Real SL Situations: The Story of Wayne

Wayne spent most of his adult life as a property lawyer. He was successful professionally but divorced, in early retirement, and entirely uninteresed in the club scene.

One day Wayne came across Second Life, a virtual world, in an online gaming group. With nothing to lose, he decided to give it a try. On his first day in SL, he wandered aimlessly, but eventually discovered the search function and managed to find people. He even got himself an “adult verification” to watch the pole dancing ladies who were friendly at first but quickly lost interest after he tipped them just 10 lindens. Wayne made a mental note to buy more lindens.

One day, for a laugh, Wayne came up with the idea of creating a new avatar. This was Second Life, a world where you could let your imagination run wild. Wayne did not like it when people were narrow-minded, so in the tradition of Weird Science, he registered a new SL account and created a woman on his computer. In fact, Wayne created the hottest woman he could imagine. She was tall and curvy, with long legs, a large chest and an intense tan. She was the perfect blonde woman. His lindens were limited, but he found free skin and hair that he liked, and he would upgrade her as soon as he could. Now she still needed a name. He’d wanted to call her something slutty, but after putting so much effort into her looks, he decided “she” deserved better. Names of all the women he’d ever known flashed through his mind, but finally he settled on one he’d heard in a spy film years ago. It had an exotic ring to it. Nadia. Yes, Nadia was perfect.

Wayne tried to see as much of Second Life as he could as Nadia and was almost speechless as people approached him and started friendly conversations. Not just men, but women too. Oh yes, women! They flirted with Nadia but ignored his male avatar. He smiled at this.

It was the first week he created Nadia, Wayne met Laura while he stood in a women’s clothing shop. As a man, jeans and a T-shirt were fine, but as a woman — what choices! Some of the clothes reminded him of film stars and his heart rate increased at the thought of the plunging necklines. Nadia had a beautiful cleavage. She deserved a beautiful dress to show it off.

“Do you need help, Nadia?” Laura entered the chat area. She was shorter than Nadia and had dark auburn hair and a light green ball gown on. Something stirred inside Wayne the moment he saw her. But yes! Wayne did need help, so they got chatting, became friends and met up every day for the next few weeks. During one of their conversations, Laura revealed that she was bisexual, and Wayne’s heart pounded as she admitted that she was interested in being more than a shopping buddy. At first Wayne questioned his sanity. Laura was a woman, which was fine. He was a straight man who liked women. But he was not communicating with Laura as Wayne. He used Nadia for that and the time they spent alone was intense.

After a few weeks, Wayne couldn’t help but think about Laura, even when he wasn’t logged into Second Life. She would pop into his mind while he was grocery shopping, paying bills or taking his car to the shop. Although a lot of it was a sexy fantasy, he also imagined Laura cooking dinner or cuddling with him by the fire. But then it dawned on him that Laura did not deserve to be lied to. Although Second Life was a pixel world, Wayne realised that the feelings he had for Laura were real. He had been honest about everything except the fact that he was a man in real life. But if Laura really felt as much for him as he did for her, was it possible that she would accept him as Wayne? She said she was bisexual, so maybe she would accept him anyway. It might even improve their relationship.

“I love you,” Wayne blurted out, hugging Laura tightly with Nadia’s arms. “We should talk on voice.”

Laura, though shy about some things and not one to rush into anything to do with “real life”, surprisingly agreed. She snuggled up close to him on the menu-driven sofa, but she didn’t want to use Second Life’s voice feature to talk to him. Instead, she gave him her mobile phone number.

“Call me now.”

Wayne was shaking as he dialled her number. The phone rang six times, and when Laura picked up, he thought to get it over with as quickly as possible and immediately rushed right in to speak before she could say anything.

“Laura. This is Wayne, er, Nadia. I didn’t mean to lie, it just happened.” He paused. “I care about you, but I’m a man. Can you accept me as a man? I’m sorry for not telling you.”

Silence.

Wayne held his breath and it was as if the birds stopped chirping, the wind stopped blowing and all traffic came to a halt.

“Laura?” Wayne said. “Are you there?”

What came next Wayne never expected. A deep, male voice spoke from the other end of the phone: “I know exactly how you feel,” Laura replied.