For Dej

These were my words at the memorial gathering for Dej on Sunday.

Dej and I trying out the sits in a new couch

"It’s a sad occasion, but I am happy for those of you who could make it here today and hope that those who couldn’t will remember my brother Dejerrity Mycron in their own way.

Dej is gone, but the people we lose stay with us in the things we do and how we remember them.

I first remember meeting Dej when he – together with Jeb Nicholls - was hosting for my late husband Ars Northmead at some weekly event they had going for a year, or maybe even two years.

Quite frankly, my first impression wasn’t favorable. I thought Dej was a crude and overbearing bastard. He, on the other hand, thought I was a damned fool. Well, that only goes to show how very wrong first impressions can be sometimes.

I got to know Dej better when Ars passed away in 2010. To my own amazement, I discovered that underneath that rough exterior he was a kind, loving, smart and very gentle soul.

Dej was fiercely loyal and very protective towards me. In that time, he also made his home here at Southern Charm. His protectiveness made me feel safe in a time when I had lost my footing. In the years to come our friendship grew and we became closer. I discovered what a truly good man he was.

Although, as I am sure you all know, he had an awful temper and high defenses, we never really exchanged an unfriendly word. In time he let me come past his walls of protection and I got to know the entirely lovable man behind the rough exterior.

Dej was a man with many and diverse interests.

Did you know he was a secret Trekkie and had a childlike fascination with everything science fiction? He even built a wonderful and complex command station for the USS Enterprise over many years. It would fold out in various ways and had all kinds of instrumentation that I don’t know a thing about, not being a Trekkie myself.

Dej often boasted of having the largest collection of gay porn videography in the history of mankind, among them the complete “Centurians of Rome” , a classic from 1981.

On the other hand, he also had an extremely large collection of show tunes and often knew all the lyrics by heart. He would often sing them to me – and others who cared to listen in – with his beautiful tenor. But he never liked when I tried to sing along, I cannot understand why.

I was utterly shocked when I was reached by the news of Dej’s death and the circumstances surrounding it: he had died alone at the age of only 54 and that he hadn’t been discovered for up to a week after his passing. Add to that the facts that the cause and time of his death are still unknown. It saddened me deeply that I had lost a brother in that way.

Hopefully we will learn more about what caused his death and when he died after the investigations are completed. Dej’s brother in first life has promised to keep me apprised of the results. I can only hope he keeps his promise.

Dej is gone, and we remain to guard his memory and keep him in our hearts and minds. I will always remember him as my protective brother, with a weakness for singing show tunes to me to make me happy when I was sad, or even just to make me laugh.

I will always love you, Dej, and I will always remember you for the warm, caring and loving man that you were.

Rest in peace, my sweet brother."

The Over The Rainbow Tribute For Ars - Event Pictures by J.J. Goodman

Hottie B Lockjaw

Kharissa Indigo

The Disco Biscuits, with guest star Kharissa

Bambi Flores, Hottie & Kharissa

Hottie & Bambi

JJ Goodman & Fordis Flores

Jeb Nicholls

Miss Pieni, my niece

Syllie Whitfield & her Royal Majesty Queen BM Oh

Mirco Dinzeo

Dejerrity & Tomais

Cayson Triellis & Jay

The Smith Boys (Kahvy & Garrett) with Syllie & BM

Kahvy

Kane Hawksby

Shutterbug niece

BM

Ars In Memoriam 2014

Photography by Kent Hutchinson of KH Photo

Joseph Douglas Wilson Jr. a.k.a

Ars Northmead

★ April 21, 1953 (first life)
★ October 25, 2006 (SecondLife)
† March 12, 2010

On this day four years ago my beloved husband Ars passed away after a short illness.

Ars' brothers Dejerrity Mycron and Jeb Nicholls arranged a Memorial Service at Calas Galadhon where Truck Meredith and Tymus Tenk kindly let us use the homestead sim Mirromere for a week before, and their main sim for the big Memorial Service on March 20, 2010. Bora Rossini had created a beautiful setting for the memorial.

All of Ars' family and friends in SecondLife gathered there as well as Doug's parents, one of his sisters, his brothers and and even some of his nephews, nieces and cousins, who joined us in front of a computer screen using an avatar they had created.

I have asked for pictures from that memorial service earlier and this year I was happy to receive two from our friend elis Eun.

Photography by elis Eun

Photography by elis Eun

Although I never at the time thought that I would find love and true joy again, as it turns out life can work miracles and today I am happily married to my darling Tomais. I know that Ars would have wished this for me.

Coming Together

Yesterday I had invited a small and carefully selected group of family and friends to join me at Southern Charm to commemorate the third anniversary of Ars' passing. The real day is tomorrow, March 12, but as you all know it is usually easier for people to make time during the weekends.

Dej, Millimina, I, Shayne & Sarco

Those invited were
Guyke Lundquist, Ars' son,
Dej Mycron, Ars' brother,
Andrey Messmer (nowadays known as Drey Porchers), Ars' brother,
Jeb Nicholls, Ars' brother,
Shayne Turbo, Ars' brother in-law and husband of Jeb
Millimina Salamander, Ars' sister in-law and my sister, and last but not least,
Sarco Halderman, Ars' business partner and both our friend.

Sarco, Guyke & I

I was so fortunate that all except two could attend despite it being held on the day that the United States started Daylight Saving Time and the fact that Sarco had to get up at six o'clock on a Monday morning. Jeb unfortunately had a prior engagement and Drey could sadly not be reached.

The six of us who could make it had a nice time together,  exchanging memories of Ars and catching up with what had been going on in the others first and second lives.

Email to the Wilson´s

From: X.X.
Sent: December 15, 2012 8:53 PM
To: Debbie.X.
Subject: Happy Holidays

Dearest Debbie, Marie and the rest of my American family,

We have another Christmas and New Year coming up and I wish you all the best for the holidays and the coming year. I hope this email reaches you all in good health and that you are all doing well!

In my first life, 2012 has been a kind and consoling year and it seems that I, in spite of a few bad turns during the year, will be meeting it will all my loved ones still with me. My mother and father have both been hospitalized during the year but are both now doing very well and are – as always – enjoying each other’s company. I have two more grandnieces/grandnephews as my sisters children continue to multiply.

On a personal level I am doing well too. Although I still think of Doug/Ars on a daily basis it is now happy memories that appear in my mind. You should also know, that whenever I think of him I also think about you. Of course I already knew that you were an extraordinary family but recounts of other peoples experiences in similar circumstances have made it quite obvious to me that you are unique. The warmth, kindness and consideration with which the Wilson family received me and accepted me in such a difficult situation is still unparalleled by anything I have yet heard of. I will be forever grateful to you for that.

My SecondLife is also doing well, Guyke, Millimina and Dej are still close, in fact Dej has moved in and set up house on the south west corner of Southern Charm sim. I am sure all three of them and Jeb also send you their warmest greetings for the holidays and the new year.

With love and big hugs!
Bock

"It Gets Better" in SecondLife

 

The It Gets Better Project (url) was created in first life to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach – if they can just get through their teen years. The project was initiated by the gay activist, syndicated sex advice columnist and author Dan Savage together with his partner Terry Miller to inspire hope for young people facing harassment.

I was happy to note, during my wanderings at the Second Pride festival sims yesterday, that this worthwhile project has now also spread into SecondLife. Although in a different format, posters instead of videos, the message resounding from them is loud and clear and will hopefully help young people in SecondLife that they are not alone and that things actually will get better.

You will find the It Gets Better booth in the Buenos Aires shopping district.

Here are a few of the individual testimonials.

The Yifus

Ra Deemster

Mirco Dinzeo, fabulous underwear creator (among many other things)

The always delightful Kharissa Indigo (SP2012 board member)

DJ Cupric "The Coop" Router and Jagger Naughton

Last - but not least - my brother in-law Jeb Nicholls, making the family proud

Unscheduled Events

Yesterdays main event in SecondLife was going to be my first prom, but things happen and I ended up doing so much more.

It all started going off the well planned track when my brother in-laws Dejerrity Mycron and Jeb Nicholls came over to bring me to Dej´s parcel at the Southwest (please note I got it right this time) corner of the sim. They had been landscaping and decorating and wanted to show me what they had achieved so far.

Even if they both claim they are not done yet and that there is a lot of texturizing remaining, the spot already looks wonderful.

We sat there together at the camp fire for a good while talking about everything between heaven and earth, men (of course), life and loves, my chest hair (too little according to them both), how long Dej can keep a computer in working condition (he just got a newer one after eight years), earlier building projects they had been involved in (The Damocles Project and Ghoul Prison), how Jeb could fuel the Peoples Republic of China by daily flossing and about Ars (of course).

Time passes very fast when you are happy and when we were done covering the essentials I discovered I had already missed the Euro prom, so I had four hours to kill.before the American prom party started.

My buddy Butch Diavolo was doing an impromptu set at the Sanctuary, he always does that when he knows I am busy with other stuff. However, I was able to drop in for the last 30 minutes of his set and had a great time with great music and hilarious chat. Butch is a motormouth who is able to pull up the wittiest remarks at the drop of a hat.

I took a meal break after Butch´s set and was then called by my ex-missus for-a-day, Iendi Laville, to my buddy Apollon Allen´s jetty. Apollon was playing music for the gathered crowd (mostly Swedes) while they were dancing or enjoying the Jacuzzi.

Let me just give you a warning here.

All straight men are not avers to giving you a good time in a Jacuzzi. Ethon Sands has wandering feet that are wonderfully soft and flexible. I am not sure if he was playing with others under the water too or if they were just mocking me when they all started repeating "Ooooooooo Ethoooooon, it feels so good!"

Finally the time came to get ready for the American prom, so I reluctantly got out of the tub with the memories of Ethon´s feet still lingering on my mind.

By the time I got to the prom the party was well on it´s way and people were having a good time. I was too tired to take pictures but thoroughly enjoyed myself for an hour before leaving for bed at 4 AM my time. Avacar Bluestar was DJ-ing (the first time I heard him) to our enjoyment. Beautiful Kharissa Indigo and sexy  and notorious Ryce Skywalker were there among a whole lot of other sexy men and pleasant women.

Oh, you may be wondering if I did get a date to bring me to the prom. No such luck I am afraid, although I did try to entice the studelicious Ziggy Starsmith over with a blind teleport (He absolutely loves them!), but he was at another party and "couldn't come" (Have you ever heard a lamer excuse when being invited to a party by a sexy blond Swede,I ask?), or so he claimed.

Men, you cannot live with them, nor without them! All the same, I had a great Friday evening and early night, and have left out a lot of what happened being the soul of discretion that I am known to be.

The Concept of Family in SecondLife

From a sociological and/or anthropological perspective a family is a group of people who are affiliated by marriage, consanguinity, affinity or co-residence. Families are formed as a source of mutual love and support within the group concerned. Sexual relations among family members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest taboo.

In a virtual world we don´t need to focus on consanguineous relationships as sexual relationships cannot end with an independent issue. All relationships are created by choice through affinity and affections and are either romantic or non-romantic.

The Family Chart. Muted colors mean that the avatar is (mostly) no longer around
Yellow circles signify partnerships/marriages, red circles previous partnerships/marriages and yellow arrows mutually elected non-romatic relationships of a family kind (sister/brother or child/mother or father)

In the beginning there was Ars Northmead, a charming, friendly, clever and multitalented avatar.

Ars was - among many other things - a DJ in SecondLife and founded the Sarco Sound Group with his friend and business partner Sarco Halderman. One of the first DJ´s recruited to the group was Andrey (D R E Y) Messmer. Ars and Andrey developed a close non-romantic-friendship, with much love and trust between them.

Shortly before Ars and I met there may - or may not - have been a brief sexual relationship between Ars and Guyke Lundqvist (I am not altogether sure about this and have never really worried about it). Anyway, by the time I appeared on the scene the relationship between the two had evolved into a relationship between a father and son. When I teamed up with Ars I also became Guyke´s evil-stepfather.

Ars and I became a couple, shortly thereafter Andrey and Guyke became a couple also, this was however before we had established the family. When Andrey´s and Guyke´s relationship ended, Andrey became Ars brother. Both Andrey and Guyke went on to form new romantic relationships that were included into the family.

When Guyke became partnered with Haakon Meads, his elected mother Starry Sweetwater and her husband Sir Trifle became in-laws. Similarly I become the uncle of Skip Turbo´s adopted son Liam when Skip and Andrey were partners.

Ars also formed brotherly ties with Dej Mycron and Jeb Nicholls, while Martial Eisenhart and I and Millimina Salamander and I also elected each other as siblings, well in the last case I more or less forced it on the poor girl. Martial formed a partnership with Elorian Scarbridge for a while through which Elorian and I became brother in-laws. Dej has of course also had partners, but I did not much like the last one so I am not mentioning him (I am invoking my literary license on this).

Postscript
I am happy that I took the time to make the family chart, because looking at it clarify some things that have been a mystery to me earlier.

As I understand it, these kind of chosen family clusters are supposedly more common among the gay population in SecondLife than among the straight population. An explanation to this could of course be that many gays already have experienced the concept of "choosing your family" in their first life due to the shunning and ostracizing that still occurs in all cultures, albeit to a lesser extent nowadays that 15-20 years ago.

I have no sure information on how common it can be among lesbians, either in first life or SecondLife. As we all know lesbians seem to provoke less animosity in the straight culture, possibly because the women are better at staying "under the radar" than gay men. The fact that straight men find women "playing with each other" so fascinating at least while they wait for him - the macho male - to arrive. I am also certain that part of the explanation is due to the unequal status of women in society, "what women do does not matter".

If heterosexuals ever think about homosexuals, there seems to be a strong tendency to focus on the sexual activities rather than on the feelings and attractions. I did not choose to become gay to engage in fellatio or have anal intercourse. I am gay and therefore use the sexual activities and techniques available to me to give and receive pleasure from another man - and hell yes, I damn well love it!.

Ars In Memoriam

Joseph Douglas Wilson Jr., in SecondLife better known as the avatar Ars Northmead, passed away peacefully on March 12, 2010, at 8.30 PM SLT. Doug died at hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, of respiratory failure and complications due to double pneumonia.

In his first life Doug left behind parents, four siblings and their families. In SecondLife Ars left behind me, our son Guyke and Ars´s three brothers Andrey, Dejerrity and Jeb and very many friends. All of us miss him terribly in our lives.

Hey, my darling, I am back to sit and talk with you at Mirromere again. Somehow this is still where I feel closest to you, even if I know you are with me everywhere. The calmness of this place soothes me. 

Its strange really, today is two years since you passed away and sometimes it still feels like it was only two weeks ago. These two years have been rough, but I am doing much better now and am getting increasingly better as time lingers on. Nowadays I can even think of you, talk with you or about you without breaking up - most of the time. Other times are not so good, but those days are farther apart. 

I think a lot about our years together, babe, when I first saw you, when I first heard you laugh, when we first kissed, when we first made love on those damn pose balls that weren't adjusted to our sizes, when you first told me you loved me and I confessed that I had loved you for the longest time and had gotten to love you more every time we met.

I remember how we went looking for our new home together in secrecy. Not telling anyone what we were doing or why we were doing it. The many, many, places we saw before we came to Southern Charm and saw the house on the waterfall and both knew at once that this would have to be it. It felt like home from the start. 

We had many good times, my darling Ars, and they are good to think about now. We had some bad times also, babe, but they never, ever, made us doubt that what was good between us would hold whatever came in our way. I have never been happier than when I have been with you, my Ars, you always made me feel safe, you made me feel clever and you made me feel worthy of your love. 

Did I ever tell you that I sometimes seem to forget what that wild and crazy laughter of yours sounds like? But you always come through for me, and the next night or the night after that I hear it in my dreams and get all warm and fuzzy allover again. Yeah, yeah, we aren't religious any of us but still, that's what actually happens.

Oh Ars, did I tell you today? Yes I know that you know I love you, but did I actually speak it out. Somethings need to be said out loud and repeated as often as it suits you. So whether or not I already told you, I love you so much Ars baby, always and forever.

Peaches & Coconuts

Last week one of my co-workers, who was married with an American woman for ten years and lived stateside for a few years longer, told me one of these rather amusing generalizations about the difference between Americans and Swedes.

My co-worker said, "Americans are like peaches and Swedes are like coconuts, because Americans seem so warm, charming and sweet when you meet them but are hard as stone inside when you get to know them better while Swedes have a rough, hard and inaccessible exterior and are actually all soft and mushy they you come closer."

I hadn't heard this before and thought it was a rather amusing way of describing the differences, bearing in mind of course that these kinds of generalizations only hold some truth on the macro-level. When one get´s down to the micro-level with smaller groups and individuals they mean nothing at all.

I usually follow the news closely all the time but not so yesterday because I had been too preoccupied with other stuff. When I logged in to my SecondLife at noon (SLT) I was therefor not aware of the fact that there had been a earth quake on the east coast of the U.S. and that it had hit New York City as well.

You can imagine my surprise when my brother in-law Dejerrity Mycron sent me an IM telling me that he had waited for me to get in-world to let me know that he and his family were all doing well and that my other brother in-law Jeb Nicholls was also fine.

Dejerrity knows me quite well - and he knows from experience that I am a worrier - so he had stayed in-world to give me this news personally. That was so caring and thoughtful of him that it still warms me up inside and brings tears to my eyes thinking about it now.

"Actions speak louder than words", as my darling Ars always used to say so I will return the favor to Dej and tell him "Yes Dej, I love you too you big muscular, hairy ball of mush!"

So now I only have the hurricane to worry about, but hopefully it will change it´s path enough or lose momentum not to cause any real harm to my loved ones.