about me, except that I'm a woman and that I am (in his words) "very very very erotic". Then one night (or early morning SLT), we did a brief roleplay just for kicks -- he was a ship's captain and I was a ... mermaid! (Did you expect anything else?)

As we talked, I realized it was probably better to switch him over to my RP alt. Besides, we've become friends and we didn't want to lose that friendship. So I told him that I would introduce him to my other alts where I am more open about myself and that it was up to him which alt he preferred to be with.

He met Opal first and I showed him the work I do. He was already making up his mind; I think he was still preferring my sex alt. Then I introduced him to my RP alt, and she changed his mind. :) To him, my RP alt's character represented "freedom, dangerous freedom but very attractive". And so, he and my RP alt have been in roleplay since. Not very often, since he's busier now, but we RP in email too.

Because he is married, I made him promise me that he wouldn't fall in love with me and he promised. (mfpwtff says, "goodlukwiddat". :D That was the best backhanded compliment I ever heard. :D)

Now, if only I could smell these gardenias....



That conversation with mfpwtff actually started out about something going on with Mer Betta; I badly needed a friend to talk to and he was the only one who was logged in that early and close enough to me to confide in. Earlier that morning, Kyota (Mermaid Temple) made me aware of another mermaid tail seller who has been stealing design elements from other mermaid designers and mixing them up. I can prove that the thief took a picture of one of my tails and simply modified it to make hers. She made enough changes so that it doesn't look like my tails, but she didn't make enough changes with designs she stole from other designers. At least one of those other designers had filed a report with LL already. I'm still talking to people to get advice about this before I decide what to do.

My Captain (that's what I'll call this new lover from now on in this blog) was trying to make me feel better with these flowers. *sigh*

Transformation of the cricket

One lover pulled me back into the real world and, thereby, showed me how one reality enhances the other. But the real world has responsibilities and commitments and vows, and the cricket chirped.

Then another lover brought me into a deeper fantasy and, thereby, reminded me how imagination enhances our lives. And in a world of fantasy, there are no responsibilities, no commitments, no vows, and the cricket was muffled.

That's where I've been. Deep inside my imagination, deep in tales and myths and metaphors and archetypes.

But the emotions are still real. No matter how deep into fantasy you get. At a time when I thought he was rejecting me, he thought I was rejecting him. And I realized that perhaps I was as important to him as he is to me.

In the middle of that argument, he mentioned the cricket. He feels that I'm still hearing it, and he said I had to either shoot it or follow it. He advised following it.

The day after the argument, I sent him a roleplay scenario just for the two of us. A few days prior, he had told me the story of Eos, the goddess of the dawn, who had asked Zeus to make her lover Tithonos immortal, but she forgot to ask for his youth to be preserved. So Tithonos aged and shrunk, until he became a cricket. The roleplay scenario extends that myth. The fantasy continues.

I did take his advice. I followed the cricket. I followed Tithonos... my darling Tithonos.