ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
GEEK
by Ted Pelton

I used to be someone else. Oh, you wouldn't have noticed. Guys like me just sort of fade into the surroundings, like the soft hum of your hard drive. No one ever notices until one day something goes wrong and there's a crash.

I always seemed to be marking time when I was a kid, waiting for something to happen. I got through school okay, one featureless boy in the crowd of suburbanites. We had big schools on Long Island, so I never made any of the sports teams, though I was on J.V. tennis one year. After graduation, a two-year degree got me an okay I.T. job, which in time became even more ideal when they moved me to nights. Eventually I became the "network doctor," troubleshooting problems in the system during off-hours. I didn't have to deal with anyone. Most of the communication took place by email and as long as people's work stations hummed along, I was pretty much left alone.

I can't remember ever not fearing girls. I got stepped on plenty in the old days. It always amazed me how much scorn a female could pour into a phrase like, "I wasn't talking to YOU" or even a simple, "Tsk," combined with a turn of the head and flip of the hair that sealed you off into another world. All done with complete deniability--if you asked them, or if some adult did, or it went to court, they would be all, "I was always nice to him."

Yeah, I just never got it.

Which is probably what was responsible for my relationship with Ken and Karen to begin with. I'd known them from high school, and after a couple years we all became inseparable. Somehow, I could talk to Karen--she was already taken and I was just, well, their geek friend, who could get them software and fix any computer snafu they might have.

In fact, they called me that. Geek.

Ken and I couldn't have been more different, but that's what made it work. They were both beautiful--Ken the star football player in high school, Karen a cheerleader with long honey-brown hair and a body that was impossible. She was small, and yet every part of her was tantalizing. I'd look and look at her and wonder how it had been done--like some new state of the art electronics device so perfectly and compactly put together that it takes up half the space you imagine it should. Don't get me wrong--there was never any question about my messing with Karen. For one thing, Ken would annihilate me. For another, it was just the unwritten law of our three-part relationship. The twenty-two year-old virgin was allowed to hang with Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Ten because he was safe and predictable, and could serve as a buffer between them. God, how I envied them--believe me, they made no secret of their sexual activity! And how they must have despised me--a male in form, but without the macho packaging that defines a man in our society. Ken wore tank tops that showed off his chest hair, broad shoulders and biceps. My shirts were buttoned to the second below the top, even in summer. I always avoided the beach--and on the South Shore that wasn't easy. But there was no place for the maleness I possessed, a maleness that wasn't beautiful and still isn't acknowledged as valuable in today's America.

The problems began one summer when we were at our closest, the three of us, about five years after high school. Ken worked for the highway department, and after he got off work one Saturday, we all had plans to meet, watch videos and drink some beers. The usual. Of course, I was also there to referee any fights between the two of them and when I arrived, it looked like a doozy was in the offing. At the last minute, Ken had gotten a ticket from a buddy at work to see Eddie Money at the Nassau Coliseum and had already taken off. Karen could watch videos with me, he'd said. It was typical for him to leave me to clean up such messes. I'd brought a twelve-pack with me, but no one had even called me, telling me about the change in plans.

When I arrived, Karen was already doing shots of Tequila.

Though he trusted me, Ken always knew I wanted Karen. In a sick way, my desire for what he possessed was one of the dynamics of our relationship. In high school, I remember one night we were all at the library, working on a project (or rather, I should say, Karen and I were working--Ken would just skate through on what we did for him). We were sitting at a long wooden library table. Ken looked me in the eye and cupped one of Karen's breasts in his hand right in front of me. This in public, in view of anyone who cared to notice. It was to show me he could do it. I'll admit, I was impressed. He didn't even have to ask. Karen's face reddened slightly as she kept her glance down at the book in front of her on the table. She didn't want to know who might be seeing her.

"Should I leave?" I asked Karen now, arriving at their apartment behind the Tequila bottle and seeing that she was pissed off and already getting wasted.

"No," she said. She smiled sadly. "We shouldn't let this ruin our time, just because of Ken."

"Okay," I said. "I'll go get the movie. We'll have a good time without him."

In those days, you'd still rent the video player along with the movie, and you'd get this thing with a handle on it that half the time didn't work. I have to laugh. I don't even remember now what Eddie Money was known for, except "Two Tickets to Paradise." But we were all into him then.

Ken had left some pot and we watched the movie pretty much in silence, drinking, interrupted only by forced laughter at funny scenes that weren't that funny to us at first. But laughs rolled out of us unprompted as we got more and more trashed.

The movie ended. We drank some more. I was sitting in a recliner they'd just bought, probably their only new piece of furniture, while Karen laid sprawled out on the carpeted floor. I laughed again.

"What?" said Karen.

"Nothing." The twelve-pack was almost gone, as well as most of the Tequila and a fair amount of the dope.

"No, what?"

"It's just an idea."

Karen looked hard at me. Her green eyes seemed to have magnets in them that went straight to my crotch.

I laughed again. When Ken went off like this with his construction buddies, as often as not he wouldn't be home until dawn. I spoke quickly: "I was thinking we could play strip backgammon. Whoever wins, the loser has to take off one piece of clothing. Or do a shot," I added, not wanting to spook her too much.

"Hell, why not," said Karen. "Fuck Ken."

We got out the board and began to play. All the same, I was surprised when, sitting across from Karen on the floor where we'd set up the game, she told me to take off my shirt after she won the first round. I did, showing my mostly hairless, pointy breasts.

"You should wear a bra," she said. Then she felt bad at having insulted me and tried to soften it. "The game would go longer then at least and we'd have more fun."

We continued. Now we were at the stage of getting into stoned conversations about where we wanted to be in the future, talking about how hypocritical people were, agreeing with one another, forgetting whose turn it was in the game. I was also getting pretty hot after getting her to take off her shirt. She'd gone to her room earlier to put on a bra which I don't think she'd been wearing when we started. It was one of those big, white, padded kind old women wear, bulky as Army equipment. But nothing could disguise what Karen had, and while I had to imagine the darker skin of her nipples, I could see slight protrusions in the fabric. She was really drunk now, because she'd taken some shots earlier rather than remove clothes. It was getting too much for me, seeing her like this. I was pretty far gone myself.

"Karen," I said. "You're a really great friend. I ask you this as a friend. Don't get mad. Could you let me make love to you?"

She shook her head back and forth in a dopey, drunken way. A cloud seemed to darken her. There'd never been anything like this between us, and I told her I didn't want to threaten her relationship with Ken. "But I do get jealous of him," I said. "He's so lucky to have you." I tried to keep looking at her face but had trouble keeping my eyes off her breasts. "You guys are my best friends, and I wouldn't do anything to hurt either one of you." My voice was cracking with nerves, but I wanted her so bad. "I'm a virgin," I said. "I've never been with a woman like this." Although her eyes were bleary and she couldn't sit up straight, I could tell she was sympathetic. I wasn't actually a virgin. There'd been a family wedding the year before and I'd ended up with a friend of my cousin in the parking lot in the dark, quickly trying to get her into sex before she'd notice, before anyone from the reception came looking for us. This was something else: here I was with the woman who was most desirable to me in the world, someone so far out of my league I'd never even allowed myself to fantasize about her, and she was half-undressed in the lamplight in front of me, entertaining the idea of fucking me. "Ken doesn't have to know." I reached into my wallet and pulled out a condom that had been there so long it had worn a circle in the leather.

"You're a good friend, Geek, but . . . ." She had righted herself somewhat, but then collapsed back on her elbows, so that she was lying away from me.

I pressed on. "You just lost another. Take off your jeans."

Honoring the game seemed to be important to her. She laid back and unbuckled, then stopped. I helped her pull them off. Her panties were pink, with a flower print. She sat up again; for a moment, she'd been lying back flat with her womanhood exposed to me. I'd caught a flash of deep pink and hairs coming from the seams of her panties. Her brown hair fell off her face and touched the white of the battle bra.

"You look so good," I said. I began to rub my pant leg with the heel of my hand.

"Poor Geek," said Karen. She kind of sang the words, her head lolling forward, back and forth. "Poor Geeky Geeky Geeky boy." She laughed.

I slid the board out from between us. "Ken will never find out," I said again.

"Put the thing on," she said. I undressed and did it. She laid back down and her head hit the floor slightly too hard. I pulled off the panties. Then, I don't really know why, except that I was too drunk and she was sort of staring off into the other room, I took the rubber off.

She didn't notice it at all when I was inside her, nor did she respond much except for a slow moaning; I began to really work, trying to give her pleasure. But she wasn't doing it for me; she was doing it to get back at Ken, because she was drunk, maybe for other reasons I didn't know. When I came, I seemed to explode. It felt like an artery opened, and everything in my body rushed out and kept rushing, three, maybe four seconds. When the river stopped, I shivered a few more seconds, like I'd endured a painless electrocution. I don't think I've ever had a feeling like that since.

She was snoring loudly, and I realized the snoring might even have begun when she hit her head on the floor earlier. This was awkward. Should I wake her? What would I say once I did? I felt guilty, like if I brought her back to consciousness I'd only embarrass her. I wasn't even sure waking her was possible. I slid away and began putting on my clothes. Juice was dripping out of her. Mine.

God, what if Ken got home? I tried to wake her. I took her under the arm and lifted her to a sitting position. After some struggle, I got a better hold and managed to get her on her feet, walking her, with me taking half the weight, into the bedroom. She fell headfirst on the bed.

Over the next few minutes, I managed to maneuver her around and get her lying on her back underneath the covers.

Back in the living room, there was a coaster-sized spot on the rug. I got a sponge from the kitchen and daubed it up. I was thinking, this is where we fucked. I just wanted to sit there for a while. But I also wanted to get out of there before Ken showed up. Her clothes! I quickly picked them up and tossed them in by the bed. Karen had turned over onto her stomach and her hair was splayed up around her head like a crash-scene photo.

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