Recent parenthood has, by necessity, curtailed our fetish clubbing activities (at least until we can arrange a suitable kink friendly baby sitter). But the urge to deviate is still as strong as ever and I wanted to find at least a token outlet for that part of me that needs to dress in latex and tie people up. After stumbling on a TV item on the virtual world of Second Life my mind began to map out some of the more depraved opportunities that it offered and I wondered if anyone else had had the same idea.

For those of you that haven’t come across Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com); Second Life is a virtual world created by Linden Labs in which thousands of people can meet and interact in real-time. While Linden Labs created the universe and the physics which control how objects perform and can be used, the entire built environment has been created by the residents themselves. Second Life is free to join and play and many people live out their second lives without having to spend any first life (as the real world is known) money. Second life does have its own economy based on the Linden Dollar which you can used to exchange for goods and services supplied by other residents. There are two ways of getting Linden Dollars, the first is to enter your First Life (FL) credit card details and buy the currency, the second is to make use of any creative and technical talents you possess and create virtual clothes and accessories to sell to other SL residents. If working for your L$ does not appeal then an investment of £10 is more than enough to kit out you avatar (you Second Life character) with everything a virtual perve could need. 

So, armed with my virtual credit card and an enquiring mind I boldly stepped into the world of Second Life (SL) where I reinvented myself as the uber sexy switch, Balzac Slade. The omens looked good. Typing in fetish into the in-world search engine came up with hundreds of references, it looks like I was not the only person to see the kinky potential of Second Life. The first job in hand was to get my avatar out of the street clothes that Linden Labs had decided to dress me in and into something much less comfortable. A quick teleport down to the local fetish mall (teleporting is by far the quickest mode of transport in SL) and the spending of a couple of thousand dollars gave me the image I was after. Black latex leggings and a purple top gave me an interesting two tone look, the addition of a two piece harness gave a harder edge to the ensemble. But I am a switch so I felt that collar and cuffs were a necessary part of the final outfit, after all, I wanted to be available for all eventualities.

Now looking the part I set off to find out what Second Life had to offer, one of my first finds was Bondage Playground, a dungeon complex which seemed popular with the Second Life crowd. Being a newbie I though it best to just wonder around and people watch. Very quick I began to realise that SL was very popular with women who like a little F/f action, by my estimate a good 55%-60% of the players in SL are women (though of course being the internet 30% of these are likely to be burly truck drivers from Newcastle!). The split between doms and subs is much the same as in real life, perhaps not surprisingly. Also, as with any popular FL club there were a fair assortment of dodgy looking men hanging onto the walls and watching the action.

Just like any well equipped FL club, a SL dungeon will be well furnished with the latest BDSM equipment and since SL doesn’t need to worry to much about the limitations of the human body with regard to bondage some of the devices looked really quite extreme. Another advantage of SL is that self bondage is really quite straight forward with none of the potentially embarrassing risks associated with trying to tie yourself up in real life. I spent the next hour happily attaching myself to variety of devices of every increasing complexity and perverted purpose. All I can say is that there are people in SL whose imagination and creativity make my kinkiness look positively vanilla by comparison.

It did not take me long to pluck up courage and approach a particularly well endowed and scantily clad avatar and started a conversation. One of the fun things about SL is that each person has a profile which you can click on and read (you can even add your own notes which only you can read), this makes people watching much more fun and allows you to gauge the persons interest etc. before approaching them. For anyone who has played with IRC (chat rooms) they will know that relationships can develop at an incredibly fast pace, within the space of a few minutes you can be exchanging the most intimate sexual fantasies with a complete stranger, and this encounter was to be no different. Within the briefest time she was naked, kneeling at my feet and begging to be my slave. Given the circumstances I felt in churlish to send her away and quickly had her strapped to the cross I had being testing out myself a few minutes earlier. I’ll draw a veil over the rest of the scene but anyone who has toyed with cyber sex will guess that it involved much rapid typing of “YES.. YES.. PLEASE MASTER.. Ahhhh” etc.

There are places in SL designed to appeal to every sexual preference and sub set of the BDSM lifestyle. One of my favourite places is the “House of V”. This is a large and beautifully designed area and has one of the best equipped dungeons in SL. For some reason, however, it is not that popular and you need to pick your times carefully. I am guessing this is because it is new and not that many people know about it, hopefully over time this will change. One of the problems with SL is that no matter how well designed an area is, unless there are people to interact with it quickly becomes boring. Just as with FL fetish clubs, SL clubs and places need to have a critical mass of people to give it a buzz. This is one of problems of SL, basically there are too many spaces and not enough people to fill them.

As well as “straight” BDSM there is also role-play. Role-play spaces differ from dungeons in that there is much less of a social scene to them, when people enter a role-play area they tend to take on the role they have selected and stay in role for the duration of their visit.  The most popular role-play being based on John Norman’s Gor series of books (where men were men and women were well endowed and submissive) and there are several dozen islands where you can live out your virtual life as a muscular warrior or beautiful slave girl as your fantasy dictates. If sword and sorcery is not your thing then how about being a vampire or his (or her) long necked prey? Still not interested? Then SL can let you become a cyberpunk living in a post apocalyptic urban nightmare. Tags which you attached to your avatar let others know if you are a predator or a hapless victim waiting to be snared. I am sure if you search hard enough you will find a role-play group that will allow you to act out your fantasy.

 Another of my favourites is Capture Roleplay HQ. This is great fun! The area consists mainly of a huge maze where all the action takes place. You choose if you want to be a predator or prey, after that it is basically a game of tag. If you can catch a prey then they become frozen and must submit to you, as a predator you can do whatever you like to any prey you succeed in capturing, there are even private dungeons scattered around the maze for you to drag your prey to and abuse them in private.

Finally we come to where we started the virtual Club Rub. I am told that it has no connection to our very own Club Rub in FL London. It has a fab venue with discrete areas for dancing, chill out and play with a very cool modern décor, everything you want from a club where you go to dance, socialise, see and been seen. The only problem is that very few people seem to know about it and on the times I have visited it has definitely been on the quiet side. Still, if after reading this you fancy dipping your toe in the water this could be a good base for any LFSers to meet up and chat on-line.

So, does Second Life work for me? I have certainly enjoyed my time there, it is a huge world to explore (event if you stay with the BDSM areas) and the visual element does add a real something to the experience. But in the end it still comes down to tapping away on a keyboard and cyber sex is a very poor substitute for the real thing. The real problem with Second Life is that the world is still very sparsely populated this means that many locations have far too few people in them to make them places you would want to visit. I have never been to SL Club Rub and found more than five people there (I don’t think that Kim needs to worry too much) and when I have been to places that are full of people the SL servers often have difficulty keeping up with the action and this can lead to frustrating lags when interacting with other people.

But even with these problems, Second Life can be great fun and no doubt over time it will get better and even more involving. Definitely worth an explore.

 Balzac.