Virtual Sex
By: Lauren M. Lynley

People engage in cyber-sex, phone sex and other non-contact erotic practices for a wide variety of reasons. I have always explored various forms of sexual entertainment as it has long been my contention that sex and erotica is far more than the time it takes to come. Naturally, I am always on the look-out for others to have wildly romantic evenings and steamy sex with but in between those encounters one has to be erotically stimulated somehow ergo, virtual sex.

I have recently been, and continue to be, involved in numerous "cyber-affairs." Some of which are quite simple, we phone or ICQ each other and have imaginative liaisons which inevitably lead to mutual orgasm. We are affectionate and friendly but the relationship remains well, skin deep. With others, things have gotten rather more complex and, dare I say it, developed an emotional component. There was one in particular which became serious in the sense that I actually began to feel something more than a tingling between my thighs. It was, after several months of e-mails and hours of daily ICQ chats, a romance with all of those delightful and terrifying sensations that accompany it.

This "woman" (for who really knows who is at the other end of the cyber connection) really got to me. She was sensuous, charming, well-read and witty. She was all of the qualities I desire rolled into one very sexy package (based on the VERY hot photos she'd sent). We had even discussed the possibility of her coming out to Los Angeles to meet me to see if things would be as good in the real world as they looked on the computer screen. On day I asked (again) for her to ring me (I'd given her my voice mail number) to set up a time when we could talk on the telephone. This request was the beginning of the end. For whatever reason she got very upset and refused to acknowledge future messages and e-mails. And what was strange was that I really felt like a five month relationship had come to an end. I made a few attempts to remedy the situation but to no avail, my ideal lover had vanished into cyber-land never to be heard from again.

As I began to analyze the relationship in the aftermath, I realized that I knew fairly early on that there were some inconsistencies in her e-mails and ICQ's (I kept all of our correspondence) and that I deliberately deluded myself because I thought that if I willed her to be what I desired that she would be. Not so different from those "in the flesh encounters" after all. She stroked my ego whilst I stroked my clit and I was in cyber-love. An illusion you say, well of course, but in those moments when I totally believed that the improbable was not only possible but real it was truly divine.

These days, other than a couple of cyber-lovers that I KNOW are whom they say they are, I pretty much stick to the sex and leave the romance for my poetry. Virtual sex cannot take the place of real sex and it can sometimes lead to the very pain one wishes to avoid but all in all it's great fun until the REAL thing comes along.