Honey, we’re just avatars
MY WIFE AND I disagree about very few things. That previous statement being one of them.
But one thing we definitely see differently is betrayal. Unlike me, Cassandra believes that a deep but unconsummated connection with a member of the opposite sex is far more grievous than an empty sexual affair. This doesn’t have much to do with the rest of this column, but I figured it was a good idea -- for legal reasons -- to get that into print. Again, just to be clear: empty sexual affair, totally cool with her.
So there was only marital downside for me when I logged on to second-life.com. On Second Life, you build an avatar that flies around to different rooms chatting up other people’s little avatars and generally behaving like an avatar dork. Sure, there’s lots of hot avatar-on-avatar sex, but cartoon characters haven’t turned me on since the Smurfs were pulled off the air.
Second Life is huge: Nearly 1 million people have logged on in the last two months. American Apparel has built a virtual store there; Starwood has a cyberhotel; Jay-Z has thrown a concert, and Reuters has devoted a full-time reporter to the site. He is, officially, the only journalist lazier than me.
The genius of Second Life is that, through a PayPal account, people spend real money to buy fake crap: fake real estate, fake clothes, fake cars, fake hookers. It’s the greatest leap forward for capitalism since option backdating.
Walking around the welcome island trying to figure out how this world worked, I was approached by a woman who was so ludicrously peroxided and fake-breasted that she looked beautiful. In the universe of Second Life, she actually seemed normal. All the women here look like Pam Anderson, the men like Lorenzo Lamas. Turns out when you let people create fantasy versions of themselves, androgyny doesn’t sell.
As my new pneumatic friend gave me a tour of casinos and outdoor gardens, she made it clear that although she was happy to show me around, we wouldn’t have sex. These websites are getting more realistic by the day.
It wasn’t just that my character was too short for her (you have to buy extra height) or too unpenised (you have to buy genitals). It was that she had a Second Life boyfriend she really loved, and they were monogamous.
He was several countries away, but he was perfect, caring and deep, and their love was pure -- totally emotional, unsullied by physicality. Though they would occasionally press buttons and watch their avatars pound away while they typed dirty things to each other and touched themselves. So, “pure” in the sense that really disgusting things are pure if no one sees you do them.
The only problem in this otherwise idyllic relationship was that she was happily married. Still, I thought, that wasn’t such a big deal. It was just a faceless, flirtatious, dorky friendship with someone she didn’t know. It might be creepy, but it clearly wasn’t adultery. If this is the cheating of the future, we can look forward to an incredibly unsexy batch of Richard Gere movies.
But then my new friend told me she’d fallen so hard for her Second Life boyfriend that she just had to meet him in person, though she was planning to bring her husband along. This is where I learned that, to my surprise, in my fantasy life I long to be Dr. Phil.
I warned her that her plan would endanger two relationships, and that she was better off enjoying a good thing while it lasted. I also thought it would be helpful if she sent me transcripts of these online chats she was having with her phony boyfriend. She refused, saying it would be a breach of trust. People draw a lot of weird lines in cyberspace.
After we parted ways, I quickly became bored with Second Life because it seemed to consist mainly of the two worst parts of real life: dealing with technology and meeting new people. But I did kind of miss my new virtual friend and her fascinating not-so-virtual problems. And the way she was so open. And adventurous.
And I wondered, for a moment, if Cassandra had been right the whole time. Maybe the most dangerous extramarital affair isn’t a mistress with real needs and demands, but an unrealized love you can project perfection on. Especially one who can fly. And who sends dirty e-mails to guys to turn them on. I wonder how much a penis costs?
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