Being as broken down as I am, I find I’m stuck with a lot of free time. That’s why I fell in love with the MMO computer game “Second Life”. It gave me a way to live without a life.
Now I’m not recommending everyone give up hours of real world living for these pixelized pastures, but it does make a great little escape once in a while to go somewhere that gives you the chance to be almost anything. Except some of us don’t really change much, as I recently realized.
In real life, I’m an intersexed woman, a lesbian with a permanent strap-on. The disabilities that limit my social opportunities aside, I’m what a lot of you might call a she-male, a girl with a c--k who will always have a c--k. This isn’t by choice in my case, but it technically shoves me into that category. I have a blood disorder that means a surgery as invasive as a vaginoplasty would almost certainly kill me, and when tests confirmed this I was told—short of an unlicensed quack in Mexico—no serious surgeon would touch me with so high a risk of dying. I had no choice but to make peace with the body I was stuck with.
That was 6 years ago.
In that time I’ve had ups and downs, ranging from attempting suicide because I didn’t think I could cope knowing I’d never be a “real girl,” as they say, to wondering defeatedly if I should just get my breasts cut off and resign myself to being an unhappy man. Eventually I did make peace with it. It’s a bit of skin and blood vessels; it doesn’t define my heart. I know I’m a woman, as do those I care about, and anyone who disputes it can suck it.
Which leads me to Second Life.
I’ve reached a point in my life where I can’t be bothered to create the little illusions we all have—I’m crippled and I’m too old to care. I have a wonderful real-life wife who loves me as is and I’d rather be hated for exactly what I am than loved for being something I’m not.
So my profile on Second Life is honest—I admit I’m an It. Granted, my avatar there is thinner and prettier and has cat ears and a tail, but aside from that, it’s me un-embellished, I don’t role-play being anyone else but me. (Well, except when I pretend I’m a bitchy cyberpunk with a gun and stilettos on the post-apocalyptic Sims).
Being me includes a penis.
I was cuddling with a lover online one afternoon, virtually of course (my wife and I are polyamorous), when she asked me about it. She wondered why I had bothered to buy a virtual prim cock to wear in intimate moments, when it was a world where I could be normal, where I could pretend I had the body I thought I should have been born with. She wondered why I didn’t just pretend to be a normal girl with a normal pussy having cyber sex with normal men and women, especially knowing that by having it and being public about it, I was leaving myself a tempting target for trolls and other homophobic internet bullies.
She asked me why in a world where I could be anything or anyone, why be myself?
I thought about it for a moment. I wondered if I should explain about my blood disorder, or being disabled, or any of the other factors I’ve told you folks. But in the end, I just smiled and typed my answer.
There’s nothing wrong with who I am and I don’t need to pretend I’m anything else.
We now return you to whichever life you’re living.
