The Alt Thing

Chey (R) and Dakota

Written 3 April, 2007

The Alt Thing

It was never my intention to bring drama to Pele or to my own life or to my relationship with Sweetie by having an alternate avatar.

I thought making it clear to everyone that I was both Dakota and Cheyenne would prevent that.

It didn’t.

And it was never my intention to cause turmoil or pain for anyone by having an alternate avatar.

And yet it has happened.

I don’t blame Dakota. She has only done what comes naturally to her. Her feelings are genuine and real, and quite different from mine, and from the human being who runs us. And she has respected and maintained the limits I set for her.

I don’t blame Boyfriend for his feelings toward Dakota. Certainly he knows she’s an alt, but just as certainly she is real and manifest to him, as she is to herself. He is simply, for some reason, attracted to her.

I don’t blame myself. I’m a little upset with myself because even though I played it straight up all the way through I should have shut things down earlier. I set limits calculated to maintain the peace, and everyone observed them. I only wish I had made the limits a little more conservative. No slow dancing, for instance.

I’m so grateful to Sweetie for knowing her own limits of comfort and discomfort and telling me the moment that line was crossed by Dakota and Boyfriend.

Now we are all in a healing period.

Boyfriend and Milky have begun dancing again, and are slowly building bridges. She hasn’t yet slow-danced with him, but it will of course eventually come to that. And he’s making new friends as well. I don’t mind. And neither—I think—does Dakota. Or maybe she does. Remember her previous reaction!

I wept on Sunday as I framed pictures of Dakota for Boyfriend, at his request—I cried so much, in fact, that I found myself building a memorial to her on the deck of the Dragon Skybar. I put a picture of her on an easel, draped it with wreaths, and added a sign that reads “Hurry Back, Dakota. We Miss You.”

And we do.