Hi ho, all, and greetings from week 5 now of my existence within the alternative reality known as Second Life (or SL). This is, in fact, my first SL column to be written while out in the real world; I'm at Dollop Coffeehouse right now, actually, in the Uptown neighborhood where I live, enjoying the warm spring weather that has finally arrived in Chicago, scribbling away in a paper notebook like some kind of Luddite schmuck. For real-life (RL) readers who don't know, by the way, I am now also distributing this journal directly within the grid of SL, known there as a sex column called "Gridhopping;" I'm doing it through automatic distribution of text notecards, in fact, I think making it the first publication in SL history to be distributed actual blog style. (Most here do it by creating entire stand-alone PDF documents, that readers must remember to download manually each "issue," by clicking on one of the many "newspaper boxes" that litter the grid here.)

That of course has been bringing more and more of those people over to my RL website, those who formerly only knew me as Miller Copeland in the grid, where they are quickly learning that there is maybe a little more to me than at first meets the avatar's eye there. So for all of those new readers, I guess I should explain that I've actually been writing about sex online for seven years now; most of that time as a self-publishing amateur, don't get me wrong, although with a year-long professional stint in there as well, for a British magazine that's no longer being published. Sex is just one of the many things I write about in my journal, along with mobile technology, interface usability, guitar-based indie-pop bands, ridiculous overanalysis of movies I like, and a dozen more subjects; and that's why my audience is as fractured as it is, with definitely a certain percentage of them here mostly to read about sex, although certainly not all of them.

Needless to say, these particular readers have been writing in to me in droves recently, many of them apparently with the same beginning question: of what the point mainly is of having sex in the grid in the first place. After all, they opine, I'm someone who already throws group sexual parties and orgies out in RL Chicago, who has been in actual gangbangs, who has starred in actual amateur porn videos, who has had so many actual threeways now, he's sincerely lost count (all of which is admittedly true); so what could I possibly be getting, they ask, out of simply recreating the situations virtually, through text statements alone?

That's a fair question to ask, I think, and unfortunately one without an easy answer, or at least one that everyone thinks valid. After all, why do people have phone sex? That's been happening for decades now, and shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Why do people broadcast their webcam for others? Why do some people get off on setting up an anonymous AIM account, then announcing it publicly at Craigslist? There are people out there who love doing all of these things, and who have very specific answers to the questions I just posed; and some people hear those answers and think, "Yeah, me too," while others hear them and think, "Jesus, you all have to be the silliest bunch of little fuckers I've ever met." That's the beauty of sexuality, after all, is in its infinite complexity; how there's room for both a million fetishes and a million ridicules of fetishes.

I can tell you, for example, what I in particular like so much about sex in the grid: I like experiencing the feelings again that come with other people desiring you. Long-time readers of course know of the struggle I go through with this subject; of how I don't even like being in long-term relationships more than once every four or five years, how I keep myself fairly emotionally closed to my lovers the rest of the time, how writing about your sex life publicly doesn't exactly help matters. I know that there are people out there who desire me, both sexually and sometimes emotionally/romantically, just that usually I don't let myself listen; here in the grid recently, though, I've been letting myself do that again, and I've been enjoying what I've been hearing.

And let's face facts, that this is kind of the point, that you kinda have to let people desire you here, and to feed off that; or else what's the point of having sex in the grid in the first place? This is probably the biggest misconception among my RL readers, is when they ask me to "compare" sex in the grid with RL sex; instead of responding to such a request, in fact, I ask, "Well, what's better? Reading a really good piece of erotica right before you go to bed one night, or someone giving you head in the middle of the afternoon?" It's hard to compare the two, because both are appropriate for different situations; sometimes, frankly, we don't want to go through all the trouble and bother of having a physical lover, but simply want to get off in a quick and private way, stretching both our brains and certain other body parts at once.

And so it is in the grid as well, because "sex" in the grid isn't of course "actual" sex - there's no physical pressing of flesh, no feeling the weight of the other person on top of you, no feeling the heat emanating off their body/bodies. The reason I do so well as a lover here, in fact, is because sex in the grid is mostly for the very literate - those who read erotica, those who write it, those who, God help them, just love the dirty talk. It's the ultimate collaborative project here for such people - a chance for two, three, four or more people to write a dirty story together, in real time, with strangers as their co-authors, working off each other's desires to create something everyone loves by the end, something better and hotter than any of you could've written by yourselves. It's an improv troupe, performing at a swinger club; a naughty dinner party, where everyone is masturbating as well; an orgy without the bodily fluids. Is this "better" than RL sex? "Worse?" Neither, I think; simply one more thing a person can add if they want, for having as full and as varied a sex life as possible.

Now, that said, it's of course more fun when a past lover calls you up out of the blue via IM, confesses that they've been masturbating for days over your last session with them, wonders out loud when you might be able to get together again. And this is fun because desire is fun; it's great to know that someone else out there has been thinking about you, flattering and sexy to know that they've been wanting to get together again. I love it when people express their desire for me; just that I have neither the time nor the energy to devote to the romantic relationship that usually ensues in RL afterwards, which is why I usually avoid the subject altogether. In the grid, however, and the automatic distancing that already exists, it's easier for most to separate the two; to be able to simply be attracted to another person here, to have some sexual fun with them, to be intimate and share secrets, without confusing it all for a big heavy-duty emotional thing, where the two of you are ready to literally give half of your entire life over to this other person.

Take my new lover *Jane, for example, who so far is the only other woman I've found besides my own female aspect who runs around as a punk-rock-pixie; short, thin, with boyish hips and small breasts, a spunky short haircut and butchish clothes. (*Her name, of course, has been changed here.) And not only that, but Jane's into the same kind of edgy erotica as me, people like Poppy Z. Brite and Michelle Tea, who loves the detailed dirty talk just as much as your humble narrator. So needless to say, our first sex session together was a particularly great one, because she turns out to even be the same kind of dirty talker as me; that is, Jane is as good as me at remembering all those teeny-tiny, intimate and inconsequential little details of the sexual experience, the stuff that most people forget about afterwards but which actually made the sex as hot as it was. Like, once we got naked at the club together for the first time, before I could even ask her if she wanted to hop on a pose ball, Jane started describing how she had just walked over to me, and had tentatively picked up my cock with a nervous hand, holding it and feeling its weight for the first time. And so instead of doing any animations at all, Jane and I quickly got into this 15-minute chat session about just exploring each other's bodies, standing the whole time and pressing into each other more and more, eventually grinding against each other's genitals without actual penetration.

I admit, this is the exact same way that many of my RL sexual encounters with strangers go as well, which is why I find the whole scenario so hot. It's not unheard of, for example, for me to be in a random coffeehouse one day, to meet a random hot girl, to get into a random conversation with them, that turns quickly flirtatious and gets to talking about our mutual sexual histories. And that might lead to me talking about the sex column, about my swinging experiences, about how sometimes it's nothing more than a cute girl I randomly meet one afternoon, who likes the idea of getting high and watching some cute boy she doesn't know jerk off in front of her. And sometimes, yeah, the woman will say, "Wow, I'm one of those people," and we end up at my place or theirs, actually getting all high in the middle of the afternoon, me now naked and she starting to watch me. And sometimes that's all it is, and that's fun enough on its own; but then maybe she and I make a connection as well, and feel extra comfortable around each other, so that maybe she's now naked herself, masturbating with me on the bed. And sometimes that's as far as it goes too, and that too is highly erotic; but then sometimes it can move into us scooting in closer, or maybe rubbing our bodies against each other, or perhaps jerking each other off instead of ourselves, or perhaps making out during the whole thing as well.

This hasn't happened very often to me - two or three times my entire life, maybe, where it was just a complete stranger out in public, not the result of a personal ad. But it has, is my point, and I remember them quite clearly, and am therefore extremely turned on when someone can roleplay this exact scenario to me, as Jane exactly did the other night. But my point is this - that despite knowing some things about Jane, I still really don't know who she actually is in RL. She could be, for example, exactly what she seems like - some mousy, nerdy 19-year-old girl, with a RL circle of nerdy friends, inside of whom lurks an insatiable sexual monster, that she can't share with her friends in the real world, because they're so shy and dysfunctional that they can only relate through the repeating of Monty Python lines. Believe me, this is the kind of 19-year-old I myself was; I know exactly what kinds of vicious erotic appetites can lurk inside the hearts of some of these people.

But you know, Jane could just as well be a suburban housewife in her forties, who like me used to be sexually repressed but has now dealt with it, but who for some reason wishes to relive that more innocent part of her past, which is why she's roleplaying the part here in the grid. Or hell, Jane could always be a guy! I exist as a female sometimes here as well, and certainly have had my share of hot sex with awestruck men. That's my whole point, in fact; that I don't know who Jane actually is, will never really know for sure anyway, so am not going to even bother wondering who's behind her avatar and where she might be. And without that chance of a physical meet-up, and of a possible RL relationship, I can simply accept the situation for what it is; someone who's a really great dirty talker, who is very compatible with me, who exists in a form that gives me an erection, and who seemingly likes meeting up with me and has expressed a desire to do so more often. If I could have this kind of relationship with every person I have sex with in RL, I'd have a lot more sex in RL; but you can't in RL, because physical sex is just too intense and emotional thing for so many, which is why I pursue such things in the grid instead.

And so, I continue my late-night haunting/hunting on the grid; hopping from club to club, event to event, one corner of the grid to the other, in the wee hours of the night when people are most letting their hair down. This is the greatest thing, after all, about being a "life in the city" style columnist in a virtual world - no cab fares, no waits for buses, just instant transportation from one interesting event to another, all night long and for as long as you want to stay. I've been a guest now to vampire balls and Gorean communities; have silently observed gangster-rapper orgies and fetish fashion shows; have had sex with cats and dogs now, space aliens, "wyrms" that are born with both sets of genitals. I've had three prostitutes out in clubs now offer to have free sex with me, simply because they found me so hot; I've had rich strangers stop me on the sidewalk, simply to buy me things.

I never dance, never mingle, just mysteriously stand in the corner, smoking my never-ending virtual cigarette; and some people are intrigued by this, and call me up, and suddenly I'm off on another crazy random adventure, this time a nudist colony or BDSM club, a threeway with a master and slave in a floating medieval castle in the sky. I hop from scene to scene with the greatest of ease, stopping only for a minute in an empty field to change clothes, burning through six or seven outfits a night simply because I can. I am the life of the party, and the mysterious stranger; the boisterous drunk girl, the moody sober boy; I can fulfill any fantasy that any entity in the entire universe might have. I'm the uncarved block, existing mostly on the edges of people's consciousness, malleable in the infinite way that can only come in a virtual world. I am your lover; I am your confessor. I am a stalker of the city. I am a gridhopper.