Virtually Feminine - Part 4 - Home

That night, as I was driving home, I played through the conversation with Kathryn in my head. I didn’t know whether to be excited or nervous. But something about Kathryn’s reactions made me cautious. I like going to the movies, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not exactly ideal for a first date for two adults. There’s limited opportunities to sit and chat, and get to know one another, which is a pretty fundamental part of dating. I couldn’t imagine touching a work colleague in the dark in a potentially inappropriate way without clearly understanding how she stood. I wasn’t sure whether it was a ‘date’ date or just two colleagues going to see a kids film together.

Meh…

Still, it would get me out of the house, and that could only be a good thing.

I got home, slammed a microwave dinner in and fired up my laptop. I finished putting together my formal outfit that Lovely had helped me with and ate my dinner while I waited for Fee to show up. He was late and I was getting anxious when he finally came online.

“There you are, darling! I was beginning to worry!”

“I’m so sorry, Jez. Something unexpected came up.”

“Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“No, nothing like that… it just took me longer to get away than I expected. How was your day? Where are you, do you want to TP to me?”

“I’m at the camp fire, and I’m all dressed up ready for you to take me dancing, like you promised. Hurry up and get changed! It’s my birthday in RL so you have to be nice to me :-P”

“Why didn’t you tell me! I would have got you a present!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you, silly. Now get changed and your present to me can be your company on the dance floor.”

“As my lady commands! Give me a moment and I’ll TP you.”

It didn’t take Fee five minutes to get ready. He sent me a message asking me to join him. He had a classic James Bond-style tuxedo on, I had a gown designed to look like it came from the red carpet at the recent Oscar’s ceremony. I appeared on the edge of the dance floor at Frank’s jazz club.

Fee greeted me in open chat, and made sure everyone there knew we were a couple as he led me out onto the dance floor. He found two dance animations side by side, one pink ball and one blue ball and he stood waiting on the blue for me to join him. I quickly clicked on the pink ball and we started dancing to old Frank Sinatra tunes as Fee started to chat to me over private IM. I’ve never really listened to Frank Sinatra before that night, but dancing in Fee’s arms to ‘The way you look tonight’ and ‘Someone to watch over me’ was just so romantic.

“Your tux is very spiffy.”

“You look stunning, my dear.”

“Good job we’re not in RL then,” I said ruefully “I can’t dance and there’s no way I could look this good.”

“I love the woman inside, the one you’re only starting to let me see. I think you put yourself down too much, I’m sure you are beautiful in RL, too!”

I didn’t know what to say to that, I thought sometimes that Fee had figured out that I was only playing a role in SL, and then he went and said something like that.

“Oh, I’m going to a film with someone from work on Thursday”

“Should I be jealous?”

“It’s a female colleague, so I think you’re safe.”

“That’s alright then!... I know I have no right to be jealous, I know this is just a game to you…”

“No. It’s not that. It’s just, complicated… there’s things about my life, things about me, that mean you and I will never meet in RL.”

“I understand, you have your kids to protect and the business with your ex sounds horrendous, I’m not surprised you are protecting yourself like that. But I can still be here for you, if you’ll let me?”

“Oh Fee! I don’t know why you want to waste your time on this broken down old has-been… I really don’t deserve you!”

“I don’t know what I could have done to deserve you, so that makes us two undeserving sinners together. (kiss)”

Fee and Jez danced the night away, our private chat got more and more ‘mushy’ through the night and we stole virtual kisses as we danced. It was getting late, maybe after midnight, when Fee asked if I would like to come with him to see something he wanted to show me. I said ‘sure’, because I couldn’t imagine going to sleep the way the thoughts were whirling through my head still. We stopped dancing and Fee TPed away with a whoosh. A few moments later I got a message to join him, I clicked on the link and the club vanished, to be replaced by the most amazing sight. Fee stood in front of me, still in his tuxedo, in a grotto or cave, with stalagmites and stalactites, a stream ran down the middle of it. The light had a greenish tinge, but it wasn’t dark.

Fee led me a short way deeper into the cave to a rug on the floor with a number of scattered cushions all around. Beyond his shoulder I could see a small building, either a temple or a shed or summer house of some kind. Fee clicked on the rug and a pink and a blue ball appeared. Fee lay down on the rug, with his arms held in an inviting manner and the blue ball vanished. I clicked on the pink ball and jez sank into his arms.

“I’ll get my beautiful dress all crumpled!” I said, the formal dress that moved so nicely while I was stood up looked ridiculous now I was lying down with various panels sticking out in different directions, some of them apparently intangibly sticking through Fee and me.

“Take it off, then.” Fee said “It’s not like there’s anyone else here to see us.”

“Ha, so that’s your game!”

“You want to play it with me?”

“Grr… well, maybe a little…” I clicked on the skirt of the dress and detached it. I was still wearing the hose and undershorts, they were called ‘glitch pants’ in the inventory, so it looked like I was wearing a glittery body suit.

I clicked on the rug to see if it would let me control the animations. There were the usual ‘Sit1F’, ‘SitM’ stuff, an ‘XXX’ menu, ‘Couples’ and, at the end, a button labelled ‘Story’. I clicked on it and there were 4 buttons; ‘Kiss’, ‘Closer’, ‘Denouement’ and ‘All’, I clicked on ‘All’. Fee and Jez started moving into a tighter clinch. Unlike other animations when Fee and Jez had made out, this one was almost like watching a scene from a movie; instead of just kissing the two avatars moved against each other and their hands roamed over each others bodies as they kissed. The movements were not repetitive and they appeared to build towards a greater level of intimacy as I watched. There was a moment, when it felt voyeuristic to see the two avatars in this way. Then there was a moment of disorientation when my viewpoint changed and I began to think of Jez as being ‘me’. It’s very hard to describe. I didn’t vanish into the game magically or any of that nonsense. It was like, if you’ve played any kind of video game, particularly a first-person shoot-em-up for any length of time you begin to talk about “he shot me” or “I got him”. You see the game, the battle, from the viewpoint of your character on the screen.

In a similar way, I was beginning to see Second life, and in a strange way my relationship with Fee and the real person behind him and, by extension, the rest of the real world, from the viewpoint of Jez.

“Ah, you found the Story mode…” Fee said.

“What is the story?”

“I’m not sure, I didn’t play it through to the end, but it seemed intriguing to me when I found this place earlier.”

Fee rolled over on top on Jez at that moment and his movements looked as though he was undoing buttons.

“Intriguing? Riiiiight” I typed back, mildly amused. “Oh, what the hell, it’s only pixels, right?” I removed the top of the dress as if Fee had succeeded in undressing Jez in the way the animation suggested. Jez’s nipples were now clearly visible, but her bottom half was still covered. Jez rolled over on top of Fee and the animation showed her starting to undo his shirt.

“Oh my…” said Fee, as his jacket vanished. As Jez worked her hands down his body and got to his waist the shirt vanished too and he was naked to the waist.

“How far does this animation go?”

“Er, I’m not sure… We can stop if you are uncomfortable?”

“It’s not that, not really. It’s not real, right? Just us looking at an animation together…” Jez started working on the imaginary buttons on her waist as Fee started kissing her neck. I was starting to get a little turned on by it all. “It’s just, well, I don’t know how to put this delicately… Fee hasn’t got the equipment to go much further, has he?” I blushed in RL as I asked.

“Well, if Jez keeps doing that…” Fee said as Jez’s hands were moving down his body now she was down to her knickers and hose, “then you’re going to find out soon!”

Fee’s trousers vanished, then his shoes.

“Fee” I said, “you can lose the socks too, nothing sexy about a man in his socks!” The socks soon vanished too. Pretty soon the two of us are down to our underpants and knickers. As the animation makes Jez take down Fee’s underpants I am shocked when they suddenly vanish and a moment later a large erect penis suddenly appears in front of my avatar.

“Too much?” asks Fee.

“Let’s put it this way… if this was RL then I wouldn’t let you within 10 feet of me with that deformed monster. I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to do any real damage with that to Jez, though!”

“Snerk. I was afraid I might offend you…”

“Offend? No, it’s cute that you thought you needed to buy a strap-on for your Ken doll. I trust you didn’t model it on yourself?”

“Er… no, not exactly”

“Oh?”

“No, mine is bigger in RL…”

“ROFLMFAO!” as I hit return on the comment my avatar suddenly spasmed into a crazy laughing animation and a bizarre braying noise came out of my speakers. “What the hell?” I typed.

“Ha! You triggered a ‘gesture’” Fee said. I guess that’s the SL equivalent of spurting milk out of your nose when you laugh!”

“Eww”

“Still cute though”

The animation had restarted and Fee was naked, with an erect penis, kissing his way down my body and tugging at my knickers. I gave in and clicked on the option to take them off. They vanished, along with some of my inhibitions, and I decide to watch and enjoy the show as the two beautiful avatars gave Fee and I a show. It was just a little disorientating to identify with Jez and take the female role in this. I thought to myself what the hell, it’s not real - think of it like sharing a flicker book cartoons of stick men humping. How amusing is that going to look?

“Mmmm” Fee said, as his avatar buried his face in my newly bared nether regions.

“Eep!” I typed “you might buy a girl dinner first!”

“Chuckle. I thought all women liked foreplay?”

*-*-*

I want to draw a veil there. Not out of prudishness, nor shame. We were both adults and it was just an animation in a computer game, after all. I kept telling myself that as I got more and more aroused by what I was seeing on the screen and what Fee typed in the IM message box. It’s just… I can’t imagine how I can express to you in a way you can understand how much it affected me. Sex is very intimate. This, what I later came to call ‘cyber-sex’, was, in its own way, just as intimate as any physical act. Fee and I played out our roles, as lovers do, making up the words as we went. What started as a lark or a game became something much more intimate and affecting.

Whenever I have made love to a woman in the past (there have only really been two women that I have been so intimate with) I have kept my mouth shut and let my fingers do the talking.

With Fee, I had to find the words to express those feelings. I had to be much more explicit in what I was doing and why in order for us to build a story, build a fantasy together. It was in some ways, more intimate and more fulfilling than actual sex. Except for the physical release of course. And that was easily handled for both Fee and I by a visit from Mrs Palm and her 5 lovely daughters.

Without wishing to sully a beautiful moment of intimacy with such a tawdry thing, we both masturbated as we typed our fantasies out to each other, one handed.

-*-*-*-

Wednesday was a disaster of a day from start to finish and I want to gloss over it and move on. I woke with a smile and I couldn’t remember why, I was tired, but happy. Then I remembered why and I began with the second thoughts - what the hell were you thinking, what will he think of me, what do I think of him, what do I think of me, what the hell was I thinking!...

Over and over, round and round in a circle, sapping my energy.

I dragged myself into work and remembered that I had to finish the proposal I’d been working on for a month. The problem with my job is that everyone promises to meet their deadline and they all lie. Everyone down every stage of the proposal, coming up with the design, agreeing the prices, documenting the contract clauses, everyone; they all think that their bit is the most important and that they therefore have the right to be late as it can’t go to the customer without their bit. Each one is only a day or so late, but my job is to pull everything together. And that means, on the last day I have to do 5 days worth of work in one day. And that means, every proposal leaves the bid manager working until stupid o’clock to finish everything off.

Kathryn stayed late with me, the proposal was for work that she would be the project manager for. We were tired and punch-drunk when we left, at about 10pm and made our way home. We said goodbye in a friendly way, but nothing more than that..

I had pizza delivered at work for Kathryn and me to eat while we worked, so I didn’t eat when I got home. I watched 30 minutes of TV and went to bed at about midnight.

-*-*-*-

I slept in a little later than normal on Thursday, no one was going to complain after the extra time I put in yesterday. I rang our sales administrator on the way in to check that they had all the copies of the bid and the courier was picking them up on time.

The day was a bit of an anti-climax after all the excitement yesterday. I couldn’t really focus on anything new so I just made sure all the paperwork was in place and tidied away, ready for us to pick up again if we were short-listed.

As the day wore on I thought more about my upcoming date with Kathryn. I wasn’t sure that dating a co-worker was a great idea. However, with my life, where else was I going to meet a woman? I was driving, working, sleeping or looking after the kids. Not much time for socialising.

I rang Kathryn at 5pm to check everything was still ok. She confirmed that it was and we arranged to leave the carpark at the same time to drive to the cinema. It seems daft that we drove 25 miles to a cinema, but it was handy for the motorway and on my way home. If I’d known the area around work better I would have suggested somewhere closer, it would have been less distance and I could have offered her a lift, maybe got invited in for coffee afterwards…

I hastily shut that thought down, time enough for that if and when I found that there was something real between us. I still couldn’t help feeling that there was something a little ‘off’ about this date.

We got to the car park and parked up. We went and stood in the queue and bought our tickets. Kathryn was like a little kid, she wanted popcorn and a big drink. The film was good, a typical Pixar movie, with gags for the grownups as well. Kathryn grinned like a fool and got teary eyed at all the relevant bits. Even my eyes got a little misty sometimes.

At no point did she touch me. All the way through the evening there was no real flirting, In fact, there was less flirting than she normally did at work.

When I suggested that we go for a drink together after the movie before we went our separate ways she said that she was really tired and that we’d get together again at work.

So we said goodbye, which was awkward, no kiss, no handshake just… walked in separate directions to our cars. I was getting this weird vibe, so I didn’t push it, I just took my lead from her.

I let her leave first and then followed her to the motorway, I flashed my lights at her at she took the turn to head North and I headed South.

I had 30 to 40 minutes driving to think about what had happened as I drove home. I couldn’t figure it out. It was the strangest date I’d ever had. Was I so out of touch? This was the first date I’d been on since my divorce, maybe that was how grownups dated now, but I didn’t think so.

I felt kind of out-of-sorts and dissatisfied with life when I got home. I got out a microwave dinner and started up the laptop as it cooked. Maybe Fee could cheer me up?

I started eating as I logged in. The moment I got online I got a message from Fee.

“Baby! How was your day? Can you come over?”

“My day sucked… Sure, I would love to see you.”

Fee sent me an invitation to join him and I TPed over. I appeared in someone’s living room. There was a sofa, a chair and a log fire.

“Welcome home!”

“Huh?”

A message came up “Fee Avro would like to animate your avatar - OK?”, I clicked on the button and Fee and Jez hugged and kissed hello.

“Mmmm” I said “That makes my day so much better! Now… what’s this ‘Welcome Home’ about?”

“I rented a home for us!”

“Huh? You can do that? Of course you can do that, this is SL, you can do anything, right?”

“With a little money :-)”

“How much money?”

“I get it as part of my monthly stipend and a little extra, nothing really.”

“Nothing?” (It’s really hard to get across the idea of being sceptical in SL, but I think Fee got the idea).

“It’s just a little money, my love. Nothing to worry about.”

“Why do you need to rent a home, though?”

“Well...er...Privacy?”

“Privacy?”

“For when we… when you and I…_you_ know...”

The penny dropped for me.

“Sex?! You got a place so that I would have sex with you?”

“Er… yes? We could… if _you_ want to…”

Hehe, I could have so much fun with this, men are so easy!

“So you just _assumed_ that I would do THAT with YOU!” I said in mock fury.

“Sorry”

“I only have one thing to say to you!”

I paused…

“YES!” I said

“Yes?”

“After the day I’ve had? Yes, some sweet loving from someone who cares for me would...be just what the doctor ordered.”