DATING AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS

We couldn’t say it was love at first sight. Love is such a strong and heavy word that it may sink forever the very object to which it is attached. Words have their own agenda, you know, and you should use them with caution. Let’s say, instead, that it was an attraction at first sight.

She was dancing at a club and saw him as he was sitting on an armchair, apparently minding his own business, oblivious to his surroundings. Was it his evident indifference to whatever was happening at the club that caught her attention? His looks were against everything she had observed in such places. You know what I mean: hyper-muscled guys with extra broad shoulders, short arms, and a diminutive head whose whole capacity is exhausted by generating the most standard pickup line: “hi, nice avi.”

She also observed he was wearing shoes, and that made her decide to check out his profile, where she had the pleasant surprise of not finding any sex-related groups. Rather, she noted he belonged to a collection of groups from role-playing sims. His picks also referred to places with names reminiscent of ancient worlds and cultures known only in a few selected academic circles. He looked too high-browed for the sordid speak-easy that place was. Was he looking for an adventure on the dark side? Oh, certainly he was looking for a fast fling on the down low, she supposed, noticing that his profile listed one Missy Buttons as his partner.

“Nobody’s perfect,” she sighed.

The ding-a-ling of an incoming IM startled her as she was resigning the idea of chatting him up and seeing what could happen. Did he notice she was checking his profile? Was that even possible? Only God (and maybe the Lindens) know what is possible in this crazy digital realm, but just to be on the safe side, she closed the window with his profile and opened the IM. She was in for a pleasant surprise.

The conversation among them flew so smoothly, she couldn’t remember any other occasion when she felt so at ease, relaxed, and safe talking with a total stranger about all and everything. From the usual platitudes about lag in Second Life and weather in Real Life to details every time more intimate about themselves, their exchange came to a halt only when both realized the party had ended long ago and that they were the only people still at the club. Friendship was offered and accepted as a matter of fact, with the promise to resume contact the next day.

For their “first date” –he made every effort to establish that it was a date–, he invited her to a fancy ballroom, where she appeared all dressed up and had the chance to verify that he owned more than one pair of shoes. “That’s a good sign, I guess,” she thought. The venue for the second date was a pretty park, where he managed to rez a blanket and all kinds of food and beverages to have a picnic. After that, they went on a romantic boat ride along a peaceful river, surrounded by a beautiful landscape. Covered with a blanket, they continued sharing intimate thoughts and feelings, pleasantly discovering how many things they had in common, likes and dislikes, music genres, and especially intellectual interests. Thus, they weren’t too surprised when they discovered both lived in the same time zone.

For their third date, he invited her to his place. Not a fifty-linden rental, mind you, but a huge house whose décor showed its owner was both smart and refined. That sealed the deal for her, and the date practically consisted of them trying every item on the menu of a bed he had acquired specifically for the occasion. There was chemistry. There was understanding. There was passion. Each one seemed to know in advance what the other wanted or needed to make the experience even more pleasurable. There was a moment before the climax when they felt no words were necessary anymore. Their gazes locked in an unending embrace of ecstasy, bliss, and something that could be described only in mystical terms. But they were both atheists and wouldn’t bother describing what they had just lived invoking supernatural forces. They rather thought of an amazing combination of factors that enabled them to meet each other. “It was kismet,” she would say later to a friend, talking about her relationship.

Shortly after that, she moved in with him, and from that moment on they were inseparable. They were together from the moment they logged in until the moment they went back to Real Life. Together they went dancing, exploring, sailing –he was a consummate sailor–, racing cars… or they simply cuddled for hours and talked.

Allow me at this point a brief digression about immersionism. Both our friends were diehard immersionists and, thus, they avoided the mere mention of anything related to their real lives. But even the most hardcore immersionists may feel the need to share some specifics about what they are and do on the other side of the screen if only to explain some decisions they make in Second Life.

That’s why they were well into the third month of their relationship when, one evening while they were talking about their jobs, she accidentally mentioned the name of the company she worked for.

That lapsus triggered a chain of revelations that led to a surprising discovery (surprising only for them, of course; I’m sure the reader already knows what’s coming next): they both lived not only in the same time zone but in the same country too and, miracle of miracles, wonder of wonders, also in the same city!

That finding sent every bit of their immersionist dogma right down the toilet. If they were such a perfect couple in Second Life, the temptation to fix a date in the real world was too big to resist. And they didn’t resist it. They even decided to have a date in two weeks’ time, on February 14th, St. Valentine’s, no less.

They settled for a quaint coffee shop not too far from where she lived. That evening, she put extra care into her outfit, makeup, and hair. She knew she wasn’t as good-looking or as young as her SL avatar, but she wasn’t an old hag either. Besides, “he can’t look as good as he does in SL,” she thought to calm her anxiety.

Of course, he didn’t, as she could confirm when she arrived at the coffee shop. She recognized him immediately, even if he was a few years older than the picture he had shown her and went to sit at the table with him.

The conversation had a bumpy start. A few comments about how they looked, some comparisons with their digital alter egos in which they always seemed to have the upper hand, and a few remarks about the terrible weather they were having that day. “Oh, my god! Are we talking now about the weather?” she realized. The witty, smart, and literate partner she had found in SL was nowhere to be seen and, to make things worse, she also felt at a loss for words, with no conversation topic, as if she had nothing to say to this stranger. Suddenly she realized how dull, vapid, and uninteresting he was.

He must have felt something similar since he didn’t bother to set a new date when it was clear that the first one had been a huge mistake. He didn’t even ask her for her phone number before parting ways. The next time he logged in to Second Life, he discovered she had picked up the few things she had rezzed at his home. We couldn’t say he was disappointed. Like many men like him, he had never been a fan of dating on St. Valentine’s. “I should have known better,” he thought, noticing she had also disappeared from his contact list.

Sita Writer