Sex Advice for the Digital Age

Getting laid in a pixelated hot tub is, well, harder than you'd think

Comments (0) By Bonnie Ruberg Tuesday, May 1 2007

It's a Sunday afternoon and I'm stretched out by a virtual hot tub, trying to convince a bikinied brunette to take off her digital top. She’s not stunning, but she’s sexy: those candy-red lips, those glowing, pre-rendered eyes, those perfectly perky breasts purchased from the virtual mall down the street. As for me, I’m all sex: endless legs, bubble-gum hair, and the proudly buoyant chest of a porn star. Unfortunately though, this brunette—she’s not too charming. When I ask, "Any chance you’re looking for a little fun?" she answers, "Sure, got two minutes." Then, "You hot."

image:: Bonnie Ruberg

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Not exactly poetry, but things can be slow around here before sundown. Right now, I’ll take what I can get.

She climbs out of the hot tub and strips off her bikini. I wait. Standing next to her in a blue corset and lace-up boots, I look like a burlesque dancer or a dominatrix. But before I can even lean in to kiss her, something goes wrong. She says:

Brunette: Up down your pussy
Brunette: I touch
Brunette: oh yeah

"Excuse me?" I type.

Brunette: you on me hard
Brunette: but no rubbing
Brunette: oooooo

Okay, now I’m totally lost. She seems to be in the throes of non-verbal ecstasy, and I didn’t even know we got started. In my sexiest online voice, I ask her, “Baby, are you a native English speaker?”

This is cybersex at its worst: all vowels and no logic. Trust me, I should know; I’ve been doing it a long, long time. At the moment, as I’m watching my screen fill up with this brunette's faux-sexy hiccups, I'm in the massively-multiplayer online world Second Life. It's is a pretty popular hook-up spot nowadays, but cybersex happens all over the Internet: in chat rooms, web-cam groups, and other virtual environments. Where there are people, there's sex.

But normally when we talk about cybersex, we talk about men with their pants around their knees roaming chatrooms for teens. But the vast majority of people who cyber are people like you and me: consenting adults. No one talks about it, but everybody does it—well, everybody with an internet connection and a creative libido. Real-life sex may still be a taboo subject, but most of us can at least admit we’re having it. It’s time someone spoke up for cybersex. Because, just like in real life, good sex online is an art.

That’s precisely the problem with people like my Second Life brunette—who later admits in a fit of confusing passion to being a nineteen-year-old boy—she has no respect for the craft. To be fair, she isn’t just bad, she’s awful. I mean, where’s the tension? Where’s the build-up? Where’s the adequate command of the English language? Still, a surprising number of cybersex encounters share that lackluster quality. After all, the internet is supposed where we live out our sexual fantasies. No one should have to suffer through bad cybersex—there’s already enough bad sex in the real world.

Which is why Click Me was born. Click Me is an advice column for cybersex—which is just as hot and awkward and confusing as sex in real life. So send in your stories or questions, and let’s get started! Don’t worry, no question is too bizarre. Once you’ve seen a virtual whale make love to a virtual tiger, you learn to stop (virtually) blushing.

Click Me runs every Thursday. Contact Bonnie Ruberg at bonnie[at]heroine-sheik[dot]com.