My RL suit

The reasons why we initially join second life are varied, but most of us do it out of curiosity and to fulfill a need to socialize in a user created "safe" environment, or at least safer than real life.

So we wonder off and explore, shily at first, mostly overwhelmed on how really big and vast SL and all of its continents seem to be, finally settling somewhere after lots of exploring at a place we call "home"

Much like in RL, we create families, make bonds and new friends, fall in love and out of it which is most of the time what compels us to log back in day after day; we also create a virtual person which has all of the physical traits we find desirable and evolves with our experiences and as our knowledge of the platform improves.

But something most of us seem to be unaware of is that as we delve deeper into SL experiences we become sufferers of what I call the "RL suit" syndrome; taking advantage of both the immersion 3D environments induce and the anonymity that most of us -no matter how open and "true" to our RL selves- enjoy, our SL personas bring out the best and the worst that RL social limits sometimes prevent us from experiencing, hence this becoming our "RL suits".

We wake up, we go to our RL jobs, we come home at the end of the day, shedding our RL and becoming for the rest of the day, that which we really are, with all of that implied. I certainly don't regret every second spent in SL, or I clearly would not be doing it, the "game" as many call it, has given me so much and asked for so very little, I've learned valuable lessons and it has certainly brought out the best in me, which has crossed over all the way to my RL.

Over the almost 3 years I have invested in this, I have become a DJ, a designer, a writer and most importantly, it has allowed me to experience parenting, with the good and the bad that comes with it, something that I am sure in RL would have been negated to me as a gay man -or at least extremely difficult-, I truly don't know what the future holds or if I'll even be here for another 3 years, but I'll enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

https://www.facebook.com/spikecls

THE Pixel Gender

After straying from my regular topics, over the past few months, I have decided that my first post of 2013, would bring me back to the original idea of this blog, namely sex.

It has always been  my interest and goal for this blog, to be a faithful reflection of my coming and goings in SL and my experiences with sex and other individuals, but when you are married, no matter how inventive you try to be, your experiences -at least on the sexual plane- are still somewhat limited to your partner and what he/she decides to indulge in with you.

This being said, I will do the Carrie Bradshaw thing today -the columnist from the "Sex and the City" show-, and tell you about an issue one of my friends is having in SL, when it comes to gender orientation. My friend, who we will refer to as "F" -for friend-, has found himself semi-involved with a man in SL who does not have a penis, but in fact a vagina.

He admits that the first few times they got involved he was curious and the reason he kept on doing it again with this person, is because it was simply, pleasurable and different, but the more he has done it with him, the more complex it has become and F is now in fact very confused about his sexual orientation -which up to this point he'd consider as exclusively gay-; coming to me for advice -poor him-, I pointed out that the WHOLE SL experience is so varied and open for experimentation, that one should not base what we do on it, as a faithful reflection of our RL selves.

A friend of mine compared SL to Narnia the other day on a FB post, and on this I have to agree, SL is this magical world, where we are all we can't be in RL, we do all we wish to with little, if any consecuences and at the end of the day, we leave "Narnia" only to find that very little has changed about us, this also applies to sex.

I know many people who do furry sex, have sex with horses, dogs and even those who enjoy being submissive to the point where they are treated as objects whilst in the platform, and this does not necessarily mean that there is something wrong with you, a need is simply being fulfilled, IT is there and SL being so immersive, allows you to experience it in the safest way possible, without any VD or harmful after effects.

So when it comes to SL, and romantic relationships in there, there are some I like to refer as the "Pixel Gender", a whole new category of people, who are not really men, nor women and have succeeded in finding happiness whilst being their true selves, at least when they are logged in.

https://www.facebook.com/spikecls