“I haven’t been touched by another human, even in a non-romantic way, since this started, besides an elbow-bump,” says Simon. His girlfriend lives in Canada, and since the border between the two countries is currently closed, the couple hasn’t seen each other since the beginning of March. Simon (also not his real name), a 26-year-old Park View resident who works in management consulting, feels the same way about his virtual sex experiences. “It’s something that makes us feel closer to each other.” “My friends would be like, ‘W hat the hell, you guys are weird ,’ but for us, it’s like this is our own private thing,” says Jake. Obviously, having your avatar make sweet love to your partner’s avatar isn’t as good as the real thing, but it does fulfill the need for intimacy somewhat. “You start forgetting about ‘Oh, is she judging me? Am I judging her?’-those sort of feelings-and it just becomes more natural.” “After a few sessions, you start getting used to it and you start understanding your partner and how she reciprocates communication,” he says. You might wonder-is it awkward to narrate the banging of two pixelated creatures to your partner? At first, yeah, says Jake, but that goes away. And once his girlfriend even set up a virtual strip club in her Animal Crossing home and had her character dance for Jake’s while removing her clothes. Sometimes Jake’s character will sit on a chair and his girlfriend’s character will come over and do a head-nodding movement to simulate-well, you can probably guess. “We’ll simulate a lot of things that we do in real life.” “We’ll start dirty texting and getting on with it,” says Jake of their set up-the duo is often playing Animal Crossing, while simultaneously chatting on FaceTime and texting during their island hook-ups. Now, the couple goes on frequent Animal Crossing dates-slash-hookups: Jake will visit his girlfriend’s island, the couple’s virtual selves will hop into her large bed, remove their clothes, and then get weird. “It started as something that was a joke and then it transitioned into ‘Oh, this is for real,’ you know?” Oh, I’m going to take my clothes off,’ ” says Jake. “We were just playing on each other’s island one time and I was like ‘Oh, it’s a bed, I’m going to jump on your bed. Until one day when they were playing Animal Crossing together, and they found themselves on a virtual private island, that is.
So they started sexting and dirty talking on FaceTime. But once they were apart, they realized they missed the intimacy of a physical relationship, says Jake. Jake and his girlfriend never had virtual sex before this-they hardly even FaceTimed because they saw each other in-person so much. They both live with their parents, whose ages put them in a high-risk category, so the couple decided it would be safer to spend this time apart. Jake and his girlfriend have found themselves in a situation that may be familiar to lots of couples right now: Even though she only lives 25 minutes away, the two have hardly seen each other since stay-at-home orders began in March. He’s having sex with his girlfriend via the game Animal Crossing (the one everyone talks about on Twitter with the raccoons and the bells and the turnips). And, okay, fine, the sex is virtual, too. This may seem like a far-fetched dream during a pandemic, but Jake (not his actual name), a 35-year-old consultant who lives in Fairfax County, is doing just that. It’s something of a cliché fantasy to have sex on your own private island, right? No one else around for miles, the white sand stretching into the moonlight, the inky waves crashing against a shoreline that’s all yours-paradise.