Second Life has done wonders for my real life sex life, let me tell you that. Not that I was jaded or anything (or prepared to admit it, anyway) but after nine years of marriage, and

One of the few publishable snaps I've got. And that's all you're seeing!

giving birth – well, there’s always a need to keep some spice in your relationship, is there not? Who would have known I might find it virtually?

Not without some lessons learnt however, and I’m still not sure about some moral dilemmas which remain “in discussion” when my real life partner can be bothered talking. Men don’t, do they?

Second Life has far too many women in it, of course. And I’m one of them, so can say that. For my first few days after first rez I didn’t encounter one male. Here I was, having been warned somewhere that I might be accosted by some newbie male wearing a freeni without knowing it, and instead my expectations were grossly shattered. No one spoke to me at all. Not even a mentor at Help Island. Okay, so I’d first thought I was being truer to myself, by developing my noob avatar into a likeness of my real life, and possibly looked like a troll. But even so, where was all that attention?

After a week of loneliness, invites, requests, subtle hints, non-subtle hints and outright pleading my real life partner decided he best make peace with me, and joined up on second life himself. So that I would have somebody to talk to, mainly. And share my new beach pad with.

Outfitting a male in real life is hard enough. Especially somebody who’s over forty but likes to think he can still get away with dressing as a twenty year old. Outfitting a male in second life is even harder. The amount of shopping malls I found for him which were discounted because everything looked “too gay” is registered on my synopses days later. Admittedly, most of the male avatars and clothing does look, er – a little gay, even from my perspective as a female. Perhaps it’s the long lashes and youthful skintones they put on the skins, maybe it was the fact that the jeans are skin tight, and the middle shops insist on selling village-people type moustaches. Whatever the reason, the pure macho hetero side of him caused no end of bother in getting him semi-allowable to be seen in public.

Once he’d gone away to real life, now outfitted in beach shorts (in orange, for Pete’s sake!) I spent a wickedly giggly day finding him some male genitalia. The ken-doll pubes of his new skin were putting me off. I settled on a male set of appendages that looked okay with me, and came with animations and sounds. Who knew?

That evening after considering the pale apricot skin tone, we gave it a whirl anyway, and discovered what those animations were all about. It was then that I issued the demand that he please get up and close our bathroom window, as the neighbours would be wondering what on earth all that grunting noise and American accents coming out from it meant. You can’t turn the sound controls down enough, and in stereo laptop versions, the noise was embarrassingly intimate. And, er, of an American man.

If you haven’t worked it out already, then let me explain the madness of this virtual sex thing and our lives here. I sit there watching my virtual self having sex with a virtual male avatar, on my laptop. And next door on the same bed is my husband sitting there watching the same thing on his laptop. Virtual Sex in duplicate. And the sound isn’t quite synchronised either, so you get a multi-media echo effect. (I’ve been reading Legendary Charisma’s series on cybersex chat – very helpful, but completely not needed when you consider that I don’t chat – virtually – at all with my cyber partner, whilst we’re ‘doing it’, because in reality we’re right beside each other).

But we’re both consenting adults, and real life partners. And actually – well, it was quite stimulating (if not for the neighbours).

We went off then, to see if we could find one of those sex clubs I’d heard all about. Newbies had been promised / threatened that we would stumble upon these accidentally. I never had, despite trying. It took a bit of genuine searching to find some. And it took even longer to find one that would let me teleport into it. This was at ten o’clock UK time, so about 1:00 o’clock in PacificTime. Yet the sex clubs were brimming full.

Full of males. So that’s where they are, I thought, and quickly called my virtual partner to teleport in to protect me (as if he could). When I say quickly, it took half an hour because the club was full and only seemed to be letting females in (okay, my opinion only).

Strolling around the club, I found myself hit upon every minute or so. This has long since stopped happening in real life for many years, so I was quite flattered really, even if it looked out of desperation more than anything.

My husband, who I’d bought a strapping big hunky shape for, finally strolled over laggedly to protect me. I could imagine the conversation going something along the lines of, “Um, she mine. Yum keep away. Ugh!” (Did I mention he’s taken a liking to long Neanderthal like hair and a beard?). That’s the conversation he might have had, anyway, if only he’d spent more time learning how to actually chat and communicate in second life before tagging along. Instead he sat nearby, and appeared to be enjoying the entertainment. Far too much.

For the first time in my life, I did a pole dance – and was good at it too. But then, once I’d been hit on by the same adamant man for the sixth time, we decided we’d better get out of there. Certainly after our bed conversation over our laptops, I was wanting to pause for thought.

I’d done the inevitable female thing there, and asked my partner if he thought it morally wrong to have sex with a stranger in virtual life. ‘No’, he’d replied after some thought. ‘What?!’ I rounded on him, shocked. ‘Well, only if I was there’, he’d said. ‘Do you mean it’s okay, if you’re watching, but not okay if I do it in the daytime when you’re not here?’ I asked. He nodded.

There’s been stories in the media about real life marriages being broken up by infidelity within virtual worlds. But those stories have centred around virtual affairs taking place inworld which turn into real life love affairs. Here, we were talking about the casual virtual sex which is at times, incredibly surreal and possibly less intimate than even sharing a virtual house together.

I perused the club again. Over to one corner a female avatar was having intercourse with a male, doggy style. The only problem being the male’s bits were darting in and out and right through her stomach. Similar problems were happening elsewhere. The peenis and lady loves weren’t lining up. Nor was there many sounds (other than the rather appealing dance club mix being played) and at times, some peculiar facial expressions going on. Nor were people talking to each other, even by text chat. Maybe there was a lot of IMing going on behind the scenes, in between the movements from pose ball to pose ball? I could only hope there was some introductions going on somehow. But then, I was in a free sex club, and for my first attendance, being a bit of a voyeaur.

No, my own titilation came from having my own life partner there with me, somebody who understands me, and can converse with me – even if virtually. We tried out a kissing sofa, and seeing us there like that actually made me a little snuggly teary-eyed. There we were, him with a six pack, me with less love handles than reality, and we were, um, kissing. Sigh.

Incidentally, the club was where I finally encountered the promised land of freenis – supposedly offered to every new male avatar as soon as they rez in. Finally my partner could also experience the freeni giftatude in the form of a box of them worn around somebody’s head).

Still, it was enough to send me off the next day to see if I could find another penis without the off-putting grunting sounds or fruit-coloured skin tones, and I did indeed. I also found some female equipment next door. That’s the one I purchased, never mind my husband.

I later took my husband back to get himself a Mr Woody (with free superhero-like T-shirt) which can be colourised to match his neanderthal-hairy skin tones. Both mine and his are incredibly life-like when you look up close. Photo-realistic. What might be considered somewhat off-putting is the fact that all of these, er, attachments come with talking. Via either gutteral cliche American voices, or text chat to tell your partner (and anyone else locally) how you’re, um, getting on.

Now that I’ve got the equipment right, if only I could work out what my moral high ground is when it comes to second life sex.

Over the next weekend after our first sexual explorations of Second Life, Linden Labs made its big Adults Only announcement of intentions to segregate and localise all the adult-themed content in Second Life. And so some controversy ensued, but I’ve kept well away from that as I’ve explored all that Second Life may or may not give my sex life. Personally, I love the stuff.

In Second Life, my middle-aged husband and I have found a new and exciting outlet for some of our adult-desires, and this has added a bit of spice to our reasonably mundane and hard-working real lives. Even if I get the giggles when American accents of an intimate nature echo over the laptop speakers.

We went back to a sex club not long after, which is another long tale of ineptitude, and then there’s the problem with my newly purchased sexgen shaggy rug’s script co-ordinates and my resulting public display of acts I didn’t really want witnessed fifty feet in the air above my house. Perhaps I’ll tell you about those some time soon. Bribes will be taken if you don’t want to subject yourselves to such knowledge.