Episode 56 – Balls Up at Bogarts

Beth is determined to master pose balls. She is creating a catalogue of them as she trips the light fantastic with any of her friends bonkers enough to be seen out dancing with a Victorian Librarian Transvestite wearing a ballgown. Beth is becoming a dab hand at switching dances as the music changes at a few select venues. She looks so much better dancing than walking – and of course, it means she gets to take the lead!

Bella Vida and Bogart’s are frequent haunts (along with The Pour House punk bar – though Beth tends to leave her ballgown at home for that one…) While merrily salsa-ing and giving it some cha-cha-cha, Beth makes full use of her Imprudence viewer’s profile-perver to check out her fellow dancers and has a good nosey around at frocks and faces. Some nights there are lots of single female avatars, along with the couples. Some nights there are lots of single men. Rarely, for some reason, do the numbers seem to tally up to give all these singles a fighting chance.

Beth has witnessed a lone, pitiful male wailing to the room in general:
“Is there anyone here I can dance with! Please? I bought this tux and everything!”



She has seen the lone newbie female tentatively hovering by the dancefloor, only to tp away in fright the moment a male avatar takes three steps towards her.

And Beth has seen ‘the showdown’. This is where lone male is spotted by lone female. Lone female strides across the dancefloor and stands, provocatively, a few yards away, staring intently at lone male. It looks pretty peculiar. Is she waiting for him to join her for a dance? Did the elastic just snap on her knickers and she can’t take another step? Has he flung up a forcefield to keep her at bay? Most likely what is happening is an intense flirtatious negotiation between the two of them on IM. What it looks like to everyone else in the room is a well-dressed Mexican stand-off.

Those in the know are probably ‘silently’ cheering them on in their own IMs. Or making bitchy comments about the clothes, the body shapes or the relative chances that lone female and lone male have with the other. What eventually transpired with this particular two - was the ‘pose ball tussle’. The flirtatious negotiation obviously ended in an agreement to take a spin round the floor to some Frank Sinatra, because they accompanied each other to a conveniently empty spot. But clearly the negotiation did not extend to ‘who should click on the dance intan’. So both of them did. There are now four pose balls hovering above them. Two blue, two pink. The battle for supremacy in this nascent relationship continues as both try to be the first to click on the pose balls, and hence choose the dance. Now only two balls remain dangling. Unfortunately, they do not belong to the same set. So now the two of them are dancing – but not with each other. Beth did not put high odds on this couple chances for an evening of unbridled romance. It is highly likely that they got into sync eventually (Beth has noticed that people using the same dance near each other tend to fall into matching movements after a while – couples look like they are part of a formation team, and singles end up doing a kind of twisted line-dance) But whether this would lead to the start of a beautiful friendship, Beth wasn’t so sure.



As it was, Beth was now distracted by another dancehall phenomenon. Through her profile-perving addiction, Beth has noticed that a lot of the couples are those ‘married ones’. You know, the ones who insist on telling everyone in SL how much they love so-and-so, how they are soul mates and how much he/she ‘rocks their world’. There is always some ghastly photo of them wrapped up in each other like terrified puppies facing Cruella Deville. Now, in principle, Beth has no issue with people brandishing their private relationships and intimate details in public – she knows that some people feel a compulsion to share indiscriminately. Like nudists and poets. But what Beth has noticed is that at these dancehalls, as well as a lot of the couples, a large number of the lone male and female avatars are also these marriage proclaimers. And she has also noticed that a lot of the ‘couple marrieds’ will happily swap in and out with these ‘lone marrieds’. Just mixing it up a bit with a ‘safe’ dance partner? If all the marrieds are so devoted to each other, then obviously there is no danger to the relationship by letting your loved one take a turn around the parquet with someone trustworthy and reliable? Hmmm. Is SL such a communal and supportive place for the perpetuation of monogamous ‘married’ bliss?

Beth thinks not. Beth thinks that this is mere swinger hunting. Couple marrieds and lone marrieds are just out on the prowl for likely partners to take home for hot and sweaty three-somes and four-somes. You might dress up in suits and gowns and declare your unimpeachable devotion to your one true love, but Beth reckons you are as fickle and easily swayed as the next set of avatars. Obviously EVERYONE is at it in SL. Maybe one day even Victorian Librarian Transvestites wearing ballgowns might get lucky. Who knows!