Your clothing is still downloading

YOUR CLOTHING IS STILL DOWNLOADING

Also by Huckleberry Hax: AFK Be right back My Avatars and I

by Huckleberry H. Hax: The Day is Full of Birds The introspection of Imogen Card Old friend, learn to look behind you in the coffee queue (poetry)

www.huckleberryhax.blogspot.com

YOUR CLOTHING IS STILL DOWNLOADING by HUCKLEBERRY HAX

Copyright © 2011 by Huckleberry Hax All rights reserved This paperback edition published in 2012 (Version 1.0) Huckleberry Hax is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Published by www.lulu.com Cover design by Huckleberry Hax

The terms 'Second Life,' and 'Linden' are copyright © Linden Research Inc. www.huckleberryhax.blogspot.com

Dedicated to the memory of Nancy Redgrave.

[2007/12/20 16:19] Nancy Redgrave wonders what she has to do to get a part in the next book....

So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

WEDNESDAY

1

I was sitting in Persky's with my sixth coffee of the day and the first two lines of an ad for a price comparison website scratched out across the back of a napkin, when Benjamin Burton – aka Maximus Manchester – fell into the seat opposite me as though dropped through a trapdoor in the ceiling. “I need you to log on as me tonight,” he said urgently. “I can't talk now, I have a train to catch in five minutes. Did you touch your coffee yet?

I've not drunk a thing since eight-thirty.”

“What?” I said. “What do you mean, log on as you?”

“I have to get the train,” he said again. “I'm on a course tomorrow.” He took a long gulp from the other side of my cup. “Something to do with management. I told Cath I'd stay in at the hotel tonight. Do this for me, will you? It would really help me out.”

“You want me to log in as you?” I said, aware of the fact that I was effectively only repeating my previous utterance, but not yet in a state of familiarity with this proposition where I could ask something more meaningful.

“My password's 'spritzer',” he said. “Don't nose around in my inventory too much. There's a folder called 'sycamore' in particular you're forbidden to enter.” He 11

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held out his right index finger pointed upwards in the three feet of air between us, as though to freeze a moment of time. “Don't ask. More importantly, don't look.” He stood up, draining my cup as he did so. He looked like he was about to launch himself into the air.

“Oh, and I need your coat,” he said.

“What? What do you want with my coat?”

“I forgot to bring mine. It's going to be freezing up there. I'll get it back to you as soon as I get back.”

“I wear this all the time,” I protested, emptying the pockets all the same.

“I owe you one, Gerry.” He grabbed the coat and made for the door.

“Wait!” I said. “I don't understand.”

“Call me,” he said. “But not in the next five minutes.

I still have to get my ticket.” And he was gone.

“You want me to impersonate you to your wife?” I said into my phone exactly five minutes later.

“You'll probably go the whole evening and not hear a word from her,” he replied. “Is this seat taken? We belong to completely different communities: she doesn't go to my events and I don't go to hers. I mean, she's interested in virtual wrestling, for fuck's sake. Is this seat taken? Sometimes I actually hear her shouting some sort of chant crap at the screen. Some sort of fighter catchphrase bollocks. 'Fist! Fist! Fist!' she cries. I think it's some sort of catharsis for her. You'd never guess she's a librarian. Is this seat taken? She'll be way too busy to want to spend time with you. All she needs is to see my name come up online. She'll might ask you how my trip was and whether I ate something. Is this seat 12

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taken? Just tell her everything's fine. Tell her you had a Panini at the station café. You do realise 'taken' doesn't include your bags, right? So someone's actually sitting here as opposed to you just want easy access to your shopping? Fine. But make it something like cheese and ham, nothing fancy. She knows I'm allergic to tuna. Tell her the taxi driver wouldn't stop moaning about the petrol prices. I'm going to Manchester, by the way. I'll text you when I get there so you know my arrival time. Is this seat taken? It's not? Excellent. I'm not going to be in the hotel tonight. Not initially, at least. You know, she'll probably not even say hello. Can I just...? Thanks.

You've got a fast PC, right? You can run two viewers.

Just log on as me in the background and be Harold as per normal. Make sure you log into my home, or there'll be people around. Quite probably naked people. Try not to talk to them. No business transactions, please. But log me in at home. And no poking around in my inventory – especially the Sycamore folder. We're moving. The tunnel will cut us off. Don't log on until you've had my text plus an hour for taxi and checking in. Actually, I'll probably phone her from the station. Wait until you've had my text. Oh – if she comes over make sure I'm wearing something. Put on the outfit with the-” And the line went dead.

Repeated attempts to re-establish contact failed. The most I got was thirty seconds of intermittent reception a half hour later, through which the universe chose to mock me by cutting out almost everything except the swear words: “...this fucking... bastard of a... bullshit... [long pause] cocksucker... I'm telling you, they think I'm going 13

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to stand and... fuck that... jumped-up ticket inspector... until Manchester... I'll ring you when...” Beep beep beep.

And then I could stretch my working lunch no further and had to head back to the office. I stormed up the stairs in a red fury. He hadn't even asked me if I'd been planning on staying in that evening. I was, of course; but that wasn't the point. I resolved to book myself a table for one at Largo's just to spite him. Then I remembered how much I hated eating alone and resolved instead to book the table anyway, but not turn up and get a cancellation fee that I could wave in his shameless face.

I had no idea if restaurants charged cancellation fees if you didn't turn up. Technically, I supposed, it wasn't a cancellation if you didn't actually cancel. I resolved to make the booking and then cancel at a minute before I was due: even if I didn't get a cancellation fee, I could still quote their disapproving words at him. Then I remembered how much I hate it when people express disapproval towards me – it actually brings me out in a rash behind my ear. In any case, it was just conceivable I might one day take someone to Largo's, in which case any previously expressed disapproval would hang in the air like tear gas, inhibiting any initiation moves on my part because I'd be worried they'd recognised me from all those weeks/months/years ago and had spat in my food – or, worse, hers (because then I wouldn't be able to kiss her). I resolved to not make any booking, but tell Ben that I had and had to cancel, and make up outraged insults hurled at me down the phone. Except that Ben ate quite a bit at Largo's and had a habit of confronting people he had issues with.

I shelved my booking/cancellation plans.

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I fumed at my desk for a full four minutes and then Nigel called me into his office to talk about the FairyGirl contract. Ten minutes after that I was back at my desk with just twenty-four hours to come up with a new idea, my existing pitch rejected completely by the client on the grounds it wasn't “girl enough.” I did my best at feigning incredulity, but I can't say I was that surprised. I hate my job. Our business is stereotype and cliché. For some unfathomable reason, I'd spent days putting the FairyGirl brand together, hoping against hope that maybe this would be the product that defined a new age in children's advertising. I'd spent hours researching Celtic mythology and fantasy literature. I even interviewed six online fantasy roleplayers – which, I might add, I had to do in role myself. It wouldn't have been so bad except the only position they had open was the village idiot.

But what the client wanted was “ pretty and delicate and tea parties on mushrooms and tree stumps in a woodland fucking clearing.” They gave us two days to come up with something new and Nigel reduced that to one on the grounds that then he'd still have a day remaining in case I fucked it up again.

Ben sent me a text at eight to say he'd arrived in Manchester and reminded me to leave an hour before I logged on in his identity. I replied, saying I'd been killed in a road traffic accident. He didn't send condolences. I logged on as Harold at eight-thirty and took my avatar to The Bitten Thumb where a bunch of the regulars were hanging out in their usual place on the big, circular sofa.

As usual, they were discussing an absent group member.

I stuck a curry for one in the microwave and took in five 15

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minute's worth of the conversation whilst I waited for the ding.

Silver Remmington: So Franklin has an issue with me.

Harlequin: Oh? Goliath Watergate: What sort of an issue?

Silver Remmington: Apparently, I'm using the wrong sort of greeting with him.

Goliath Watergate: What sort of greeting are you using?

Harlequin: There are categories of greeting?

Mystic Tulip: Of course there are different categories of greeting, Har. Silver Remmington: He said to me, 'So what's with the smileless hi?'

Harlequin: What the heck's a 'smileless hi'?

Silver Remmington: It's a hi without a smiley.

Silver Remmington: Apparently.

Harlequin: And that's bad because...?

Silver Remmington: He asserts that I add smileys to all my other people greetings.

Goliath Watergate: hmmmmm... Let's see now...

Goliath Watergate: He's been coming here for – what – four weeks now?

Goliath Watergate: That's still a bit early to qualify for smiley privileges.

Mystic Tulip: Smiley privileges are not issued according only to length of acquaintance, you oath.

Silver Remmington: In any case, he's talking bollocks.

Silver Remmington: I don't *do* smiley privileges.

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Mystic Tulip: Sure you do, Silver.

Mystic Tulip: Everyone does smiley privileges.

Mystic Tulip: You just don't do it *consciously,* is all.

Silver Remmington: I really don't, you know.

Silver Remmington: I allocate smileys randomly.

Silver Remmington: It's a conscious effort.

Silver Remmington: The alternatives are to use them constantly, in which case I look like some sort of inane grinning idiot...

Silver Remmington: ...or to never use them, in which case I look like a miserable cow all the time...

Silver Remmington: ...or engage in smiley allocation, which – as the current anecdote ably demonstrates – is fraught with social peril.

Mystic Tulip: Silver, random smiley allocation is something you should never admit to.

Mystic Tulip: It's inhuman.

Mystic Tulip: It implies that no friend is more close to you than any other friend.

Mystic Tulip: Which is against the fabric of normal social intercourse.

Goliath Watergate: There's a fabric to social intercourse?

Mystic Tulip: Yes Goliath.

Mystic Tulip: And no – I'm not talking about bed sheets.

The microwave dinged. I tipped cherry tomatoes and spring onions onto a side dish and took the whole lot back in front of the computer. In these three minutes of my absence, Silver had teleported out. Scrolling back up 17

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through the chat log, I saw her excuse that she'd had a call to shoe shopping from a friend.

Mystic Tulip: She *so* doesn't randomly allocate.

Goliath Watergate: This is all so confusing.

Goliath Watergate: I'm trying to work out what I do now.

Mystic Tulip: Just because it isn't conscious that doesn't mean you don't do it.

Harlequin: Isn't that a little unfalsifiable?

Goliath Watergate: How can something be only 'a little' unfalsifiable?

Harlequin: Fine. Then just unfalsifiable.

Mystic Tulip: The subconscious never did lend itself well to empirical analysis. No reason to not study it, though.

Harlequin: Sounds like a get-out to me.

Mystic Tulip: Nope. Just the way things are.

Harlequin: What the hell does any of it matter anyway?

Harlequin: Who thinks themselves so self-important that they have some sort of right to a smiley greeting?

Harlequin: Who's so insecure that the absence of a smiley greeting – perceived or otherwise – is cause enough for confrontation?

Harlequin: Isn't that what we should be asking?

Mystic Tulip: Oh Har. You're so sweet.

Mystic Tulip: Absence of smileys is a key non-verbal indicator in here.

Mystic Tulip: That's just the way things are.

Goliath Watergate: Yeah, I guess that's true.

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Goliath Watergate: When Sonya greets me without a smiley, I know I'm in the shit.

Harlequin: But for God's sake, Goliath, she's your girlfriend. Of *course* you're more finely tuned to her.

Harlequin: This is just someone Silver vaguely knew – and then only for a few weeks.

Mystic Tulip: You're attempting to defy insecurity with logic, honey.

Mystic Tulip: Insecurity and logic do not sleep well together. That's pretty much the whole point of insecurity.

Harlequin: Well that's what I'm saying!

Harlequin: This is to do with Franklin's insecurity, not Silver's pattern of smiley allocation.

Harlequin: Maybe he has a thing for her!

Mystic Tulip: Right. And having an argument with her about her smiley withholding would be a really great way of advancing that agenda.

Harlequin: Who's arguing logic *now*?

Goliath Watergate: Yeah. I was just about to say.

Mystic Tulip: Oh dear. Men and their bitterness. I will never understand it.

There are moments in SL conversations I'm on the periphery to when I want to jump in and lecture. “My God,” I wanted to cry. “Is it so utterly beyond belief that the endless conditioning we go through in the concealment of our emotions results in the slightest leak from the just the thought of a lover – never mind the actual lovers who actually succeed in seeing us from the inside out and then 'move on' once they've looked into our 19

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core – being something that sickens our security and evokes our resentment? I mean, there's no point in presenting this as a just state of being – there's no truth whatsoever in the assertion that women are evil for wanting to pull these things out of us and the Lord only knows it would be a better place for all if men growing up didn't work that way – and of course this is something we just have to 'get over' and learn from, but for God's sake don't try to make out that the existence of male romantic insecurity is in any way puzzling.”

But I didn't. I let it lie.

I let it lie because they would say things back and then I'd have to make up new things to say that in some way weren't just saying what I'd already said a second time and eventually it'd all get somehow personal. Some characteristic of mine would creep its way into the conversation, like “Harold, there's an aggression to your words that I personally find very threatening”and that would trigger my guilt and I'd then have to say it all over again but this time with provisos and get-out clauses along the way; eventually it'd be a conversation about me instead of the actual topic and my insecurities would be screaming at me to never go to this place or talk to these people again. Yes, I foresee all of these things before writing even the first word. It's crippling.

In any case, it was nine o'clock. I minimised the window and opened up a second viewer.

And logged into Second Life as Maximus Manchester.

20

2

I remembered to log into his home. This, it turned out, was a rented apartment in a run down block of the sort where the graffiti actually brightens up the place. It was both a brilliant build and a thoroughly depressing place to look at; aesthetically pleasing perhaps in the way that vomit can sometimes make interesting patterns. There's no way that Ben would have lived in such a place in RL, which isn't to say that made him a hypocrite: playing safely with dangerous fantasies, after all, is one of the selling points of SL. You could say the same for just about any computer war game, I suppose (my performance on which is dire, but still represents about a thousand times more living time than I would actually achieve in a real life combat situation), except that computer games don't carry the same degree of real-life consequences possible in SL. After all, you're only killing people in the games. That's easy.

SL is more dangerous because relationships are involved. Maybe dangerous isn't the right word exactly, but I think you know what I mean. There's more that can get hurt. There's more damage you can do.

Like I knew this guy who was straight in RL but had fantasies of having sex with a guy as a woman. He told me one evening all about an affair he'd had as a demur 21

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brunette with a guy from Detroit, only the guy from Detroit didn't know that sultry Geraldine was in fact a Gerald. It had all started on a nudist beach of the sort where the waves lap up against the packed-in, full-bright advertisements and over the ankles of herculean guys and buxom blondes all standing about and saying pretty much nothing (they're only saying nothing in public chat, of course; secretly, they're all IMing each other polite hellos and copy/pasted chat-up lines). Gerald told me he'd go there at first about once a month for his cross-gender sexual fix, figuring that everyone there pretty much knew at least half the women were secretly men (getting off with an actual women, he'd reckoned, could only be regarded as a plus) and that – since the terms and conditions of SL highlighted that residents were entitled to play as gender opposites and not required to reveal this to anyone – nothing he was doing was in any way wrong.

Well perhaps he was right in the technical sense, but the reality was there were a lot of lonely guys to be found on those sands, some of them hoping against hope that one day they'd find in the virtual world the love of their lives and thinking this was as good a place as any to start looking. Joe Detroit (I've no idea what he was actually called) was a socially awkward and inexperienced guy with a locked away tenderness that yearned for expression. An optimist. A worker. A guy you could depend on to come and get you if your car broke down.

A guy who believed all the billboard bullshit and who thought that winning the lottery was inevitable so long as you just kept playing the same numbers each week.

Gerald's big mistake was in accepting Joe's friendship whilst they smoked their virtual post coital cigarettes on 22

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that first evening in a rent-by-the-hour hut on the beach.

He accepted the friendship on the grounds that the female he became in Geraldine's body felt something tangible for this man's gentleness and sexual hunger. Yes: when Gerald donned this particular avatar, he told me, he came to feel like a woman. He took a pride in his appearance.

He started to enjoy looking for clothes. And, most fundamentally, he started resenting those obviously recycled chat-up lines and anything that involved the use of the letter U in the place of the word 'you'. A woman likes to feel she's worth the effort of something original, Harold, he said, or at least worth the effort of typing those extra two fucking letters. Joe Detroit's earnest desire to be whatever Geraldine needed him to be that night was refreshing and charming after the dull succession he'd become used to of fifteen minute scripted affairs involving 'earth shattering orgasms' and 'explosions' and things that 'throbbed', not to mention seemingly endless references to 'juices'. So Geraldine broke her one-night-only rule and saw Joe Detroit five more times in the following fortnight before the thirtysomething office manager declared her to be the love of his life and announced his intent to move to England the following month Ironically, it turned out he actually had just won the lottery. Gerald panicked. His first thought was to fake Geraldine's death and to come in as an alt to break the news to him. But Joe Detroit's new resources plus his liberal use of such terms as 'life partner' and 'soulmate' raised the possibility that he might try to invite himself to the funeral. Which would be awkward, on account of there not being one. I'll tell him the funeral was a week ago, Gerald told me, and I only just got the 23

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note, hand-delivered according to Geraldine's dying wish. If he's that motivated, I told him, then he'll want to come anyway to visit the grave (there wouldn't be one of those either). I'll say the body was cremated, he insisted.

Then he'll want to see where the ashes got scattered, I replied. I'll tell him they got thrown overboard from on a cruise liner travelling across the Bay of Biscay.

Apparently, one of their role plays involved big boats (specifically funnels). “You think he won't want to stand on deck and watch for whales at play,” I said, “imagining you somewhere and somehow amongst them?” There was only one thing for it, he decided: he would have to fake an affair. He created a new male alt and named him Carlos, gave him a hard tan, jet black hair, two days' worth of stubble and an overall body size 15 per cent bigger than Joe Detroit's build. 'Accidentally' ticking the box for Joe that enabled him to see where Geraldine was, he left Carlos fucking her in a twenty Linden motel room in Zindra and sat back to wait for the trauma. He didn't want to hurt Joe at all. A part of him – before Joe's announcement of intent – had actually enjoyed contemplating the idea of a long-term relationship with a man who thought he was a woman. It was intimate, it was exciting, it was loving in a way he hadn't really considered loving previously to capable of. And it was an excellent piece of difference affirmation; for Gerald needed all the proof he could get his hands on that he was fundamentally different from all other people on the planet – it was this hypothesis, after all, that he used to justify all his other great weaknesses of character. At the moment that he saw Joe come online he lost his nerve and logged Carlos out. Seconds later, Joe materialised in the 24

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very spot the Portugese engineer had been standing in (Gerald had constructed an entire identity for this girlfriend thief so there was material prepared for any ensuing character argument; the history included two previous marriages a passion for cooking with olives and year spent experimenting with homosexuality whilst working on an oil rig in the gulf of Mexico). Seeing Geraldine in one half of an anal intercourse position, Joe took this as an invitation to jump straight in and leapt upon the pose ball without hesitation. Gerald was outraged – firstly that Joe had mapped him (he put aside for the sake of argumentative convenience the small matter that his original plan had somewhat relied upon this happening) and secondly that he'd just dived straight in without even pausing to remove his clothes and attach a penis, let alone asking permission in the first place.

Impolite, he fumed, unromantic, totally unsexy and – quite frankly – lazy. Is it asking too much for a little fucking build-up? he demanded, asserting that he'd been – I mean, she'd been – testing out pose balls for a future romantic liaison. Joe was beside himself with guilt and dutifully fell upon his sword; he virtually volunteered never to see her again, the apologies dripping from his cheeks. I think the poor guy thought he'd committed a sexual assault. And that was the end of that: Joe was never seen of again. Gerald told me, “It was a lucky escape. Think how guilty I'd have felt if he'd found out I was a bloke.” Guilt, for so many, is like the philosophical sound of trees: the noise is only relevant when it's right in front of your face.

I sat Maximums down on Ben's sofa. It looked like you 25

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would stick to it. My plan was to leave him there and then spend the evening task-avoiding the FairyGirl rewrite by dressing Harold up in his best tuxedo and engaging in witty, non-committal banter at the 'Ivories' piano bar. Attractive women only ever IM me when I'm busy. I minimised Maximus (enjoying the irony) and located the outfit folder. The suit was one of the most expensive items I own alongside a custom-made skybox made entirely from red and orange hexagons (it enjoyed an in-service life-span of exactly two weeks and one day and had a lot to do with the artist I was dating at the time, who left me for a guy who made things textured from pictures of his own urine), a personal organiser HUD that I never got around to putting in a folder where I could find and use it, and a top-of-the-range penis that came with its own range of accessories, including flavoured condoms. The thing was so prim heavy it had its own gravity well. More than a couple of guys wearing it could bring down a homestead sim in a matter of minutes. I'm telling you, this thing was evil: the cufflinks alone would have exceeded the entire prim allowance of a 512m plot of land if rezzed individually. I'd just dragged the folder onto my avatar when I saw Maximus' tab flash orange.

I thought about just ignoring it, but I supposed it could be important. I opened up the window and the combined drain on my PC of running two Second Life windows and the act of rezzing that suit in one of them froze everything for nearly a full minute. I miss the egg timer, by the way. What's with the little circle thing?

The egg timer represented perfection in meaningful icons, and they got rid of it.

Maximus was still by himself when the frame rate got 26

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going again, still sticking to the sofa. An IM alert was squatting in the corner of the screen and I opened it up.

Gazer: Hey baby. Did you get to the hotel ok?

And that's when I realised I had no idea what the name of Cath's avatar was. And so no idea if this was her.

27

3

You see, Benjamin and I don't exactly hang out in SL. So I don't know much about what he gets up to or what sort of friends he has. It's kind of an odd thing, I suppose – why would you not hang out if you're accustomed to each other's company in RL and okay with them knowing your SL name? Although don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting you should take into your inner SL circle any RL friend, relative or acquaintance who you happen to find out has a metaverse identity; that would be insane.

Myself, I like to think that the broad, witty charm possessed by Harold is not all that distant a personality trait from my own interpersonal manner, and so far as our physical appearance is concerned, we definitely have the same taste in shirts; but imagine if I was role playing a fantasy persona in Second Life – a Furry, a mediaeval warrior, a submissive, a woman – and someone in RL found out. Imagine if I was just a twenty stone reclusive bachelor assuming the identity of a ten stone, tattooed social hero. Nothing about that could possibly be good – our insides just aren't meant to be visible to everyone we know – and I say this, I hasten to add, in full recognition of the times when I've judged others myself on the revelation of some sort of meaningless (but immensely amusing) detail. There's nothing wrong on paper with 28

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taking on these roles and putting on these costumes, but we're just not geared up for dealing with the revelation that people we thought we knew have whole other aspects to them that we've never seen before; intimate desires; yearnings; whole extra mental layers that bust them out of the boxes we've mentally stuck them in – even though we've been telling ourselves for years that we don't belong in the categories other people have identified for us. Maybe that's sad, but – for the most part – it just is. I honestly believe it says more about the everyday, RL world than it does about the minority that have found a way online of connecting with a secret part of themselves and bringing it out into the protected open. It shines a light on all that's left to do. The future's less about space ships and atomic energy than it is about the way our understanding of identity could change. But it is still very much the future – and only a possible one, at that.

Neither am I saying, of course, that we should never seek to strengthen virtual ties in real world meetings. My few meetings with SL friends have ranged from a forty minute coffee stop in a city I was passing through to the RL wedding of an SL couple I used to know. All I'm saying is that the safest thing for now is that RL and SL should not by default overlap.

Ben and I have known each other since university and we saw each other in the real world on at least a weekly basis. Plus our inworld interests didn't really coincide.

There just wasn't the need for us to spend time in SL together. It was enough that we each knew the other to be a resident; in and of itself that had created a new connection between us: the shared language that covered such words as prim and rez and sim and voice and ruthed; 29

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the shared understanding that covered such concepts as building and selling and buying and inventory management and being part of an audience to a live event that was scattered across continents and flirting with strangers where you didn't even know their RL gender and falling in love with someone you'd never even seen or heard the sound of. It wasn't that we necessarily talked about any of these things; they were just there, mostly unspoken, mostly unreferenced, like the way two British people abroad wouldn't talk about Terry Wogan or Jonathan Ross or Coronation Street, but they'd be there – invisibly – just the same. I felt lucky to have an RL friend who knew all about that other place and its customs. But in SL itself, our very occasional messages to each other tended to concern such domestic issues as which pub we wanted to meet up in next and on what day and at which time. We were acquaintances in SL rather than friends, and IMing each other basically only happened when it was more convenient to texting.

And Cath I only saw on those rare invitations to dinner or bank holiday barbecues. I only knew she was in SL via Ben, and I assumed the same knowledge on her part about me. She and I had never talked about the metaverse, which suited me just fine. Cath was a quiet woman, kind of judgemental in the way she hardly ever endorsed any of my extremely funny jokes. A tiny smile would have been enough; raised corners of the mouth, a slight creasing at the edges of the lips would have been just fine; but no. It wasn't like she frowned or anything, it wasn't like there was visible disapproval of any sort on her face; she just said nothing. Or she'd make out like she was taking what I'd said seriously. Ben would be talking 30

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to some guy about something to do with football and I'd ask if there was a dictionary or phrase book of some description available to enable me to join in with the conversation; and Cath would say something like she'd seen recently a novice's guide to soccer in the bookshop and could get me the ISBN if I wanted, next time I was in. And, in an attempt to rescue the comedic dimension, I'd say thanks, but I'd just wait until Google Translate introduced football to its list of official languages. And she'd say nothing. Nothing at all. Once enough time had passed for a couple of medium sized tumble weeds to bounce past, she'd turn to the wife next to her and initiate a conversation about scatter cushions. And Ben had told me she was interested in metaverse wrestling: another box busted apart.

They were an odd couple, each perfect and complete in their own way; together, they were an anomaly.

Anyway.

Gazer: Hey baby. Did you get to the hotel ok?

I sat for thirty seconds, asking myself what sort of return salutation someone who commonly calls you baby might be expecting. I half suspected 'baby' again, but the writer in me disliked the repetition.

Had I ever heard Cath call Ben 'baby'? I didn't think so. Then again, this wasn't the sort of thing I ordinarily listened out for. Furthermore, did people use pet names like that when other people were about anyway? Only the sort of people, I reasoned, who got talked about behind their backs because of it.

This is what I settled for: 31

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Maximus Manchester: Hey honey. Yep. Everything fine.

'Honey,' I reasoned, was safer than 'baby'. Softer. Less extravagant. More warm affection than intimate passion.

More ambiguous. More leeway. Less committal.

Gazer: Ohhhhh. I love it when you call me honey :) Then again, warm affection had its dangers.

Gazer: Now I have goosebumps...

Rescinding on the 'honey' was way too risky. I decided to downplay whatever passion element might have been read into the term.

Maximus Manchester: Really sleepy. Long train trip.

Couldn't get a damn seat most of the way.

I congratulated myself on the use of factually accurate detail that might correlate with any phone call Ben had made home on reaching the station. Also, if this was Cath, she might reveal her identity through a comment like, “Yes, you told me earlier”. Then again, how was I to know he wasn't phoning up virtual lovers?

Gazer: Awww...

Gazer: And how is Maximus in Manchester?

It irked me that this coincidence hadn't revealed itself to me earlier. That's what emotional stress does to a 32

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creative thinker.

Maximus Manchester: They didn't give me the key to the city just yet.

Maximus Manchester: Maybe they thought I was on a different train :) Maximus Manchester: I plan on looking for the statue of me tomorrow during lunch break.

Maximus Manchester: I'm sure it'll be signposted somewhere.

Too much me. Too much me. I realised I was trying to make things up to the inner critic who was appalled by my missing the whole Manchester thing.

Gazer: lol Gazer: funny Then again, that pretty much ruled out it being Cath.

Gazer: Watch out for all those swooning Mancunian women...

Maximus Manchester: Oh don't worry...

Maximus Manchester: I intend to!

Was Maximus an exclamation mark sort of person? I had no idea. I realised, all of a sudden, I'd also used a smiley earlier. It brought me out in a cold sweat. It was so easy to be careless, so easy to make mistakes. These minuscule nonverbals, these tiny little embellishments were the fingerprints, were the DNA of online interpersonal style. If 'Gazer' knew me well and I was 33

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out of sync with Maximus' normal pattern, she'd know before long that something odd was going on. Even if he did use smileys, for all I knew he might be one of those people who insisted on inserting a nose (I've never understood why people do that; how does :-) carry more nonverbal information than :) and how has anatomical accuracy become a factor for consideration in smiley construction?).

Getting out of this conversation was the only safe thing to do, but how? The 'early night' get-out-of-jail card was tempting, but the purpose of being online in the first place was to convince Cath that Ben was in his hotel room in Manchester: if this was Cath then logging off to go to bed might look like logging off to leave the hotel; if it wasn't, she might still be watching his online presence from wherever it was that she was.

I wondered what Ben was actually doing that moment. I assumed fucking. Or some sort of prefucking procedure. Ben talked about his online affairs as though they were trees that we were passing: obviously there; numerous; unremarkable in their existence. I long ago accepted that this was now an unexamined feature of his marriage that Cath was perfectly well aware of. I assumed she had her own online relationships too. Never before, however, had any sort of actual real life affair been mentioned. So this particular deception both surprised me and didn't. I mean, where do you draw the line? Is a one night stand in meatspace more adulterous than a long-term romance in SL (which has at least passive agreement)? If the Manchester recipient of Benjamin's libido was any more than that then he'd have mentioned her before. I assumed.

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The thought suddenly crossed my mind that maybe it was a guy he was actually seeing. It intrigued me how unsurprising this notion was to me.

Gazer: lol Gazer: Wanna get some practice in for them...?

I brought up her profile. Well-constructed didn't even begin to describe the avatar in that picture. Surely this couldn't be Cath. And then my thinking – as its wont to do – went off on in its hundred distracting sub-branches: a) I knew better than to assume I knew what an RL acquaintance's inner world looked like (or didn't look like). b) It didn't matter if it was or wasn't Cath, it was still nonetheless someone who thought I was someone I wasn't. c) It was still nonetheless one of Benjamin's girlfriends. d) Leaving aside the moral issues of (b) and (c), any sexual liaison that occurred would likely be referred to retrospectively by Gazer in the future, meaning I'd get found out. e) Was (c) a bonafide moral objection? Didn't it assume in some way that the women he was interested in were his possessions? f) Would Ben get angry with me if (when) he found out or would he bank it for future trade? g) Would he actually tell me he knew or would I spend weeks/months/years trying to read between the lines? h) Of course, I also had to consider the possibility that rejecting Gazer might damage a relationship that was important to Ben. And so on. This sort of sudden mental paralysis is pretty usual for me. Sometimes, I can be like a computer that's been trapped into calculating pi.

Nevertheless, I found myself becoming drawn to line35

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of-thought (h).

Maximus Manchester: My dear, does this mean you consider me to be...

Maximus Manchester: *out* of practice?

'My dear'? 'My dear'? Did I want her to think I was Leslie Philips?

Gazer: lol LOL is overused. I get that it's a helpful affirmation of the conversation partner's funniness, but sometimes it also means, “I can't think what to say right now so I'll just smile politely and laugh a little.”

A slight pause and then: Gazer: Well I couldn't possibly speak for you, 'my dear'...

Gazer: But in my case I think it's safe to say Gazer: that I'm always wanting more practice...

Was that merely a expansion on the initial expression of desire or was it a neatly packaged criticism? Was she insinuating that Maximus hadn't been paying her enough attention? I bought myself a few extra seconds' thinking time.

Maximus Manchester: lol The insecure romantic that was Harold, assuming the latter interpretation, would have leapt to the anxiety36

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intense defensive had that remark been aimed at him by a current SL lover (there was none, by the way; hence the absence earlier of any train of thought (i): doesn't this count as an act of unfaithfulness on my part?). Maximus, however, if he was anything like Ben, would be completely and utterly unphased by it. So I decided to tackle the issue head on.

Maximus Manchester: Sounds like someone feels a little neglected.

Benjamin's assertion was you should never deny, never pretend, never gloss over delicate insinuation and trailing sentences. Always always always, he would say, bring the hidden remark out into the open. Reveal it. Expose it. Drown it in sunlight, for its power there was only a fraction of the power it had when it got hidden behind politeness.

Gazer: I imagine there's the consolation to be had that I'm not at least the only one.

“When asked if you're X,” he'd said once, “where X is something generally considered bad or naughty and where at least a little bit of the accusation is true, then for God's sake just say, 'Yes. I am X.' Say it with pride. Say it with pleasure. Even if you're only ten per cent X; it'll be easier to lose that ninety per cent if you start from a hundred than it will ever be if you attempt to start from zero and get found out.” What he was saying was never let yourself get painted into a corner through defensive answers: better to be understood a rogue and have your 37

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lovable side discovered than try to make out you're some sort of saint and end up being accused of corruption. “No matter how unfair that sounds, my friend, I promise you that that's the way things work.”

So...

Maximus Manchester: Yes. You are one of so many.

Maximus Manchester: To be honest, I lost count ages ago.

Gazer: lol Gazer: Bastard.

Maximus Manchester: Also correct.

Gazer punches your arm.

Maximus Manchester: That would require a very long reach.

Gazer: Then shorten the distance.

Maximus Manchester: You want to teleport here?

Gazer: Not if you're sitting in that shit hole you call an apartment.

Maximus Manchester: Your appreciation of beauty endlessly disappoints me.

Gazer: It's a shame you're not a woman, then.

Gazer: That would prepare you well for the experience.

Maximus Manchester hears something about 'bloody men' and thinks about football for a moment.

Gazer: My. You're sharp tonight.

Maximus Manchester: Train travel sharpens the nerves.

Gazer: lol I actually read that as 'time travel' first time.

Maximus Manchester: In fact, I do that too.

38

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Maximus Manchester: As it happens, I'm currently on a visit from two hours into the future.

Gazer: Really? And what does the world look like in your time?

Maximus Manchester: You'd be surprised how little has changed.

Gazer: I might not be.

Gazer: Am I still around? Have I given up virtual smoking?

Maximus Manchester: You were lighting up a one prim Lucky when I left.

Gazer: Well that only begs the question...

Gazer: Why on Earth did you leave?

Maximus Manchester: Maybe I wanted to relive the experience.

Maximus Manchester: Or maybe I wanted to see if you could do better.

Gazer: hahaha Gazer: As if better was possible.

Gazer: Bastard.

Maximus Manchester offers no denials.

Gazer: You had better not Gazer: if you value what's left of your soul.

Gazer: Are you gonna take the TP I sent you two minutes ago or what?

I took the TP. I materialised in an open hut on stilts over water, with a wooden walkway leading back to a totally empty beach. Gazer was a red cloud but she rezzed quickly enough, sitting on the edge with her legs swinging idly over the side and reflected in the blue water below. She was wearing a white bikini and beside 39

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her a towel was tossed upon the boards as though thrown there after she'd dried herself. In the hut itself was a bed, a top brand of over 200 high quality poses. Next to the bed was a pair of unworn flip-flops and an open, facedown paperback. The scene was very pretty. It smelled of sea salt and suntan lotion, and the hint of a warm pinot noir.

Maximus Manchester: Deserted beach scene. Nice.

Gazer sighs.

Gazer: I shouldn't have hoped for better.

Gazer: You were equally dismissive the last time we fucked here.

Maximus Manchester tries to remember.

Gazer: Funny.

Gazer: So I should discount the evaluation of 'unforgettable' you gave me?

Maximus Manchester: You should not.

Maximus Manchester: I was – of course – trying to recall my dismissive comments about the beach scene.

Gazer: I think you used the N word then also.

Maximus Manchester: 'The N word' Maximus Manchester: Why does it make me nervous saying that?

Gazer: Because you're programmed, baby.

Gazer: Just like we all are.

Gazer: Actually, your anxiety relieves me a little.

Gazer: It suggests you might yet have some form of social conscience.

Maximus Manchester laughs and sits down next to you.

40

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Maximus Manchester: Maybe I need you to find it for me.

Gazer: Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Gazer: Something like that would require a whole lot more time than the two hours we apparently have tonight.

Gazer: I'm after a one night missionary, not a five year mission.

Maximus Manchester: hahaha Maximus Manchester: You just made me laugh in RL. Gazer beams with pride.

Gazer: I wonder what other RL reactions I might be able to stimulate...

Maximus Manchester: I'm wondering too.

Gazer: You won't find out if you stay in that outfit.

I was wearing ripped jeans, a white shirt open down to the third button and an overcoat that hung through the boards where I sat. And boots; their laces untied so they looked like they might fall off my feet at any second and drop into the water below. Given the surroundings, I looked ridiculous. Someone ought to invent sweat pores in SL. Gazer: Why don't you put on those swimming shorts I bought you?

Gazer: That would be a start.

The phrase I unleashed upon the air sounded a bit like a rapid repetition of 'duck duck duck duck duck,' except a different initial consonant was involved. I opened 41

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Maximus' inventory, praying it would be better organised than the crate of randomly thrown in items that was my own. It was actually worse: over thirty thousand items, distributed as though by an atomic blast shockwave. I typed 'shorts' into the search bar and got over eighty different hits – and how was I to know the thing I was after actually had the word 'shorts in its title? “Don't nose around in my inventory,” he'd told me: how had he ever supposed I would pull this deception off, given his evidently plentiful female attention (although – thinking about it – no-one else had thus far IMed him).

I took a breath. I closed my eyes and counted to ten.

This wouldn't be a problem if I was Harold and it needn't be a problem now.

Maximus Manchester: You're kidding me. You want me to find something specific in my inventory?

Maximus Manchester: And still have time left over within two hours?

Gazer: How fortunate that you'll be able to time travel back when you've found them.

Gazer sighs.

Gazer: Search for 'ACME Surfer dude blue beach shorts'.

Maximus Manchester: Really? You made a note?

Gazer: Try to remember my skills.

I found the shorts and put them on, and took everything else off. It turned out I was also wearing a tattoo. It stretched all over the front and back of my torso: a naked woman wrapped around me, her head resting on my ample chest. Gazer and I sat side by side, our bare 42

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shoulders brushing when the animation over-riders saw fit to push us towards each other. We looked edible.

Gazer: Better.

Gazer: Much better.

Maximus Manchester: I feel like I should be putting on lotion or something.

Gazer: Or that I should be putting it on you?

Maximus Manchester: Or that.

Gazer: What do you think of it here? Really?

Maximus Manchester: It's very pretty. It really is.

Maximus Manchester: It's the sort of place that might be nice to visit.

Gazer: But...?

Maximus Manchester: But not the sort of place that might be nice to live in.

Gazer: A holiday, then.

Maximus Manchester: Perhaps.

Gazer: You really don't like it :( Maximus Manchester: You know what it is? It's too perfect.

Gazer: Okay. I do get that.

Maximus Manchester: Sounds ridiculous, right?

Gazer: Not at all.

Maximus Manchester: It's kind of like the opposite end of the spectrum from my place.

Gazer: It is indeed.

Maximus Manchester: Too picture postcard.

Gazer: Right.

Gazer: One of these days, you're going to explain your place in a way I can understand.

Maximus Manchester smiles.

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I wondered what Ben would say. Like I said, there's no way he would have lived in such a place in RL. But that shitty little hole had something about it that I couldn't not see. There was something visceral about it, something raw and instinctive. It was a denial of all things orderly, perhaps an extreme extension of an everyday desire to not have to put things in their place all the time. It was a place where manners mattered not. It was a place of spontaneity. It was a place where fucking was just about fucking and the bed you fucked on was only important in that it prevented you from having to fuck on the floor.

Gazer: Hey...

Gazer: You've relaxed a little.

Gazer: Good :) Gazer moves a little closer to you.

Maximus Manchester puts his arm around you.

Gazer leans in and rests her head against your shoulder.

Maximus Manchester closes his eyes and smells your hair.

Gazer bites your neck a little.

Maximus Manchester moves his hand to your ass.

Gazer moves her hand to your shorts and feels you.

Maximus Manchester: growing.

Gazer: Yes baby.

The real world de-rezzed around me; I slipped into that place of the sharing of thoughts, where minds discover the insides of minds.

44

THURSDAY

4

“You fucked my wife?!” Ben said to me down the phone, less than half a second after my 'hello'. The very instant he said it – in fact, before he'd even said the word 'wife' – I knew his incredulous accusation to be true. Ignorance and denial simply fell away with a big “Ta-daaaa!”

“What?” I said, even so.

“Jesus Christ, you fucked my wife?!” he repeated.

“Gazer's your wife?” I said, trying to sound shocked.

I looked around at my co-workers and gave a smile and a roll of the eyes at the one I spotted listening which I hoped looked like a friend or family issue I was assuming egotistically her to know all about.

“You fucked my wife!” he cried.

“How was I to know that was Cath?” I whispered. I got up, did the cell phone 'To the stairwell!' stumble.

“She came on to me like a girlfriend. You never told me there'd be girlfriends. And I specifically recall you predicting any contact with your wife would be brief and fleeting. 'You'll probably go the whole evening and not hear a word from her' were, I believe, your exact words.”

“How does thinking her my girlfriend make it in any way more acceptable to fuck her?”

“I thought I'd get found out if I didn't have sex with her.” I gave a good morning smile to a colleague coming 47

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up from the kitchen with five coffees on a tray.

“What kind of a sex maniac do you take me for?”

“Are you kidding me? Before yesterday, our most recent conversation was about how it's hard for you to keep track of who's having the orgasm when there's more than four people involved in a voice orgy.”

“Why didn't you just tell her you were too tired?”

“If I was too tired then the logical thing to have done would have been to log off, and then she'd have been wondering what you were up to at liberty in Manchester.

I'd only been online for a few minutes when she IMed me. What the hell were you up to last night anyway?”

“I was visiting an old friend who moved up here,” he said. “What the hell did you think I was up to?”

“I thought you were fucking someone, of course!” I held the door open for the IT guy as he struggled past me with a laser printer.

Ben said, feigning (I was certain) offence, “Jesus Christ, Gerry, do you think I lead life with a permanent erection or something?”

“Why else would a married man want to make his wife think he was in his hotel room?”

“It wasn't about what I was going to do,” he said, “it was about what she thought I was going to do. I have a suspicious wife! I just wanted an evening free from surveillance and questions.”

“I so wish I was married,” I said. “It sounds like so much fun.”

“Why didn't you just tell her you were fucking someone else?”

“You're right. It was the obvious solution to pretend you were fucking someone online in order to allay your 48

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wife's fears you might be fucking someone in real life.

Why didn't I think of that?” I mouthed good morning to the Polish cleaning lady who'd just emerged from my floor with her mop and bucket and assortment of green and blue bottles.

“I don't do real life infidelity, Gerry; I thought you understood that.”

“This is like different types of snow to an Eskimo,” I said. “To me, it's all just snow.”

“It's not all just snow, Gerry.”

“I don't even get how she's not jealous of your online relationships. It doesn't make any sense to me.”

“Of course she's sometimes jealous. But there's different types of jealous. I'm jealous of some of her lovers too.”

“I'm happy with there being different types of taxes,” I told him. “That's about as far as my differentiation abilities stretch.”

“That's ridiculous thing to say. That's like saying all cheese is the same.”

“We're talking about cheese now? Is there any level of metaphor to which you won't stoop?”

“You should try seeing the world beyond your filters, Gerry,” Ben said. “You might just enjoy the flavours.”

“Don't go criticising my flavour range, Benjamin. I like my existing flavours just fine.”

“A far right political statement, if ever I heard one.”

“Now you're comparing me to a Nazi because I have difficulty getting my head around your extra marital fucking arrangements?” I nodded at security guy as he passed me on his way up from ground to second.

“Do you realise what a massive inconvenience this is 49

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going to be for me?”

“My fucking your wife is an inconvenience?” I cried, just at the point that the door behind me was opened by one of the admin pool, coming out with her own mobile clutched to her head. She both saw me and didn't see me, went halfway up the stairs and leaned against the wall with her back to me. “Yes,” she said. “I know,” she said. “That's not what I meant,” she said. “We only fucked the one time,” she said. There's a loosening of social convention that goes on in company stairwells; inner worlds are allowed to show a little. It's like the glimpses of panties that are now apparently permitted when women bend over to pick something up. What I mean by that, of course, is that the sense of exposure comes not from just seeing the panties, but in seeing the design that's been chosen. I made a mental note to draft out an idea for an ad when I got back to my desk where a stairwell gets filled with employees – one on every other step – all taking highly personal calls. Maybe a phone ad. Maybe a deodorant ad. The scene would cut from pan that ended on two guys – one arguing alimony and the other talking to his last night's lay about how great she was – to a product display and then back to the two guys meeting up at the water cooler, all normal office interaction protocol restored; one would say to the other something like, “Did you see the game last night?”

“Gerry,” Ben said, “the whole point about the jealousy thing is the way in which it's managed. Cath and I hardly ever get together in SL.” “But baby,” the admin pool girl said, “you and I weren't together back then.” I think her name was Sue. “What has that got to do with anything?” I asked.

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“Worlds, Gerry. Worlds! A person's inner existence isn't just a single circle. You have to manage carefully the ways in which they overlap.”

“It means he's not important!” possibly Sue protested.

“I don't understand a word you're saying,” I said.

“How is this inconvenient for you?”

“Don't play the innocent with me, Gerry. You know as well as I do how cybersex is different from flesh sex.

Sometimes Cath and I have both. Sometimes, Gerry.

And not if I'm away.”

I started to get angry. “This makes no sense at all,” I said. Having sex with your wife online in preference to the real thing surely only makes sense when you're unable to actually be together. You're telling me you only have sex with Cath in SL when she's a few feet away from you in real life? And thanks for the 'flesh sex' descriptor, by the way. I really needed a new sex adjective. That's another bundle of neurons I'll never get back.”

“It was the one time only!” possibly Sue insisted.

“What does it matter how we did it?”

“Good God, Gerry; is it such a stretch of the imagination to consider cybersex the perfect form of foreplay? Can you ever imagine sharing in verbal conversation the thoughts you share in online text?

Really? Inner worlds, for fuck's sake. Could you really look someone in the eye and tell them in the right tone of voice that doesn't make you look and sound ridiculous that you want to fuck them in the ass against a tree? The whole point of cybersex is reduced social anxiety enabling trust and mental intimacy. When Cath and I do cybersex we do it in separate rooms until we're each at 51

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the point of climaxing and then we flesh fuck each other's brains out and it's fucking unbelievable. And the day you drop out of advertising is the day you can start lecturing me about the tragedy of lost fucking neurons.”

“Okay fine,” possibly Sue whispered angrily. “We fucked in his car and I let him come in my mouth. And I loved it. Is that what you want to hear?”

“And still I don't see,” I said, noticing the curve of possibly Sue's outer hip and trying not to, “how this incident is a mere inconvenience to you.” “'Mere'? There's nothing 'mere' about this, Gerry.

This is massively inconveniencing. You've initiated a whole new category. Quite apart from anything else it could mean Cath thinking she by herself can satisfy my cybersex needs. Or I could be looking forward to cyberonly sex with her. But the biggest problem we have is that she'll be thinking she's seen a whole new dimension to me and think of the implications of that!”

“Because it's never been that way between us, baby.

Why don't you see this?” Possibly Sue began to sob.

“Dimension?” I whispered, apparently more selfconscious in the presence of a woman who was weeping.

“What dimension are you talking about?

What implications?”

“Your inner world, you idiot. You think she won't have noticed the difference? She'll think she's unlocked something I've never wanted to show her before. She'll think this represents something, Gerry.

“You're an idiot,” he continued. “Give me an hour to figure out what to do. I have to go to some seminar on how to fire people. Fucking hell. This is going to be a pain in the ass to sort out. I ask you to do one simple 52

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thing.” He hung up.

He rang back again. “Did you look in the sycamore folder?” he asked. I told him I didn't. Because I didn’t.

53

5

Somewhat ironically, the distraction of Benjamin's anger made re-scripting the FairyGirl commercial that much easier. Moral issues of a societal norms nature are so much easier to overlook in the presence of more pressing personal ones. I pondered the consequences of my behaviour, and meanwhile I wrote a pretty woodland glade with sunlight entering into it in golden, diagonal shafts and little girls laughing and giggling as they ran – no, skipped – to the (wise) old tree stump and got their FairyGirl dolls out of their pink and white backpacks.

The dolls then – naturally – came to life in a sparkle of shimmering dust and started flying about the clearing playfully, much to the delight of the girls. They made love hearts in the air with their glittering flight paths and the hearts then drifted slowly to the ground around the girls whilst the female voiceover said, “Shower your children with love this Christmas. With FairyGirl.”

Using 'children' instead of 'girls' made it non-sexist.

Nigel loved it and I was off the hook.

Ben didn't call after an hour, of course. I still hadn't heard anything from him by the end of the work day. I went home and logged in as Harold, not really sure what to do with him since it felt like I was being kept in an indefinite holding pattern whilst I waited for the call. I 54

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rezzed as a floating purple cloud. “Your clothing is still downloading,” the message box told me. “Others can still see you normally”. 'Normally' is such a vague term.

If 'normally' means 'not as a cloud' then presumably that could include naked. Since, realistically, naked's what most people are likely to be worried about when they see a message telling them their clothes haven't yet arrived, you'd think Linden would be at pains to put their mind at rest on the issue if nakedness is definitely not occurring.

“Your clothing is still downloading, but don't worry others don't see you naked” would seem a much more appropriate statement. But no. The absence of nonnudity assurance strikes me as distinctly suspicious. It's like a question answered with the reply to a different question. “Your clothing is still downloading.” “Jesus Christ, am I naked?” “What? Oh don't worry, others can see you normally.” It's like a subtle form of misdirection.

Whenever I read it, I get that back-of-the-mind feeling that someone's just tried to pickpocket me.

My grey body finally appeared and coloured in as the purple fog dissolved. In the end, I took Harold over to Bear. Bear's where I began my SL, a red brick 'lodge' with a big terrace and a wall that whoever's regular sits on. It was the first place I appeared on the main grid after my pleasant little stroll around Help Island all those years ago, accepting clothing from Governor Linden and a kiss from a talking parrot. Because it's a welcome area, it hasn't changed a bit in all that time, save for a strange forest texture someone once stuck all the way around it. I don't go back there all that often, but when I do it feels like paying a visit to the town I grew up in. There's enough there that hasn't changed to make it feel the same 55

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and there's enough that has to make it feel completely, completely different. The thing that's changed in Bear, of course, is the people. For the first two or three years, my approximately biannual visits usually treated me to one or two of the folks who'd been the crowd during that initial couple of homeless SL months; since then, however, I haven't seen a single person I remember from that period. I usually just stand around for a bit and observe whatever newbie griefer's engaged in the apparently delightful pastime of walking into people and calling them fucking twats, and miss how it was to feel new. Then I disappear in my little twister of purple puffs and return to my 'current' SL. Same old Bear. Except someone had managed to rez a huge, red, twelve prim camel in a corner. I sat on the wall next to it. There was a time when I'd felt intimidated by the wall sitters, with their SL days in the hundreds and their sophisticated skins and their realistic hair and clothes and their naturalistic sitting positions.

Often, they'd sit there in total silence, it seemed to me like like senior prefects, bored and uninterested in the same old same old witterings from the younglings. Now, my own days had overtaken two thousand, my clothing was so detailed you could see the stitching on it and my wall sit was a moody hunch, my elbows on my knees and my fingers interlocked in grim, disturb-me-at-yourfucking-peril contemplation. I decided I'd earned my place there. So I sat in silence for a while and started checking out the avatars. A bunch of newbies stood around in the middle talking to a couple of six-monthers who hadn't yet moved on. The newbie guys were asking about sex and the newbie girls were asking about jobs, so 56

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no change there. I spotted a gorgeous looking two year old sitting on the sign for Torley Linden's video tutorials.

She had on a fantastic pair of jeans with sewn on badges and patches – the best of which was a 'Fuck You' badge just below the left pocket – and I immediately wanted a male version. I opened up an IM box with her – I passed the stage of anxiety over doing that to a complete stranger years ago – and asked her what make they were.

I didn't get a reply. I reckoned she probably thought my message some sort of chat-up line. It didn't bother me in the slightest. I went back to listening to the newbies.

One of them had rezzed an enormous cock and appeared to think this novel and amusing and erotic.

Unfortunately, he'd also discovered voice. “Hello!

Hello! Do you hear me? Do you fuck? Do you fuck doggy? You want to suck my cock? Hello! Hello!” All red line, naturally. Voice hadn't yet been invented during my Bear period. I was lucky.

I checked my friends list. I had – I counted them – eighteen people showing as inworld, out of a hundred and twenty-six. Sometimes I can go for whole hours and not hear from a single one of them. Sometimes I can have three, four or even five private conversations on the go at once. My personal best, actually, is seven, though it nearly drove me to madness trying to juggle them all that time. I can never decide who to sacrifice in an IM overload situation and usually end up trying to spin them all very badly. Usually, at least one of the plates is someone who needs to talk about something and cutting them off is the last thing their insecurities need.

When you're trying to juggle too many IMs, you start to notice people getting pissed off with you for the delays 57

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between them saying something to you and you making some sort of reply. I always feel a little hard done by when that happens, because it seems unjust that you can give your time to – say – four people and just end up with four people that are pissed at you. It's not like I'm not putting in the effort. Everyone wants to be prioritised, although I'm not saying I've never felt that way myself.

What happens is that, after a while, their own replies to the comments I manage start becoming shorter or dismissive; they'll make comments like, “Yes.” or “Anyway.” or “Well, I suppose it's not important.” or “Well, I guess you have more important things to be doing.” What they're saying is, 'Clearly, you're not interested in my pain' and I have to then focus in on that IM for a full couple of minutes to show them that I am.

The full stops are important, by the way. I don't know why or how, but sentences with a period at the end are colder, terser, more harsh. It's like the sentence is folding its arms at you. Of course, this only applies to people who don't ordinarily go to that trouble. Everything is relative. Some use periods all the time, but some can't be bothered for short comments like, “Hello” or “I'm fine” or “Goodnight.” A “Hello.” with a period at the start of an IM almost always indicates to me the conversation isn't going to be a cheerful one. Then, as discussed so skilfully at the Bitten Thumb, there's the absence of smileys. If someone who ordinarily greets you with “Hey :)” gives you a “Hello.” instead, you just know that they're either in a mess or that you've somehow managed to land yourself in the shit with them.

Sometimes, I resort to faking a crash in IM overload situations and coming back in a couple of minutes later.

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Crashing is a bit like having to use the bathroom when you're out somewhere with a group of people: it's a natural pause; it slows things down; if you're lucky, the conversation will have moved on by the time you get back. But I try to use that option as little as possible. For one thing, it feeds my own insecurities: I'm never quite sure when someone crashes on me that they didn't do it on purpose themselves.

Ben rang me – finally – at eight-thirty.

“Cath's out,” he said, as though I'd asked. “I've been doing some thinking. You log your IMs, right?”

“Maybe,” I replied.

“Maybe my arse,” he said. “You log your IMs.” “Why do you ask?”

“I need your log of last night.”

Dread spread over me like an expanding ink blot. I might just as well have been asked by a court judge to show the jury my penis.

“Why do you need my log?” I asked him.

“Because I need to read it, idiot,” he said. “I need to see what you wrote. I need to see how you were.”

“And why,” I asked, “do you need to see that?”

“Do you know how many text messages she's sent me today, Gerry? I'll tell you how many: six. Six text messages. Want me to read them to you? 'That was gorgeous last night baby you've never been so tender'.

'When will you be home I'm wet just thinking about you'.

'I have to go out this evening but I'll be back by ten keep yourself erect for me'. 'Oh God baby I just mast-” “Okay okay,” I said. “I get it. But how is you seeing what we wrote going to help you?”

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gravity just is, “somehow, she's been blown away by you.

I can't think-”. He stopped. Took a breath. “Look,” he continued. I sensed this was Ben trying to be diplomatic.

“We've been mates for years. Please don't take this the wrong way, but there's never been anything about you from my inspection that's- How can I put this? Let's just say I never would have thought you had it in you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Clearly,” he continued, “I've been totally wrong.

Look. Cath's a complex, intelligent, sexually intelligent woman. What I'm saying is it takes a lot to impress her.

I need to know what you did so that I can do that too.

Don't you go thinking this is me asking for tips: I'm more than fucking competent when it comes to satisfying her.

But now she's thinking she's discovered this whole new me and I need to know what she thinks she's seen. What am I going to do if she says 'Do that thing you said you'd do the other night'. She comes home in just over an hour and she's going to be making all these references to Casafucking-Harold-nova and I've got nothing.”

“Surely she has the logs herself on her computer,” I said. “Why don't you just find them?”

“What do you think I've been doing for the past forty minutes since I got home?” he said. “The standard folder's empty. Maybe they're there, tucked away in some corner of her hard disk, but I don't have time to look for them. Even if I find it a few minutes before she gets back I still have to read the fucking thing. Or maybe she doesn't log at all. I have no idea. But if she comes home and starts going on about last night and sees me clueless about what she's talking about then she's going to know something's up. She's not an idiot, Gerry. And if 60

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she wouldn't have accepted I was just visiting friends last night beforehand, she sure as fuck won't accept it once she suspects I got someone to log on as me. And don't think she's not going to pull out all the stops finding out who that was, by the way.”

“Friends?” I queried.

“What?”

“You saw 'friends' last night? Earlier, you said friend.

A friend. Singular.”

“I saw a friend, yes. Who's now married and so I saw him and his wife together. Jesus Christ, don't you start on me.”

“I so wish you'd given all this some thought before you asked me to get involved,” I said.

“I never asked you to fuck anybody, Gerry. That was your decision. Now, are you going to give me that log or not? Time is running out.”

“Fine,” I said. “I'll email it to you.”

“Do it now,” he said. “If I haven't received this in five minutes, I'm ringing you again.” He hung up. I sent the email four minutes and fifty-five seconds later.

61

6

Red Muster: Viidii.

The two year old sitting on the sign for Torley Linden's video tutorials with the jeans with the sewn on badges.

Red Muster: Sorry. I was AFK. Harold Ettal: Hey thanks.

Harold Ettal: Do you happen to know if they do a man version?

Red Muster: I'm afraid I don't.

Red Muster: Sorry.

Harold Ettal: No worries.

Harold Ettal: I'll check it out.

Harold Ettal: It was the 'fuck you' badge I especially liked.

Red Muster: lol Red Muster: Me too.

Harold Ettal: Thinking about it...

Harold Ettal: How difficult can it be to pass off a pair of women's jeans as menswear?

Harold Ettal: Wider leg. Larger cuff.

Harold Ettal: That's pretty much it, right?

Harold Ettal: Or is there some secret identifier?

Red Muster laughs.

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Red Muster: Sounds like a plan to me.

Red Muster: I imagine you will be offending only the designer.

Harold Ettal: Omelettes and eggs, I guess.

Red Muster: Indeed!

Harold Ettal: Gonna go check it out now.

Harold Ettal: See ya.

Red Muster: Good luck.

Harold Ettal: Thanks :) I looked up the store in search and teleported over. The TP turned me back into my purple cloud state temporarily and, whilst I waited for the countless grey signs to colour in, I flew around the aisles for a bit, enjoying being the steam trail of an invisible (yet purple) locomotive; I swooped around the shoppers like a cross between a gay pride parade and the Monster on the island in Lost.

Eventually, my grey body appeared and the smoke dissolved away once more. The signs were still grey. I knew that finding the specific product was going to take an age and it would be far quicker to look for it on the web market, but there's something soulless about shopping on the web for SL stuff. And Harold needs to get out and about.

My wait was made more bearable by an IM from an old friend.

Soma: did i tell you about this guy who is building a space station?

Harold Ettal: No! Soma: he's a fucking class a loser Soma: and wants to jump my sl bones 63

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Harold Ettal: lol Soma: but his space station IS impressive Harold Ettal: hahaha Harold Ettal wonders if there is a correlation between...

Soma: harold!

Soma: how very basic of you Harold Ettal grins.

Soma: now... here's a case in point Harold Ettal: Go on.

Soma: this guy is the worlds biggest douche bag Soma: i really can't stand him Soma: but Soma: he's got sl ambition...

Soma: lol Soma: he explained to me that he was building it for the forthcoming 'armaggeddon'...

Soma: so Soma: i figure he's worth staying in touch with Harold Ettal: how very sensible of you Soma: safety first, harold Soma: y'know Soma: when the time comes Soma: maybe i could get you on board Harold Ettal: Nice one!

Soma: i mean Soma: this guy REALLY is an idiot Harold Ettal: do you think his SL ambition is matched in RL? Soma: there's a fine line between holing up in his space station, and facing heirononous bosch-style global meltdown 64

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Harold Ettal: hahaha Soma: anyway Soma: i like a man who plans for the future Harold Ettal: lol Soma: paranoid sl nobodies who plan for virtual armaggeddon Soma: that's cool Harold Ettal: That your kind of guy?

Soma: haha Soma: he's such an idiot Harold Ettal: Awww blesss... you're so fond of him. I can see it.

Soma: hahaha Soma: he sent me a picture of him in rl, to prove how 'attractive' he is Harold Ettal: Oh Jesus.

Soma: yeah Soma: he had a face like a bucket of gutted sardines Harold Ettal: lmao Soma: i told him so Harold Ettal: How did he take it?

Soma: i was so pleased with my metaphor, i barely registered Harold Ettal: hahaha Soma: or is it a simile?

Harold Ettal: I think it's a simile specifically, Harold Ettal: but more generally a metaphor.

Soma: i love you harold Harold Ettal: lol Soma: anyway Soma: he's a jerk Harold Ettal: But he *does* have a nice space 65

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station...

Soma: yes Soma: a jerk with a nice space station Soma: can't say that about many people in rl Harold Ettal: How we've moved on from 'jerk with a nice motor'.

Soma: hahaha Harold Ettal: Mind you... I bet it's a bastard to clean on Sunday afternoons.

Soma: hahaha. actually, i think he's got the potential to be some kind of cosmic dictator Harold Ettal: Great! We need more of them!

Harold Ettal: American?

Soma: what do you think?

Harold Ettal: Is that a yes?

Soma: yes Soma: with thudding inevitability Soma: well...

Soma: as much as i'd love to stay and whitter on in this ineffectual way...

Soma: i have to go Harold Ettal: Night night, Soma.

Soma: i didn't say I was logging, just that it's time for you to stop talking to me Harold Ettal sticks his tongue out at you.

Soma: as it happens, i AM logging Soma: goodnight harold Soma: behave yourself I found the jeans and bought them. They were boxed and rezzing wasn't allowed in the store, so I had to go home to rez the box so I could then open it and try on the jeans.

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One of these days, shop owners are going to realise they lose additional sales by selling stuff in boxes instead of folders. It's crazy. No doubt Linden will be to blame when they go out of business.

Red Muster: So...

Red Muster: Did you get the jeans?

Harold Ettal: I did!

Red Muster: And? Red Muster: Did your plan work?

Harold Ettal: In fact, I haven't tried them on yet.

Harold Ettal: You know how it is...

Harold Ettal: The wait for everything to rez...

Harold Ettal: Finding the right product...

Harold Ettal: Buying... Trying to rez the box...

Realising you're not allowed to rez there...

Red Muster: I hate that.

Red Muster: It's ridiculous.

Red Muster: All they have to do is create a small rez spot.

Red Muster: It's so lazy.

Harold Ettal: So in the end I had to come home.

Harold Ettal: I had been looking at a tshirt there as well.

Harold Ettal: But I can't be bothered to go back and wait for everything to rez again.

Red Muster: Right.

Red Muster: So you're not at the store now?

Harold Ettal: Nope.

Red Muster: I guess that explains why I can't see you here. *Smiles* Harold Ettal: It would indeed.

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Harold Ettal: Which I guess is your way of communicating...

Harold Ettal: ...you're dying now to see what they look like on me!

Red Muster laughs.

Red Muster: I will admit, I'm curious.

Harold Ettal: Wanna see them?

Red Muster: Would I be disturbing you?

Harold Ettal: Nope.

Harold Ettal: I had loose plans to go to a poetry event.

Harold Ettal: But that doesn't start for another half hour anyway.

Red Muster: I imagine the evaluation will take less time than that.

Harold Ettal: As do I. I sent her a TP. She rezzed above my coffee table and landed on it with a graceful crouch that looked like Neo from The Matrix before he launches himself into the air.

Harold Ettal: Hey there :) Red Muster: Hey. *Smiles* Red Muster: Sorry about the coffee table.

Harold Ettal: No worries.

Harold Ettal: Happens all the time.

Harold Ettal: I try to cover up the scuff marks with decorative ornaments.

Red Muster laughs.

Red Muster: Finally, then, decorative ornaments have a function.

Harold Ettal: They do.

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world to discover it.

Harold Ettal: So what do you think?

Harold Ettal does a little twirl.

Red Muster: Actually, not bad.

Red Muster: Not bad at all.

Red Muster: I thought it would probably be okay.

Red Muster: Though I must admit a part of me did wonder if there was something obvious I was missing.

Red Muster: Like if a certain density per square metre of sewn on badges subconsciously somehow equalled 'female'.

Harold Ettal laughs.

Harold Ettal: Yes, similar thoughts had occurred to me.

Harold Ettal: But what the heck.

Harold Ettal: Some risks have just got to be taken.

Harold Ettal: (A risk which would have been reduced, incidentally, if they'd just let me try it before I bought it).

Red Muster: Yes, isn't it interesting Red Muster: how skins and hair usually come in demo versions Red Muster: but clothes generally not.

Red Muster: I haven't seen demo clothes before, anyway.

Harold Ettal: Nor I. Red Muster: Another way in which SL trade fails to mimic RL. Harold Ettal: Well Harold Ettal: that comparison can only be stretched so far.

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Harold Ettal: I mean...

Harold Ettal: It's not as though you can buy skins and hair in RL shops.

Harold Ettal: (Wigs aside, naturally).

Harold Ettal: And as for guys trying on female clothes...

Harold Ettal: I doubt many men would take that opportunity in RL. Red Muster laughs.

Red Muster: Right.

Red Muster: I once worked in a clothes store at the fitting cubicles, as it happens.

Red Muster: A long time ago.

Harold Ettal: And did you ever have a guy try on something for women?

Red Muster: I did not.

Red Muster: Which is a shame, because that would certainly have brightened up a dull job.

Harold Ettal: Yes. Harold Ettal: And therein lies the fear.

Harold Ettal: Guys don't especially want to be your moment of unexpected comedy.

Red Muster: lol Red Muster: I doubt women would especially relish it either.

Harold Ettal: Fair point.

Red Muster: We're all such slaves to the social system.

Harold Ettal: Indeed we are.

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room for a moment and I saw her lookat cross-hairs wander around my stuff. My sofa. My pictures. My table on the far side by the window. The wooden chair by the main entrance and the blue, fifties style record player (really an internet radio player) resting on it. For a brief moment, she took in the bedroom next door. A couple of times I saw her particle stream connect her to an object as she checked out a detail. Maybe to see if the pictures were made by me (some of them were). Maybe to see if I owned everything (I did). Maybe to see if the bed was a sex bed (it was).

Red Muster: Nice place.

Harold Ettal: Thanks.

Red Muster: So. You're a poet?

Harold Ettal: Oh, only occasionally.

Red Muster: Show me something you wrote.

Harold Ettal: Really?

Red Muster: Of course really.

Harold Ettal: All right then.

I hunted in my inventory for something short that wouldn't require too much of a feigned appraisal on her part. I found a short five-seven-five I'd written a couple of years previously following my break up with Tresni, a woman from Birmingham who I'd thought for a while had been my future. But hadn't.

Harold Ettal: I am shaken by / the speed of your transition / And in awe of it.

Red Muster: Haiku?

Harold Ettal: Senryu.

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Harold Ettal: Same format, but about people rather than nature.

Red Muster: What a curious distinction.

Harold Ettal: I find it helpful.

Red Muster: In what way?

Red Muster: I did like it, btw.

Harold Ettal: It reminds me that some things in this world are of people's making...

Harold Ettal: ...and that some things are not.

Harold Ettal: And thank you :) Red Muster: Interesting.

Red Muster: And love is something you consider to be of people's making?

Harold Ettal: You don't?

Red Muster: People are made by nature.

Red Muster: They come pre-packaged with love.

Red Muster: Is love then not made by nature?

Harold Ettal: If I wrote about a concrete building...

Harold Ettal: would you say the same thing because people come pre-packaged with the ability to create?

Red Muster: I could if I wanted to.

Harold Ettal: Everything breaks down into the same sub-atomic particles eventually.

Harold Ettal: It's still convenient to call a stick a stick and an apple an apple.

Red Muster: Oh well...

Red Muster: If you're only concerned about life at the level of shopping lists...

Harold Ettal: lol Harold Ettal: Shopping lists can be poetry.

Red Muster: I want an example.

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Harold Ettal: Okay.

Harold Ettal: Let me write one for you.

I wrote one out quickly and sent it to her on a notecard.

It read: Ready meals (x7).

Breakfast cereal.

Bread.

Sandwich paste.

TV guide.

Batteries for the remote.

1 x bar of soap.

1 x bottle of shampoo 2 x deodorant (2 for 1 this week at Tesco) Replace emergency condoms before June expiry.

Checkout 9 is where the girl with the short brown hair works on Saturdays.

Red Muster smiles.

Red Muster: But you so wouldn't write that checkout 9 comment on a real shopping list.

Harold Ettal: Yes, it's an embellishment.

Harold Ettal: But the poetry was already there.

Red Muster: It makes me sad.

Harold Ettal: But at least it contains optimism.

Red Muster: Optimism as in an unused packet of condoms and an unobtainable checkout girl?

Harold Ettal: hmmmm Harold Ettal: Thinking about it, maybe that pairing is a little on the crude side.

Red Muster: No, it's perfect.

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Red Muster: Because that's what his optimism looks like.

Red Muster: All I'm saying is sometimes optimism is sad.

Harold Ettal: Sad to the onlooker.

Harold Ettal: For the guy himself, it might be what keeps him going.

Red Muster: Sad for the onlooker who knows that the girl at checkout 9 has probably never noticed him and probably never will.

Red Muster: Sad for the onlooker who knows that if those condoms ever do get used, it'll most likely be a sad, desperate little fumble with someone who doesn't even come close to what he'd held in his head all those years as his ideal woman, and afterwards he'll grimace at the sounds and the sight and the smell of it, and loathe every single thing that he did that led up to it.

Red Muster: If he's really unlucky, she'll want to see him again.

Harold Ettal: Wow. Harold Ettal: I'm never writing another shopping list again.

Red Muster: I shred all mine.

Red Muster: But then, I write other things on them too.

Harold Ettal: Such as?

Red Muster: Such as reminders to find something nice to look at.

Red Muster: Such as the name of whatever love-ofmy-life it is that's currently invading my capacity to think.

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Red Muster: I like to write down my lovers' names.

Red Muster: Sometimes, I write them one letter on top of the other, so that it looks like a meaningless blob to everyone but me.

Red Muster: But I digress.

Red Muster: Shopping lists and poetry. Okay.

Red Muster: I think I get the point you were making, though – for the life of me – I can't remember why you were making it.

Harold Ettal: I think you were arguing that all distinctions are arbitrary and therefore pointless.

Harold Ettal: And I was arguing in return that they might well be arbitrary, but they still have some use.

Red Muster: Pointless – no.

Red Muster: But they are distracting.

Red Muster: They seduce people into taking a superficial view of the world.

Red Muster: Like there's a design all worked out.

Red Muster: Like that way of looking at it is the only way of looking at it.

Harold Ettal: I see what you're saying.

Harold Ettal: Essentially, social constructivism.

Red Muster: If you say so.

Harold Ettal: I do.

Red Muster: I'm not going to ask.

Red Muster: I sense the answer would probably take up more time than you have before your poetry event.

Harold Ettal laughs.

Harold Ettal: Probably an accurate prediction.

Red Muster: Could I come along?

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Harold Ettal: Of course.

Red Muster: Will you be reading your poems on voice?

Harold Ettal: Possibly.

Harold Ettal: It will all depend on how I feel.

Red Muster: I sometimes write poems myself.

Harold Ettal: I think most people privately have written poems at some point in their life.

Harold Ettal: Every now and then, it becomes a need.

Red Muster: Yes. Red Muster: Mine are not very good though.

Harold Ettal: Want to show me one?

Red Muster: Good God no.

Harold Ettal laughs.

Harold Ettal: Sorry.

Red Muster: For what?

Harold Ettal: Laughing probably wasn't very sensitive of me.

Red Muster: If you become a friend – a trusted friend – I might one day show you.

Red Muster: But I say that only as a statement of logical possibility.

Red Muster: I can't actually think of circumstances arising where I'd actively want you to see them.

Red Muster: They're full of pain.

Red Muster: I would worry that they misrepresented me.

Red Muster: And – you being a poet, and all – I'd be concerned you felt the need to give some sort of feedback or comment.

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Red Muster: would be to give you some small insight into Red Muster: the little part of me that sometimes doesn't know how to continue.

Red Muster: I have no desire whatsoever to 'be' a poet.

We went to the poetry event together, a sitting-in-a-circle affair hosted by a gentle Yorkshireman where everyone got the opportunity to read if they desired. I read two old poems – one about bitterness and one about the ending of the Cold War. We stayed right to the end. Afterwards, we went to a bar and sat on stools in front of a robot bartender and joked for an hour about the things that were missing in SL bars, such as the queue to the Ladies' toilets and the smell and sound of late-night drunkeness.

I drank white wine whilst we talked; she drank red. She took me back to her place – a two storey house floating on a sixty-four by thirty-two platform at a thousand metres and gave me the tour. It finished in the bathroom, an enormous shrine of tiles and white ceramic.

She walked right up to me so we were touching, so that my avatar took a tiny involuntarily step back. Even in SL, the invasion of that little bubble of personal space means something.

Red Muster: I'm touching you.

Harold Ettal: You are.

Red Muster: I want to touch you some more.

Harold Ettal: I'm flattered that you want to touch me.

Red Muster: Flattered?

Harold Ettal: Very flattered.

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Red Muster: Okay...

Red Muster: Flattered is good, I suppose...

Harold Ettal: You know Harold Ettal: It's getting late.

Harold Ettal: I have an early start tomorrow.

Red Muster: Right.

Red Muster: Right.

Harold Ettal: It's been a lovely evening.

Harold Ettal: Thank you.

Red Muster: You're welcome.

Harold Ettal: We must do it again some time.

Red Muster: Sure.

I left her, crumpled and deflated, and teleported home before logging out. On any other night, I would have had no hesitation whatsoever.

But I couldn't stop thinking about Gazer and her reaction to our encounter.

I couldn't stop thinking about Gazer.

78

FRIDAY

7

Benjamin sent me a text at ten the next morning asking to meet up for coffee at lunch. My stomach lurched at the thought of it, but I agreed. After logging off the previous night, I'd re-read the log file I'd sent him, experiencing the whole thing over again and thinking about him reading it. I felt humiliated, and at the same time a small part of me felt turned on by him seeing how good it had been. I thought about what he'd told me about how he and Cath had sex online and how that led to real life fucking, and thoughts about that turned to thoughts about Cath. I tried to remember when I'd seen her last, then recalled it had been a barbecue in the summer. She'd been wearing a knee-length, pea-green skirt and a white tank. And flip flops. I couldn't remember much more than that – I never really paid her a great deal of attention – and that annoyed me now. She was – what? - thirtyseven? Thirty-eight? I found myself wondering what her face looked like in orgasm and tried to push the image out of my mind. I went to bed wishing I'd stayed in Red's bathroom.

Ben got to Persky's before me. I saw him watching me through the window whilst I crossed the road outside.

He watched me all the way up to the counter; one long, unbroken stare. I watched him in the mirror behind the 81

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barista. When I turned back round, cappuccino in hand, the stare was gone. He was looking instead at a magazine, or appearing to be. When I approached the table, he made out like this was the first time he'd noticed me.

He closed the magazine with exaggerated grace, said to me, “And how is Casanova today?”

“I'm fine,” I replied.

He smiled. “So that was quite a performance you put on the other night.”

“A 'performance'?” I said.

He pulled out his smartphone and thumbed a few icons, then scrolled through something on the screen, his eyebrows bunched, then raised when he found what he was looking for. “This is nice, I like this: 'Maximus Manchester walks kisses from your left nipple to your right'. Very good. Then... ah yes: 'Maximus Manchester traces a thin, wet line with his tongue from between your breasts to your navel, from your navel to your mound, over your mound and down to your swollen, glistening-'” “Shut up,” I said.

“Quite the craftsman with your tongue, aren't you?”

“I'll assume that's praise for my skill in articulation,” I said, never able to resist quips when they reveal themselves to me.

“Assume away, my friend.”

“Is this why you wanted to meet?” I asked him. “To give me a review?”

“No,” he said absently, unconcernedly; still looking at his phone, still scrolling through the text. “As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you to come to dinner tonight. At our place.”

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“What? Tonight?” I repeated, the unexpectedness of the invitation throwing me completely.

“Cath's impromptu suggestion last night.”

“You mean she knows? You told her” He held up his free hand – his right hand – index finger extended as though raising a point. “No no no,” he said, still studying his screen. “Not yet, at least. What – you think she could break me in a single evening? I haven't lost my mind completely. Not yet.

“Although in a manner of speaking,” he said, suddenly resuming eye contact, “not entirely a coincidence. The idea was a product of the very good mood she was in last night. She wanted, I believe, to please me.”

“How nice of her,” I said, meaning it to sound sarcastic, but failing in that objective.

“Isn't it?” he replied, returning to his scrolling. “Ah yes, here we go. This is quite a fucking volume. I mean, the length is fucking incredible. How much one is forced to write when you can't use voice. Everything's so much the matter of perspective: we remember events like this as 'having sex' but we could just as validly remember them as 'writing a novel'.”

“Voice was kind of not an option,” I commented.

“In your case, no,” he said. “Although you'd be surprised how less easy than you think it is to recognise in SL the voice of someone you know in real life.

There's a woman in my office who does Second Life; quiet as a mouse in real, but quite the animal in her sexual imagination. I walked past her computer once and caught sight of her SL gmail account on the screen, made a note of her ID and then tracked her down in SL. I've 83

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fucked her twice and she doesn't even know it. Nice excuse, by the way – about the hotel connection not being good enough for voice.”

“Hardly a work of cunning genius,” I said.

“But it did the trick. So. Overview. Lots and lots of cunnilingus. Maybe five minutes of fellatio, which you seem keen to move on from – rather odd, but there you go. Then it's basically straight missionary sex for about the next half hour, focusing rather fixedly on the details of where your face is in relation to hers and how her legs wrap around your thighs.”

“You make it sound like an economy menu,” I said.

“The delight you appear to take in the exploration of such minute detail does in fact make me think of a starved man finding a tin of Tesco Value peaches an amazing meal. Did you really just use the one pose ball all that time? For the whole half hour?”

“I also eat chocolate slowly,” I said.

“It's no wonder you're so fucking skinny,” he said.

“Was that a compliment?”

“No. So anyway – on and on and on and on with the missionary – at one point I honestly wondered if it would ever finish – and then, at long last, this: 'Maximus Manchester comes violently inside you, aiming to withdraw but failing, losing control to the desire to be inside until the last possible second. Still clutching you, he pulls out and the last stream of ejaculate sprays wildly, desperately across your belly. You are dripping – inside and out.'” He read it like he was reading from an instruction manual.

“Will you quit quoting me?” I hissed, looking around at the other customers. “What is the point of this?” I 84

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took a mouthful of my coffee and it felt like acid going down my throat. My cheeks burned bright red.

“Just a second,” he said. “'Gazer stretches her fingertips across her belly, pushing them into your trail of semen and rubbing it into her skin. She brings her fingers to her mouth and sucks them clean, one by one, each salty taste of you a tiny delight. She forms a scoop with her hand and carefully gathers what remains in the outside crook of her hand; she brings it like a spoon to her mouth and transfers it all to her tongue in one long, careful, loving lick.' My point is, Gerry, I have no idea how to follow this. This – this” he turned the phone around so I could see the screen and held it out to me, “this just isn't my style. Nor do I in any way want it to be. To each their own and everything, but Jesus Fucking Christ am I expected to have to conjure up a major work of romantic literature every time I want to fuck my wife?”

“Cath seemed to enjoy it. Maybe it might be worth the investment.”

“Oh I can see she fucking enjoyed it. That much is patently obvious. Gerry, you probably think I'm a cunt right now and you wouldn't be the first and what's more it's highly probable that you're right, but – believe it or not – I do actually want for Cath to feel fulfilled and satisfied. If she gets off on endless paragraphs of slow motion 'lovemaking'” he did the air quotes thing around that word, “then good luck to her in finding it. Seriously.

But me – I want fast and furious, I want raw and animal, I want different things in different places with different people and I want to hear them cum. Cum, Gerry: C U fucking M. Not come as in 'come over to me, my 85

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darling'. Not come as in 'will you come to luncheon today'. Do you see what I'm saying here? We have a serious problem.”

“You landed this whole impersonation thing on me with no notice, with no instruction, with every indication that I'd have no contact whatsoever with Cath.” My mouth was dry and sticky. “How is this problem mine as well as yours?”

“A guy asking you to house-sit for the evening,” Ben said, “is not a guy asking you to fuck his wife when she comes home. You need to stop trying to wriggle out of this and admit you fucked up, my friend. And we need to figure a way out of this that'll make everyone happy – you, me and especially Cath.”

“You're presenting this like it's the three minute warning, except you could get yourself out of this by just making a bit more effort the next time you have sex with her. Why should I have to have continued involvement in this as a result of your laziness?”

“Don't go giving me that try-harder bullshit.” He wagged his finger at me whilst he finished his americano.

“What do you want me to do – book myself onto a creative writing course? I couldn't write like that and you fucking know it. You're a writer. I'm a talker. You're a reader. I'm a listener. She's a writer. She's a reader. It's obvious the two of you would hit it off in text.”

“Cath writes?” I asked.

“Sure, all the time. All kinds of stuff. I think she even got a story published in something once. Here's an idea: when I'm next having sex with her I copy and paste what she's writing to me into an IM with you, then you tell me what you'd write in reply.”

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“What?” I said. “Are you crazy? No!” “Think about it. We'd only have to do it for a few weeks. Bit by bit, we'll tone it down. Eventually, she and I will be back to normal and she'll just put the whole thing down in her head to some sort of phase I went through. Perhaps she'll attribute it to the short-term influence of some passing SL love affair I had.”

“How is that different,” I protested, “to me just continuing to log on as you?”

“The difference is,” he replied, “that this way I get to edit.”

“You're out of your mind,” I told him. “That's like having sex via an interpreter.”

“But look, you enjoyed the other night, right? Don't you go making out you didn't – you loved every single second of it. This way, you pretty much get to fuck her again. If you want, I'll send you snapshots of us doing it.”

“Forget it,” I told him. “I'm not fucking anyone by proxy.”

“But you did enjoy it, right?”

I squirmed in my seat. I felt sick. “Why are you asking me these things?” I said, weakly. “I thought I was doing you a favour. Once I was in the mood I was in the mood. What more do you want me to say?”

“Just admit it. It was amazing for you. What – you think I'm going to get jealous if you say so? Gerry, you didn't actually cum on her. She didn't actually lick you off her fingers. You didn't even hear her – for all you know, she didn't even climax. You think this is a jealousy issue? Gerry, it's fine. If the two of you had hooked up any other way in SL I'd be toasting your future 87

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happiness right now. I really would. Just admit it! Just admit you loved every minute.” He drilled each of the last three words into the table with his right index finger.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

“Just,” he said, “admit it.”

My face felt like a furnace. “Why is this so important to you?” I asked.

“Do this one thing for me,” he said. “Just admit it.”

“I admit that I enjoyed it,” I said, the words barely making it across the table.

“Now tell me you want her again.”

“Forget it. I'm not going to feed you sex text.”

“Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way,” he said suddenly, sitting back in his chair and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “You want to fuck her – just admit it – and she wants to be fucked in the way you want to fuck her.”

“Do we have to use this language?”

“Listen,” he said. “All we need to do is find a way to get the two of you together bona fide. No pretence. No impressionism. All plain normal, above-board SL sex.

You meet her needs and she meets yours. My best fried and my wife in mutual satisfaction.”

“I don't know what you mean,” I said.

“You see what we've done here, Gerry? You and I have defined the problem: she wants something; you want almost the same thing. Once you define a problem that clearly, the solution becomes obvious.”

“I thought the problem was you not being able to write like me and getting found out.”

“She's not going to find out, Gerry; not unless you tell her and I hardly think that works well as an option. She's not going to find out: I'm far too good a bullshitter for 88

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that to happen – I know it's true. The worst that's going to happen is she's going to get pissed off with me and it's not like it would be the first time that ever happened. In any case, that's not the main problem: that's the consequence; that's the problem created by the problem.

The problem, as I see it, is that Cath needs something I can't give her. And parallel to that is the problem that you would very much like to give her the exact thing she wants.”

“I wouldn't exactly describe that as a problem.”

“I would,” he said. “You mean a lot to me, Gerry.

You've always been there for me. Your happiness is important.”

“Look,” I said. “It's not as though I'm unable to find like-minded women in SL. Only last night I was getting to know someone I got talking to at Bear. She made a definite, unambiguous move on me.”

“And what happened?” He was suddenly attentive in a way he hadn't been.

“Nothing happened. I wasn't in the mood.”

“Really?” he said. “She made a D.U.M. on you and you walked away?” A university days acronym that had survived.

“Like I said, I wasn't in the mood.”

“Interesting.” He looked as though this genuinely puzzled him. He also looked faintly relieved. Then his face snapped back to its mission. “What are you doing resorting to picking up newbies at Bear, anyway?”

“She wasn't a newbie,” I protested. “She's two years old. She has her own place and everything.”

“Look,” he said, indicating the termination of this detour to the conversation. “No-one's saying you can't 89

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pick up women. Clearly, you're very practised. But this is Cath we're talking about. She's amazing. You pretty much said so yourself just now. Yes you did. Women like her don't come along very often. This is an opportunity here. You see what we've done here, Gerry?

We've re-framed a problem as an opportunity. God, my motivational speaker yesterday would be proud of me.”

“Fine. Explain to me what you have in mind,” I said.

“I'm not promising anything.”

“Good. Good to have you on board. This is what I'm thinking. Cath knows about your Harold avie, right?

“I've no idea.”

“Hmmmm. She might know about it from me. Or she might have overheard it in one of our conversations.

Or she might not know about it at all. Better to play it safe, though.”

“What difference does it make?”

“You must have alts, right?” he asked.

“A couple,” I replied.

“Any that are more than two years old?”

“Both of them.”

“Good. So let's use one of them.”

“Use one of them for what?”

“Here's what I'm thinking,” he said, leaning even closer towards me. “You bring one of your alts back to life, spruce him up, make sure he looks okay. Then you and I get together in SL. Cath comes over as Gazer. I introduce you to her as an SL friend. What I'll then say to her in IM is that you're the influence on me that brought about Wednesday night's change in my approach.

Like you're my teacher or something. You know, that would work in a number of ways.

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tonight – before you come over – that that whole thing was a style I was trying out, but on reflection it didn't do as much for me as I'd hoped. So she'll be disappointed by that, but then - all of a sudden – she meets the source, the guy for whom all that bullshit – sorry – really is meaningful. Meanwhile, you start making moves on her in IM. Then we just sit back and hope for the best.

Think about it: if it all goes well, you'll both be seeing each other and each getting what you need. She gets what she wants; you get what you want; it takes the heat off of me; it explains the other night: it's perfect.”

“We'll just 'sit back and hope for the best'?” I said.

“What else can we do?” he asked.

“And if it doesn't work out the way you want it to?”

“Then we gave it our best shot and we'll just have to come up with something else. Like the fucking by proxy idea – your words. I know you don't like that suggestion, but it would only be temporary. I think it would grow on you if there was no other alternative. I really do.”

I sighed. “And she's not going to know it's me?”

“You come with baggage, Gerry. She knows you.

Sure, she thinks you're okay and everything, but why let RL knowledge interfere with inner world possibility.

There's nothing untoward in any of this: we all conceal RL information in SL, at least to begin with. We all accept the possibility that our SL partner might not be someone we'd get along with in RL. Who knows? If the two of you really hit it off, sharing that information might become a possibility. But that's over the horizon right now.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “You'd be okay with Cath finding out that the guy she's having sex with in SL is her 91

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husband's best mate? A guy who in actuality lives just ten minutes' drive away?”

“Like I said, it's over the horizon. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. But in principle, yes I'd be fine with it. Although you should probably be aware you won't be the only guy she's having sex with in SL. That would be highly unusual. We're poly in SL, Gerry. I doubt very much she'll be interested in anything monogamous with you. Just so that you know.”

“This is crazy,” I said. “How could that possibly work out? I'm coming over to your place for barbecues and we just greet each other like acquaintances whilst we continue to fuck each other in SL.” “Don't worry about it,” he said. “Believe me, Gerry; stranger things happen than that. It's not like we're talking swinging parties here. In any case, that's all hypothetical right now. If you don't like the idea, then if she starts asking for RL info you just say no.”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Think about it,” he said, surprising me with his sudden lack of insistence. “That's all I'm asking. Think about it and you'll see that it's perfect. A win-win-win.

I'm telling you, this is an amazing solution.” He looked at his watch. “I have to go. Just think about it.”

“What time do you want me over tonight?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” he said, like it had slipped his mind. “Eight o'clock. Make it seven-thirty, in fact. The earlier we start, the earlier we'll finish and then we can all meet up in SL again once you've got home.”

“Does it have to be tonight that we do this?” I asked.

“Why hang around? Why wait for her to find someone else? Think about it, Gerry. Just think about it.

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This is the start of a brand new era. I'm not even angry any more about you fucking her. Maybe it was even meant to happen. Think about it. I just know you're going to love this plan.”

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8

I turned up at Ben and Cath's house at exactly seventhirty. My heart was pounding in my chest. All sense to the idea put to me at lunch time had dissolved within an hour of the conversation and it now seemed about the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard. I looked for a corresponding return of sobriety in Benjamin's face when he opened the door and thought that I saw it. He gave his normal greeting, opened the door into his normal hallway and showed me into the normal living room where Cath sat at in her normal place at the end of the sofa and offered her own normal hello. It was all as utterly ordinary as the magnolia paint on the walls.

Looking at her there, her feet tucked under her and a novel open in her hands, it was almost impossible to believe this was the same person I'd made love to two nights ago.

“Good book?” I asked. She didn't seem to realise I was talking to her until that period of time had elapsed whereby the subconscious brain suddenly recognises someone's asked a question and nobody yet has answered.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes.” She didn't show me the title and I stooped a little so that I could see it.

“Ahhh, Auster,” I said.

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“You've read it?” she asked.

“That one? Yes. Not sure I understood it, though.

Too much meta-fiction makes me start breaking my own imaginary fourth wall. People can never work out what I'm looking at.” She smiled, at least acknowledging that she recognised I thought that had been an amusing thing to say.

“This is my third reading,” she said. “I waited for the next part and that same little period of silence elapsed.

“Right,” I said. “Is it starting to make any sense?”

“Bits of it,” she replied.

She was wearing jeans and a white blouse that revealed not enough skin. But then she moved slightly and I noticed her black bra just visible underneath. I tore my gaze away. Benjamin called me to the kitchen, where he was making coffee.

“She's not happy,” he said in a low voice. “I told her about the whole Wednesday night thing being an experiment. Not happy at all.”

“To be honest,” I said, “she doesn't seem to me all that different from normal.”

“Take it from me,” he said, “she's pissed. And not in a good way. Mind you, there's a part of me that's always loved her when she's in a shitty mood. Her eyes just come alive. Try to notice her eyes, Gerry. Think of them when we meet up in SL tonight.”

“Are you still seriously suggesting we should go through with this insane plan?” I asked him.

He hushed me. “Of course I am!” he whispered.

“What's changed between lunch time and now that could have changed my mind?”

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whispered back. “That's Cath in there. Cath! Not Gazer.

Nothing like Gazer.

“Of course it's nothing like Gazer,” he said. “What did you expect?

“So she's pissed off with you. What's the big deal?

Married couples get pissed off with each other. Where's the serious problem? Why do we still need to do this?”

The kettle boiled and the background noise unofficially masking our conversation was gone. He gave me an open-handed look of bewilderment, as though he just couldn't see how I didn't get something as obvious as the sun. He poured hot water onto the coffee grounds in their black cafetiere and placed the lid and plunger.

The silence was awkward. I imagined Cath looking up from her book, curious at the absence of sound. I felt like we should make some sort of casual conversation.

“The sooner they scrap the Euro the better,” Benjamin said, as though this was a natural successor to a previous comment. “We should never have gone into that system in the first place.”

“We didn't” I commented.

“Thank God. And still we're getting shafted. You have a common currency, you need a common fiscal policy; it's as simple as that. You don't share your money with people who haven't agreed with you on how to spend it.”

“It's worth remembering,” I said, “that the union was originally conceived as a peace mechanism, as a way of avoiding a repetition of the two world wars.”

“And look how well that turned out,” Ben said.

“Germany the strongest economy on the continent and everyone on their knees for its handouts. Can you 96

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believe they just cut taxes? Jesus Christ how Hitler must be grinning.”

Cath was in the doorway. “I somehow doubt the German people see it quite that way,” she said.

“All a matter of reframe, honey,” he replied. “History repeats, just in different ways.”

“That's offensive,” she said.

“It hardly seems possible that the wall came down over twenty years ago,” I said, trying to make my change of topic seem natural.

“Did I ever tell you,” Ben said, “Cath was living in Berlin at the time?”

“Really?” I said. “Your parents lived out there?”

She laughed. “That's very nice of you, Gerry, but no.

I was living there with my first boyfriend, he came from Berlin. We met at university.”

I tried to do the maths in my head, but Benjamin saved me the bother. “Cath's forty-four in a couple of months,” he said, pushing down the plunger on the cafetiere whilst he spoke.

“Thank you for sharing that, darling,” she said.

“I'm stunned,” I said. I was. “I thought you were in your thirties.”

For the first time, it seemed, since I had known her, Cath smiled warmly at me. “Thank you Gerry,” she said and moved next to me, took my right arm in her hands as though we were outside in the cold, walking together.

The physical touch was like an electric shock. I fought to keep my body from flinching. “It's nice to know there are some gentlemen left in the world,” she said and patted my arm with her right hand.

“Now you're embarrassing him,” Ben said, although 97

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there was a big smile on his face.

“Not embarrassed at all,” I said, a little too quickly.

“Of course you're not,” she said. “What's to be embarrassed about?”

“That time I found myself twenty feet tall and naked in Plymouth city centre, with a TV film crew conducting an interview via a cherry picker so as not to be head height to my penis,” I said, “now that that was embarrassing. Dreams can be useful desensitisation experiences.”

Cath laughed. “Gerry, you're so silly,” she said.

“What he is,” Ben said, “is an idiot. And, at the same time, a genius.”

“I see only the latter of the two,” she said and squeezed me.

Gazer stretches her fingertips across her belly, pushing them into your trail of semen and rubbing it into her skin. I tried to think of other things, but the words – cemented now across visual and auditory memory, thanks to Benjamin's earlier reading – were stuck in my head like a song that wouldn't stop playing. She brings her fingers to her mouth and sucks them clean, one by one, each salty taste of you a tiny delight. My body started to betray me.

“Don't you go getting a hard-on, now,” Ben said, as though he could read my thoughts.

“Benjamin!” Cath scolded.

“Catherine, my dear, he's but a man.” He removed three identical mugs from a mug tree and started pouring the coffee.

“Don't you listen to him,” she told me, and finally released my arm to go get milk from the fridge.

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“So, I said. “That must have been quite something.

Seeing the fall of the wall.” Without thinking, I rubbed with my left hand the spot on where Cath had held me.

“Nice change of subject,” Ben said and laughed. He noticed the movement. “Awww, he misses you already.”

“If you don't want hot coffee in your face,” Cath said to him, “then I suggest you shut up now.” She looked at me and added, “You get the spot next to me on the sofa, Gerry.”

“Looking forward to it,” I said.

“And yes. It was amazing. “Gregor's grandparents were on the other side. He phoned them that night the border opened and they came across. It was beautiful. I always think about that night at this time of year. How the islanders rejoiced. Unforgettable.”

“Islanders?” I asked.

“The West Berliners used to call themselves that.”

“I always used to think,” remarked Ben, “that Berlin was just bisected by the Iron Curtain.”

“Actually, so did I,” I said.

“Because the reality was just too preposterous,” said Cath. “You couldn't make stuff like that up.”

“Yes, I agree,” I said. We went back through to the lounge and I took up the rear because I wasn't sure if her sofa remark had been serious and wanted to see what she did. She took the middle space and patted the spot to her right for me to sit in, then curled her legs across the other cushion so that Ben had to take one of the armchairs.

“By the way,” Cath said, “we're going to get take out.

I know I said I'd cook, but I lost the mood.” Ben raised his eyebrows at me.

“Takeaway sounds great,” I said. “Can I give you 99

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some money?” I leaned to my left in order to retrieve my wallet from my back pocket and my shoulder brushed against her.

“Absolutely not,” she said and elbowed me back into place.

“Is pizza okay?” she added. “Sorry to be so unsophisticated.”

“Pizza's just fine,” I said. It wasn't really, mozzarella disagrees with my stomach; but I didn't really want to say that, plus I calculated I'd be home in good time before the effects made themselves apparent. “Thanks.”

“We should watch a film,” Ben said.

“Must we?” she asked.

“How's the job going?” I enquired. “Are you under threat of the Big Society?”

“Oh, that's mostly to the public libraries,” she said. “I work in the university library. Not that there aren't cuts being made there also.”

“Everything's going electronic,” Ben explained.

“The journals, mostly,” she said. “We lost two posts this year. I was lucky.”

“All hail the Eurozone,” Ben declared.

“Now who's changing the subject?” she said absently.

When it was time to go home, Cath kissed me on the cheek and told me to come again. She always said that, but this time she sounded a little like she meant it. Ben walked out with me to my car.

“What time do you think you'll be on?” he asked, looking at his watch. “It's nearly ten thirty now.”

“You really still want to do this?” I said. “I just don't see that there's the need any more. Get her some flowers 100

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tomorrow or something.”

“You've forgotten what I said earlier,” he said. “This is about you and her now. This is about your happiness – both of you. Forget about the problem between her and me. I'm just focused on being a good husband and friend.”

“How is any of this,” I asked, “in any way being a good husband?”

“Good husbands see to it that their wives' needs are met. You're thinking inside of the box, Gerry. That surprises me.”

“I don't like the deception.”

“What deception? It's a perfectly ordinary thing in SL to keep your RL details anonymous.”

“That pre-supposes I don't know who she is,” I said.

“Well there's nothing we can do about that. Come on Gerry. Don't tell me you didn't think about Wednesday night whilst she was sitting next to you like that. Don't tell me you didn't fantasise for even a moment about fucking her tonight. That's what's potentially available to you. Within a couple of hours, if you're lucky. Did I ever tell you she once let me watch whilst she had sex in SL with someone? She was sitting up in bed with the laptop. And let me tell you: when she tells you she cums she really does cum. Well,” he added, “that time was in voice, so I doubt that the guy was in any doubt over it.”

“You're unbelievable,” I told him.

“Well, it's up to you Gerry. If you want to walk away from this then fine. But don't think I didn't see how you got turned on by her tonight. This is all good. There's not one scrap of bad here to be found. I know some people prefer to ignore the opportunities right in front of 101

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their face and then moan about how shit their life is, but I don't have you marked down as one of them. Do this for yourself, Gerry. Or do it for her. I promise you won't regret it if you do.”

All the way home, I thought of her. I thought of her hands on my arm. I thought of her scent next to me on the sofa. I thought of her stretching her fingertips across her belly, pushing them into my trail of semen and rubbing it into her skin.

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9

Maximus Manchester: Harvey: Gazer. Gazer: Harvey.

Gazer: Good to meet you, Harvey.

Harvey Herringbone: Likewise, Gazer.

Gazer: Cool name, btw.

Harvey Herringbone: Thanks :) We were at Ben's shithole apartment. He was topless and tattooed, wearing just his torn jeans and army boots. She was wearing a one piece white dress cut to halfway up her thigh and with a plunging back that went almost all the way down to her ass. Her black hair was in a bob.

Maximus Manchester: Harvey was just telling me how much he loves my apartment.

Gazer: Oh boy.

Harvey Herringbone: I really, *really* wasn't.

Gazer: Thank God. Gazer: The last thing he needs is encouragement.

Gazer: This place should be burned down.

Maximus Manchester: Preferably with me in it, no doubt.

Gazer: That would indeed be a bonus.

Gazer: Do you have a place, Harvey?

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I almost told her about Harold's skybox. In fact, I was halfway through a description of it when I remembered that I was no longer Harold and had to hit the delete key quickly. I told her instead that I'd been renting a place until recently, when the landowner had gone bust and had to sell up.

Gazer: Happening a lot at the moment.

Gazer: And loads of people leaving.

Maximus Manchester: Destination: InWorldz.

Harvey Herringbone: Is that right?

Gazer: Apparently.

Harvey Herringbone: I only went there the once.

Harvey Herringbone: Couldn't get used to the idea of being new again.

Gazer: I know what you mean.

Gazer: I've been hanging out there quite a bit, recently.

Gazer: It's okay.

Gazer: I just wish they had there the shadows and depth of field we now have in SL. Gazer: I know they're still new here...

Gazer: ...but I've kind of gotten used to them!

Maximus Manchester: So I was offering Harvey the use of this place whilst he's homeless.

It was astonishing how seamlessly Benjamin could weave my lies into his.

Gazer: You've got to be kidding me.

Gazer: I wouldn't rez a single thing in here for fear it'd stick permanently to the floor.

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Harvey Herringbone laughs.

Maximus Manchester grunts.

Maximus Manchester: Very funny.

Maximus Manchester it's never stopped you having sex with me in here before.

Gazer: Actually, it has.

Gazer: On three separate occasions that I can recall.

Gazer: How typically male of you to remember only the times that I didn't turn you down.

Harvey Herringbone: lol Maximus Manchester grunts again.

Maximus Manchester: The last time was on this very couch, I believe.

Harvey Herringbone: The last time you got turned down?

Gazer laughs.

Maximus Manchester: The last time Gazer and I fucked, idiot.

Maximus Manchester slaps Harvey round the head.

Harvey Herringbone: Ow! Gazer: You're such a pig, Max. Harvey Herringbone: I'm trying to teach Max how to be romantic.

Harvey Herringbone: As you can see, I have a long way to go.

Ben IMed me straight away with: Maximus Manchester: Niiiiiiiiiice It made me feel a little dirty. And not in the sexual way.

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Gazer: There are tasks which will take a long time, Harvey.

Gazer: And there are tasks which will never be completed.

Gazer: If I were you, Gazer: I'd focus my romantic energies on someone who'll truly appreciate it.

Harvey Herringbone: Your concern for my wellbeing touches me.

Gazer: Or maybe I just don't want to see good talent going to waste.

We were standing in the middle of the room and Max was fiddling with the couch, his stream of red particles probing it briefly. Then, a pair of blue and pink poseballs appeared above it, labelled 'lick pussy' and 'be licked'.

Maximus Manchester: No time like the present for a demonstration.

Harvey Herringbone: Right. Romance starts with cunnilingus.

Gazer laughs.

Gazer: In fact, I'm impressed.

Gazer: The recognition of any form of for female foreplay is a step forward for him.

Harvey Herringbone laughs.

Harvey Herringbone: You know Harvey Herringbone: That sounded like the start of a good tongue twister.

Harvey Herringbone: Any form of for female foreplay forms forward furtherance for Ford.

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Ben IMed me again: Maximus Manchester: She did too. I just heard her.

Maximus Manchester: Big belly laugh.

Maximus Manchester: So what are you waiting for?

Use the balls!

Harvey Herringbone: You're insane. It's too early.

Maximus Manchester: Bollocks.

Maximus Manchester: Act now before she gets sleepy I decided to ignore his IMs from this point forwards and shut down his window.

Maximus Manchester: Come on you two.

Maximus Manchester: Show me how it's done!

I waited for Gazer to say something dismissive, but she was silent. My heart started to make its existence in my chest known to me by knocking on my rib cage as though it wanted to be let out.

An old conversation with Benjamin resurrected itself in my head. “Strong women can't stand shyness,” he'd said. “Quiet is fine but shyness they hate. It makes you look like a child. Adults shouldn't act like children. It makes you look more stupid than you could possibly look if you just had a go at the thing you're shy about doing.”

I took a deep breath.

Harvey Herringbone: You know, Harvey Herringbone: if it wasn't for how insanely attractive Gazer is, I'd jump out the window of this place right now, Max. 107

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Harvey Herringbone: Taking you with me.

Gazer beams at the compliment and laughs at the joke, and moves just a little bit closer to Harvey.

Gazer: You find me attractive, huh?

Harvey Herringbone: Any gorgeous girl who dresses up with your impeccable taste is bound to catch my eye...

Harvey Herringbone: But finding my tongue twister funny – that propels you into the superleague.

Gazer: oooooo Gazer: I like being in the superleague :) Gazer: And I also appreciate a man who values tongue skills.

Gazer glances momentarily at the pose balls on that grubby couch and bites her lip in silent contemplation, then suddenly stretches on the spot, screwing up her nose and eyes, and stretching out her fingertips as though wanting them to touch the floor.

I thought, Gazer stretches her fingertips across her belly, pushing them into your trail of semen and rubbing it into her skin.

Gazer smiles at Harvey.

Harvey Herringbone moves closer to Gazer so that they are just elbows apart.

Gazer raises her elbow and checks. Confirmed.

Harvey Herringbone kisses Gazer's elbow.

Gazer: ooooooo Gazer discovers she likes having her elbow kissed.

Harvey Herringbone: It's an old Herringbone family 108

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tradition.

Gazer: Is that so?

Harvey Herringbone: Yes it is.

Harvey Herringbone: And now I have to kiss your ass to show I know the difference.

Gazer: LOL Maximus Manchester guffaws.

Maximus Manchester: Sorry.

Maximus Manchester: Pray continue.

Gazer looks at you and wrinkles her nose.

Gazer: Well... if it's a family tradition...

Gazer turns her back on Harvey and slowly pulls her skirt up over her waist.

Gazer bends over and touches her toes.

I thought about how she said to me, “You get the spot next to me on the sofa.” I thought about how we'd bumped shoulders there.

Harvey Herringbone kneels.

Harvey Herringbone reaches up and takes hold of your panties either side and slowly, firmly, pulls them down to your ankles.

Gazer deftly kicks them away, trying hard not to think about what they land in.

Harvey Herringbone presses his thumbs into your cheeks, wraps his fingers round your thighs, pulls you gently apart.

Gazer feels the air there. Goosebumps rise all over her body as she realises she hadn't quite appreciated the finer detail of the Herringbone family tradition.

She reaches up with her own hands and parts her 109

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cheeks more firmly, just short of soreness.

Maximus Manchester grows hard.

Harvey Herringbone leans into you, takes one long lick, then sits back on his heels so you can feel the slight wetness cool.

Gazer: Oh God. Maximus Manchester: That is one quality tradition.

Gazer: Mine are all about Sunday roasts and the order in which presents get opened on Christmas morning.

Harvey Herringbone: Admittedly, I embellished a little.

Gazer: Family traditions should evolve.

Harvey Herringbone: Yes they should.

Harvey Herringbone stands, pulls you gently back into a standing position by your shoulders.

Gazer quietly raises her arms.

Harvey Herringbone pulls your dress up and over them, and drops it to the floor.

Gazer: Yes. Gazer: Naked.

Gazer turns to face you.

Harvey Herringbone takes your face in his hands.

Maximus Manchester sits on the sofa and pulls off his jeans.

Gazer looks at Max and then back at Harvey.

Harvey Herringbone: Yes. I think it's time for him to leave.

Harvey Herringbone: Or us.

Maximus Manchester: What?

Gazer: I have a beautiful beach hut. Let's go there.

Maximus Manchester: You're kidding me?

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Gazer: I'll send you the log, darling.

Maximus Manchester grunts.

Maximus Manchester: More reading.

Maximus Manchester: Yay me.

Two hours later I opened the double doors in my living room and stood at the waist height railing and smoked one of the remaining three cigarettes from the emergency pack I'd bought a year ago in the event of the end of the world being announced. I gave up smoking four years ago. The council are due to seal those doors next year so they can't be opened like that any more: I live on the eleventh floor of a tower block and the health and safety risk is no longer considered worth the benefit of having two full doors' worth of air being able to come into the room on a hot day. This was neither daytime, nor hot.

The warmth from the room disappeared just as suddenly as if it had itself tumbled over the rail and plummeted to the ground below. I smoked my cigarette and looked in the general direction of Cath and Benjamin's house, wondering if I had line of sight with them at this height and – if so – if a strong enough telescope might give me access to the window of their bedroom. I imagined Cath on top of her covers – as she had described herself – going through her own recovery routine. I imagined Benjamin downstairs, in another place as Maximus. A house of three disparate, yet overlapping worlds and now, it seemed, I was part of them.

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SATURDAY

10

The apartment felt stale the following morning. I woke at nine but lay in bed until ten, just looking at a picture on the wall opposite, an A4 printout of a painting by an SL artist I knew; I'd blue-tacked it to the wall a few months previously and the edges were beginning to curl. It showed an old man walking in just his shorts on a sunlit beach. The man was carrying a fishing rod and a bucket, and appeared distracted by something on the sand he was at that moment passing. He looked about seventy. He was a little overweight and tanned. You could tell by the length of his stride that the pace of his walk – indeed, the pace of his day; indeed, the pace of his life – was a slow one. Even so, a vitality pervaded the painting.

There was a sensuality somehow to his near nakedness; the need to feel natural things on his skin looked as everyday as the need to eat and drink. The picture was called, 'Retired'. It was a painting full of life.

I felt drained and dull and absent from the world of living things. The grey sky outside and the drizzle on my bedroom window did little to help. Saturday morning. I hauled myself out of bed and made coffee on the stove, then opened the double doors again and sat naked in front of them whilst I drank it and smoked another cigarette. I wanted to feel like the old man in the painting. I ended 115

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up getting wet and frozen and had to take a hot shower to restore feeling to my body.

Ten minutes' drive away. Depending on the traffic. I had never been so close geographically to an SL lover before (at least, that I knew of). On only one occasion had I met up with one in RL and that had been a disaster.

Following that, I'd vowed never to attempt this again, but the resolve hadn't lasted all that long. Hearts have a dreadful memory and a staggering naivety when their passions become once again activated. It had taken just a few months and then I'd found myself back in that place where everything smelled, looked, sounded and tasted just that little bit better. And Tresni, the woman to whom I'd allocated such phrases as 'the love of my life' to – and meant it – had become just another memory, another thing I once did, another person I once knew. That this was even possible appalled me. But it didn't appal me a lot, because I was in love again and once more fantasising about the hypothetical real life meeting. It appalled me in the same way that third world poverty appals me: its existence is horrific, but its everyday impact is low. And yes, that's appalling too.

Those hypothetical meets never actually happened because the SL relationships never lasted that long.

Anything over six months in the metaverse is an accomplishment. Now, I was potentially entering into an SL relationship with someone I'd already met, someone I already knew, someone who lived ten minutes away, someone who was married, someone who was married to my best friend and he actually wanted this to happen.

He'd even engineered it. Someone who, the previous night, I'd bumped shoulders with and it had aroused me.

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Someone who, when I'd been looking at her mouth, I'd imagined it sucking my semen from her fingers because that was what she had written. Less than a couple of hours after she'd kissed me good night in real life, we'd been fucking in SL in her beach hut, and only I knew this. The whole thing was just too big and unfathomable to consider. It made no sense. Yet there it was. It was.

I wondered what the old guy on the beach in his shorts would have made of all this.

Slipping momentarily into the seduction of stereotype, I supposed he would probably have made a remark about not understanding computers. And in reply I would have attempted to explain that computers plus the internet were a qualitatively much bigger thing than just computers by themselves.

The creation of online interaction, I would have argued, made the microchip look like some sort of slightly improved piston. The internet could both hide and expose you, and you got to decide which bits of you fell into which of those two boxes. And that meant you got to reinvent yourself however you pleased, and the improvements in technology made the inventions ever more realistic. And if the old guy was really wise, like some sort of retired academic in philosophy or psychology, he might have asked me to consider that maybe letter writing wasn't really just invented only to facilitate functional communication over distance, but constituted an earlier stage in the evolution of the exact same thing I was talking about. We were just as selective, just as prone to embellishment, just as downright deceptive in that medium as we were in any digital communication, he might have counter-argued. Even cave paintings, he 117

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might have gone on to propose, were the telling only of the stories their artists had wanted people to hear.

Communication – language itself, he would have concluded, and our neural pre-disposition to its acquisition, contained within it the essence of what it was that made us fundamentally different from the animals: consciousness; the mind turned in upon itself. There was no consciousness without language and there was no meaningful expansion of consciousness into the adolescent and then adult world without self-recognition of some description. Consciousness was self awareness, yes, but it was also the existence of the inner world, the mental entity within which that awareness of self resided and got compared to the outside world. Language created the inner world and whatever the technology of the tools employed to expose it, they were only casting light on something that had always been in existence. Or, more precisely, the inner world as container had always been both there and destined to be there, and the only thing that was changing were its contents.

I hated it when it turned out old folk knew far more about what you were talking about than you'd expected. I hated it even more when my hypothetical characters suddenly took on new intellectual qualities in order to challenge the complexity of my thinking.

Did the internet, I asked myself, really expose hidden, but pre-existing identity? Or did it create brand new identity that would never have happened without it? Or was its ultimate function just to take whatever identity you'd managed to build and to tear it into tiny, unexaminable pieces? Was Benjamin Burton just an evolution of his younger self – the guy I'd met at 118

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university who'd once told me he regarded marital fidelity as one of the most important pillars to the meaning of life – or was that man no longer in existence, replaced by a new human being who only happened to share a few of his memories? It was hardly the case I disagreed that opinions should ever be revised; it was hardly the case I thought that before the internet no-one had ever come to change their mind about something – the psychological literature was replete with suggested explanations for that process long before the first email got sent. But the degree and the speed and the totality of the change was overwhelming. Were we built to absorb such change? Was it possible to sustain it indefinitely?

Was there a limit to how far we could travel from ourselves before we looked back at the distant shore and realised we had no idea who we were any more?

And yet, set against this sense of individual magnitude, there remained the picture from above. Inner worlds, as my hypothetical old man had pointed out, were ever thus. Internet or no internet, the discrepancy between that which was openly described and that which existed within was enormous, and it was everywhere that human life existed. If society could be rightly considered a single conscious entity (which, at most levels of inspection it couldn't) it's biggest lie was to cover up the prevalence of this difference, to present and continue to maintain the illusion of some sort of moral 'norm' as the essential fabric of existence. When adulterous politicians or priests or celebrities got found out, it still somehow shocked the nation. In all probability, doing away with this pretence would do ultimately more harm than good in an age where jealousy, greed and anger were still the 119

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primary drivers of events. But the fact remained that the death of the younger Benjamin was utterly ordinary if one chose to look at it without the tinted spectacles that kept the official world turning. In every street, behind closed doors, there were people breaking rules of some description that their childhood selves would have recoiled at the prospect of violating. This was the actual normality. The Earth contained seven billion worlds and the agreed 'normality' was just that tiny slither of overlap.

And, I thought, as I smoked the last of my emergency cigarettes and considered once more the issue of Ben and Cath, marriage was one of the biggest platforms there was on which that discrepancy between inner and outer could play. It's myth was both as beautiful and as likely as the perfect Christmas Day. Yet still we clung to the institution. The universe is not without a sense of humour and irony. I held in my hand my one picture of Tresni, who I'd met in real life at a wedding.

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11

A wedding I had been late to. The 2:15 had got in a full hour and forty minutes overdue because of a track fault.

I'd taken a taxi to the church and rushed the entrance in a fast stroll I hoped might still carry some semblance of dignity about it. I needn't have hurried. The only commotion my entrance caused was a collective intake in anticipation; the turning of all heads, the rising of shoulders in expectation of someone important. Then, the hundred or so guests assembled turned back round again and the mutterings crept across the rows towards me like the sea returning over sand. I'd sat clumsily in an aisle seat at the back. A large woman in front of me then turned and mouthed the words, “We're waiting for the groom,” as though some sort of explanation for this disappointed response to my arrival was required. She looked about sixty. The linger at the end of her statement was just long enough to suggest that she was expecting some sort of response from me beyond the nod I gave in reply. So I added a smile, thinking in my head it was like a smiley tacked to the end of a written sentence. I wondered if the same thought had occurred to her. I knew that a good ten of the assembled witnesses were SL regulars, and there was no reason to suppose that she was not amongst their number.

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The woman made a face that was halfway between a wink and a nose wrinkle, and it made the thick pancake on her cheeks crease slightly. She turned back to the front, then straight away twisted back round again, this time with a half-consumed tube of sweets offered in her left hand over her shoulder. “Would you care for a mint?” she asked. I took one – mouthing an exaggerated “thank you” - cementing a new bond that, if nothing else, meant I'd have someone to talk to in the reception later if everything fell flat with Tresni. As I sucked on the mint, I scanned all the backs of heads thinking, Which one are you? We'd arranged to meet up in front of the gate a half hour before the start of the ceremony, but I'd missed that time by nearly an hour. No whispered “Harold?” had caught my ear when those heads had turned at the appearance of my shadow on the aisle. I'd seen no look of expectation or anxiety. Perhaps the non-appearance of the groom was an altogether more pressing issue for the moment. That, I supposed, was fair enough.

This was actually the second marriage of Dev and Feather that I'd attended, the first having been their SL union seven months previously. There had been some talk of providing some sort of an SL feed of the real life version so that residents online could observe and smile, but – as I'd suspected would be the case from the start – that all proved too technical and time consuming (church walls and wireless – obstruction thereof – being a pretty key factor in that). The first wedding had been an affair of intermittent voice, pauses for pose ball rezzing and lots of typed 'awww's and 'ahhhh's. It wasn't the first SL wedding I'd been to, but it did little to reduce that sense of hilarious bizarreness I'd always felt at such occasions.

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The lagged walk up the aisle alone (at one point, bride and groom had sailed right through the 'altar', off the edge of the sim and out to sea together for a full minute before returning to their starting point) had caused me very nearly to snort my tea across the keyboard. All that aside, there was something about it that was undeniably moving. There was a sense amongst the community I belonged to back then that Dev and Feather were two people perfectly matched who had somehow managed to solve life's puzzle and find each other. Words and phrases like 'soulmate' and 'life partner' were used plentifully and unashamedly. These two people appeared in all respects to complete each other and there was a real sense of achievement to the union, as though we were watching the construction of an enormous bridge or the launching of human beings to the moon.

That first wedding was also where I'd met Tresni. At the reception, I'd sat by myself at a table and she'd sent me an IM compliment about the quality of my suit from across the other side of the dance floor. When I'd sent her back a thanks and a smiley, she'd added that her date had had to go afk for a few minutes to take an important call and that it seemed wasteful for two such great looking avatars as us to spend that time alone. So we'd danced. It wasn't the beginning of our relationship, but a month later we were dancing again in a field of blue flowers and we kissed for the very first time.

We waited another thirty minutes or so for the groom to show up, during which time the usher received a call on his phone and abruptly went outside to take it. He returned a few minutes later and disappeared straight into the room behind me; I turned to watch him – along with a 123

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hundred other heads – and caught a flash of white, flowing fabric when he entered. But the heavy wooden door, once shut, surrendered nothing more than that.

Fifteen minutes and an uncomfortable announcement later, we were milling slowly from the church onto the unconfettied path outside. Discussions were held in small groups about whether to take up the offer of going on to the reception, since it had already been paid for. Taxis were called from mobile phones. I wandered up and down from the gate to the entrance, listening in to the various conversations and hoping to hear something that sounded like SL interaction. Somehow, I'd thought it would be simplicity itself to recognise in real life the people whose avatars and textual mannerisms I knew so well. But the metaverse was conspicuous to me in that churchyard only by its absence. The real-lifeness of the situation – never mind the apparent absence of Tresni – started to unnerve me and, at about the third or fourth repetition of my twenty metre route, it suddenly dawned on me that I was effectively by myself at a stranger's wedding. I started to worry about what to do next. As the various guests started to move towards the road for the arrival of their cars, I realised I had no way of telling what the plans of 'my group' were: they might decide to go to the reception, but they might equally decide to go some place else (where SL issues could be discussed without concern over tact and sensitivity). I decided that the best move strategically would be to position myself at the gate where I could listen in on the discussions of every group that passed. So I stood there and played with my phone, making out it was really important I consulted stuff. The groups wandered through and I heard things 124

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said about the economy, Gordon Brown, a number of different football teams and the latest series of Masterchef. Nobody looked at me as though they were keeping an eye open for a missing person. And nothing whatsoever was said about Second Life. Strangely enough, though, nothing was said about the wedding either. People don't always discuss what you're expecting them to discuss. I supposed everyone was temporarily talked out about that.

One by one, I watched the groups leave in their taxis.

In the end, I climbed aboard the last of them on the invitation of the Chief Bridesmaid, who had looked at me part-way in, her skirts lifted to clear the step into the car, and said, “You got a lift? There's just about room in here for one more, if you want.” In the absence of any other plan, I elected to join them. It was a London-style cab. I sat in one of the two rear-facing fold-down seats, the Chief Bridesmaid and her husband, and a tiny little man of at least eighty years opposite me. The other fold-down was occupied by the mint offering lady from the row in front, in the church. Tiny drips of perspiration were beginning to show around the edges of her make-up, but she didn't attempt to loosen any of her many layers, which included a knee-length tweed coat. She fanned herself with her Order of Service and commented, in a voice that tried to be merely observational, “Isn't it hot in here?” and the bridesmaid leaned forward and said, “Driver, could we have some air conditioning on back here please?” I had my back to the driver, so I couldn't see if he turned for his reply, but it sounded like he didn't.

“Air-con's broken,” he said. I heard his window whine open, perhaps by means of compensation, perhaps so he 125

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wouldn't be able to hear any further requests. The car moved off. The bridesmaid sighed and sagged back into her seat. She was tall and plump and had a fake tan that was all over the palms of her hands. “Jesus,” she said to her husband, “I could murder a cigarette. I should have had one before we got in the car. I didn't have time to think about it what with all the phone calls and everything.” Then she added, “Give me my phone again, will you?”

“You going to call Lindy again?” the husband asked.

“She's got to answer eventually,” she said, and took the phone he retrieved from an inside pocket. She pressed small buttons with a long, thumbnail that had tiny silver flowers painted onto it, then held the device to her head. There was a long pause and then she said, “Okay Linds, this is the last message I'm going to leave. I don't want to clog up your voicemail in case that bastard decides to call you. I'm on my way to the reception place right now. Call me.” Then she looked at the phone, impaled another button with her thumbnail and handed it back to her husband with a sigh. “Still not answering,” she said. “I'm worried to death about her.”

“Maybe she just needs some time alone,” the husband suggested.

“I just need to know that she's okay,” the bridesmaid said, “and not standing on the top of some building somewhere.” The word 'building' made me think of Second Life. I thought about rezzing pine cubes on a quiet platform in a secluded sky, and shaping them into something new.

“There's nothing more you can do,” the husband reassured her.

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“I just hope somebody's with her,” she said. “I should never have left her alone. Jesus Christ, I mean you slip out for four minutes because you're busting for a piss-” (her eyes flicked towards Mrs Mint Giver and then the old man next to her) “excuse my French – and, when you get back, she's nowhere to be found. What the hell did that usher guy think he was doing, letting her out like that?”

“My dear,” Mrs Mint commented, her hands crossed over the clasp of the clip-open handbag resting on her lap, “men rarely display very much ability when it comes to the management of distraught females.” The bridesmaid glanced at her husband and replied, “You're telling me.”

And he snorted, an ambiguous sound that could have been either a low-key laugh of some sort, a stoic acknowledgement of his own shortcomings or a token rebuttal of her accusation.

“Ohhhhh,” said the bridesmade. “Just give me five minutes with that bastard. Just give me five minutes.”

“Well, you know,” said Mrs Mint, a sudden firmness in her voice, “better now than two years down the line and a little one involved.” She fanned herself again.

“Did he have to leave her waiting so long, though?” the bridesmaid snapped back. “Would it have been asking too much for him to call her first thing if he had doubts?”

“I expect his Best Man was doing... was trying to talk him into coming.” I notice edit hesitations. I supposed she'd been going to say 'his best man was doing his best' and then hadn't wanted to use the word 'best' two times within a sentence. I wondered if she was a writer of sorts.

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continued, “making sure no decision was made rashly.”

“Men,” said the bridesmaid. Her husband did another of his ambiguous snorts. “They were probably talking about football.” I looked at the elderly man to her right.

He was like a little painted statue.

I looked at my phone again, hoping that appearing to be occupied might excuse me from any possible involvement in a conversation about men or – worse – Second Life. The absence of the subject so far had, I decided, been a blessing; it struck me as the sort of topic on which people might be likely to express bemusement and ask such questions of each other as, “What do you think?” At least, that was my fear. I'd already started to rehearse secretly the rather vague and generic to-eachtheir-own response I planned on giving and which I hoped I'd be able to get away with without being identified as One Of Them. I wondered why the topic had not been brought up and supposed that it was possibly an issue of embarrassment. How did one discuss a virtual relationship, after all, without coming perilously close to the question of cybersex? Most people had absolutely no idea how this was achieved (in fact, I would have included myself in this category before encountering SL) but the questions required of obtaining this information – however much one wanted to know – were simply not compatible with the polite decorum and the guest range of a wedding (at least, not before the evening reception and its associated alcohol consumption).

Alas, my apparent luck on this issue was destined not to continue. It was the bridesmaid's husband who broached the topic, perhaps to indicate that the absent member of the 'men' community under discussion was not 128

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a particularly good example by which others within it should be judged. “You have to wonder,” he said, “why he couldn't find a girlfriend the normal way.” He looked at me, the nearest fellow member, for affirmation of this view. I offered him back one of his own ambiguous grunts.

“You know,” said the bridesmaid, “I promised Lindsey I wouldn't go on about this, but what the hell did she expect? Did she honestly expect him to be normal?”

“It's all rather beyond my comprehension, I'm afraid,” said Mrs Mint. “Still, love takes many forms.” I couldn't help but feel I'd just heard the exact statement she would also have used at a homosexual wedding. “I still find it hard enough just to send an email. I learn how to do it and then they change the way everything looks on the screen.” I could sense her trying to steer the conversation into less accusatory territory and instantly adored her for the attempt.

“I mean, hello. Second Life? What the hell's wrong with first life?” The husband grunted approval. “What they're really saying is they don't have a life.”

There are moments in RL conversations I'm on the periphery to when I want to jump in and lecture. What 'they' are clearly saying, I wanted to say, is they want more from life, that for a whole load of different reasons – which are usually obvious, when you look at them individually; I mean, it’s rarely rocket science – the idea that you could link with people from different places and share your thoughts with them, share your feelings with them, share your dreams and fantasies with them was incredible; a gift; a miracle of the modern age; too good an opportunity to be turned down. Nobody was saying 129

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people shouldn't also make more of an effort to appreciate all the things they had already – there was indeed beauty to be found everywhere – but in many people's lives there were gaps – some of them big gaps; some of them small gaps – and here was something incredible to fill them with. Why wouldn't one grasp that possibility and embrace it? Why wouldn't one leap straight in and immerse oneself? And how many of the people who criticised others for not having a life let their own seep away in front of the television, an escapist device which offered no interaction, no human contact, no creativity whatsoever. Everyone had a responsibility for their own happiness. Life, I wanted to say, was all about living and who the hell were we to criticise others for finding new ways of meaningfully living it?

But I didn't say that. I let it lie.

“I mean,” the bridesmaid said, “what do you expect from a computer geek? He's probably never had a girlfriend before.”

As I looked at my phone, I asked myself for perhaps the thirtieth time that day why Tresni and I hadn't exchanged phone numbers in case of a problem. Both of our decisions to attend the wedding had been fairly last minute – the wedding itself had been pretty hastily put together – and we'd only just got to the point in our relationship where the sharing of RL information beyond first names was starting to feel okay. Exchanging phone numbers, however, still somehow felt like a big deal.

We'd neither of us met before – or, for that matter, seriously considered meeting – an SL lover in RL. We'd just started talking about it as a hypothetical possibility when suddenly the RL wedding of Dev and Feather was 130

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announced. In the first instance, the invitation of SL friends wasn't part of that agenda. Then, just a few weeks to go before the date, personalised notecards got handed out. It was a difficult thing for either of us to say no to, particularly since the train trip in both cases wasn't a great deal more than ninety minutes. To begin with, we just avoided talking about the subject. Then, we were each individually visited inworld by both Dev and Feather, neither of whom could see in any way that our attendance would constitute a real life meeting we were neither of us certain we were ready for. Tresni suggested just one of us go and we agreed at first it would be her. Of course, as soon as I knew she'd be there, missing this opportunity to meet her was then all I could think about. We told ourselves and each other it wasn't as though we couldn't organise a meet at any other time and we thanked God we weren't transatlantic lovers. We laughed quite a bit about that, and then the others – who had further to travel – started talking about their hotel bookings and travel arrangements. A couple of the group were actually flying over from the States for the occasion. Suddenly it was real and happening in a couple of weeks and we – we – weren't a part of it.

“If we knew each other in real life this well,” she said to me, seven days remaining until the date, “we would have no problem with meeting up like this at all.”

“Technically,” I pointed out, because it was utterly impossible for me not to, “if we knew each other in real life this well, we'd already have met.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“In fact,” I said, “I think it's knowledge of each other that's the problem. The worry is that we'll look at each 131

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other and expect to see someone we know well and instead see a stranger.”

“Oh, I'm not worried about that at all,” she said. “I know we'll see each other.”

We were in voice at the time. We'd been doing this for about a couple of months by then. We never had sex in voice because we were each too embarrassed and had no idea what to say. But we knew each other's vocal mannerisms well. She sounded convinced that we knew each other. I wasn't so sure.

“Why is this a problem, then?” I asked.

“I don't really know,” she replied. “Maybe it's not?

Maybe it's just the novelty? Maybe it's the expectation?”

“Thinking about it,” I said, “might it be helpful if we did both go that we'd be there to attend an event? I mean, rather than there just to see each other? If we ran out of things to say to each other we could always fill awkward silences by pretending to be interested in the speeches.

Plus there'd be plenty of people about in case I turn out to be an axe murderer.”

She laughed. How I loved that laugh.

“You're right,” she said. “If the day goes badly we can just blame it on the wedding.” And so it was decided, just like that.

The night before the wedding, we made love at her place, a castle she was renting, with grounds that covered a full quarter sim. She said to me afterwards, “I hope this doesn't wear you out for tomorrow.” I laughed, hoping the fear wasn't too noticeable. “Is that part of the agenda, then?” I asked, once enough awkward silence had elapsed. “Baby,” she replied, “there's no agenda. But if there was one, it wouldn't be off it.”

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But we still didn't exchange mobile numbers. It's not that either of us proposed an exchange and the other one vetoed. We just avoided bringing the subject up. This unspoken agreement was, I think, some sort of unofficial safety net. We each knew that if the day didn't work we'd at least not have to worry about difficult phone calls. The day would be an incursion into RL, but only a temporary incursion. We didn't have each other's address details or surnames. RL would continue to be safe and separate if that was what we needed it to be.

Sitting in the taxi, still pretending to look at my phone and less than five minutes from the reception venue (according to the bridesmaid) I suddenly realised Tresni could still have tried to contact me by email. It was all I could do to stop myself from swearing out loud once the thought was formed in my mind. Of course she would have done this; of course she would. It was beyond belief that the idea hadn't occurred to me until now, and yet it simply hadn't. I wondered if I was in trouble about that.

If I was, 'I never thought to check' sounded like a totally implausible excuse and would require revision. I logged into Gmail on my phone and waited the endless wait for the connection to form and my Inbox to update. The circle turned and turned and turned, and I decided whilst I watched it that I'd claim I'd had no data signal in this place until just before the hotel. I'd make a joke about my provider being unable to provide signal to any place lacking the letter O in its title, and if it turned out she was on the same network I'd resort to a generic anti-Apple remark.

Finally, the Inbox appeared. Four emails from 133

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Tresni. This is what the first one said: OMFG baby, Dev's fucking married already!!!

Fucking fucking fucking unbelievable! Feather doesn't know yet, poor love. Dice has been waiting at the gate to let us know but none of the other guests know yet. We're not gonna stay here. We're all cowards. We're gonna go somewhere just us to gossip. Get here as soon as you can but if you can't I'll let you know where we are. Love you. T xxx My eyes widened considerably at the first sentence. The mistake I then made was to next look briefly at the bridesmaid to see if she was watching me.

“What?” she said. “Do you know something?”

“What?” I said.

“What are you reading there? Do you know something?”

“About?” I said. Mrs. Mint leaned everso slightly closer to me. I angled the phone screen away from her.

“About the wedding, what do you think?”

“The wedding?” I said. “Of course not. Has something happened?”

“Why did you look up at me like that? You looked guilty.”

“Just a dirty email someone sent me,” I said. Mrs Mint recoiled.

“Typical bloody man,” the bridesmaid said.

“Don't keep it to yourself, then,” her husband said, reaching out for the phone. She slapped his hand and he winced.

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The next email said: Baby we're going to a pub just up the road from the church. You can't miss it. It's called the King's Arms. Can't wait to see you. T xxx And the next: Did you get delayed? I hope you got my messages.

If you didn't, you might be surrounded by angry guests right now. Oh dear. I feel guilty now for not waiting. If you're there and you get these, try to slip out if you can. No-one knows where Dev is. On the off-chance that you see him, can you let him know where we are? I think we should have stayed for Feather, but the others are saying she might think we knew something. She must be feeling terrible. Why do people do this to each other? Oh well. Come to me as soon as you can, baby. Love you. T xxx And the final message: Where are youuuuuuuu? Now I'm worried. I'm going to assume you haven't had signal. We saw all the guests get into taxis and I'm wondering if everyone's going to the hotel. I have a room booked there, so that's where I'm going to go now. Hopefully that's where you're headed. So stay there, baby – I'm right behind you. T xxx “Any more good ones?” the bridesmaid's husband asked as I put the phone away.

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“Nah,” I said. “Just work stuff.” My mouth was suddenly dry and my heart had started to speed up at the realisation that I was mere minutes away from the meeting. As if on queue, the taxi slowed and made a right turn into a wide service road, then a left into a large car park. I turned in my seat and looked forward. I saw other taxis up ahead, well dressed people stepping out in front of a large entrance. We were at the hotel.

I sent Tresni a message by email. “I'm at the bar.” The wedding guests wandered though into the function room and I spotted the usher having a conversation with a member of the hotel staff which involved him waving in the direction of the head table. I stood at the bar and ordered a whiskey. The bar tender asked if I was with the wedding party and I said no because I considered Dev and Feather had enough stress without me adding to their bar tab. I had a good view of the entrance from where I stood.

She entered the hotel about ten minutes later. I knew immediately it was her from the way she stopped and looked for a face as soon as she was inside. She looked in my direction and made eye contact. Straight away, she smiled.

She was wearing an orange fitted dress, sleeveless, above the knee and with an empire waist. White high heels and a white hat made this rather bold statement wedding-ready. She was smaller than I'd expected. The one RL picture I had of her was head and shoulders only and it was difficult to relate that to the full, three dimensional person about fifteen metres distant. Her dark hair was cut in a bob – my favourite style – and I 136

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remembered both that I'd told her this once and that the hair in the picture had been long. I laughed. She laughed back. She walked over and the first thought that popped into my head was that her stride was nothing like her avatar's animation overrider. Everything I knew about her visually, I realised, I now had to discard. Here was a real human being.

She stood in front of me and we both laughed again.

“I don't know what to call you,” I said. “Should I use Tresni or Sally?”

“Come here,” she said, ignoring my question and putting her arms around me. We hugged. I smelt her perfume and felt her hair against my cheek and her cheek against my cheek and her fingers pressing into my back and the fabric of her dress though my own and how this moved against her skin underneath. I felt all these things at once.

“It is so good to see you,” she said into my ear. “It's so good to see you too,” I said in reply.

She kissed my cheek and pulled away. “I would have said Sally,” she said, “but we so need to stay in SL character for a while. We just have to talk about Dev. I can't get my head around what's happened.”

All destroyed wedding misery aside, this immediate and urgent topic for discussion was a Godsend. We ordered drinks, found a table in the bar and sat. Not only was Dev married, he had two kids and a mortgage with twelve years left to pay. The tangled web he'd weaved, so far as the numerous real life meetings he'd had with Feather in the months leading up to their wedding were concerned, involved a house twenty miles from where he lived that belonged to his brother, a contract programmer 137

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working in China for the year. “I just can't believe he did this to her,” Tresni said. “The deception is incredible.

All that effort he went to. All those times he fucked her as his fiancée in real life, knowing what had to come.

How did he imagine this would end? Un-fuckingbelievable. You couldn't make this sort of stuff up.” We went outside so that she could smoke and I lasted about two minutes before I asked her for one. She stood close to me whilst I lit up. “You know what?” she said. “I really want to care about all that, but I just can't. Seeing you has just turned a bizarre day into an incredible one.

You may consider that sentence suffixed with a smiley.”

“How many closed brackets are we talking here?” I asked.

“Four.”

“Four? Only four? I'd have thought we were into double figures here at least.”

“You're far too loose with your brackets,” she said.

“You're a bracket slut. You're shameless. Brackets should be conserved so that they mean something when you use them.”

“Four is still a little underwhelming.”

“So let's get to work on turning it into a five,” she said.

We ate in an Italian restaurant around the corner from the hotel. I avoided pizza on the grounds this really wasn't a day that I wanted to become reacquainted with the non-affectionate relationship mozzarella had with the bathroom via my stomach and picked instead at a bland tagliatelle in a pesto sauce. She ate two thirds of a large hawaiian with a side order of salad. Despite our joint avoidance of garlic menu items – the 'no' we both gave to 138

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the waitress on her suggestion of garlic bread was a little conspicuous in its immediacy – we didn't kiss until a good half hour had elapsed of our subsequent walk around the town. The moment came when we stood back in front of the church and talked about the newly married kissing that should have occurred in front of its entrance by now. “This church is expecting to witness some kissing today,” she said and I replied, “Then maybe we should offer it something by means of compensation.” “I thought you'd never ask,” she said and we took that extra step into each other's space that hadn't been breached since the hug in the hotel bar. Our faces lingered in front of each other for a brief moment of extended anticipation and then our eyes closed as we crossed that unfathomable distance and met in the middle with our lips. She tasted of sweet cherry tomatoes.

“So let me make sure I've got this right,” she said, after about fifteen minutes of more or less solid kissing had elapsed. “You're not booked in to stay over tonight?”

“I have a client presentation tomorrow morning,” I said. “I'm really sorry, but it's something I just couldn't get out of. I have to get back tonight.”

“And the last train leaves at...?”

“Twenty past twelve.”

“So it's now nearly eight-thirty,” she said, with slow deliberation. “We could go find a pub, get drunk together for a few hours and then kiss each other goodnight. Or...”

“Or...” I said.

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my body using forceps. The conversation died slightly between us and by the time we were crossing the foyer to the lift, we'd hardly said a word for the past five minutes.

In her room, I sat down on the bed whilst she drew the curtains and turned on the bedside lamps. She came and sat down next to me.

“So,” she said.

“So,” I replied.

“Here we are.”

“Here we are, indeed.”

I looked at one of the paintings on the wall opposite, a production-line orange and red abstract. I cocked my head slightly, as though finding it fascinating.

“Interesting colours,” I said.

“What?”

“The painting.”

She looked at it briefly. “I expect they're the same in every room,” she said.

“I must stink,” I said. “Such a hot day. That taxi was unbearable.”

“Why don't you take a quick shower?” she suggested.

“I could do that,” I said, as though this was an intriguing proposal. Then, for want of anything better to say, I repeated this. “I could do that.”

“Although,” I added, “I don't have any clean clothes to change into.”

“Maybe you wouldn't need any clothes,” she said.

“At least, for a while.”

“Right. Yes, there is that, of course,” I said and chuckled.

“You're nervous,” she said. “Why are you nervous?”

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good idea. Take a shower. I won't be long.”

“Would you like me to come and scrub your back?” she asked.

“No no, that's quite okay,” I said, as though letting her off a chore.

“What if I sneak in whilst you're in there and take a peak at you through the screen?”

“It'll probably be steamed up,” I said, hand on the door. “The screen. I mean... well... sure, if you'd like.”

“I'll wait out here, sweetie; don't worry.”

I forced another chuckle and went into the bathroom, shut the door behind me, locked it by turning the little circular knob inside the door handle counter-clockwise (but very slowly so it didn't make a sound). But then I needed to check that it was actually locked, so I turned the door handle itself very slowly. I managed to do it without making any noise, but then I worried that the knob on the other side of the door might be turning also.

This is stupid, Gerry, I told myself. Unlock the fucking door. I turned slowly the little circular knob inside the door handle again, this time clockwise.

I turned on the shower. The hiss, the sound of the water running, the background noise I'd created, against which I could sigh and curse without being overheard, plus having the door closed between us was a relief. I stood facing myself in the mirror, my hands either side of the sink, the glass slowly starting to mist over.

It's Tresni. I said to myself. It's Tresni, who you love. It's Tresni, who you are in love with. I tried to picture her avatar. I tried to hear her voice. It's the same fucking voice. Only now, somehow, it wasn't. It came out of a human face I didn't know. An animated human 141

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face with expressions and hair that moved and fell across her eyes. Eyes. Eyes that looked at me. Eyes that saw me. Eyes that I saw seeing me. Eyes I had avoided when we'd been sitting together on the bed.

I tried to picture us having sex. In her castle: the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, the cellar. In the grounds by the sea. At my place. In a log cabin we rented out for a week. The images flicked in front of me like still slides from a Powerpoint show, and with as much emotional meaning; picture postcards from another reality of no relevance right this moment. Something I'd once seen in a book and wished now I'd somehow paid more attention to. It had hardly felt at the time like I wasn't paying attention. Everything then had felt so natural and normal and right. Everything had just happened, as though of its own accord. Everything had flowed. Once, after I'd logged off, I'd retrieved my Tresni log and pasted the text of our most recent lovemaking into Open Office to see how many words we'd generated, and it was over three thousand. Three thousand words in a couple of hours and not a single one of them had felt like an effort. Three thousand collaborative, story-telling words: the story of our love together that evening; two people in separate places writing it together and feeling at the end only that they had been with each other and shared intimacy. As Benjamin Burton would later comment, one never recalled such encounters as writing experiences, but now, in the bathroom, whilst Tresni – whilst Sally – waited outside, I could only relate to these things as pieces of wistful literature. Sally was real.

Sally was real. She'd never felt not real to me before, but now she was here – just metres away – a real, physical 142

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person with real, physical lips that wanted to be kissed and real, physical skin that wanted to be touched. And my own lips and my own skin had no idea how to go about this. Oh yes, I knew exactly why this wasn't a problem for her in the way it was a terrible, terrifying problem for me. I realised, as my gaunt face faded from in front of me behind a thin veil of condensed water vapour, that I had been appallingly naïve. My deception had felt to me inconsequential and a legitimate protection of my privacy, but now I realised I had been lying to both of us all along. I spent about half a minute cursing this wedding for coming along before I'd had a chance to come clean, but then I told myself – because I knew that it was true – that the closer we'd become, the more we'd explored intimacy together, the more difficult it had been for me to tell the truth. Well, perhaps now was as good a time as any.

I took my shower and enjoyed it, for it felt now like I had a plan. I put on one of the hotel robes once I'd dried myself, took a deep breath and went back into the room.

Sally was in bed, her naked neck and shoulders emerging from the thick, smooth duvet; it looked like a concrete shroud encasing her. She smiled at me. “That was a long shower, baby,” she said. It was the first time she'd called me baby since we'd seen each other.

“I needed a bit of thinking time,” I said.

“I realised,” she replied. “That's why I suggested it.

Would you like to talk?”

I sat down on what was apparently 'my side' of the bed, my back to her, the towelling belt of the robe hanging limply between my legs. “Well, you see,” I said, and found I didn't have the words to continue after all.

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“I understand,” she said. “I suppose I should have realised. It's not like you're the first ever guy to do it. I must admit, though, you had me fooled completely.”

“I fooled myself completely,” I said.

“What did you tell her?” she asked.

I turned and looked at her. “Sorry?”

“About today. What story did you give her?”

“Give who?”

“Your wife stroke fiancée stroke partner stroke current girlfriend.”

“Ohhhh,” I said. “No no no. You think I'm involved with someone? Absolutely not! Really, you think I'm married?”

She sat up a little, extracting her bare arms from beneath the covers so she could keep the duvet in place.

“You're not?” she asked. Now she looked confused.

“Of course I'm not!” I exclaimed.

“No girlfriend?”

“No girlfriend.”

“Then... I don't understand,” she said. “What is the problem?”

“Seriously, you thought I was married?”

She pursed her lips. “I rather think Dev put an end to the concept of non-marriage certainty, she commented.

“Good point.”

“Honey,” she said, leaning across the bed towards me, so that I could see her back, “please explain to me what's happening.”

“You're very beautiful,” I said, looking at the way her skin moved over her shoulder blades.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Here's the thing,” I began. She rested her chin on 144

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her open hands, her fingers forming inverted question marks around her cheeks. The duvet dropped a little; I looked away. She noticed.

A look of faint puzzlement crossed her face. Then, suddenly, her eyes opened wide.

“Noooooooo!” she said.

I coughed.

Sat sat up again, pulling the duvet up to her neck (which made it worse somehow). “Nooooo!”

“Yes, I think this time you might have got it right.”

“You're kidding me?”

“Afraid not.”

“It isn't possible!”

“Oh, it's possible.”

“Oh my God,” she said softly. Her hand rose to her mouth. “Oh baby... no wonder...”

“I honestly thought,” I said, “that this would be no different from in SL.” “This definitely isn't a wind-up?” she said. “You're really a virgin?”

“And there was me thinking we were going to get through this without mentioning the V word.”

“Oh I'm sorry, baby,” she said. “But you can understand my amazement, right?”

“Of course,” I said.

“But look. It's okay. Now I understand, we'll just take it more slowly. It's going to be fine.”

“I'm really sorry, Tresni,” I said.

“Oh baby.” A tear dripped down her cheek. She laughed at herself, wiped it away with her middle finger, sniffed. She pulled open the duvet on my side. “Will you take that thing off and get into bed please? I won't look, 145

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if you prefer.”

I wriggled out of the gown and slid in beside her. She pulled herself right up next to me, so I could feel the front of her thigh against the side of mine.

“This is where it begins,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Just close.”

“You're so warm,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “And... wet. Would you like to feel?”

I tried not to think too much. I turned towards her a little, looked at her face. I reached across with my right hand, found her flat belly with my fingertips.

She closed her eyes for a moment, her lips parted; she took a slightly longer breath than usual and let it out slowly.

I pushed down, felt the rise of her mound, felt the slight bristle of recently shaved skin, then the start of a short, thin strip of pubic hair. I pushed down further, felt the dry labia against my middle finger, but then its tip slipped easily between them and I felt sudden heat and moisture.

She made a small sound on the contact that was part exhale and part “oh”.

I left my fingertip there for a moment, perfectly still.

She said, “Further, baby. Please.”

I pushed myself in as far as I could, my finger formed a comma inside her.

“Ohhhh,” she said and closed her eyes again. She held my forearm with her left hand, as though to keep me there. Then she opened her eyes and said to me, “Now see if you can find my clit. Just move upwards, slowly.

Let my lips guide you.”

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I withdrew, back to the first knuckle. The pad of my third finger slid up the parting like a rowing boat pushing aside the reeds. I found the small button of flesh at the upper tip and pushed gently against it. She moaned softly. “Oh God,” she said.

My cock pushed against her thigh on its ascension.

She let go of my arm and reached down, took it in her hand and what little flexibility remained disappeared instantly. “Oh darling,” she said, looking at me. She sat up, the duvet falling away so that I could see her breasts for the first time. But, just as quickly, they disappeared again as she leaned forward, got up onto her knees and knelt to one side of me. She pushed back her hair over her shoulder so that I could see what she was doing.

She kissed the tip of my cock. “Please,” I said, overwhelmed. But she mistook my meaning as 'proceed' and started a long, delicate lick that ended just below the head. “Wait,” I said. She looked up. I forced myself to breathe, but it didn't help. In desperation, I gripped myself, but it only made things worse. Restricted, the first stream became a jet that hit her chin and the corner of her mouth. Her head jerked back in surprise. I vaulted out of the bed and landed painfully on my knees. And kept on coming; grunting, gasping uncontrollably like an animal as I unleashed two long arcs of semen across the carpet before I finally had the sense to let go of myself.

“Oh Jesus,” I said, my head bowed. I sat back on my heels. “Oh fuck.”

Sally got out of bed and knelt next to me, put her left arm around my shoulders and pulled my face towards her with her right hand. “Baby,” she said, “it's okay. It's okay.” She wiped the semen from her face with the back 147

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of her hand, studied it, looked at me with eyes that seemed playfully to be saying, I guess I have nothing to worry about catching anything from you. But then she appeared to reappraise the idea. Perhaps she thought the timing bad. She rubbed the back of her hand across her thigh instead, making the skin there shiny for the few moments before it dried. She put both arms around me and pulled me into her. “It's okay,” she repeated. “It's okay.

All I wanted was to get out of that room and out of that hotel and back to my train and home. And then I thought about what my apartment really was to me: some empty rooms with a computer in them that was connected back to her. And I didn't care.

“I should go,” I mumbled, pulling away from her so I could get to my feet.

“Oh baby please,” she said. “Please don't. We need to make this okay.”

“It's not okay,” I said. I went into the bathroom to retrieve my clothes and to dress.

“Gerry,” she called after me. “Harold. Harold, come here please.”

She came to the door, stood there naked, leaned against the frame. Her breasts were a little saggier than I'd expected, and I liked it. “Harold.”

“Gerry,” I said.

“Harold, she said defiantly.

“Harold isn't here,” I said. “He doesn't exist. Not in this world.”

“Harold exists in my heart, alongside you.”

“Well therein,” I said, as I pulled on my pants, “lies the problem.”

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“Baby, you're not the first guy to ever come too early on me. There's nothing unusual about this. We can work on this. We can make it better.”

I said nothing. I sat on the closed toilet and put my socks on. I'd once read that a measure of a man's fitness could be found in whether he could stand on one foot whilst putting a sock on the other; it was one of those bizarre fantasies I'd kept that one day I'd perform this balancing act successfully in front of a lover and that she'd be secretly impressed with me as a result. There was no doubt in my mind that on this occasion, however, I'd fall over if I tried it – in all likelihood getting my feet caught up in something and performing a full face plant on the tiles so that blood could then be added to the list of bodily fluids I'd inappropriately released that evening. In any case, I reasoned, talking the stupid thing through in my head because it was the only way I could keep myself sane long enough to get out of the room, it wasn't like the opportunity to impress in any way existed any more.

“Gerry, please,” she said.

“I'm really sorry,” I said. It was suddenly difficult to breathe and talk at the same time. “I have to go. I want to be alone.”

“You need to stay,” she said.

“Please Gerry,” she said. “I need you to stay.”

Socks and shoes done, I stood up and put on my shirt.

Doing up the buttons seemed like high level algebra. I put on my jacket, noticed my tie on the floor and tucked it into a pocket.

She stayed in the doorway, resolute, as I tried to leave.

“Please,” I said, avoiding eye contact.

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She sighed. Her body lost its firmness somehow and she turned to one side to let me pass. I left her there like that: naked, her back and head against the bathroom door frame, her eyes looking at the ceiling and brimming with tears.

I didn't log in to Second Life for three days after that.

Tresni didn't log in for a week. By the time we did talk, I was in a state of total longing for her. She told me I had let her down and when I reminded her it was my first time she explained that this was not what she was talking about. We argued for several nights. Finally, not wanting this new dynamic to become woven permanently into the thing that was us, she ended it. For her, it was about protecting the memory of our relationship. For me, it was an end to every thought in existence in my head.

But, like I said, the heart has a terrible memory.

Thank God.

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12

A text came from Benjamin: She's waiting in SL for you, hoping you'll come on.

Sitting in front of my window, the picture of Tresni in my hands, I decided a person never really falls out of love with someone if it ends whilst they're still in love.

Instead, the piece of them that loves shrinks down to a manageable size like a collapsing star – all that feeling, all that longing compressed into tiny, yet massive ball – and gets stored in an annex to the mind, a satellite room accessed by an unused corridor. Looking at that picture; recalling that day; thinking of the tears in her eyes when I left was like looking through the keyhole to that room and glimpsing the old me locked within. It was like the dead Benjamin and it wasn't. This was a snapshot in time, a state preserved. In theory, that person could be let out again, reactivated if the right combination of circumstances came along. I knew that would never happen. Tresni had found new love in the real world and her visits to SL were now increasingly fleeting, like occasional weekend trips to the place you grew up in.

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thing. Our happiness is ours to maintain and I had moved on. We have to move on. There is no other choice. In fact, there is a choice: we can stay in that place forever and give up on life long before we die. Some people choose that. I, ultimately, did not.

This whole thing with Cath and Benjamin felt obscure and surreal and wrong. But it was still living. I put the photograph away, back to its place in the bottom of a tin of bits and pieces that I kept in the bottom of a box under my bed – a satellite room accessed by an unused corridor – and I turned on my computer and I logged in to Second Life.

I logged in to my previous location and the bedroom of Max's grim apartment coloured in around me. Gazer, already logged in, was lying naked on the bed. I lay down next to her and opened up an IM box.

Harvey Herringbone pushes a wisp of your hair back off your face and kisses the spot that it touched.

Harvey Herringbone: Good morning.

It was a minute or so before I saw the message “Gazer is typing” appear underneath my greeting. Swiftly, it got replaced by: Gazer: Hey :) Gazer: You came back. How wonderful :) Gazer is a little sleepy still.

Harvey Herringbone: At lunchtime?

Gazer sticks her tongue out at you.

Gazer: It's Saturday. It's permitted.

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Gazer: Actually, I got up and went for a walk earlier, then came back to bed.

Gazer: Now I'm all warm and sleepy again.

Gazer: Spoon with me?

I found the option on the bed's menu and our avatars shifted position so that mine was wrapped around her curled body.

Gazer: You drained me last night.

Gazer: Utterly.

Gazer wonders if you're that good in RL. Harvey Herringbone: One day, maybe I will be.

Gazer: Do you have someone in RL? Harvey Herringbone: No. Gazer: You live alone?

Harvey Herringbone: Yes. Gazer: Do you have a job?

Harvey Herringbone: Of course I have a job!

Gazer: Why 'of course'?

Gazer: Plenty of people out of work these days.

Harvey Herringbone: True enough.

Gazer: What do you do?

My fingers froze above the keyboard. Did I risk telling her my job and have Gerry enter her mind? But not telling her would increase my stake in the deception.

Before I could decide, I saw that she was typing again.

Gazer: Ohhhhhh Gazer: Edit hesitation!

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Gazer: You're something important!

Harvey Herringbone laughs.

Harvey Herringbone: I'm not good at sharing RL information.

Harvey Herringbone: It's stupid, I know.

Gazer: It's completely fine. Of course it is.

Gazer: After all, we only met last night.

Gazer: Don't worry about it at all.

Gazer: Can you at least tell me what country you live in?

Harvey Herringbone: Of course. The UK. Gazer: Yay UK! lol Harvey Herringbone salutes.

Gazer: As you were.

Gazer: I wondered if you were in the US. Gazer: Since now would be... (checks) seven am for you now.

Gazer: I mean, if you were.

Harvey Herringbone: Which I'm not.

Gazer: lol Gazer: You know, Gazer: much as I love feeling you around me like this, Gazer: we should clear out of this dump.

Gazer: It makes me want to shower just looking at it.

Harvey Herringbone: You mentioned something about a beach hut last night?

Gazer: Yeah.

Gazer: I'll take you there soon enough.

Gazer: Only there's a place I'd like to visit en route.

Gazer: I think you might like it.

Gazer: Come with me?

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Harvey Herringbone: Of course.

She stood up, adopted a steady stand above me on the bed, then disappeared in a swirl of purple puffs. Which struck as faintly unexpected: for some reason, I thought her puffs were red.

Harvey Herringbone: You're still naked!

Gazer: Yes, lover.

Gazer: Naked in SL; naked in RL. Gazer: Spent. Drained. Raw. Gazer: All my civilisation stripped from me.

Gazer: And I don't want it back. Not just yet.

Gazer: I'm just a body and a soul right now.

Gazer: When I went for my walk I wore a skirt and no panties.

Gazer: I want you to fuck me like this, whilst I'm still empty.

Gazer: Come.

I took the TP she sent me. I rezzed in the middle of a long street of shops and businesses that looked like an avenue in New York City. Nobody else was around.

Gazer stood waiting for me at the entrance to a side alley, a couple of pose balls rezzed in front of her.

Harvey Herringbone: You want to fuck in an alleyway?

Gazer laughs.

Gazer: Nope.

Gazer: Not on this occasion, at least.

Gazer: I mean, for starters there's no-one around!

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Gazer: Where would be the fun in that?!

Harvey Herringbone laughs in RL. Harvey Herringbone: And grows a little.

Gazer: mmmmmmm Gazer: Hold that thought.

Harvey Herringbone: What are these pose balls then?

Gazer: Well you see Gazer: This is a special sim.

Gazer: The owner is very creative.

Harvey Herringbone: It's well built. The textures are very good.

Gazer: That's not what I mean.

Gazer: I mean, yes – the textures are very good.

Gazer: The textures are incredible.

Gazer: But Gazer: The street – the shops, the apartments Gazer: It's just a normal street, right?

Harvey Herringbone: Sure.

Gazer: So Gazer: A normal street with one very unusual thing.

Gazer: These balls.

I examined the balls more closely. They were called 'Flying Fuck'.

Harvey Herringbone: I'm intrigued.

Gazer: Good.

Gazer: It always amazes me – Gazer: in a world with no physics, no limitations – Gazer: why we still make love in contact with the ground.

Gazer: I mean, 156

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Gazer: don't get me wrong, Gazer: I do understand the need to root in reality.

Gazer: But why *only* that?

Gazer: Why not occasionally something different?

She jumped onto the pink ball and her avatar assumed a casual lean against the alley wall, the side of a shop selling lingerie for men.

Gazer: This animation took the sim owner a year to create.

Gazer: Click on the blue ball, lover.

I clicked on the blue ball. My avatar walked over to hers and put its right hand against the wall, leaned there so that our faces were inches apart. The left hand rose and stroked her face a little, then curled around the back of her neck, the thumb stroking the right-side line of her jaw. Harvey moved in and stole a kiss – a peck – then her right arm rose and her fingers spread through the hair at the back of his head; she pulled him back for more, a long, lovemakers' kiss that lasted a full minute.

Gazer: Don't try to RP this.

Gazer: Just watch.

Gazer: And touch yourself.

Gazer: Tell me about that.

Gazer: Tell me when you come.

A joint step back from the wall and, suddenly, we started to rise. The walls of the alleyway slipped slowly down past us and, meanwhile, the kiss continued. Our feet 157

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dangled, her right leg angled about ten degrees backwards at the knee. At the halfway mark, we started to spiral slowly, twisting through 720 degrees before coming to the top of the buildings. Their roofs fell below us, but the spiral continued. Upwards we flew at that slow, careful speed and then my avatar broke the kiss and moved smoothly around her body so that my arms were around her waist and her head leaning back over my shoulder.

The spin came to a gentle halt momentarily and we flew in that position into a long, backwards arc; Harvey underneath, Gazer on top; both of our backs to the ground. My left arm remaining locked around her waist, my right hand lowered and its fingers spread out across her mound. The third fingertip found its target and, in response, Gazer stretched her arms out in the direction of our travel and locked her hands behind my head.

The slow spin resumed, this time around the horizontal axis. Gradually, the spin turned into an increasingly wide spiral as our distance from the axis started to grow. This transition communicated somehow a loss of spatial focus. We traced wide circles in the sky as I stimulated her; Gazer's body started to writhe slightly against me. Suddenly, metres away from the edge of the sim, we dived sharply down.

Our bodies were momentarily separated. Gazer pulled her arms back to her side in a long, slow, breast stroke movement twisted to face me. She moved closer, wrapped her legs and then her arms around me and cradled my head against her neck. We were approaching the ground, but with feet only to spare we pulled out of the dive and shot back up into the sky. She lowered herself the required distance, penetrating herself on me.

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A crackle from the speakers brought me temporarily back to the world inside my apartment. Cath had turned her microphone on. I turned up the volume for her avatar, but she said nothing. I wondered if she'd hit the mic button by mistake, but then I heard her exhale jerkily and I understood. I plugged in my headphones and then her breathing was inside my head and as clear as if she were standing right behind me. I hovered over my own mic button. The sound of her blurred out the apartment once more, along with all notion of consequence. I clicked. And that was the temporary end to my hands' involvement with the computer.

Our upwards speed seemed to have slowed. As I watched, as Gazer moved herself up and down on me – her fingers wrapped around my shoulders for purchase – the precision to the flight appeared to dissolve and our direction became haphazard, erratic, unplanned. We dropped a little, then rose again, then flew in a slow diagonal towards the ground. Sometimes we spun a little.

Sometimes we rotated in a slow somersault of sex. Our movements became more frantic, more urgent. Harvey, clinging to Gazer's ass, met her rhythm and the speed of the intercourse became faster and faster. Suddenly, we were at one end of the street I had met her in, winding our way along it like a slow motion, out of control firework, ricochetting from building to building. But the scene in front of my eyes was losing out to the sounds inside my head. Cath's moaning was growing louder and louder, and it was making me lose control. Suddenly, my breath started coming in gasps as the climax rose within me, inflating inside like everything had to be pushed out and pushed out right away. At the sound of my onset, she 159

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cried out, “Oh God!” It was a wild, desperate sound and its effect on me was to magnify every sensation inside me. I gasped – an enormous sound that contained within it a sob let out – simultaneously cut away from every sense of self I possessed and at the same time astonished by my own volume and abandon. The orgasm seemed to push every muscle in my body to its maximum tension, a state of exertion I felt could destroy me, yet still it continued. And then it was gone, draining out of me like the water from a sink. I was suddenly dizzy and weak. I practically lay in my chair. I could hardly move.

A phrase came to me, something that Tresni had once said whilst we were still together: “You need someone who can destroy your consciousness.”

“You sounded so beautiful,” Cath said.

“Holy Christ,” I said, still breathless and forgetting that the microphone was still on. “This is insane.”

She laughed. “It is.”

I drew long, careful, cautious breaths. “You sound familiar somehow,” she said.

Reality flooded back like a hot wash. I sat up in my chair. I was about to type something in about not being ready for voice chat when I realised doing so right at that moment would probably only throw suspicion over an innocently made comment.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Your voice reminds me of someone, but I can't think who.”

“Out of context,” I said. “It'll come to you.”

“Maybe when I get my mind back.”

“Yeah.”

Back on the screen, our avatars lay sprawled naked at 160

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the end of the street like we'd been thrown of a nudists' car window. I had missed the last few seconds of the animation. There were a couple of other residents about now, looking at shops nearby. They looked like they were pretending not to have noticed us. I wondered how much of our joint climax they'd overheard. The thought of it made me stir again.

Enough. I thought. I turned off my mic and typed in: Harvey Herringbone: Oops.

Harvey Herringbone: People nearby listening.

Gazer laughs and blushes a little.

Gazer: Oh well.

Gazer: It's only lovemaking.

The word 'only' seemed completely non-applicable to the events of the last few minutes, but I said nothing.

She logged off after a few more minutes, promising to be back online in the evening. I couldn't decide if that was an appointment I wanted to keep or not. My brain felt saturated by sex. My skin felt numb from my isolation.

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13

Outside, the rain was now beating properly against the glass. I decided all the same to walk into town, I felt the need to be around people. I took the stairs and emerged from the main entrance into an ungodly downpour. My umbrella cut off my view of the sky, and it felt a little like I was looking at the world through a window, just like how I looked at Second Life on my PC. I walked around puddles edged with slowly rotting leaves, the last remaining relics of a long ago summer. A part of me thought I should be walking through the puddles, but a part of me just didn't want to get cold and wet again.

I reached my local high street, a mottled collection of outlets connected only by their adjoining walls. People tend just to visit the shops relevant to their worlds, so a game I sometimes play is to pick one at random and then visit the next ten consecutive stores. I closed my eyes and moved my head from left to right, silently singing to myself the words to 'Moon River'. When I got to the word, 'Huckleberry' I froze and opened my eyes. And found myself looking at a betting shop on the opposite side of the street. I crossed the road and went in.

There were TV screens showing races going on and sports news. There were advertisements showing young, attractive people rejoicing at a win; crisp notes fanned out 162

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in their well-manicured hands. The décor was modern: primary colours, clean lines, laminate flooring. The staff all wore the same green polo shirt, each with a silver name badge that dangled a little like a war medal. There were collections in display stands on the counter of A5 leaflets, one of which had the phrase, 'Fancy a flutter?' in a big, two line diagonal across the upper half. 'Flutter' is such an innocent word with which to entice the newbie gambler; a little bit of harmless fun; almost like enjoying the occasional chocolate bar. Men stood at waist-high ledges, filling out betting slips. A child in a pushchair left by the door was putting a cardboard picture book into her mouth.

The next door along was a hire-purchase electrical store. The walls featured pictures of young, attractive couples sitting together in a bright, ultra-modern living rooms on light coloured sofas in front of their brand new TVs. The shop itself seemed to be modelled on the décor in these pictures, with two sets of paired, facing sofas separated by glass-topped coffee tables where the sales advisers could take customers through their credit agreements. There were collections in display stands on the counter of A5 leaflets, one of which had the phrase, 'Own the easy way' in a big, two line diagonal across the upper half. I saw no information mentioned about the APR. The staff all wore the same beige coloured shirts.

The next door along was a large pound shop. A big sign on the window said, “Why not treat yourself today!” and showed a young, attractive couple laughing. The shop was as crowded with products as it was with people.

I squeezed down narrow aisles heaving with cheap deodorants, stationary, plastic toys, Christmas 163

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decorations, iPod cases, photo frames, packets of biscuits, bars of chocolate, boxes and boxes and boxes of cake. I came to a DVD stand full of action movies I'd never heard of. The staff all wore matching red shirts, the phrase, “How can help you?” emblazoned across the top of their name badges.

The next shop was a travel agent. Lots of pictures of young, attractive people in swimwear, stylishly doing nothing in colour saturated places.

The next outlet was a bank. Young, attractive, professional looking people stood in front of a white background and beside their new house/car/business. A big sign said in huge red letters, “6.9% APR” with a little asterisk.

I stopped in front of a shelf packed with boxes of mince pies in the supermarket six doors down from my starting point and thought about the sound Cath had made when she came. Where is the world I want to live in? I thought. It wasn't on this high street. But this was the place where all those services, all those manufacturing businesses, all those advertising campaigns – yes, my own role in it all was perfectly visible – made actual sense: the circulation of money. On these shoppers' purchases, jobs, dreams, the prosperity of the nation rested. This was what mattered: buying things. Outlet number seven was a charity shop. No picture fantasies; it was a blessed relief. I browsed the vinyl records and found a near perfect condition copy of a Peter Gabriel LP for a pound, which the elderly lady serving then ruined by insisting on removing the price sticker along with a good two square inches of the cover photograph. It didn't matter at all.

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Number eight was a coffee shop, a chain outlet. I bought a cappuccino and set up my laptop in a corner, found the wireless signal and logged on as Harold to SL. I watched a couple in their sixties, between the two of them perhaps three times my weight. They eased themselves into their chairs, first placing carefully on their tables their exotic coffees and slices of cake. I watched them sit and say more or less nothing to each other whilst I teleported to a strip joint. It made me feel secretly incongruous. It made me feel alive somehow. It made me feel useless and wretched, unable to find the thing in the air that for everyone around me was sufficient. I am, I thought to myself, what I am.

I sat in front of a dancer I'd chatted to a couple of times before. I doubted she'd remember me. I tipped her 50 lindens.

Sarah First: hmmmm....tippers choice ;) Harold Ettal: I get to choose something?

Sarah First: Well, typically the way this works is I get tipped and then I toss a piece of clothing.....I'm sure you've run into this concept before ;) Harold Ettal has observed this phenomena, yes :) Sarah First: Now it is a mutually beneficial relationship. #1 I get tipped, #2 you get to see some skin, #3 it generally entices others to tip.

Sarah First: So it works out for everyone.

Harold Ettal: Sounds like a good system.

Sarah First: It is amazingly efficient.

Harold Ettal: In that case, I choose the bra.

Sarah First: I rather thought you might.

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The couple I was watching appeared to have said absolutely nothing to each other for the entire duration of my brief interchange with Sarah. The woman had her back to me. The guy seemed to be looking at some vague point over her right shoulder. Sarah's bra disappeared.

She wrote about throwing it in my direction and, dutifully, I entered a few words in reply. What does one do with a bra thrown at you that's witty, intelligent and slightly insecure (but not in a sexually unattractive way)?

I wondered. I wrote that I contemplated putting it on my head as makeshift neko ears then thought better of it because I thought nekos looked ridiculous. Somewhere in the world, Sarah's driver typed in a laugh and told me she was making a mental note never to put her tail on when I was nearby and in a tipping mood. The guy on the table I was watching said something that looked like it contained about seven words. The woman opposite him nodded.

I finished my coffee and left. I decided I couldn't face the two remaining shops and made for home.

On the way there, Ben phoned me. For a moment, I contemplated ignoring the call.

“Gerry, this is a result. I haven't seen her this happy in months. I can't thank you enough.” He sounded completely genuine.

“You're welcome,” I said, a little flatly because I didn't want what I felt to be a necessary response to an earnest thank you to be interpreted as endorsement of the whole thing in the first place. I didn't want to appear to be saying, “Yes, Ben; you were right all along.”

“Even if this is just a short-term thing,” he said, 166

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perhaps picking up on my reticence, “it's still fabulous.

But I still think this is good for both of you.”

“My head is spinning from this, Ben,” I said, not meaning it in a good way.

“I know. Isn't she amazing?” he said.

“I mean I can't make sense of it. It's so intense. I wish I was at work today.”

“You're experiencing life at a new level; it's just the novelty. You'll get used to it I promise. In any case,” he added, “it's not as though you're doing anything you haven't done before.”

I elected not to tell him about the voice experience that morning. He was far too close to my private life as it was. “I've never done anything like this with someone I actually know.” I said. “'Know' is stretching it a little, don't you think?” he said, deliberately missing my point. “I mean, yes, you know her... but it's not as if you know know her. I wouldn't exactly call the two of you friends.”

“You're arguing semantics,” I told him. “It's still a deception and I'm massively uncomfortable with it.”

On the other end of the line, Benjamin sighed. I waited for the riposte, the persuasion, the aggression disguised as just-wanting-a-good-outcome-for-all.

Instead, there was a pause and then he said, “I don't want you to feel this way about it, Gerry. And I know what you're like. This is going to eat away at you, I can see that. And there's so much good that could come out of this. Okay. We have to address this.

“You know,” he continued, “I wasn't going to say this, but Cath said something to me a couple of hours ago that stuck in my mind. I was dismissive of it at the time 167

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to her, but maybe we should give it some thought.”

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said, 'What would you say if I wanted to meet Harvey in real life?' She said it like a hypothetical question. Now don't panic. I of course said I thought it would be a bad idea. I went over the agreement we have about not crossing the SL/RL line.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “She really asked that?”

“She did.”

“But she just asked that? You make it sound like she was asking what you thought about going to the movies tonight.”

“I think we both knew it was a bit more significant a question than that,” he said.

“But she's effectively asking your permission to commit adultery,” I cried. “Jesus Christ! You don't just ask that sort of thing in passing. You don't actually ask that sort of thing at all!”

“Let's just be clear on this,” he said calmly, “before we actually get to what my own views on it are: Cath wasn't saying this as some sort of veiled threat; she wasn't asking, 'What would you say if I told you I was thinking of leaving you for Harvey?' Our marriage is solid, Gerry; and I mean solid. What she was asking was how I would feel about her seeing someone alongside the marriage.

There's a big difference between the two.”

“It's still adultery,” I insisted.

“And seeing someone in Second Life whilst you're married isn't?” he asked.

“Okay – yes it is. That's not my point.”

“If you're only going to stick to legal definitions then this is going to be harder to explain than I thought,” he 168

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said. “Try to think outside the box here, Gerry. This is about discovering something that works. You're talking about this like I'm casually suggesting the end of all civilisation. I'm still pro equal rights and against discrimination. I'm still in favour of fair trade and against the sexualisation of childhood. But just because society's decided boys should like blue and girls should like pink that doesn't make it some sort of Newtonian law of the universe. At the end of the day, people just make all this stuff up and convince others to agree with it. Why is a pen called a 'pen' and not a 'shit'? Why do we all take a day off on Sunday? Come on! You know this stuff better than I do!”

“You're arguing that everything's a socially defined construct,” I said, “and I agree. But just because something's a construct doesn't make it inherently bad.

To assume that would be a construct in and of itself. We might all ultimately be choosing to stop at red traffic lights but that doesn't make it a bad thing to do so. Just because monogamy's a socially agreed construct doesn't make it a bad thing.”

“I'm not arguing one size fits all,” he said, “just that a single word does not constitute a counter-argument.”

“For God's sake, Benjamin,” I said wearily.

“Terminology is shorthand. The word represents an idea.”

“An unexamined idea!” he declared.

“An idea examined very intensely over hundreds of years.”

“Largely by those who have a vested interest in maintaining it. There are plenty of people who try polygamy, Gerry.”

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“Try being the key word, here,” I said. “If it's such a great option then why hasn't it caught on?”

“Because it's inconvenient to societal structure and because it's misrepresented as oppressive!” he said.

“What do most people think about when they hear of this concept? They think of a guy married to several women is what they think of – one for each day of the week. Not a woman married to several guys. Not two men and two women in a loving and intimate relationship with each other.”

I would have rubbed my temples except I had my umbrella in one hand and my phone in the other. “You're turning this into a debate I have no investment in,” I said.

“You're trying to make out there's nothing out of the ordinary about a wife seeing her husband's friend-” “Best friend, Gerry.”

“Friend, best friend; whatever. You're trying to make out it's perfectly everyday, when actually what you're suggesting is massive!”

“Of course it's massive! Of course it's not everyday!

Who the fuck cares if it's not everyday? All I'm saying is that this is fifty per cent emotion and fifty per cent convention, and the convention half is entirely an illusion.

But look,” he added quickly, “this, first and foremost, is about coming clean with Cath, because that's what you need to happen. That's what you want. Everything else is secondary and at this stage purely hypothetical.”

“You just said she raised the idea of seeing me in RL,” I protested. “I was assuming by that you didn't mean she meant through binoculars.”

“I told you that because it's a possible opening for getting the two of you together. It's an opportunity. But 170

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Gerry, she doesn't want to meet you; she wants to meet Harvey. When she realises it's you she'll probably go off the idea of anything further altogether. You know I don't mean that personally, mate; you must know also that what I'm saying is true. She has a fantasy image in her head: real life never lives up to those sorts of images, however good the flesh and blood person actually is. Because she knows you – a little – there's just no way she's going to be able to maintain what she thinks about Harvey in her head once she knows Harvey is Gerry.”

“Right,” I said.

“And in any case, all she was floating was a hypothetical idea. A thought, Gerry – that's all. A thought that popped into her head whilst she was still recovering from fucking you. What I think I'm going to tell her is I've been turning the idea over in my head now I've had a little time to get used to it and have decided it would be okay, so long as precautions are taken. The moment I say that, she's more than likely going to tell me the whole thing was just a momentary fancy and she's forgotten all about it.”

A gust of wind blew my umbrella suddenly forward and a stream of water poured off it onto my neck. “By the way,” I said, “I could do with my coat back.”

“What? Oh, sure. Are you okay?”

“Absolutely.” I decided he was right. I decided this was the best way. His logic was as inescapable as the trickle of cold water running down my back. I knew this would mean the end of a momentary bubble of amazingness that suddenly seemed like a good and meaningful thing. So be it. This time the previous week none of it had even started and life had seemed okay back 171

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then. “So you're going to tell her it's me?” I asked.

“You want me to tell her before you meet?” he asked.

“That's not what we're talking about?”

“I was thinking I'd tell her you were interested in meeting and then if she went ahead with it she'd find out when she saw you.”

“Are you kidding me? That's going to be terrible!

Why put her through that, and in a public place? Why put me through that? Just tell her. Get it over with.”

He paused, then said, “Okay. Listen, I'll do it tomorrow morning. Let's leave tonight alone. I'll bring your coat over this evening. No wait – you should come over and get it: that way you can see her again.”

“What's the point of that?” I asked.

“Because you never know. She enjoyed having you over last night. Let's not just assume the worst here.”

“Why are you so keen for the worst not to happen?”

“Because nothing's changed, Gerry. She still wants what you have. You still wants what she has. I still want both of you to be happy and fulfilled. You two being able to be with each other within the safety and protection of everything the three of us already have would still be a good thing. Maybe it's not going to work out, but it might!”

“Why are you okay with me sleeping with your wife?” I cried. A couple passing, huddled together under a single umbrella, turned their heads.

“Gerry,” he said quietly; I had to strain to hear him above the noise of the rain and traffic, “put yourself in my position. She's considering seeing someone outside of the marriage. I know you better than I know my own brother. I know that she'll be safe with you. Imagine me 172

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having to contemplate this with someone I don't know.

Some guy she met in SL who could be anyone; who could be anywhere. She disappears off to God knows where some day to hook up with some psychopath that's lulled her into a false sense of security and the next time I see her she's in a body bag. Can't you see that if this is something that needs to happen then I'd far rather it was with you?”

“But won't you feel jealous?” I asked.

“Jealousy is a relative emotion, Gerry. I'm jealous of the guy next door for his BMW, but I don't let that become an obstacle to my ability to function. I'm not saying I won't experience any feelings at all over you fucking her. But so long as I know she's coming home to me then everything beyond that is manageable. And that's looking at it negatively. There's so much that could potentially come out of this. Can you imagine the two of us making love to her together? Can you imagine how amazing that would be? This could be the doorway for us to intimate experiences most people never get to experience in their whole lives. Fuck jumping out of a plane as something to do before you die: I want the thrill of threesome! I want the normal everyday world to be ripped away from me; I want to be pushed out of my comfort zone and into a place on the edge where I can still be safe, where I can still lose myself completely. I want the three of us to be lying on a bed exhausted, fucked out of our minds, unable to comprehend the sheer fucking unbelievableness of what we've just been through together; unable to express sufficiently the sheer fucking gratitude we have for being alive in that moment. My God, Gerry; is that such an inexplicable thing? Can you 173

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really not relate to that possibility? Are you really trying to tell me that given that opportunity you'd turn it down?”

“This is my life we're talking about,” I said. “how do you know I'm not going to meet someone else and want a monogamous relationship with them?”

“Of course that's going to happen!” he cried. “I have no plan here, Gerry. It's not like I see the three of us growing old together. This is a take-it-as-it-happens thing: there's no way it could possibly be anything else.

Each experience a gift, and who knows what tomorrow will bring? There's no better way to experience intimacy.

There's no better way to value every moment that you have. 'Live each day as though it's your last.' Live!”

“Right,” I said. I knew I should protest, but I couldn't think of any further argument to make. And I did want what he was describing. I did. I dropped my umbrella to one side for a moment and held my face up to the grey sky. The rain felt greasy against my skin. I felt like a fly, sharing only physical space with people, but living in a different world. This will not happen, I told myself.

Whatever he says, it's too preposterous.

I knew I should protest, but thoughts about the night to come were already forming. One last night, then. One last night of seeing her in the flesh and looking forward to later intimacy. I knew it was a selfish, greedy desire, but the knowledge that wrongs would be exposed within twenty-four hours allowed me to rationalise the guilt to something manageable. “Should I come over at sixthirty?” I said.

“Six-thirty is fine.”

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14

I stood at the doorway to Ben's house and shut my eyes. I listened to the other noises going on in this quiet little cul-de-sac. I heard plates being washed. I heard a muffled stereo playing Lady GaGa. I heard the Strictly Come Dancing theme tune float out of a number of just ajar windows. Nice to see you; to see you: nice. No different from a Saturday night thirty years ago. I wondered what Sir Bruce would make of this. I visualised my younger self, sitting with his parents in front of The Generation Game. And grandparents, because that's where we'd have been on a Saturday night.

I smelled my grandfather's pipe smoke. I saw how it hung in the air in layers. I tasted the cream crackers and cheddar cheese my grandmother organised for us at eight o'clock, about when Juliet Bravo came on.

That little boy would probably have been starting to look forward to Christmas about now. I tried to recall details and, of course, could remember nothing.

Memories like that were long gone, buried with the boy who no longer was.

I opened my eyes and knocked on the door.

Benjamin let me in.

“Cath's in the shower,” he said.

“I only came for my raincoat,” I told him.

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“Come in anyway. Do you want a coffee? I was just about to make some.” We went through into the kitchen.

The door to the downstairs bathroom was open by about a foot and I could hear the sound of the shower from within.

“I'll wait in the lounge,” I said, looking anxiously at the door.

“Don't be an idiot,” he said. He switched on the kettle. “Thinking about it,” he said, “that coat might well be in there.” He went over to the bathroom door, pushed it open and went in. I couldn't not look. I saw briefly her figure behind the frosted glass screen. Embarrassment overcame me and I moved to the other side of the kitchen where I couldn't see any more. But straight away I wished I'd stayed put.

“Did you see that coat Gerry leant me?” I heard Ben say. “I could have sworn I left it here.”

“Nope,” she shouted above the hiss of the shower.

“Oh wait, didn't you wear it into work yesterday?”

The door got pushed back to its ajar position. The shower stopped. Silence took over.

“Fuck, you're right,” Ben said. “I forgot about that.”

A short silence.

“Ow!” she cried. I heard Ben chuckle. “Keep your...” she said; then, “Benjamin!”

His voice turned into a low murmur and I couldn't hear what he said. “Yes,” she said. Then, “mmhmm.”

Then there was silence for about a minute.

Then I heard her moan. It was a low sound, a slowly released letter O. In the mirror opposite, I saw my face go red as I realised what was happening. I took a step towards the living room then stopped, hesitated, as if 176

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freeze-framed mid-stride. I turned to face the dresser behind me and looked at a bill tacked there, as though it would look like I'd was studying it if anyone came out – unaware of other things going on. I looked towards the bathroom door. I looked back at the bill. I looked towards the living room once more.

She moaned again, a longer, louder sound. Suddenly, the kettle clicked off and there was utter silence in the kitchen. I became aware of my breathing: short, slightly panicked breaths. I tried to breath more quietly. I took a tentative step towards the living room again to see how quietly I could move. I thanked God the kitchen was tiled and there was nothing below my feet that could conceivably squeak.

“Oh yes....” she said. “Yes... right there... yesssssss... mmmmmmmm....” The pitch of that last sound was a tone or two higher than the first two moans and gently rose further across the length of its utterance.

You cannot stay here, I told myself, meaning in the spot that I was standing in; meaning the kitchen. I crept across the tiles and made it to the living room, sat quietly in the armchair nearest to the kitchen entrance, but now out of sight of the bathroom door. I leaned back in the chair, shut my eyes. I tried to relax. I listened.

Cath's moans turned into gasps, became higher still, became shorter. Then they became sharp exhales with immediate inhales, breath forced out and then sucked straight back in, respiratory punctuation marks across the silence of sex. I heard what sounded like a mostly-empty plastic bottle tumble and skitter across the bathroom tiles.

Two sets of exhale-inhale. Breath held. Cath cried out, “Oh Christ!”

And something covered in skin hit a 177

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smooth surface. I could almost hear her muscles tensing.

I felt myself leaking and crossed my legs to hide my erection from the empty room. A huge, noisy exhale and an inhale. Then a much longer exhale. Muscles relaxing.

Tension draining. Her breathing became more regular I heard Ben say, “Stand up. Face the wall.” I heard his belt buckle tinkle. A short silence, then a joint sigh of satisfaction. After a minute or so I started to hear skin slapping against skin at a frequency of about two times per second. Slap slap slap slap slap. But very quickly it picked up. Ben started to grunt. Whilst the image of what was to come made me squirm in anticipation, the sheer speed of it all slightly appalled me. His own pitch started to rise and the frequency passed the point of no return. Slapslapslapslapslap. He gasped, “I'm gonna cum I'm gonna cum” and I heard body movement. Then a long, urgent exhale. Then another. Then silence.

“Looks like you might need another shower,” Ben said as the belt buckle tinkled again. “Mmhmm,” she replied and laughed. I heard a bare ass being smacked. I heard the shower being turned back on.

Presently, Ben came into the living room.

“You are something else,” I said to him.

“It's just a shame you couldn't watch,” he replied.

“Maybe next time.” He leaned over me and brushed my shoulder. “You've got a hair there.” He picked it off, went back into the kitchen, came back with two mugs of coffee.

“So I'm afraid I left your raincoat at work,” he said, sitting in the chair opposite. “I'll get it for you Monday.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Sorry about that.”

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“Don't worry about it.”

“Not exactly a wasted trip, eh?” I said nothing. The shower got turned off again.

“So I'm supposed to just sit here now?” I said.

“Sure you are,” he replied. “You only just got here.”

I heard the bathroom door opening. “Honey,” he called, “Gerry's here. Make sure you're decent. If you want to,” he added. She came into the living room, a towel wrapped around her that reached halfway down her thighs. “Hey Gerry!” she said and smiled. “Please excuse my state of undress!”

“Not a problem,” I said hoarsely and coughed. She skipped past me and into the hallway, up the stairs.

“You, um, want to use the bathroom?” Ben said.

I tried to avoid looking where he was looking. I sat up a little in my chair. “No thanks,” I replied.

“Go in there now,” he said, “and you'll still be able to smell her.”

“It's fine,” I said. But I wanted to. I really wanted to.

“Go on,” he said. “Let it out.”

I got up. “I think I'll be off.”

“Sit down,” he said. “You only just got here.”

“Aren't you going out?”

“This guy that Cath works with,” he said. “It's his fortieth. We won't stay there long. Sit down.”

“You realise,” I said, “that this time tomorrow this will all be over.”

“Perhaps it will,” he said, “and perhaps it won't.

We'll just have to wait and see.”

“I don't know if I want to log in tonight.”

“Of course you do. If it is all over this time tomorrow then tonight will be your last night with her. Will you 179

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please sit down.”

I sat down.

“Maybe you should talk to her about RL meetings tonight. I mean, mention it,” he said.

“Why?” “She already has the idea in her head. Why not give it a little bit more momentum?”

“What time will you tell her tomorrow morning?” I asked.

“I'll decide that tomorrow morning,” he replied. “I'll text you if you want.”

“Yes,” I said. We sat in silence for a few seconds.

He looked suddenly old and anxious. Or was it fear I saw on his face? Or was it age? He saw me looking and smiled. It looked forced.

“Isn't this a whirlwind?” he said.

“Even if you didn't tell her it was me,” I commented, “she probably still wouldn't agree to a meet. It's all too fast.”

“Maybe,” he replied. “But another way of looking at it might be that she's so caught up in you right now that seeing you is all she can think of.”

“You mean,” I said, “before she has the time to think straight?”

He smiled again. “That wasn't quite the way I had it in my mind, but I suppose that captures the essence of it.

The heart is an impulsive organ.”

“Is this really,” I asked, “an affair of the heart?”

“It could become one,” he said.

“For the record,” I said, “this still all feels wrong to me.”

“By this time tomorrow,” he said, “you might just 180

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have fucked her for real. Guilt free. Just think about that.” He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

“Who was the last woman you screwed? In real life, I mean?”

I stiffened slightly. “None of your business,” I said.

“I'm only asking for a name,” he said.

“No-one you know,” I told him, which was factually correct (even more so with the insertion of a comma).

“When, then?” he asked. “How long is it since you got properly laid?”

I sighed and stood up. “Here's something you might like to consider in your visualisations,” I told him. “The more and more I think about it, the more and more I realise that it's having to share her with you that's turning me off the idea of a relationship with Cath. I don't like you in my personal space, Benjamin. No matter how good she is, there's no getting around the 'package deal' issue that we have here and its complete unattractiveness to me.”

I went to the front door and let myself out, shouting out goodbye to Cath from the foot of the stairs on the way. She called out in response. For some reason, I'd imagined I'd see Ben chuckling when I looked back through the closing door. Instead, he looked pale. He looked angry. But he didn't look angry with me. I suppose I'd have expected to see anger with me as a stare in my direction, something quickly averted when he saw my eyes turn towards him. Instead, he was looking to one side at some nonexistent point; a direction of thought that intuitively appeared to me inward rather than outward.

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himself.

182

15

At just after ten that night Gazer appeared online. By eleven, we were spooning in her bed in her beach hut, the first of the evening's orgasms behind us. “My third climax of the day,” she told me, thinking I'd only been present for two of them. Our thoughts turned towards the bubble of lust we were immersed in. It felt good to be examining it, if a little tentatively. She told me she didn't want it to end and was dreading the approach of Monday.

I reflected that exposure to a little normality might do us both a bit of good.

Gazer: Have you ever met up with someone in RL who you were in a relationship with in SL? Harvey Herringbone: Yes. Once.

Gazer: How did it go?

Harvey Herringbone: Badly.

Gazer: Oh no :( Gazer: What happened.

Harvey Herringbone: I don't really want to talk about it.

Gazer: Oh, I'm sorry. Of course.

I sighed.

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Harvey Herringbone: Wait.

Harvey Herringbone: That was a knee-jerk reaction.

Harvey Herringbone: I shouldn't be dismissive like that.

Harvey Herringbone: I've never spoken to anyone about that meeting.

Harvey Herringbone: Other than with the person concerned.

Harvey Herringbone: It's just...

Harvey Herringbone: It's very personal.

Gazer: I understand.

Gazer: You don't have to say anything about it at all.

Gazer: I keep having to remind myself we've only known each other for two nights.

Gazer: I feel so close to you.

Harvey Herringbone: I feel the same way.

Harvey Herringbone: But, in truth Harvey Herringbone: we really don't know each other.

Gazer: Yes. Gazer: It's true.

Harvey Herringbone: We all have secrets in here.

Gazer: What do you mean?

Harvey Herringbone: I mean, we chose what to present.

Harvey Herringbone: And what not to present.

Gazer: True.

Harvey Herringbone: So in RL, I am nothing like as sexually accomplished as I present myself to be in SL. Harvey Herringbone: Which became an issue in that RL meeting.

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Gazer: Oh. The word hung there, dangling its ambiguity for a full thirty seconds. Was it an 'oh' that indicated surprise?

Was it an 'oh' that indicated disappointment? Was that 'oh' the beginning of her loss of interest?

Gazer: That sounds like it was painful.

Harvey Herringbone: It was.

Gazer: Were you in love with her?

Harvey Herringbone: Utterly.

Gazer: I have to know more. Did she reject you because of your inexperience.

Harvey Herringbone: No. Harvey Herringbone: She rejected me because I allowed my inexperience to become an obstacle.

Harvey Herringbone: In that moment, I became fixated on what I wasn't, rather than what I could become.

Harvey Herringbone: It's the biggest regret of my life.

Gazer: I'm so sorry.

Harvey Herringbone: Well Harvey Herringbone: it was an important lesson.

Harvey Herringbone: I learned a lot from it.

Harvey Herringbone: I became a better person as a result.

Harvey Herringbone: So, in some ways, I value it.

Harvey Herringbone: But if I could turn back time and change my mistake...

Gazer: You would do so in a heartbeat.

Harvey Herringbone: Yes. Gazer: Are you still in love with her now?

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Harvey Herringbone: Well it's funny you should say that.# Harvey Herringbone: I was pondering that exact question myself only earlier today.

Harvey Herringbone: I mean, to all practical extents and purposes, no I'm not.

Harvey Herringbone: I've moved on.

Harvey Herringbone: But largely that is as a result of simply not thinking about her any more.

Harvey Herringbone: That person who I was is still inside me.

Harvey Herringbone: But I pay him no attention.

Harvey Herringbone: And the more I get into the habit of paying him no attention, Harvey Herringbone: the more I forget he's there.

Gazer: Yes. Gazer: I think that's pretty much how we all go about dealing with the loss of those sorts of relationship.

Gazer: We reach the point where we realise Gazer: that however unthinkable it is that the relationship has come to an end Gazer: it has, nonetheless, come to an end.

Gazer: A great wrong has happened.

Gazer: But in the end we just learn to accept it.

Gazer: And we grow as a result.

Gazer: We see the universe better.

Gazer: All of its imperfections.

Gazer: We stop believing that life is meant to be perfect.

Gazer: We stop believing in fairness.

Gazer: If we're *really* perceptive...

Gazer: we think about – and maybe even achieve – 186

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affinity with those imperfections.

Harvey Herringbone: What do you mean?

Gazer: I mean...

She paused. Gathered her thoughts. For a full minute I saw 'Gazer is typing' in blue underneath that last remark.

Gazer: I mean we learn to embrace life as it really is.

Gazer: Treat every moment as special.

It intrigued me how compatible her remarks were with Ben's. And yet, coming from her, they felt comfortable, acceptable – true, even – in a way that they didn't feel coming from him. I wondered why that was. For a moment, no answer came. And then it did. I realised that Gazer was just putting thoughts into words; Ben, on the other hand, was using these views as an instrument of persuasion. Why is this so important to him? I again asked myself. Why is it so important he convince me?

Gazer: Has your previous RL meeting put you against doing anything like it again.

Harvey Herringbone: At the time, I swore I'd never do anything like it again.

Harvey Herringbone: But that was just the reasoning of grief and anger and fear.

Harvey Herringbone: One of my biggest errors of judgement Harvey Herringbone: was not telling her about my inexperience before we met up.

Harvey Herringbone: Not so much because that falsely raised her expectations 187

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Harvey Herringbone: but because it falsely raised my own Harvey Herringbone: of myself.

Harvey Herringbone: The moment when I realised it *would not* all be in RL just the way it had been in SL Harvey Herringbone: was the moment when my confidence collapsed.

Harvey Herringbone: I was embarrassed – felt humiliated – in a way I've never felt before in my life.

Harvey Herringbone: I *thought* in my relationship with her that I'd finally found it within myself to trust another person intimately.

Harvey Herringbone: But the reality is I trusted her no-where near enough.

Harvey Herringbone: Which is where it gets really painful.

Harvey Herringbone: Because, in fact, she was totally okay with it. She was totally okay with it all.

Harvey Herringbone: But I couldn't see past my own sense of humiliation.

Harvey Herringbone: I went blind.

Harvey Herringbone: And I turned what could have gone on to become the greatest turning point in my life Harvey Herringbone: into my greatest failure.

Gazer: Oh baby.

Gazer: You mustn't beat yourself up so much.

Gazer: You really mustn't.

Harvey Herringbone: Oh, it's perfectly okay.

Harvey Herringbone: Worse things happen to people 188

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every minute of the day somewhere.

Harvey Herringbone: All I'm saying is...

Harvey Herringbone: That's why I don't much like to talk about it.

Gazer: Understood.

Gazer: So...

Gazer tries to figure a way of maintaining the topic of RL meetings without reactivating your grief.

Harvey Herringbone laughs.

Harvey Herringbone: Sorry about that.

Gazer: Oh no, it's good to talk about these things.

Gazer: Please don't apologise.

Gazer: But I *am* curious to know what you think about RL meetings *now*.

Harvey Herringbone wonders where this is going...

Gazer laughs.

Gazer: idk Gazer: It's crazy, I know.

Gazer: Utter lunacy, really.

Gazer: Obviously, hypothetical.

Harvey Herringbone: Obviously.

Gazer: Whereabouts are you in the UK? Gazer: If you don't mind me asking, of course.

What was I to say? But actually, twelve hours from now, the truth would be out anyway. I threw caution to the wind. It felt good. I felt the end of the deception close at hand.

Harvey Herringbone: Easthampton.

Gazer: OMG Gazer: You're kidding me?!

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Harvey Herringbone: Nope.

Gazer: That's where I am too!

And now I wanted to type, 'I know' and get it over and done with. Instead, I tried to think of an ambiguous phrase that would acknowledge the unlikelihood but not make out I was surprised.

Harvey Herringbone: It's a small world :) Gazer: You're not wrong.

Gazer: This is unbelievable. Which part?

Harvey Herringbone: Townbrook.

Gazer: Good God. Gazer: That's about ten minutes' drive from me.

Gazer: I can't take this in.

Gazer: This is amazing.

Gazer: omg Gazer: We could meet tomorrow morning for coffee!

My stomach felt suddenly like it was being held in a headlock.

Harvey Herringbone: Are you serious? Do you think that's really wise?

Gazer: Listen Gazer: I know it's crazy... but why not?

Gazer: We'll make it a public place.

Gazer: We'll use our SL names with each other.

Gazer: At the end of the meeting we just walk away.

Gazer: We won't know anything more about each other than we do now, except for what we look like.

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You might be surprised, I thought.

Gazer: No pressure. No expectation.

Gazer: A coffee shop; somewhere busy.

Harvey Herringbone: Persky's.

Gazer: Perfect!

And it really was. Lay the deception to rest in the place where it had been born.

But maybe we wouldn't get to tomorrow before the truth found its own way out...

Gazer: omg – does Max know you're in Easthampton?

This is it, I thought. This is where she unknowingly herds me into a corner. The easiest thing to have done would have been to lie. But if I did lie, that would hardly be consistent with the truth I wanted to tell her the next day, that the whole deception the whole way through had been like forcing myself to write poetry with my left hand.

Who are you kidding? I thought to myself. Look at the evidence. Where are any cracks going to be apparent to her retrospective analysis? My very presence in her living room that evening, there to see her towel-clad body bounce past me only hours after I'd heard her come, would send a chill down her spine when she thought about it. And then would she suspect I'd been there just minutes earlier, listening at the bathroom door? Would she wonder if I'd peeked? Would she imagine me watching her body convulsing and then Benjamin's semen 191

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splashing across her skin? Would she imagine me masturbating whilst I watched? Would her skin crawl at the thought?

How much, then, would I actually tell her? I realised that my longing for the deception to be over was utter naïvety. Owning up to being Harvey was one thing; giving detail of the depth of my collusion with Ben was quite another. If I was to tell her I'd been reluctant to accept the deceit, did that then mean I had to describe the extent to which Ben had been persuasive? So did I portray myself as the weakling talked into into a lie he ultimately was incapable of keeping or did I pretend I'd leapt at the opportunity – seized the moment – and lived a causal lie that was just the opening of a door to something which otherwise might not have been seeable?

To what extent did I reveal my own discomfort, if the discomfort itself painted this act as one of dirty desire rather than the healthy business of embracing life? In which case, more lying. Did I respond to her surprise at the revelation with a knowing grin or did I fall on my knees and beg forgiveness? Did I tell her I'd been listening to her and Benjamin in the bathroom? Did I tell her it was me she'd been with on Wednesday evening and not her husband, and that on Friday evening – only yesterday – I'd hardened at the touch of her hand against my arm, and mentally undressed and fucked her whilst we'd eaten our home-delivered pizza?

Wednesday night. It felt like months ago. 72 hours' worth of maintained deceit. What would she say if the whole truth were revealed? What would she accuse me of? What words would she find to describe me and how would they be delivered? I imagined hot cappuccino 192

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thrown in my face and the harsh sound of her chair being pushed suddenly back over the tiles in Persky's as she stood violently up. I imagined heads turning. I imagined insults shouted. I imagined Cath making for the door and then stopping, turning, returning to deliver a palm across my cheek. I imagined the worst. I always imagine the worst.

All these things flicked through my mind in the few seconds that I left her question to me unanswered. For a brief moment, I contemplated a different lie altogether.

What if, I asked myself, I make out it's as much a surprise to me as it is to her? What if I pretended Max/Ben had simply introduced her as an SL friend? Could that work?

And, if it could, could I live with this new deception if the relationship somehow continued?

Lying. More lying. It occurred to me that in all probability I'd just stumbled across the very plan that Ben himself was forming. “I've told her,” he would say, perhaps in a telephone call. “And I told her you didn't know who she was when I introduced you. So she thinks you have no idea. I thought it through last night and decided this would be the best way. It's obvious, really.

Think about it: the key deception involved her not knowing it was you, and that's now out. You don't have to pretend you don't know her any more. You're free to explore each other however you want. That's all that really matters. There's no reason to own up to having known before today: that would satisfy only your conscience, Gerry; that would be about meeting your needs and not hers.” Yes. A white lie to the benefit of all, easily justifiable in the name of discovered happiness.

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to appear a tiny misdirection, he would reason. A minuscule absence of truth of negligible actual consequence. Your clothing is still downloading. Others can see you normally.

And there – right there – was the incongruity that ran through all of this: Benjamin's constant use of the word 'intimacy' and truth being conspicuous in this construct only via its absence. There was no true intimacy without revelation. Why did he not understand that?

It occurred to me that what I wanted with Cath was more than Benjamin was capable of comprehending.

Twenty seconds had passed since Gazer's question.

Finally, I answered it.

Harvey Herringbone: Yes. Gazer: Have you met up in RL? Harvey Herringbone: Yes. Here we go, I thought. I felt the meeting walls behind me.

We were maybe a couple of questions away. I waited for her to put the pieces together. The coffee shop scenario faded out of probability and a part of me was relieved.

Gazer: Oh. Gazer: So I'm guessing then you know that I'm married to him in RL? Suddenly, I realised what was blocking her view of the truth: her own sense of deception, one I'd given no thought to whatsoever. It had never occurred to me she didn't realise I knew she was married and the absence of 194

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references to this I'd interpreted just as her assumption I'd been told about this from the start.

Harvey Herringbone: Yes. Harvey Herringbone: I didn't realise you didn't know I knew.

Gazer: I didn't.

Harvey Herringbone: Is that a problem?

Gazer: Actually, no.

Gazer: It's not a problem at all.

Gazer: In fact, I feel a little relieved.

Gazer: Just now, I was thinking how I'd have to tell you if we met tomorrow morning.

Gazer: I mean...

Gazer: This past 24 hours has been amazing...

Gazer: But if we're to start something properly...

Gazer: It has to be predicated on truth.

That was the moment when I fell in love with Catherine Burton.

Harvey Herringbone smiles and feels something new towards you.

Gazer: omg Gazer: I feel so naked in front of you right now.

Harvey Herringbone: Yes baby.

Harvey Herringbone: So...

Harvey Herringbone: Tomorrow we will lay down our truths in front of each other and see where that leaves us.

Gazer: Are you nervous?

Harvey Herringbone: Yes, I am. Very.

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Harvey Herringbone: There's a very real possibility you might not like what you see.

Gazer: I'm not going to be naïve about this.

Gazer: I want to be open right now and say I understand that the chemistry might not be there when I see you.

Gazer: That is the reality of relationship.

Gazer: Inexplicable and yet exquisite.

Gazer: Cruel and yet somehow beautiful.

Gazer: We don't have enough shared experience to be able to overcome that.

Gazer: Which is a reason why it might be better to put off any RL meeting.

Gazer: But I'm going to go with my instinct on this one.

Gazer: Which is that we should do this now.

Gazer: If the spark isn't there, so be it.

Gazer: This weekend will then become an amazing memory, one which I will treasure regardless.

Gazer: That will be the worst-case scenario, I promise you.

Gazer: I accept this, and am now going to put it aside so that I can hope for something better.

Gazer: Can you do that too?

Harvey Herringbone: Yes, I can.

Gazer: Good.

Gazer turns to face you and puts her hand on your cheek.

Gazer: I'm so wet irl.

Harvey Herringbone pulls you into him so you can feel him hard against your belly.

Gazer: Ready?

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Harvey Herringbone: Ready.

Gazer: This might be the last time, baby.

Gazer: Turn your mic on. I'm going to make you come.

Gazer: And I want to hear it.

197

SUNDAY

16

We agreed on nine o'clock. I got up at six-thirty and paced for an hour. I was at Persky's by half past eight.

Cath arrived fifteen minutes later.

When she entered, her eyes scanned the room in the same way that Sally's had when I'd stood at the bar and watched her enter the hotel foyer. My heart decided it wanted to stamp its feet with impatience whilst I waited for her search to find me. I knew what I was looking for, the sequence of facial expressions I anticipated I'd rehearsed a thousand times during my trek back and forth across my living room earlier that morning: a look of recognition; a look of surprise at the coincidence; possibly a brief smile; a consideration of the ramifications of this witness being present to her meeting; possibly a look of worry; a quick scan of the other customers; a sudden pause; realisation; and then, after, that, who knew? I couldn't decide on the next expressions, though I'd examined a number of possibilities.

Cath found me and a big smile spread across her face.

She came straight over and sat in the armchair opposite.

“I wondered if it was you,” she said, beaming. “You naughty, naughty boy – did you know it was me all along?”

I let my held breath out in an enormous sigh of relief.

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Weights lifted. Clouds parted. Everything, suddenly, was inexplicably, unexpectedly, most completely undeservedly okay. I grinned like a child let off the hook.

“I did,” I said. “And you have no idea how it was eating at me. You're okay with this?”

My hands were clasped together in the middle of the table. She covered them with hers. They were cold from the outside air. “I'm okay with this,” she said. I sighed with relief again. I felt like crying.

“This was Ben's idea, wasn't it?” she said. “It has him stamped all over it.”

“If I say yes, will that get him into trouble?”

“Most assuredly,” she said and smiled. “But only a little.”

“Oh God,” I said, “I was so certain you'd be pissed at me.”

“It was brave of you to agree to this and to come,” she said, leaning towards me and squeezing my fingers.

“Oh, I had to,” I said. “I had no choice.”

“Of course you had a choice,” she said. “You could have chosen to be unavailable, to be unwilling, to be in a city far away from here. You could have chosen to continue the pretence and then, when I eventually did find out, I would probably not have been okay with it.

Instead, you chose to come clean at the first available opportunity and I value that you chose that.”

I smiled, not really sure what to say. “Does Benjamin know you're here?”

“No,” she said. “He was still in bed when I left. I left a note to say I was going to the gym.”

“I'd asked him to tell you yesterday,” I told her. “He said he was going to do it this morning.”

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“Ahhh. Hence your fleeting visit last night,” she said, as though an outstanding answer had been provided.

“Well then,” she added, “it looks like we've wrestled control out of his dirty little hands.”

“It looks like we have, indeed.”

“Let me get a coffee,” she said and stood. Before she left the table she leaned across and kissed me lightly on the lips. “This is ours now,” she said. “It's not his any more.” I watched her go to the counter. She was wearing light blue jeans and a green sweater. I watched her fingers as she picked through her purse for change. I met her eyes as she looked back at me and smiled from the pick-up point. I thought about the sounds that she made when she came and for the first time felt it was okay to do so. All thoughts of worry and deception were gone. I felt exhausted. But the mind abhors a vacuum. Now I turned upon the next big question: where did we go from here?

“So tell me,” she said when she returned, “how did he come up with this idea? How long have the two of you been plotting?”

“Oh,” I said, a little worried there might be an accusatory edge to the question – had I relaxed too soon? had Cath had second thoughts at the counter? – but seeing nothing to indicate so on her face, “this all started on Friday.” I winced inwardly at the lie; but there it was, it was out now. “He said he reckoned I could give you something he couldn't.”

“What's that then?” she asked.

“Well,” I said. I tried in my head to find an explanation that didn't involve sex, and failed.

“Basically, the way I write when I'm, um...” Making love or having sex? Making love or having sex? The latter 203

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felt suddenly coarse. The former felt suddenly cheesy.

“Fucking?” she asked.

“Yes. Fucking.”

“You do cyber beautifully,” she said. “And I've loved every minute of your company. But Benjamin's perfectly capable of complex role play. The thing is, we hardly ever have sex in SL.” “Well, he seemed quite convinced about it,” I said.

“He seemed to think I was the one who could meet your needs.” I took a long, slow sip from my coffee, watching her over the top of my rising cup, hoping this looked alluring.

“So he thinks I've unmet needs?” she said, smiles and softness gone.

“Um,” I said. “Maybe I didn't put that right.”

“But Gerry, what does he know about my SL? He's passing judgements now on my metaverse lovers?”

“I think the only person he was passing judgements on was himself.”

“But that doesn't make any sense. We cyber at the very most once a month. We use it as foreplay. We have sex in SL then follow it up with physical sex. Other than that, we find our own partners.”

“He mentioned that – the way in which you use SL for sex,” I said.

“So in what way is he not meeting my needs?”

“I'm only telling you what he said, Cath.”

“I know. I understand.” She reached out and took my hand again. “I'm sorry if I'm sounding pissed. I'm not. But I don't get his rationale. In any case, how did he know what you were like at cybering?”

“Just, um, conversation.”

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“You were comparing technique?”

“When you say it like that it sounds bad,” I said, sensing the opportunity for at least a momentary tangential discussion on the way men talk about sex.

“When you think about it, it's all about the manner and motivation of the discussion.”

“If you say so,” she said, looking confused.

“He, um,” I said, finding a small mark on the rim of my coffee cup suddenly interesting, “might have seen one of my logs.”

“What?” she said, incredulous. “You shared one of your logs with him? You shared a log in which you had sex with someone?”

This was suddenly, I decided, not going well.

“When you said earlier you were okay with this,” I said, “how exactly did you imagine it had come about?”

She took her hand from me and fiddled with her teaspoon. “I supposed he'd just thought we'd make a good match. I wasn't assuming you to be some sort of plug for a perceived deficit.”

“He said you wanted him to be more... literate.”

“He said that? Why would he say that?”

“A conversation you had on Thursday night? Or maybe Friday evening?”

“A conversation? He said we had a conversation about this?!”

The problem was that the full justification I'd been given by Ben couldn't really be revealed without exposing the depth of my knowledge about Wednesday night – an encounter I officially had had nothing to do with.

“Alright. Look,” I said. “He told me about Wednesday night and how you wanted more of that.

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More of how he was with you then. And how that was kind of an experiment for him and he didn't really want to do it like that any more.”

“Gerry, I have no idea what you're talking about,” she said. “What about Wednesday night?”

“Are you really going to pull every last detail of this out of me?” I asked. “Sex on Wednesday night. You and him.

You in Easthampton; him in Manchester.

Cybersex.”

Her mouth opened and closed. “What has he been telling you?” she asked. “Why is he making this stuff up?”

I started to feel irritated now. If she denied having sex with Max on Wednesday night I was becoming inclined to reveal just how I knew that she did. “You're saying you didn't have sex in SL with Max on Wednesday night?” I asked her directly.

“Of course I didn't have sex with him! I wasn't even inworld on Wednesday night. Or Tuesday night. Or Thursday night. I went to see my sister for a few days.

In Manchester. It was me that went to Manchester, not Ben!” I gulped. It seemed like an appropriate moment to gulp in. My stomach suddenly twisted like it had done a double-take at something it had just walked past.

“What did you just say?” I asked.

“It was me that went to Manchester, not Ben,” she repeated. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“Benjamin told you he had sex with me on Wednesday night?”

“Yes.” 206

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“This is ridiculous,” she said and pulled her bag onto the table, rummaged around in it, pulled out her phone.

“What is that stupid man up to?”

“Wait,” I said, putting my hand over hers and her mobile. “Just wait. Let's try to figure this out. Maybe it was just about getting you and me together all along.

Maybe he concocted the story about Wednesday as a means of persuading me.” My head span. Was Cath lying to me? What possible motive could she have to do so? Nothing made sense. If it hadn't been Gazer I'd been with as Max, then who had it been?

“Is it possible that someone else could have logged on as you?” I asked.

“Not unless someone's hacked into my account somehow,” she said. “No-one has my password.”

I knew, of course. I knew almost immediately what the most obvious answer had to be, but it seemed so extraordinary that I couldn't consciously articulate it to myself without at least considering what the alternatives might be first. But there were no easily visible alternatives. If Cath was telling the truth about her trip to Manchester, everything then pointed to it being Benjamin who had logged on as her whilst I had effectively logged on as him. It wasn't Cath I'd had sex with at all on Wednesday. It was Ben. I groaned and rubbed my temples. “This is bad, Cath.

This is bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“The scale of this,” I said. “I just don't get why he went to such lengths.”

“Well maybe you're right,” she said. “Maybe he made the story up to convince you he needed your help.”

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“No,” I said. “You don't understand. It's much more than just that.”

“In what way?”

I realised it was full confession time. No more halftruths. No more omissions. I let go of the image of us together. It drifted away like a boat untied.

“In this café,” I started, “at this table, in fact, at lunch time on Wednesday, Ben shot in, drank my coffee, said he was rushing to catch a train to Manchester and said he needed me to log in as him that evening. He told me to ring him once he was on the train, so I did. I got this stream of poor reception, garbled information about him wanting to go out that evening but still wanted to appear online so you'd think he was in his hotel room. He gave me his password for Max and asked me – well, actually, pretty much told me – to log on as him that night. Said it was very unlikely I'd hear anything from you at all. He just wanted me to 'avatar-sit'.”

“Go on,” she said, her lips in a straight line.

“We got cut off. I couldn't get hold of him after that.

What was I supposed to do? I logged in as him using the details he gave me. I mean, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic to do it, but...”

“It's okay,” she said. “He's your best friend. I get it.”

“But then, not all that long after I logged in as Max, 'Gazer' starts IMing me, asking me how my trip was and everything. That's when I realised I had no idea what your SL avatar name was.”

“He didn't tell you?”

“Honestly, Cath; it was like three minutes at most here and then this mess of a phone conversation. And it's not something we'd ever talked about before. I mean, I 208

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knew you played SL, but that was it. To be honest, it wasn't like Ben and I talked a great deal about SL at all.

He and I both do it, but RL is where we do our own interacting.”

“As an aside,” she said, “what I wouldn't give to get a look at his inventory. But go on. So you got an IM from me, you're saying?”

“I didn't really look much at his inventory. There was some folder he told me not to look in. I got an IM from someone called 'Gazer', yes.”

“Wait a minute – are you saying this was just someone who'd changed their display name to mine? Or was this someone actually logged in as me?”

“I'm pretty sure it was someone logged in as you.

Well look – it was definitely the same avatar. The skin, the shape, the hair; the beach hut – everything.”

“There was a folder he told you not to look in?” she said. “That's interesting. What could possibly be in it?”

“I assumed logs or something at the time.”

“So. Someone logged in as me, then,” she said and shook her head. “Someone logged into SL as me and then you as Max had sex with her. I mean, this is what you're saying, right?”

“Honestly, the way Gazer was talking to me, I just assumed it was an SL girlfriend he hadn't told me about.

I never realised it was you. I mean, I never realised it was your avatar. It's not like I just jumped into bed with her; I tried to direct the conversation elsewhere. I know this sounds ridiculous, but she was very persuasive in a way that suggested Max would be in trouble if I didn't play along.”

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whole point of the set-up in the first place was for you to have sex with her. That devious bastard. How did he get my password?”

“A key logger, maybe?” I suggested. “Some of them are very hard to detect.”

“And he specifically told you not to look in a particular folder?” she said.

“It was some folder with a tree name,” I said. I can't remember.

“And you didn't look in it?”

“He told me not to.”

She smiled suddenly at me. “You're beautiful,” she said. “Gullible as fuck, but beautiful.”

I laughed nervously. “What do you mean?”

“He lied to you that he was going to Manchester, Gerry. He deliberately gave you minimal information and minimal opportunity to turn him down. Knowing now that when he was sitting here on Wednesday it was his sole intention to convince you later that evening that you were having sex with his wife – knowing that everything he told you in that and subsequent conversations was calculated – why do you think he gave you the specific name of a folder to not look in?”

“Oh,” I said.

“But you didn't look in it. Because he told you not to.

That's what makes you beautiful,” she told me.

“I just don't get,” I said, “why he went to such trouble. We were making love for two hours!”

“Damn,” she said. “I really want to know what's in that folder. Can you remember what it was called?”

“Something beginning with an S I think. Definitely a tree.”

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“Cedar?”

“Something beginning with an S,” I said, deadpan.

She laughed. “Do you think he'll have changed his password?”

“He wanted you to see what was in there,” she said.

“Something persuasive. What reason would he have for stopping you from seeing it again if you wanted to?”

I stood up. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“How far away from here do you live?” she asked, getting up too, taking a last mouthful of coffee.

“Fifteen minutes' walk,” I said.

She pressed buttons on her smart phone. “He's not inworld right now. We shouldn't waste time. Let's get a taxi.”

I put my coat on. Suddenly, my own phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out. A text from Benjamin.

“Look at this,” I said and held it out to her.

It said, 'With Cath now. Gonna tell her about you.

Wish me luck.'

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17

We were at my apartment block in five minutes and in front on my computer in under ten. Whilst it booted up, Cath looked around the living room and examined the books on my shelves.

“This is where you were sitting when you came last night?” she asked, her hand on the back of my chair.

“Yes,” I replied. She rested her hand on my left shoulder, leaned over my right.

“I could tell there was something different about you when you came over on Friday,” she said. “Of course, you thought we'd already been together then.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Can I see your bedroom?” she asked.

“Of course.”

She was gone less than a minute. When she came back, she'd taken off her sweater. She was wearing just a loose, white tank. It hung untucked outside of her jeans.

Imprudence viewer loaded. “Okay,” I said. “Let's see if this works. I entered Max's password and hit return.

Whilst we waited to see if the login was valid, she said, “What about the folder name?”

“I figured it out in the taxi,” I said. “Sycamore.”

“Of course.” We held our breath with the progress 212

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bar frozen at ten per cent.

It made the leap to fifty that signalled the start of a successful login. We both said, “Yes!” at the same time and it made us laugh. Sixty per cent. Seventy. Eighty.

As it crawled the last few millimetres across the screen, a box popped up over the top of it. Your clothing is still downloading. Others can see you normally.

“I hate that,” Cath commented.

“What does 'normally' mean, anyway?”

“I agree,” I said.

Max appeared as a purple cloud in his greyed out shithole apartment. I went straight to the inventory button and we found the Sycamore folder almost immediately. Inside it, there was another folder labelled, 'Cath'. I hesitated at clicking on that.

“Open it, she said.” So I went in. About twenty image icons displayed in the folder with numbered filenames.

“Pictures,” she said.

“Do you want me to open one?”

“I want you to open them all.”

I double clicked the first. We had to wait a couple of minutes for it to appear. Max's flat still wasn't rezzed properly, but his grey body had now materialised and the purple cloud had dissipated.

I heard Cath inhale sharply through her mouth when the picture finally appeared. It was a photograph of her from Benjamin's point of view.

“And the next one,” she said, firmly. One by one, I opened them all. All of them were of her naked. Most of them were taken at various points during intercourse, fellatio, cunnilingus.

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“Bastard,” she breathed. I turned to look at her.

Tears were running down her cheeks.

She left the chair and went to the sofa. “You see,” she said, “Ben would never believe a man could be turned on by words alone. Just as he would never believe someone couldn't help but sneak a look at something they were told not to look at. The sole purpose of that evening was for you to end up desiring me.”

“Cath,” I said. “There's something else you should know. Yesterday, when you came out of the shower – I'd been there for some time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came over to get back my coat. Ben told me you were in the shower. Then he went into the bathroom to get it. Then...”

“Oh fucking hell!” she shouted. “So of course that's why that cunt was arsing about in the bathroom for so long when I told him I wanted a shower. He knew what time you were coming over, I suppose?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Jesus Fucking Christ. Jesus Fucking Christ. Has anything over the last two days not been engineered?”

“It would appear not,” I said.

“And I'm supposed to be grateful for all this because he views it as somehow 'meeting my needs'?”

“He was furious with me for having sex with Gazer,” I said. “He told me you'd texted him over and over that day to tell him how amazing he'd been. He made out I'd set him up to fail with you, like he could never live up to this expectation. That was the log of mine he saw. He demanded to see it. He told me he had to know what I'd written so he could try and emulate me. Later, of course, 214

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he told me he wasn't able to and that's when he came up with the idea of introducing you to Harvey.” “'Came up',” she said.

“Well yes. That's what it looked like at the time.”

“Of course it did.”

“So look,” I said. “Yesterday, he was saying you'd been asking what he thought about you meeting up with Harvey in real life. Did that conversation happen?”

“No.” “So your suggesting a meet last night was just coincidence?”

“Of course it was.”

I scratched my head. “Then I just don't get this. He's telling me about you talking about a meet. According to his text, he's talking to you about it right now. He seems convinced you're going to want to meet me – even though he's agreed to tell you who I am first. But – officially – you know nothing about this at all. So what's he aiming to do? If he tells me you now know it's me and do want to meet, how does he think he's then going to convince you to go through with this? All this trouble he's gone to to improve the likelihood of success with what I agree to do, and he's done virtually no work whatsoever with you.

“So how does he imagine this will work? If he can't be certain he'll get what he wants from you – and he can't – the only logical thing is for him to contact me now and say you don't want to make any meet. How can he possibly be certain you'd go along with such an idea? But then if he says it's a no and hasn't actually spoken to you, I could find this out by talking to you the next time we meet online – since then I'll have been told you know it's me and won't have to conceal my identity from you.

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Surely, if he's expecting you to say no and wants you to say no, then why go to all the bother of lying about speaking to you? Why not just ask you, and then when you say no, pass the message on? But why, if he's been expecting you to say no all along, has he gone to so much trouble to convince me you're going to say yes? None of this adds up at all! It's insane!”

“Assuming he's expecting a no is nonsense,” Cath said. “The only way this makes sense is in assuming he's expecting a yes and working out how he thinks he's going to do it. Why on earth would he go to all this trouble and expect me to turn down the idea?”

“Well exactly. Unless there was some other point to all this that we're missing.”

“Maybe he's planning on making the date for next weekend and to do the persuasion work on me between now and then.”

“No, because he'd know it'd be the first thing I would talk to you about when we next saw each other inworld.

That would only work if the two of us had no contact between now and then.”

“Then he's planning it as a surprise. He announces last minute to me that he's fixed up a meet with you but doesn't tell me it's you like he said to you he would. He tells me he's fixed up a meeting and all will be revealed.

That would mean the meet would have to be today.

When it happens, he takes me there himself, making out it's for my protection (and thereby removing safety as an objection I can make), but he actually does this because he wants to see the moment with his own eyes; more than that, he doesn't trust us to get it right by ourselves and has to be there in order that he can facilitate his desired 216

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outcome.”

“And you would go along with that?” I asked. “Just go out on his say so – with no notice – to meet a total stranger?”

“It would depend on how he presented it. You know what he's like. He could argue black is white.”

“True enough,” I said.

I sat down next to her, She was dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue. “So what do we do?” I said. “Do we confront him with this or do we wait for him to make his next move?”

“This is my husband we're talking about,” she said.

“Why do I feel like we're investigating some sort of crime?”

“The lengths he's gone to over this just seem too extreme. They suggest high stakes that somehow aren't obvious to us. Why is this so important to him?”

“Maybe it really isn't, but he realised there had to be a certain pace and speed and intensity to the plan if it was to ever have a chance of working.”

“No time to think,” I said.

“Exactly. This could still just be an idea that occurred to him one day that he thought through as a hypothetical – got all the nooks and crannies of the plan worked out in his head – and then just decided to do it.”

I thought about that. It did sort of make sense.

Benjamin was an impulsive guy, but his ability to think things through was greater than any other person I knew.

He could hold a staggering number of interdependent variables in his head, alter one of them and be able to calculate the way all the others would then change. Not once had I beat him at chess.

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“He talked yesterday about the three of us together,” I said. “He made out like it was a bucket list item, a dream; something he wanted to experience before he died.”

“Well there you go then,” she said. “He turned forty a couple of months ago. Some guys buy themselves a sports car; Benjamin plans a threesome.” She laughed.

“Only Ben. Only my husband could do a thing like that.”

A moment of silence elapsed between us. Our enquiry had reached a conclusion. And, now that we were no longer inside of it, the oddness of the moment became suddenly more visible. I was sitting in my apartment with Cath and talking about the way her husband had plotted to get the two of us having sex.

Which I had wanted. Which Cath had wanted. But which hadn't actually happened and now felt like some sort of abstract concept. It was like some sort of case investigation. The method was now understood. The motive was now understood. My desires, previously in no need of justification from either Benjamin or Cath, were now the weakness which had been successfully – almost successfully – exploited. I realised, with a sense of detachment that buffered me from disappointment, that everything was over so far as Cath and I – not to mention Gazer and Harvey – were concerned. Manipulation had been uncovered, and the unspoken assumption appeared to be that any love or lust or longing which had resulted from it was automatically invalidated by this discovery.

It was over, and over in a manner that didn't even require acknowledgement. It was over in a 'well of course it's over' manner. It was over in a 'but it was never real in the first place' manner.

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“The easiest thing for me to do,” Cath said, “would be to just turn him down when he tells me about the meet idea.”

“Yes,” I said.

And then my phone rang. It was Ben. “I spoke to Cath,” he told me.

“And?” I said.

“Everything's good. Everything's okay. You should have listened to me all along, Gerry. I knew she was going to be okay with this; I just knew it!”

“She wants to meet me?” I asked.

“Damn,” he said. “You should have seen her face light up when I said that it was you.”

“Really?” I said. “What did she say?” Cath got up and disappeared into the bedroom, which made my voice choke a little on the last word. I wondered if maybe she was going to wait for me in there.

“First of all, she was totally stunned – hadn't suspected it was someone she knew for a moment. Just as soon as she'd had time to absorb it she was like, 'Gerry!

Gerry! Oh my God, that's so cool!' Seriously, you could have seen the smile on my face from China.”

“Technically, you actually couldn't,” I said, because I couldn't not correct. Cath came back into the living room with her sweater. She put it on over her head, stretched up into the arms. Her tank rode briefly up her body, giving me a brief view of her midriff before the green wool dropped down over her skin.

I thought, Gazer stretches her fingertips across her belly, pushing them into your trail of semen and rubbing it into her skin. Except it hadn't been her that wrote that.

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Those had been Benjamin's words in the opening page of a dream sequence that was now dissolved.

“Wow,” I said. “I'm amazed.”

“Try to summon up some enthusiasm,” he said.

“Seriously,” I said. “I never expected she'd say she was interested in meeting me. I don't know what to say.”

Cath leaned against the door frame and looked briefly at her watch. “She definitely did say she wanted to meet me? She wasn't just being polite?”

“Four-thirty today, Gerry.”

“She wants to meet me at four thirty? Where?”

“She hasn't decided yet. She's looking at places online. I'll text you as soon as she's decided, okay?

“Okay.”

“You're going to come though, right? You're not going to bottle on this one, are you?”

“Of course I'll come,” I said.

“This is amazing! You are pleased, right?”

“Ecstatic,” I said, flatly.

“Fuck it,” Cath said. “I'm in the mood for a fight. Let's do this.”

“Oh,” I said. “That sounds like so much fun.”

“You're not the victim here, Gerry,” she told me.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. So what are you going to do now?”

She looked at her watch. “I've been gone too long as it is. I need to get back.”

“So I'm to wait until he texts me and then go meet the two of you?”

“I want you there, yes.”

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him now?” I asked. “Something less public?”

“I'll ask you how you feel about public humiliation the next time you see photographs of yourself with semen on your face that your spouse has uploaded, the next time you find out she invited someone over to your house to eavesdrop on you fucking.”

“I wasn't eavesdropping,” I said. “It's not like I was expecting it.”

“You could have left,” she said.

A minute later she was gone. Three minutes after that I watched her march across the car park eleven floors below. I had no idea of the direction in which she was headed.

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I waited in misery, longing for the day and the week to be over. I logged on to SL as Harold and stood at The Bitten Thumb on the edge of conversations. I resolved never to have another online relationship again. I decided I hated my flat. I decided I hated Easthampton. I decided I needed to travel somewhere and looked up prices to Eastern Europe. I contemplated a tour of Pripyat.

I decided I was a weak, insecure person.

At a few minutes to four, the text message came.

Hardley Park. My sense of dread subsided a little at the choice. At this time of day that spot would be deserted – too late for walkers; too early for drug users – meaning there would be no-one around to witness the scene. He'd probably chosen it for privacy. Little did he know the sense of his decision. I waited another ten minutes before setting off. I had no desire to be there early.

The air outside was freezing cold. A clear, steadily darkening sky hinted at the approach of the first winter frost. The chill seeped through my summer jacket and I cursed Benjamin for not returning my coat. And then it hit me. Why had he asked for it in the first place? Given that he wasn't actually going to Manchester, why had he needed it at all?

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provided a reason for me to come over on the previous day. And it had. But he hadn't then given me the coat. If this was why he'd taken it then he had no reason to keep hold of it once I was there. Was it possible he had just taken it into work – perhaps thinking he'd give it to me at lunch – and then forgotten about it? I supposed that was plausible, but it felt a poor fit. Everything else had been so calculated.

Assuming he'd had no intention of giving me the coat yesterday, what further reason could he have for it? I could think of nothing, but a sense of unease growing within me asserted that there had to be something.

The unease re-activated another question I'd been turning over that day. Why had Ben not given me a location for the meet when we'd spoken on the phone?

Several times, I'd dismissed this as having no significance – as just an artefact of his sense of theatre – but it kept on coming back to me. He'd said Cath was looking at places online: why was that lie important? What reason did he have for me not knowing more in advance where we would be? There had to be a purpose to the lie, because everything else had had a purpose.

Why four-thirty? I thought. Why not earlier in the afternoon? I took a left and walked down the high street I'd sampled from the previous morning. It was nearly twenty past four. Growing dark. Cold. Nobody about, because the shops all shut at four on a Sunday.

Why had he not wanted me to know where the meet would take place? Why this time of day? What did he need with my coat?

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repeated itself on a loop. Because you don't want them to know where it is, I answered finally. Well, that was obvious. But why wouldn't I want them to know where it was? So that they weren't able to do something with that knowledge. Fine. But what was the thing Ben didn't want me to do? What could I have done with that knowledge?

Told someone.

My pace slowed down a little as this hit me. I could have told someone. Who? Who did he not want me to tell?

The obvious answer was Cath.

He didn't want you to tell Cath in case you saw her online. Then she would know about the meeting before he put his plan into action.

But that didn't make any sense. Knowing where the meeting would be was irrelevant; I would still have spoken to her about it happening, and that would still have given him away.

Had she actually not known about it – which, of course, she did. Because she was there with me when he phoned. He thought I thought Cath didn't know. He also thought Cath didn't know. He thought she was at the gym.

What if he didn't? I thought.

What if he found out that we were together?

I Stopped walking. I stood outside the betting shop.

How would he know that? I asked myself. Her logs. If he had access to her logs (why wouldn't he?) he could have read about the plan to meet in Persky's that morning.

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she was there. Why did he still want to arrange a meeting if we were meeting anyway?

But then acknowledging that he knew we were together would beg the question how he knew. So why lie in the first place?

Why send the text to say he was with her and about to ask? Why not play along and ring me up to say he wasn't able to speak to Cath because she'd gone out? Was it possible he'd only read her log after he sent that text? Did he then feel he had to continue the lie?

Supposing he knew all along. He knows we're together, but still wants to arrange a meet. Why? We're already doing exactly what he wanted. What purpose does the extra meeting serve? And why does he not tell me where it will be? Why does he not want me to tell Cath? Why does he not want Cath to know?

He doesn't want Cath to know because that's not where he's intending to take her. A chill ran down my spine. That piece fit. I didn't know why, but it did.

My heart started beating more quickly. It made it harder for me to think. I forced myself to breath and tried to hold on to that thought. I knew that I was close to something important and I knew I had to figure it quickly.

So it's not a meeting between me and Cath at all. He sends me one place and takes Cath somewhere else. Or sends Cath somewhere else. No. We'd already thought it through that he'd go with her. Except that was predicated on the assumption he didn't know we were already together.

I screwed up my eyes, felt my grasp weaken as the possibilities started to multiply. I had to chose one and take a chance on it. Why send me anywhere at all? Why not just send me a text saying it was called off? Why did 225

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he want me away from my apartment?

Sometimes, answers come to you just because of the way in which you've phrased the question. The words, 'away from my apartment' made me think of my place being empty. 4:30 in late November. Dusk. Why did he want my coat? I thought about him wearing it in this thin light and how he would look just like me in it. I thought about him wearing it and approaching my empty flat. I thought about Cath walking with him. I imagined him saying to Cath, “Let's go over to Gerry's – I need to return his coat.” And she would think he'd decided on the meet being at my place, because she wouldn't know I'd been told to go to Hardley Park. She'd imagine I'd be there waiting for them, right up to the point at which they walked into my empty flat, local eyewitnesses – people used to seeing me walking that path in that coat – later saying they'd seen me walking with her towards the block at about half past four. Benjamin was about the same height as me and about the same build, and it was a thick, three quarters length coat that blotted out distinguishing body shape details.

And Benjamin had my emergency key.

I started to run. I started to run back in the direction I'd come from. It was four-twenty-five. I knew I could cover the distance walked in about five minutes if I sprinted. I sprinted. As I ran, the loose ends of my thinking flapped around behind me and I cast them off. I knew now where I needed to be, and if I was wrong, then I'd just be late and look stupid. But anyway I knew, because it all – for the first time – fitted. I knew now that this was no longer about love or even lust. I knew now that the only intimacy this concerned was that 226

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experienced in the taking of someone's life from them.

The time for thought was over. Thinking it through any further would only slow me down, distract my mental energy from where I needed it to be. I knew I was going to have to fight Benjamin. I had never physically fought another human being in my life and the thought of it terrified me. But I told myself that this would be a fight for Cath's life and my own freedom. I made myself want it. I made myself visualise myself punching his face, over and over. Again. Again. Again. Don't stop punching until he drops, I told myself, but I didn't need to. Something old inside me was taking over. I imagined his face swollen and cut and bloodied. I imagined his eyes as blank and empty of the man I had known across two decades. I knew I wouldn't be able to fight him if he got the chance to hit back. Punch. Punch. Punch. Be ungentlemanly. Be an animal. Don't stop. Don't stop. It was the only way. I wanted it.

I turned into my street and the block rose at the end of the straight half mile. I saw them in the distance. I spotted my coat and a woman beside the man wearing it.

They were walking towards the entrance. I ran like I'd never run before, but the building grew stubbornly. They entered, disappeared from view. I ran, my breath coming in huge lungfuls at a rate of one every two times my feet hit the tarmac beneath me. Punch. Punch. Punch. Don't think. Don't consider. Don't plan. Don't hesitate.

Just before I reached the main entrance, I saw the light go on in my living room.

I fumbled for my keys over the last few metres. I unlocked and threw open the door. And then I had to stop and wait for the lift, and the lift seemed to take 227

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forever but I knew the stairs would take longer and exhaust me. Finally, it arrived and I jumped in, started jabbing the eleven button repeatedly. The doors rolled shut at an unhurried pace and the slow crawl upwards commenced. I started swearing out loud in the little space, desperate to keep my body in its state of arousal now it had nothing physical to do. I paced. I kicked the wall. I squeezed through the doors the moment they started to part and ran down the corridor to my front door, which was still open because he wanted a fast escape.

I heard Cath scream: it was a desperate, animal sound. I'm coming, my love. I'm coming, my darling. I charged through my hallway and into the living room, ran at them where they stood, frozen in struggle at the open double doors. I let out a guttural snarl as I tore across the room and he turned at the sound, just had time to release her so that his hands were free for me but had no time to do anything with them. I pushed my arms forward, punched with my open palms and the full force of my weight and momentum hit him in the upper chest.

A look of shock on his face, Benjamin jerked back and pivoted over the railing, disappeared without a sound into the gathering darkness below.

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Epilogue

I'd say I broke up with Gazer, except I don't really know if truly you could say we were ever actually together. I won't go into the details of the inquest or the brief flurry of intense media interest, because neither of these things were at the top of my mind throughout either process.

Even whilst reporters outside the block were shouting questions at me when I emerged to go to work, my mind was occupied with her and what she thought about me.

And what she felt towards me.

Even whilst I contemplated that a moment of coldness and the line of mental enquiry it had triggered was ultimately the only thing that had prevented me from being tried for the murder of Catherine Burton, all I could think about was how she'd disappeared into my bedroom that morning and left her green sweater there. We'd come so close.

Love is in one word the most selfish and most selfless state of of being. At the same time that a consideration of her grief and confusion and trauma was only secondary to my longing for some signs of affection from her, neither was my own danger of any particular concern. That scream of hers; that scream of pure, unfiltered terror and need had activated instincts I never knew I had. It was suggested to me during the inquest that it should have been possible to have dealt with Ben without actually 229

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having to charge at him like that. They were probably right. I only knew that neither his nor my own well-being had had any meaning to me in that moment. I would happily have gone over that rail with him if it meant removing Cath from her fear. I told them that, and that I had no regret whatsoever. Because I didn't.

I'd say that we broke up, except there was never any break-up conversation. I never saw Gazer again in SL and most of my contact with Cath was connected to the investigation. Once the case was closed and the reporters off chasing someone else and the water flowing steadily under the bridge, I started to fantasise about the conversation I thought we were one day destined to have; it began with: “So then – where were we?” But this never came. I rang her one evening and she talked a little about a new extension being built at the university library, asked me how things were in the advertising business. It was the sort of brief, detached conversation she and I would have previously had on an evening 'round Ben's' or during one of those dreadful barbecues, except that this one also had an underlying communication that said, “No”. In a way, then, I suppose that was our break-up conversation.

I spent a few months vowing never again to fall in love and definitely never ever to meet up with someone from Second Life again. But the heart has a terrible memory for pain.

It occurred to me in those first few months that the story of me and Cath was always about me wanting something I had no entitlement to. Is love ever actually any different? To want a person in that way is to want them in a way that just isn't possible; however connected 230

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two people can be – whatever metaphors we concoct – they are still two people, two minds, two realities, two separate visions of the world and its meaning. You cannot ever take a person completely from their reality.

But that's just the overview. On a moment-by-moment basis, the connectedness it is possible to feel is extraordinary, astonishing, unfathomable.

In these moments, the impossible becomes possible; it is life's greatest illusion that they are experienced only as the exception to the rule.

Douglas Adams once wrote about a whole world parallel to our own, accessible by turning your head through the billionth part of a billionth part of a degree.

Very few things are actually impossible. In most cases, it's just a question of how you're looking at them at the time.

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