I wasn't sure how to start grooving, but an automated notification system told me to type "/dance"; I did, and instantly downloaded a series of animations with names like the Butt Shake Dance. Soon I was shaking around the room to streaming music by KLF, Jane's Addiction, Susannah Hoffs and Weird Al Yankovic.

Then I was teleporting on to the Bellevue, modeled after a real bar in Hell's Kitchen ("est. 1912," it claims) that was giving out free Boingboing.net T-shirts, and then to the SkyClub, a futuristic boite hovering hundreds of feet overhead. It may have been virtual, but it sure felt like a Friday night.

Except that I woke up at home, in my own bed. The great thing about weekending in Second Life is that you don't need a place to crash you just log off. Neither did I have a hangover a surprise since Urge Gainsbourg had fallen off his barstool after drinking too much Duff. (It was Urge who had given Ben Folds the Duff.)

SATURDAY morning found Urge flying around Svarga, mountainous islands with an ecosystem in which bees flit from flower to flower, pollinating them. "The seeds blow in the wind," Svarga's creator, Laukosargas Svarog, told New World Notes (nwn.blogs.com), one of a handful of Second Life news outlets, "and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It's all interdependent."
Whatever the programming, Svarga is beautiful, with lush ferns, rushing waterfalls and a grove where violets spring up around your avatar the minute he/she/it sets foot on the grass. In fact, I'm tempted to call it a work of art, my only hesitation being that so much in Second Life is artistically sophisticated, from the snowy wastes of Wengen which I tromped across in virtual roller skates to the "zoom blur" photographs of Bucky Barkley, who showed them at a Second Life gallery on Saturday evening, complete with virtual cheese and crackers.

Like most events I attended in Second Life including Sunday-morning church services Barkley's show wound up with everybody dancing. Actually, the only place I went where few people danced (besides the academic discussion of genocide in the freakishly earnest Neufreistadt) was Saturday night's Metajams party, at which eight live musicians performed in a single audio stream. The crowd stood mostly stock still as Ricardo Sprocket, Komuso Tokugawa and others played a medley of folk-slash-indie rock tunes that were easily as good as anything I've heard in New York clubs. Better yet: no cover charge.

AtS the same time, I was feeling a bit lonely. I'd had brief chats with a dozen Second Life residents the unreality makes it easy to approach them but had made no real connection. In a way, it was because I really was a tourist. I had nothing invested in this world, while they were building houses and yachts, organizing rock concerts and fashion shows and creating virtual refugee camps to educate people about Darfur.

I watched them greeting each other like old friends and cuddling on hilltop picnic blankets, and wished my wife, Jean, who was watching cable in the next room, had a computer of her own, so we could explore Second Life together.
I considered for a moment going to the strip club I'd accidentally wandered into earlier, but instead I cooked dinner a real, not virtual, menu of seared duck breasts, mushrooms sautéed with thyme, and potatoes roasted in duck fat, garlic and rosemary. Then Jean and I opened a bottle of syrah from the Russian River Valley and commenced our feast. It was, we agreed, an especially satisfying meal and I knew exactly why: because, as Second Lifers understand all too well, I'd made it myself.

A Cyberweekend
GETTING THERE First, downloads the Second Life software at www.secondlife.com; it's free and available for both Windows XP and Macintosh OSX. A basic subscription costs nothing, but a premium membership, $22.95 for three months, deposits 400 Linden dollars into your account every week.
Second World is divided into named sections (Svarga, for example) made up of 256-by-256 grids. To reach one, your avatar can walk or fly, which tends to be slow but scenic, or teleport directly, by inputting the area name and coordinates, which make up the addresses.

WHERE TO STAY You don't really need a place to sleep, but there are hotels in Second Life, like the Westport (Sphinx, 32, 104; 200 Linden dollars a week). You can't rent a room at Aloft (Aloft Island, 68, 68), but you can see a sample room.

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK House of Zen (Hinode Shima 198, 31) serves sushi in a traditional Japanese building, free if you order a la carte at the bar, but 150 Linden dollars a person for table service.

Bellevue (Hawthorne 162, 167) is a rollicking, low-key bar straight out of Hell's Kitchen.
WHERE TO SHOP there are almost as many boutiques and malls as there are residents, so check out Second Style magazine (www.secondstyle.com) for fashion advice. And for the default urban hipster look, there's always American Apparel (Lerappa 152, 64).
WHAT TO SEE AND DO Svarga (Svarga 7, 123) is a constantly evolving world worth exploring.
Nakama (Nakama 46, 46) is a city designed in various styles of Japanese anime.

Knock down a few pins at Acropolis Bowl (Walleye 112, 18), then hit the dance floor or listen to live music at Mood Indigo (Olive 217, 227).
Sundays at noon Pacific Time, visit the Church of Elvis (Nampo 231, 228) to learn about the holy trinity: Young Elvis, Fat Elvis and the '68 Comeback Special Elvis.

The Virtual Hallucinations experiment (Sedig 45, 25) lets you experience the auditory and visual hallucinations that schizophrenics have to deal with every day.