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Virtual Immorality~ George Topp ~ Unfortunately, the original link to this essay seems to have disappeared from cyberspace forever. So, we're republishing it here. Should anyone know how to contact the author, please drop us a note. It's certainly not our intent to violate anybody's copyright. You'll excuse me if I'm out of breath, but I've just returned from cheating on my wife again, I think. It all happened because I allowed one of those small flecks of cyberdust - a message in a chat forum - to snowball into a virtual affair. Sandi276 (not her real number) had posted a wry reply to a particularly outrageous comment. Somebody had written, "All entrepreneurs are rapists," to which she responded, "Rapists aren't that enterprising." I admit, it wasn't much, but I enjoyed her sassy tone. So I wrote to Sandi276 privately and told her so. She wrote back, told me a little about herself, and mentioned something about her ex-husband. One thing led to another, and pretty soon I was telling her I admired women who could really wear leather, and she was telling me I was the cleverest, most sensitive man she'd ever met. Except, of course, she hadn't. She wouldn't have recognized me if I'd sidled up to her on the subway and run my finger very, very lightly along the inside of her thigh, which she told me in February 1994 was one of her favorite caresses. She also hadn't met my wife, and she hadn't met my two boys, just as I hadn't met her new husband or her new therapist. I started asking her for a photo in the summer of '94, and she gave me my first jpeg for Christmas that year. I downloaded it instantly - a bathing-suit shot, sort of girlish, but mid-thirties, sexy-cute - then hid it in my system folder, along with our illicit E-mail. She wouldn't allow me to send a picture. "You just don't get it," she wrote, without apparent irony. "It's a recurring fantasy of mine to have wild sex with a man whose face I can't recognize. I guess that's you." The photos got hotter, and so did the E-mail. I was careful not to go too far. I know a man, engaged, who struck up a dialogue with a sex therapist, for crying out loud. Did her, too. I'd never do that, I don't think. But one morning - after a late-night on-line exchange on the theme of what- would-you-do-to-me-if-I-let-you-do-anything-you-wanted? - I woke up with a sense of guilt I haven't been able to shake. It was if I'd gotten drunk and done something regrettable with some sailors. How could I have risked so much for so little? I wanted to race to the office and delete the files, but I feared I'd get caught. Besides, all that evidence must exist permanently someplace in cyberspace. Someday it would come back to haunt me and help bring me to justice. Justice? Wait. What had I actually done? Had I really cheated on my wife? All I'd done was follow the rules of good manners and replied to my incoming correspondence. As far as real life was concerned, not only was there no penetration, we'd never even touched. You can call that safe, but can you call that sex? Although I know there's a biblical injunction against lusting in the heart, this seems more digital than cardinal. Moreover, this on-line relationship has produced sufficient fantasy fuel to actually improve my marital sex life. Ultimately, this seems to me to be no worse than, oh, staring at a Cowboys cheerleader. If I'd actually met Sandi276, and if we'd compounded our E-lust over a drink or two, maybe we'd both be in trouble today. Or maybe not. Maybe actually seeing the person with whom you're flirting on-line would reduce the whole affair to the banal level of its prose, and all you'd feel would be acute embarrassment. Maybe the relative anonymity of cyberspace works like an echo chamber - or no, like an amplifier that inflates slight verbal asides into flaming insults and idle chitchat into a hot binary screw. If Sony marketed it, they'd call it Sex Boy and sell it with goggles. If it's virtual sex, I'm a virtual cheater. But so what? In an age of virtual morality, virtual philandering ought to be a normal part of life. That's my reasoning. I admit there's another way of thinking about this. I don't really want to get into it, except to say that if it were my real-life wife doing a virtual lap dance on somebody else's laptop, I'd be more than virtually pissed. |
