Mistress Strangelove: Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research

Mistress Strangelove or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Kinks

The (Mis)Adventures Of A Reluctant Mistress

Chapter 1 : A Shopping Addict Is Born
Chapter 2 : My Inner Bimbo
Chapter 3 : If The Nuns From My Catholic Grade School Only Knew
Chapter 4 : With Bells On
Chapter 5 : Would You Dance With Me?
Chapter 6 : Its Harder Than Walking And Chewing Gum
Chapter 7 : One Woman's Porn Is Another Woman's Research
Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life

After my introductory weekend in Second Life, I was eager to return. I was astonished at how much I learned during my first weekend and wanted to learn and see more - I was addicted to it already. In a number of places I encountered the word Gor referring to some sort of group, I was curious as to what it was. My "performance" during my first cybersex frustrated me; I knew I wasn't that good. Not being good at something annoys me.

Another key to my personality is that I am very self-competitive. I dislike doing things at less than my potential best. Sometimes this translates into competitiveness with others, and some of my friends may quibble with what I am about to say, but I am rarely, truly competitive with others. I will play at being competitive, joke about it, and do my best, but I don't really take it as seriously as to whether I thought I did my best. Losing to others in a fair (or not so fair) competition doesn't irk me too much at all. No, my only true competitor is my own expectations. Its far more devilish a rival than anyone else could be.

Like many people, while I'm at work, I browse the web periodically; it's one of my stress relievers and I often find that a small break from a task allows me to come back to it and approach it in a new and better way. During one of these times, I remembered my curiosity as to what Gor was. As I write this, I recall I was wrong in my previous chapter, I hadn't learned about the word kajira or Gor's relationship to slavery from that man I met who had a slave, I had merely read it in a few places.

Imagine my surprise when I turned to the Wikipedia article and finally read what Gor was. It was a fantasy world that glorified the enslavement of women. I read the whole article about Gor - it was a series of fantasy novels set in a world called Gor. One of its central features was women as slaves, it talked extensively about the proper behavior of slaves, it had names for slave positions, and it had a small, but devoted following of people who practiced its "tenants". I find that as absurd as the people who learn to speak Klingon.

I was angry about slavery. I disliked the abasement of one person to another, the whole concept of domination and submission mystified me, and the fact people would willingly do all that astonished me. Realizing that in Second Life, it was all shared fantasy similar to cybersex made it easier to tolerate. However, I still thought it very unhealthy that someone would sublimate their own will and I thought it would just reinforce emotional instability and prevent people from taking responsibility for their own life and becoming better.

Then, I reached the part of the Wikipedia article that talked about Gor in Real Life. Evidently, some people live the Gorean lifestyle, with slaves who do their bidding, practicing all the mandated positions, and subjugating themselves on a permanent basis to a master. The Gorean masters prey upon emotionally disturbed women and keep them as slaves by breaking their wills. Through links off that page and other articles, I read stories of women rescued from those situations and how mentally crippled they were by the experience. I had read about the Stockholm Syndrome and the proclivity of institutionalized people to be unable to function outside of that environment and knew how evil enslavement and captivity could truly be. Now, I was truly angry, fantasy is one thing, but taking advantage of people in Real Life was intolerable. I couldn't do anything about it in Real Life, but I didn't have to tolerate the Goreans in Second Life - their mimicking of the Gorean practices seemed to trivialize the Real Life problems.

The final revelation about Gor that surprised me was that the concept of silks, those pretty, flowing clothes I liked in Second Life, originated as the clothing of the slaves. Darn, my favorite outfit was a set of silks. I realized I had been walking around in an outfit that broadcast, "I am a slave" and right now writing this, I realize that not only did the Gorean guy walk into Paradise Lost probably looking for an escort and saw me but that he also saw someone who he thought to be an escort who was also wearing silks.

During that week, at other times during my web browsing activities, I looked for blogs and other sites dedicated to Second Life. I discovered a number of them, but what really grabbed my attention were slboutique.com and slexchange.com. Now, I was even more dangerous, I could shop while at work. My wish lists instantly grew to gargantuan proportions and I spent far too much time and far too much money browsing those sites. In Second Life there were things to distract me from shopping, offline; the only change I could effect in Second Life was the purchase of things. Which I did while at work and then excitedly logged in that evening to try out.

One thing I still immensely dislike about Second Life shopping is the inability to try things on before I buy them. In Real Life, part of the fun of shopping is trying on all sorts of clothing to see which ones you like the best, in Second Life you had to go on the pictures provided. I never liked shopping for clothing on the web before for similar reasons, but now, with Second Life's prices being so cheap; I could afford to buy things just to try them on.

While at work, there was one thing I was not going to try to improve and that was my cybersex skills :) I hit upon the idea of looking for online sex stories to see what the characters said and how they said them. Swallowing my pride, I did something I had never done before, except by accident, I went looking for porn. Those spam messages describing all sorts of sexual activities, I quickly found out, were only the tip of the iceberg. Website after website of porn existed to cater to every conceivable type of proclivity; while I intellectually knew before that time that they existed, I had never experienced them except through a mislabeled or deceptive link on a webpage.

It took me many tries to get over my embarrassment long enough to do, what I like to call, research. With the offer of being an escort hanging over my head and my own disappointment at my virginal performance, I was seeing what it took to be better. Eventually, via the suggestions of a few folks at Paradise Lost who must have thought I was obsessive, I also began to look at online porn movies.

My god! The dialog was execrable in the ones that had dialog more sophisticated than, "Oh god! Oh. Give me that cock. Oh. *moan* *mumble* *slurp*." Is this what guys liked, I wondered? These women, in my opinion, were acting like trashy whores, had they no pride? No dignity? People didn't act like that in Real Life, did they?

Slowly, realization dawned on me that *this* was the dirty talk people had referred to all along and my few attempts in the past, I now realized, had been pitiful to say the least. In Real Life, I've always enjoyed sex and I began to wonder if trying this out would improve things. My personal goal of doing my best at anything I try kicked in and I knew I had to try out these ideas in Real Life. However, I didn't want to make a fool of myself, thankfully, Second Life came to the rescue and I had a handy place to practice before my Real Life dirty talk debut.

Not only was Second Life accelerating my learning and discovery of new things while I was connected to it and wandering around, it was also doing so while I was offline.

Chapter 8 : 'With Bells On' In Real Life