The Inadvertant Stripper

A few weeks ago, while shopping at the futurist-Japanese store, Curious Kitties, I made a new friend, whom I'll call V. She was relatively new and trying to build a cool avatar look--on a budget. She was doing a great job, by any standard (budget or no). But she made it clear to me that money was an issue, asking how one can earn it in SL and/or the mechanics of buying it on the SL exchange.

Time passed, and she and I just were never on at the same time, or we were hanging out with different friends. At any rate, we didn't see much of each other (though--side note!--V is featured in the elevator pic blogged about a few posts ago) during this time.

So, the other night V IMmed me and we started chatting. I asked what she was up to, and she said she was working, by which she meant dancing in a sex club. She TPed (teleported) me to the club. Once it rezzed, I sat on a stool in front of her and watched the show.

Maybe it's my time with the BDSM crowd at Perilous Pleasures, or perhaps taking Ms. M's tour (complete with her maid, slaves' quarters, and exotic bedroom), but the sex show at Barbie's struck me as a little banal. This is not a knock on V or any of the other dancers, who were trying to please a demographic that I obviously am not a member of. But the name "Barbie" said it all: the dancers almost all had the blond, tanned Playboy bunny California girl look going. (I liked V's avvie better at Curious Kittens, but that's just my taste. And probably hers!)

But then things got interesting. For whatever reason, a lot of the guys started hitting on me. Let me contextualize this. I am an Asian avvie amongst milk-white California girls. I am small-chested amongst the buxom. I am sitting at the bar rather than dancing naked on it. My clothes are not even sexy (I was wearing my elegant red outfit, which is kind of my default), in a room of thongs and belly rings with bling. I was also the only female non-sex object in the room.

IMAGE: My standard red outfit goes for elegance, not explicit sex appeal.



Thus, nothing about me projected sex; in fact, most of my features projected quite the opposite, in that context. Given all this, it seems superficially puzzling that anyone would hit on me, rather than abundantly available sex toys in the room.

I asked the guys who were hitting on me why they weren't hitting on the other women. Their predictable replies focused on how pretty I am, etc., etc. But I don't believe them. I think I was attractive to them because I was so radically defined in opposition to the rest of the people in the room that I stood out. I probably also threatened to shatter the illusion of the place--unless I can somehow be turned into a sexual object by consenting to flirt or even strip for them--in which case, I would become a radical dancer.

V invited me to become a dancer myself (she makes decent money at it--$400L - $1,000L per hour). I thought about it, but I probably won't. I don't need to. I mean, that evening I had already become a stripper without assent or even cognizance. The male gaze can be transforming!

Virtual Friendship, Ugly Avatars

"Real life is for people with ugly avatars."

So spoke my friend SC, from an island floating miles above a neon-lit nighttime metropolis. Aside from the humor value, it reflects another interesting issue: the fact that our avatars are, if done well, idealizations of ourselves. And if my avvie is an idealization of me, does that mean that the friendships that she enters into are somehow idealized? If so, does that make virtual friendships inauthentic, at least somewhat?

It certainly doesn't feel that way. I have developed friendships with a number of SLers, SC most notably, but there are others. And even if they see a sexy form of me--sexy in both the superficial sense of my avvie's looks but also in the deeper sense that my avvie probably has a more interesting personality than I do (anyway, she makes friends a LOT easier than I do)--I don't think I'm flattering myself when I say that after the first 15 minutes, it is ME that they like, not merely my sexy projection.

Still, it is interesting that the idealized projection of me opens doors that I don't think I could ever open in RL. When I first visited Perilous Pleasures for the submissives and slaves retreat, I put myself in a situation unlike anything--anything!--I have ever been in my comparatively vanilla RL. But this situation, whose starting point was that we were all going to share our psychosexual experiences, fetishes, and fantasies (embodied in our avvies), created an instant intimacy simply impossible in RL. Well, simply impossible for me in RL. So, perhaps our idealized forms are fictions, constructions; but perhaps they also open doors of friendship that otherwise would remain closed. If a part of me yearns for those sorts of friendships, a part of me that is genuine, private, and largely unacknowledged, I don't see how it can be inauthentic.

SC: Your avatar is beautiful! I hope to see her time and again in SL!

Allecto and Friends' Elevator Ride Immortalized!

My adventures last night included an elevator ride with a bunch of friends. I took a snapshot, cuz we were having so much fun. Here is the snapshot:



Guess what?! Our picture wound up as the picture of the hour on the SL home page! Why? Because we rule! Yayy us!

Fitting Identities

As I play around sl and get to know people, I've begun paying attention to the development of avatar look and identity. From my own experience, I know that one can trace an evolution of my avatar from the default sl avatar I was given, through a series of concepts and approximations, before I finally figured out which one was "me."

For the uninitiated, "designing" your avatar means constructing a person out of several parts: a "shape" (which is your 3D body measurements, without any coloring), a "skin" (which is the coloring that wraps over your shape and makes it visible), hairstyles, clothes,and accessories (such as purses, jewelry, and tattoos). This process sounds like a superficial one, simply a matter of deciding how you are going to look. But for me, and several avvies that I know, it is much more than than choosing what shoes you are going to put on in the morning.

The look of your avatar shapes your very identity, and not just in-world.

This process plays out in many different ways. Attractive female avatars get hit on, for example. A gothic lolita not only looks like a sexy, pallid vamp, but she tends to get treated as one. So other people interpret you (and hence the way you play, your hobbies, the ways you want to interact) based on your appearance. Then they act on those interpretations, and you become that which you dressed up as.

IMAGE: An older avvie of Allecto that looks cool but just isn't me.


But it's deeper than that. I noticed as I evolved through avatars and outfits, my own behavior changed. My goth avatar is more shy and introverted than my California girl avatar. I did not design them that way. But when I put myself out there as one of these women, for whatever reason, a part of me becomes them.

So when I decided to try out an Asian avatar, which not coincidentally reflects my rl heritage, my behavior changed radically--and permanently. In my early weeks of sl, I looked nothing like myself in rl, and yet I played more or less as myself. As my looks became more outrageous, so did my behavior (this marks the time I lost my cybervirginity to total stranger with whom afterwards I was too shy even to accept his friendship card). As I finally came back to a physical reflection that contained an important element of my rl self--my gender and race, albeit idealized--a transformation occurred in which my rl identity and self suddenly came through a second time, not as the naive newbie, but in the sense that I had found a way to fuse my virtual and rl identities in a thoroughly satisfying and authentic way.

In that moment, I went from sl player to sl resident.

This fusion is profound, in the sense that I am living a lie--a hot babe wandering in the sl universe--and yet I am incredibly truthful to my online friends about who I am, what makes me "me." It is a form of sincere truthfulness and intimacy that takes place behind the opaquely colored glass of the computer screen.

And strange things were born of this new fusion. One of them was the emergence of a new cybersexuality, one which is more brave and adventurous than I am in rl, and yet one which somehow also reflects my real sexuality. That my cybersexuality is leading me to new places is exciting and also scary, such as the realm of D/s (Dominance and submission) relationships. Initially, I was curious about the imagery. Then I went to some of the places in sl that practice this form of sexuality--Gor, Perilous Pleasures, etc.--and read about it. Then I started to fantasize about it. Then I got involved in the community, at least a little bit. Now I am freaked out! Where am I going with this? Will it change my rl sexuality? Will it affect my relationship with my b/f?

Am I playing Second Life? Or is sl as much a part of rl as Halloween, weddings, vacations, and holiday dinners, that is, any other occasion in which we dress up and play our real selves in front of people we love?

I don't think I'll ask my Mom about how I should deal with my D/s longings....

My New Cyberpunk Aesthetic

The genesis of today's adventuring rises from the ashes of yesterday's unexpected sudden endings. Just before RL intervened, I was hitting if off with Ms. M., and she had just given me a new outfit. Presumably, she wanted to see me in it, but I never had the chance. So today, given that she was offline and figuring that I owed her at least some snapshots of me in the outfit she sent, I put them on and took some pictures of myself. (During that process I encountered a strange and amusing pony girl sub, but I don't think I'll tell that story today, other than to say I got to ride on her back while we trotted around Perilous Pleasures.)

I had a revelation as I put on the outfit: I was limiting myself unnecessarily to elegant clothes. The batsuit was a hit the day before, and here I was in a luscious purple + see-through gown. I decided I need to spice up my look.

Right around that time, my friend mCall logged in, and she told me she was looking for some exotic new hairstyle. Clearly, this was a call for a visit to Curious Kitties, in Bizarre. Though that store can be frustrating to move around in, it is generally worth the effort, stocked with punky-urban-Japanese themed outfits (some of the gothic lolitas look like they come right out of Fruits magazine, though I didn't get one).

For her part, mCall, who had never visited Curious Kitties before, was transfixed. I think she discovered her aesthetic. She's often complained that clothing in SL is either boring or slutty, with very little outside of these categories. Actually, there is a third category, I think, and that is fashion fetish, which is some theme gone wild: goth, robot, furry (when your avatar becomes an animal). So Curious Kitties has the Bladerunner fashion fetish (just imagine how good we'll look at the Bladerunner-themed Desert Moon!), and mCall was ready to phone home. She ran around from floor to floor declaring that she was going to buy these boots, that hair, that shirt, and the other skirt. She looked at arm bands, parasols, trailing particle bubbles (always a good choice, IMO), jackets, stockings, belts, geisha hairdos.

I don't have any totals, but I'm pretty sure a lot of Linden dollars went to Curious Kitties yesterday.

Nonetheless, mCall was a different person when she was done. Her hair was inspiring: big, teased, punk, and a nice mix of blue and black. Her outfits were modern and even a little dangerous. (She wasn't packing any guns or knives, though; something for her to work on.)

I got punked up, too. I have pink spikey hair, a dead bunny t-shirt, XXX jeans, and Hello Kitty boots (the latter were found at Perilous Pleasures). I added some spikey armbands and jewelry for good measure. Finally, I hopped on my free Desert Moon hoverboard and zoomed all over the sim, while mCall, as far as I could tell, bought damn near every thing in Curious Kitties.

Afterwards, I joined SC in Midnight City, on the frozen pond in the snow. Lovely place. We went on a magic carpet ride, drove some NASCAR cars around the city, and SC released a platoon of "mousies" into the city, I tried to follow the mousies, but they disappeared. (It should come as no surprise to anyone that someone took the time to model, animate, and script rats in SL.) We sat on a bridge in the city and talked. SC became pensive, and we had an unusually intimate conversation, which was thrilling to me. It's not appropriate for me to say more here, except that I was really honored that she was willing to share her personal thoughts with me. Yayy SC!

Black & White Dance at the Race Track

Last night, I logged in to attend a truth or dare event in Perilous Pleasures. With a title like Perilous Pleasures, you might assume that the reason one goes is for cybersex. While no doubt that happens there, the reason I like PP is because of its community. The people there are not only extraordinarily friendly and cool, but they are also SL power users who know how to get the most out of Second Life. If you're looking for love at PP, you are likely to overlook violent octapi, one of the finest photo galleries in SL, and interactive hair scripts that let you introduce yourself to someone by braiding her hair.

Sadly, not enough people showed up for the truth or dare adventure, so a couple of us went off in search of other pleasures. We quickly found ourselves at the Silver Motorsports Complex, which is SL's home for NASCAR racing. How a couple of submissives trailing particle bubbles would up at a NASCAR track is a little hard to explain. I will only say that my hero and muse, whom I will refer to in this space as SC, is the one who led me there.

At the Silver Motorsports Complex, there was a black and white themed dance. We arrived too late for the contest, but I put on my party black, which in this case was my goth batsuit, complete with batwings, tall black boots, and what not. Normally, I don't wear particularly racy clothes. I like to think my clothes are pretty classy and a little bit, but not over-the-top, sexy. But the batsuit is pretty damned sexy, and whenever I wear it, I tend to get hit on.

Now, I'm not a prude, and I don't mind being hit on; indeed, I can even be a little adventurous, as long as I can hide behind my avvie. But getting hit on can also be a distraction, when people are just trying to get to know you so they can get in the virtual sack with you. I've got nothing against that, and I've even done it a time or two, but there's more to SL than iTrysting, and last night, I was looking for adventure, not digital booty. So these were my thoughts as I donned my batsuit and hit the dancefloor.

While I was there, my muse SC introduced me to Ms. M., a tall and commanding woman with a gun on each thigh. SC then took off to do some race driving of her own (!) and left us alone (on a crowded dancefloor). Ms. M. is a domme (her subs can be found listed in her profile), and she had the gravitas to make me want to get to know her better. She seemed interested in me as well--not in the crass way that noobs hit on you--but in a conversational way that included well timed compliments that I guess amount to a form of classy flirtation.

Are you piqued? Dying to know whether I took up Ms. M. on her offer to take into the back of her UPS truck and drive off and run out of gas somewhere? So am I! Unfortunately, a RL disaster showed unforgivable timing and took me away! When I returned, Ms. M. was offline, and I was standing alone in a race track yearning for a presence that was not there.