Ainat Lunasea

59 W 12th Street . 6:47 pm . September 7, 2007 .

I chose the name Ainat Lunasea for my avatar. Ainat is Tania spelled backwards and Lunasea seemed like the perfect last name for her. So, briefly after downloading the Second Life application, Ainat Lunasea and her purple sweater appeared in front of my eyes.

Ainat is a "girl next door." Of all the options I identified with this one the most. She however seemed very naive -but was very alert- when she first landed on Orientation Island. The first two people she saw, Mitchelle Lykin and Jain Benazzi, were both naked. Mitchelle came over right away and openly asked for sex. He then preceded to "hump" her and said "i humped u." Ainat felt a little bit threatened by this but managed to pay close attention to the situation and also to Mitchelle's other conversations.

I went through Orientation thoroughly and practiced. Ainat played around with a torch. Drove a car. Ran over a rat. Suddenly a guy called DHM Akina approached her and started a conversation in French. Mais oui... trés interesant. He spoke no English but I know a little French so we managed to get through the basics. He was very friendly and started asking questions like name, age, etc. Instinctively I answered the truth: Tania, 27. He was David and 26. The real vs the non-real posses a big dilemma for me in Second Life. Is my name Ainat or Tania? Is Ainat Tania? David asked for my MSN nickname and again I didn't know what to reply. The hesitation however was making me lose time -and friends- so I quickly got online a created a completely new MSN account for Ainat: lunasea27@hotmail.com.

We kept on talking until he asked if I was "celibataire". I freaked out and said that I wouldn't answer (thinking of course he was asking me if I was celibate.) He suddenly apologized for "offending" me, perceived that something was wrong, turned around and left. So I got out a dictionary and realized he had just asked if I was single... not celibate. Voilá. I had somehow managed to also scare men off in Second Life! I (or Ainat?) got on MSN to find him and spoke to him some more. His MSN nickname was Dada and his email malaga22@hotmail.fr.

By this point I was very tired. We said we would talk later and he would look me up today. I had started to get frustrated by the language barrier which proved to be deeper than the real, physical distance. I logged off... I don't type in French as fast as I do in English (or Spanish) anyway. But regardless of language or geography I made my first Second Life friend.

I am already loving it!