Chapter 2 - Falling

I had the soundest night's sleep I had had in a long time, that night, and I awoke refreshed, optimistic and happy. I wasn't in love, don't be silly, but it was almost like... in the back of my mind... I was thinking about how Jez would feel. Writing lines for her as if she was a character in a play. Thinking how to role-play her, in the game.

At work I had the eerie feeling that there was someone else in my head with me, looking out through my eyes and commenting in the voice of a young woman...

Oh wow look at Gillian! I wish I had the confidence to wear something so fashion-forward!

Only someone who's never spoken to me would think I want anything to do with talking flipping football!

Luckily the conversations were all in my head, but it did feel like I was starting to go a bit mad. I don't know how I made it through the day, let alone the long drive home that evening. I popped a microwave dinner in to cook as soon as I got home and started my laptop booting.

I retrieved my dinner when the microwave beeped and sat down to eat with the laptop by my plate. I logged on to Second Life as I started eating. Fee wasn’t online yet, which was fine by me, I needed to go shopping. I didn’t have any spare money in RL so I would have to hit the freebie store.

I’d found a store that gave away stuff for free, there were sections where the better quality items were for sale but they cost Linden Dollars (L$). Although L$ were only in-game tokens they cost real dollars to buy them. Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life, posted exchange rates on their website, to convert US dollars (USD) to L$ and back. I had read somewhere that the economy of Second Life at that time was roughly equivalent to a small country. I’m guessing that was hype, or a very small country. Anyway, the freebie store was a bit like a thrift shop, I guess. Lot’s of rubbish, but a few gems.

Fee sent me a message while I was shopping and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was at ‘Freebie Island’, trying to make myself look beautiful for him! I had no idea where that came from, it just sort of popped out. I guess Jez was a bit of a flirt.

Fee asked if I'd like to come and join him, of course I said yes and soon i had teleported to his side, or 'TPed’ as Fee called it. All around us there were pictures of naked women, I wondered what the hell was going on?

“I thought I'd buy you a new skin” said Fee. “I got one for myself and I thought you should have one too.”

I looked at Fee’s avatar and it was certainly looking a lot better, more like a person than a cartoon. A very good-looking person.

I wandered around looking at all the pictures until I found a very sweet and demure looking face, with just a hint of humour around the eyes (maybe I was projecting some of Jez’s personality onto it).

“How about this one?” I asked Fee.

“You sure?” he replied “It’s only L$100, I can get you one of the more expensive ones with all the different makeup options?”

“Fee…” I said “I don’t even know what L$100 is in real money, you know? How much would it cost in RL?”

“Oh, just a few pennies…” he replied airily.

“This one is fine, it’s very generous of you to offer, especially as I don’t have any linden dollars of my own and I’m unlikely to have any spare cash to get any soon…”

“How come?”

“Well…” my mind span quickly, I didn’t want to tell him that all my cash went to my ex-wife as maintenance… “I’m a single parent and all my spare cash goes on my kids, you see. I’m only playing SL as an escape because it’s free to play and I can’t afford to go anywhere in RL.” Strangely, not a word of what I said was a lie but it made me sound like some kind of lonely single mum.

“Well, a tenner here or there is no problem for me, so the few pennies to see you look pretty is nothing…. Why don’t you get yourself looking good and I’ll find the spot I wanted to show you?”

I’d found a spot where I could open the packages items came in and get a bit of privacy to try things on when I was looking through the free items earlier, so I went there and read the instructions for using my new skin, soon my avatar was naked and looking much more realistic, in fact…

“I have a vagina!” I blurted out in the instant message window I had open to Fee.

“Lol” said Fee “Are you nearly ready?”

“Huh!, I bet you’d like that! Seeing my naked avatar!” I retorted indignantly.

“Hmmm, maybe later?”

“Grr” I typed as I hurriedly added the various layers of clothing to my avatar, undies (simple white bra and panties), cropped tank top and bootcut jean with high heeled shoes. Nothing fancy but it looked ok, then long blonde hair in a thick braid down my back and a pair of glasses.

Why the glasses? I clearly didn’t need them to see in SL… I thought they made Jez look more like me, I’ve worn glasses all my life and I feel naked without them. Plus… I thought they gave Jez’s face more character, she looked too much like a cartoon of a fashion model without them, too perfect.

I took a deep breath in RL as I checked my avatar before I typed “Ready” in the IM window to Fee.

****

When I appeared a second later in front of Fee he had on his new skin and he was well dressed in smart casual clothes. He took a second to respond and then he said:

“Wow, that was worth the wait and the new skin just makes you look amazing!”

“Er, thanks… I’m not used to getting compliments like that.”

“Oh? I’m sure that’s not true, maybe you just blank them out?”

“No… I don’t look like this in RL… I’m older and fatter and plainer. After the separation I kind of let myself go and I was never beautiful to start with!”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

My mind was working overtime as I was conversing with Fee, trying to figure out who Jez’s alter-ego in RL would be like. I didn’t want to break the spell of what I had with Fee by forcing him to understand I was a guy in RL. I wanted to keep playing the role of a woman. I’d often played the female magic user in our D&D campaigns with my friends. It just made sense, tactically to have at least one female character in any campaign and I tended to avoid the fighter class as they tended to have such limited options. Magic users and thieves tended to thrive on their wits, which suited my game play. Plus it led to more interesting role play if my characters were not one dimensional melee fighters. So I realised I needed a back story for Jez. Who was she in RL?

I wanted the alter ego to be similar to me in most respects. The only real differences would be gender specific things, it would make it easier to remember things and stay in character if I didn’t have to lie or make things up. So, as I was talking I was kind of building this mental image in my mind. My ex-wife was about my build, to the point where we would sometimes borrow each others clothes (It’s not what you think). She was 6 feet tall (that’s over 180cm) and looked a little like the woman from Farscape, I think her name is Claudia Black. So if I think of a name for her that will never be released to Fee but I will use as a label in my own head. Let’s call her ‘Cathy’. 6 foot tall, size ten feet and long dark wavy hair. I can tell all the stories about buying clothes in Long Tall Sally and having to buy shoes in Saxon’s that I know from my ex-wife. I wasn’t doing this consciously as I spoke to Fee, but my head was running ahead of my mouth - setting up the role play. I guess my subconscious had been musing over this all day as a lot of things fell into place in a split second. It took a lot less time to come up with this plan than to read about it here!

Cathy was shy around men and self-conscious because of her size and ‘handsome’ rather than pretty features. She lived for her kids and put up with shit from her ex-husband to give them the best opportunities. If I ever needed to think of how she looked I could use photos from my ex-wife. I was _not_ going to pass myself off as her and let Fee see those pictures to establish my bona fides as a woman because that had too many ways of going horribly wrong. Can you imagine if Fee came across my ex in the street and said “Hi!” to her? Too horrible to imagine.
Anyway, all this took less than a second to decide. I chatted with Fee as he led me deeper into the garden to where a blanket was laid out on the ground with a pink ball and a blue ball on it.

“Come and sit with me” Fee said as he sat on the blue ball. The ball vanished and Fee’s avatar sat cross-legged on the blanket in front of the pink ball.

I sat on the pink ball and Jez sat demurely on the blanket.as the pink ball vanished.

“Why don’t you click on the mat and see what poses you can find in the menu?” said Fee.

When I clicked my mouse on the mat we were sat on, a blue menu appeared in the top right of my screen. It gave me 4 options; “Single”, “Couples”, “XXX” and “Options”. I was intrigued, I clicked on “Single” and saw a few different names for seated positions (“Sit 1”, “Sit F”, “Sit M”, “Sit crosslegs” and so on). and a “Back” option. I went back to the main menu then down to “Couples”. The options included all sorts of couply things; “Sit1”, “Sit together”, “Sit leaning”, “Lay”, “Lay together”, “Lay on”, “Sleep”, “Kiss”, “Make out”, “cuddle”.... the list went on to another page, but I got the idea. I went back and chose the “XXX” menu. The list started with foreplay, missionary, doggy and went on over several pages including things that I had never heard of. Hurriedly I went back to the “Couples” menu and chose “Lay together”.

Fee and Jez shifted position until they were lying on their sides facing each other, each propped up on an elbow.

Fee asked me about my day and I started explaining that I was a Bid Manager for a software company. That seemed pretty safe and non-gender specific, particularly as every other Bid Manager in the company was female ( I have no idea why, even my boss was female, which was unheard of in the software industry).

Fee told me he was into 'Land Management’ I think he meant he was a farmer, but he was strangely coy about what he did for a living.

I honestly don't remember what we spoke about in much detail. I remember having to mentally double-check everything I said to see if a girl would say that, or say it that way, but I’m not sure how much attention Fee was paying to what I was saying. After a short while he started playing with the animation menu and before I knew it Fee’s avatar was kissing mine, chastely on the lips.

“Oops!” said Fee “I was just wondering what the other poses were…”

“Ha! You’d better not get any ideas about playing with the 'XXX’ menu!”

“Oh, you saw that one then?”

“I must admit, I’m a little intrigued… I know my new skin means that I have a vagina now, but do you even have a penis?”

“Not yet” he admitted “but I have seen some for sale! It’s just another attachment.”

I pondered that for a while, I didn’t want to have sex with Fee, but cyber-sex in Second Life? That’s just a lame form of cartoon porn, isn’t it? Just two cartoon characters getting frisky on screen for us to laugh at.

“I don’t know how I feel about it.” I admitted to Fee.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, doing ‘it’ with you in SL.”

“Sex? It’s not like you can get pregnant!”

“Hmmph, that’s not the point!”

“What is your point?”

What was my point? I’d watched porn on the Internet before, of course, I was a male adult with a computer, after all. But the idea of making porn, with another person virtually present was… disturbing, somehow. The fact that I would be expected to play the female role was not lost on me either. I just didn’t know if my imagination would hit me as hard with cyber-sex as it had when Fee massaged Jez’s feet that time. I was suddenly hit with a deep wave of loneliness and sadness. I couldn’t really put it into words. I certainly couldn’t explain to Fee, a big part of it was not wanting to lie to Fee, but he had made it pretty clear he didn’t want to hear the truth, he just wanted someone to play the game with. But this was the first adult conversation I’d had in such a long time that didn’t involve kids or work that it was… nice.

I’d missed that thrill of talking and flirting with someone friendly. As a guy with kids, slightly overweight and trapped in a job with stupid hours I felt like I was almost invisible. The only people who would really notice if I disappeared would be my kids if I didn’t turn up at the weekend to look after them and my boss if I didn’t turn up for work.

“Just hold me, for now” I typed, the words appeared on the screen without conscious thought.

Fee clicked on the menu and before I knew what was happening strong arms hugged Jez from behind as the two avatars sat on the mat.

I practically purred as I imagined how Jez would feel, engulfed in the warmth of his muscular arms, holding me close, his stubble against my ear.

We chatted for a few minutes more, I couldn’t tell you what about, and I grew more comfortable. Eventually I said to myself “F*** it!” and clicked on the menu for couples and choose “Make out”.

Fee stopped typing in mid-sentence.

“Mmmm!” he typed.

“Cat got your tongue?” I quipped.

“Mmm, no _Jez_ has my tongue! (in her pretty little mouth!) What brought on the change of heart?”

“Shut up and kiss me, you fool!”

“Hehe, as you command, my dear!”

I just watched the animation for a moment, Jez and Fee looked so happy in each other’s arms.

“Fee…” I started, not sure how I was going to continue “Can we…. just take it slow? I’m not sure that I’m ready for this. I’m in the middle of a shitty divorce and either this means something, like I feel it does, or it’s just pixels on a screen and you’d do better off going to a porn site. Either way… I’m not sure how I feel about this all”

“Shh, it’s fine, I understand, this is new for me too. Let’s just enjoy the animation for what it is and you can continue telling me what a creep your ex was?”

So we chatted into the night, me bitching about my ex, while swapping the gender pronouns - which coincidentally made more sense as most of the things like cheating and leaving me looking after the kids while she swanned off on her holidays were typically what you would expect the guy to do, I realised. All the while, Jez was falling for Fee, and the screen showed to the two of them making out, and I was just going with the flow.