Computer Boy swaggers over to my cube to help me open this one knucklehead email Phoenix sent me and within about, oh, two seconds, I’m ready to whip off his khakis and blow him right there. He’s leaning over my keyboard, tappy-tap-tap, with his lousy beautiful sideburns and his Right Guard wafting all over the place, and underneath that this kind of wounded musk that tends to make my nipples go boing, and his teeth which I could fucking eat they look so healthy. I have, mind you, already offered him my seat. But he can’t allow that. No-no-no. Don’t you move your pretty little self, he tells me, which is when neighbor Brisby starts snarking away and I’m like, Oh for Chrissakes, why does this obnoxious creature, this dopey slab of masculine grace, whose name is (try not to laugh) Lance, and whom I have taken to calling Lancelot, Sir Lance-me-a-lot, why does this totally throat-lickable hottie have to be such a shitbrain?
So I just sit there smelling him and watching his unreasonably defined triceps pulse and unpulse and noticing the blond hairs on his earlobe, like tiny spears of wheat, and the way his firm little rump tenses up when he gets a systems error. And the worst part of it is that he keeps running these lines about how I must be doing something to my machine, my keystrokes must be pretty vigorous—key strokes, get it?—and even though I’m actually kind of impressed by his use of the word vigorous, there’s no way I can flirt back without losing total office cred with Brisby, who’s outright laughing at this point. It’s not like I have time for this crap anyway; I’m on deadline. Though actually, the worst part is my leched-out imagination, wherein Lancelot is bending me like a band saw and this can’t be happening, this cannot be happening. I cannot be lusting after the Computer Boy on deadline, that is too lame for even me.
Only now Brisby’s on the phone with his fiancée, for the twelfth fucking time this hour, and Lancey tells me he’s going to have to reboot and suddenly down he goes, under my desk, and I forget to skootch my chair back because I’m too busy staring at his back and counting up the individual muscle groups, sort of flowcharting them, and then something rubs against my knee, his wrist I guess, but of course I’ve got these jeans on, because it’s forty fucking degrees in the office; the hotter it gets outside, the colder they keep the office. Then, just to balance himself I suppose, Lancey sets his hand on the bridge of my foot and starts in with these little appraising squeezes, like he’s fitting me for a pair of pumps, and I want to tell him, Hey, bright boy: there’s a whole calf and thigh where that came from! But before I can say anything, he turns and informs me I’ve got real soul and I want to barf and run my tongue along the pink canals behind his ears all at once and I can hear Brisby mumbling his I-love-yous and hanging up and my screen goes blank. Lancey rolls back on his haunches just enough to send a ripple under his shirt and I imagine looping my arms around him, taking the meat of his shoulders in my palms, and his front teeth, his, let me emphasize, goddamn perfect front teeth, biting my clavicle, and I know Brisby’s going to slag me for the rest of eternity, until death do us part, but it’s too late, I’m halfway off my chair in a canine posture and my knees are trembling.
Ahem.
You’re all set, Lance tells me. Just turn it on. He’s back to hovering over me. You know how to turn it on, don’t you, he says. I’m like, Yeah, it’s not the turning on I’m worried about. It’s keeping the hard drive going. And immediately, even before Brisby snarks, I regret having reduced myself to lurid banter with Computer Boy, who gives me his cheap and evil grin, causing this adorable declivity in his left cheek, not exactly a dimple, a crimp, a crimple, which he then has to ruin by saying: Maybe you could come back to my office sometime and we could work on that. And now, paddling to regain my footing and really hoping he’ll just leave me be, I mutter: Yeah, maybe when the new laptops come in, Lance, I could come back there and give you my special laptop dance.
I’d like that, he says, I’d like that very much, then—get this—winks, so that finally I can muster a decently derisive laugh, a true ho-ho-ho-you-bonehead-why-don’t-you-crawl-back-to-whatever-mousepad-you-came-from kind of laugh, which still isn’t enough to get Brisby off my back, because the instant Computer Boy and his filet mignon of an ass have bounced off he messages me: When do I get mine? Meaning, laptop dance, the prick.
What I really want to know is when this sad new genre of human being, the Geek Player, came into existence. Because even two years ago the Systems Manager was this little smudge of a person who frittered on about mainframe systems and was perfectly content to hang with his tech buddies and flirt with the forty-something divorcées at Mac Warehouse. Those guys had a certain pathetic, introverted arrogance, because they knew they had the rest of the office by the stones. But they were basically frightened of people. Then this new breed started up, guys like Lance, who are no longer Systems Managers. Now they’re Computer Guys, which means they can be cute and outgoing and some of them, such as Lance, even ripped. And they strut around the office, coming to the rescue of all us computer fuckups, including the publisher, whose dome turns the color of salsa whenever his Mac crashes and who worships the very ground Lance walks on, because without Lance his cursor won’t move. When he isn’t hustling the chicks in production and advertising and even that one chick in editorial (me), when he isn’t out amongst his subjects, in other words, Lance sits in his office talking to the other Geek Players in the other offices, on speaker phone, all of them hollering, and playing Nerf basketball via remote, and cheating.
How did Computer Guy become the Lifeguard of the decade? How did the mild-mannered Systems Manager morph into an omnipotent Geek Player, Love Slayer? Brisby and I have developed the following theories:
Geekerella: The existing SM population, recognizing player potential, has undergone an eerie Men’s Magazine transformation involving facial scrapes, free weights, some kind of Toastmasters public-speech seminar, and clothing from Structure.
Trickle-down chic: Noting the wealth and power afforded anyone with a whiff of tech know-how, an entirely new population of vaguely cool and mendacious men (previously drawn toward, say, condo sales) has chosen a career in the computer sciences.
Not-so-great expectations: The general population, steeped in the greasy autism of the Systems Manager, has a tendency to inflate the coolness of the Computer Guy. As Brisby puts it: When you’re expecting Bill Gates, Steve Jobs starts looking like Brad Pitt. A related phenomenon (The Naughty Wonk Effect) holds that a geek overlay accentuates sexiness through irony, the same principle that leads pornographers to script so many gang-bang scenes featuring librarians.
But how far will this paradigm shift go? Geek mafioso? Geek supermodels? Geek gangsta rap? How much cultural power will the Geek Player amass before people realize he’s just a guy who can talk to machines? And, perhaps more to the point, why do Computer Boy and his crimple have to haunt my every waking moment?
So we’re at one of these office-wide happy-hour deals, which are supposed to build company morale, though what they tend to do is reinforce the sense, at least between Brisby and myself, that we are being bribed into silence. Of course Brisby ducks off to some fiancée-engineered function, like the good little monogamous soldier he is, leaving me fully vulnerable to the forces of office tooldom, against which I have only drunkenness as a defense, so that when something lands on my hair I flail around in this slightly trashed girlie spasm and smack into what feels like a tree limb with skin. There’s Computer Boy and his cinematic teeth and he does this drowsy thing with his eyelids, some kind of demiwink, which makes him look like a cat in the sun.
Ciao bella, he says. Did I scare you?
I thought you were a fly, I say.
Maybe I am. Maybe I’m a Spanish fly.
Oh please, I say. Go ask the wizard for a brain.
Which you might figure would shut his piehole. But no, he has to speak, some ridiculous I-don’t-even-know-what rap about, oh Christ, something.
What happened to your fan club? I say. For the last hour Marcie the Production Ho has been shoving her C-cups in his face and even as we speak she’s across the room sending me the official that-my-man death rays, which only makes the whole thing more pathetic, because there’s no angle in competing with a chick who lists nipple piercing on her résumé under Other Skills.
What are you drinking, he says.
G & T.
He shakes his sweet, vacant head.
Gin, I say slowly, and tonic.
Gin, he says. Does that make you want to sin?
Actually, it makes me want to chop your head off. Does that qualify as a sin? Or is that more like a public service?
But good old Lancey, he’s not one to give up too easy. He keeps asking questions. Like he read a book once that said: Ask lots of questions. Chicks dig it when you take an interest in their lives. When did I start at the paper? How did I get into reporting? Where do I live? You can tell he’s not really listening, which neither am I, thanks to the drinks.
Then he starts this whole touching my hair thing, playing with my hair, and I tell him to knock it off, not very convincingly. His eyes droop a little and he shoots me his look of false contrition, but in such a way that rather than noticing how supposedly sorry he feels, what I notice is the muscles flaring out from his neck, these twin blades of muscle, almost like gills. Jesus, does Lancey work out his neck? Does he go to the gym with a specific neck regimen? It occurs to me in this horrible flash I’d prefer not to classify as an epiphany that he’s probably strong enough to bench press my entire (naked) body with his neck. I could plop myself down on his upturned face, his wet, white teeth, and he could neck-press me.
I look around helplessly for Brisby or someone else from editorial, who’ll snicker the whole thing away. But there’s no one left except the horny ad rats in their commission grins and the sulky face-mangled production scum. Marcie? Where the hell is Marcie?
Computer Boy moves in for the kill and I can smell the white Russians on his breath, sweet and milky and boozy and his rotten cologne/deodorant and his gorgeous throat pullying away as he swallows. But just as I’m about to be carried off onto the sea of stupid love, this little yeoman of respectability tosses me a line and I say: How old are you? Tell me how old you are.
How old do you think I am?
I don’t know, Lance. Seven?
Twenty-seven, he says. In December. Why, how old are you?
Which, I mean, how can you reach twenty-seven in this culture without figuring out that this is a bad question? How does that happen?
Where do you live? I say.
This question seems to spook him. He runs a hand through his hair, which crackles, and shows me his biceps with the two veins that intersect like rural routes on a map, hoping I’ll be so mesmerized as to forget my question.
Around here, he says, gesturing vaguely.
Really? I bite into my lime. Where?
Now he leans back, looking much less sure of himself, running my hair through his thumb and forefinger, like a suit he’s considering. Yeah, he says, I got this box right behind the bar. It’s pretty cool. I never have to worry about DUIs.
A response so lame that I’m sort of rooting for him to not be speaking English anymore. And it dawns on me, falls on me actually, as bricks fall upon the naive from a great height: Lancey lives with his parents. A twenty-seven–year-old dependent. His hulking Computer Boy bod cramped onto a single bed, Cheryl Tiegs tacked to the wall, Rubik’s cube on the dresser, mom bustling into his room with his underwear washed and folded into little squares, making him macaroni and cheese, dad yelling at him to take out the garbage. Only the great sadness of this realization rescues me from the competing desire to start chewing his lips, which, thank god, before I can do this Marcie knifes her way over, all miffed and studded, and I peel off to the bathroom before anything catty can happen and sit and listen to my bladder empty of tonic and wonder why Brisby couldn’t have stuck around long enough to save me from myself.
I’m talking to Gala about this shit, because she knows my whole deal, every hopeful seems-like-a-nice-guy-really-smart-kissed-me-goodnight flameout, and I tell her, There’s no way I can give him the goods now, right? Right, Gala? If he’s living at home?
Why not? she says.
It’s, just, like a rule, right? Didn’t we have that rule?
But Gala, though my best friend in the world, is maybe not the best person to consult, because five months ago she caught her husband cheating and gave him the boot, and the whole thing’s made her less sure of everything. She used to give me these stern speeches about not treating my body like a disposable washcloth; pride in ownership and so forth. Now, she just asks: Well, what do you want to do?
I want to fuck him silly, I say. Oh my god, Gala, you have no idea. I was on my way to lunch today and he was sitting there on the floor of his office with these parts all around him and this big screwdriver and these forearms.
A handyman, Gala says.
A handyman who lives with this parents.
You don’t know that.
That’s what all the strutting is about, I say. Overcompensation.
Maybe the strutting is just strutting. Maybe he’s hung, Gala says.
Which, I mean: How did we get from disposable washcloth to hung?
Call him, Gala says. You’ve got a phone list, right? Just call him.
What if his mom answers? What am I supposed say: Hello ma’am. You don’t know me, but I want to lick your son’s balls. Is he expected home later?
A door slams over at her place and my godson, Justin (who is so cute I would actually eat him if not monitored), comes howling in. Gala tells me to hang on a sec and yells at Justin to please go into the other room, mommy’s talking to someone on the phone right now, which makes me feel very much like a depraved auntie.
He does know this computer stuff, I say, so he’s got to have some kind of an intellect, right? Besides, I’ve always been kind of a geek, haven’t I Gal? In school. Wasn’t I always kind of a geek?
But Justin’s going crazy now, hollering something about pizza, daddy gives him pizza, he wants pizza. He’s such a little man I want to laugh, though actually what happens is I start crying a little bit, thinking about Gala and how she looked in her bridal gown, how she gazed at John during their first dance, with such dreamy trust that me and the other bridesmaids could feel the hammering of our hearts. Not that marriage is any bowl of mousse, but at a certain point you realize it’s better than tearing around town with the big scarlet Un on your chest. Getting involved with guys who are either dogs outright or else sensitive guys, which just means their molten core of misogyny is buried a little deeper, takes a little longer to get to, that place where you’re eating breakfast at some lousy diner after a night of wild angry sex, at-least-we-still-have-this sex, or no sex at all, and you want to ask him: What happened to that other thing we had? But he’s looking down at his plate, hacking up a waffle, and his face is like a cursor, a dead blink, so you just ask him to pass the syrup.
Only it’s worse than that, because maybe it’s not them at all. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the one who somehow fucks it up, demands too much, needs too much, gets too angry, weepy, moody. Maybe I’m unlovable is the truth, and I plunge into one of those moments where I can see everything I’m never going to get—the guy, the dress, the one dance—and Justin’s wailing away and Gala says she has to go, so I hang up.
Brisby and me are heading out for some tacos, but the elevator’s taking forever and the whole office seems trapped under a glaze of late-afternoon discontent, except for Computer Boy, who we can hear laughing, one of those insincere machine-gun laughs—chut-chut-chut—like the modern-rock jocks do all the time. Brisby looks at me and we drift toward his little tittie-poster-festooned office. It’s not like we’re eavesdropping either, because he’s practically shouting: No way, dude! She looked like ass. What were her stats, dude? You fucking liar! She was fucking bacterial! Chut-chut-chut. Yeah, if it was me, I’d send that shit out for dry-cleaning! Wait, where’d you find that? In the crack? Bleach, dude! Clorox! Chut-chut-chut. I’m fuckin’ serious, dude. That shit will make you go blind. Penicillin, dude. Penis chillin. Chut-chut-chut.
And what’s remarkable is not that someone who has been alive for nearly three decades would speak like this (though that is kind of remarkable) but that it goes on and on and on, this proto-fratboy-speak that’s not so much offensive after a while as sad, imbued with the deep lonely rage of the Geek Player.
All Brisby and I can say in the elevator is: Wow.
I work up a few chut-chuts over lunch, but Brisby wants to talk about his fiancée, whom I’ve met twice and who seems cool, kind of pretty in a J. Crew way, maybe a little on the uptight side. She wants Brisby to take these classes before they get married, is the latest issue, with her priest. (She has a priest!) This will bring them closer together, she figures, which I’m not so sure about, because Brisby’s not a churchy kind of guy. Even after his mom had a stroke and he had to move back from Dallas, you didn’t hear him talking about God’s Great Plan or any of that crapola. He just said: What am I supposed to do, let her drown in drool?
But now he’s looking at me, the poor guy, like what do I think he should do. Suddenly I feel flustered. What are the priest’s stats? I say.
Brisby goes into his Morley Safer face, the one he uses when he’s got some bigwig on the phone, and for a sec I’m afraid I’ve pissed him off.
He’s not currently bacterial, Brisby says. I know that.
Is his penis chillin? Do you know if his penis is chillin?
Shit. Brisby smacks his forehead. I forgot to ask.
And just sitting there, munching on our tacos, with sour cream painting our lips and hot sauce burning our throats, I’m so relieved Brisby is around, that he’s a friend of mine. That we heard Computer Boy together so that he can provide, if not moral guidance, at least a foretaste of the devout shame I would experience post-bop.
* * *
Then it’s Halloween, which means the paper throws one of these mandatory costume parties intended to lube up the advertisers. I figure, what the hell, it’s a Saturday night, I’m not getting any younger, so I go as Lolita: kneesocks, pleated skirt, twin braids, and the dogs of this world howl and howl; there’s something about the prospect of boffing a twelve-year-old that sends the sperm count into orbit.
Plenty of booze and some decent grilled shrimp appetizers and a DJ who somehow manages to not suck. The little club they’ve rented out, Sub Rosa, has this tiny sunken dance floor, and all the chicks, me included, do their thing once management clears out, screaming along to “Got to Be Real” and “I Will Survive,” shaking gynapalooza style, while the dweebs from business circle around fanning the flames, and the place actually starts to get a little sexy, a little sweaty, which is when Computer Boy makes his entrance. He’s wearing this Zorro-meets-Liberace getup, raccoon mask, pinkie rings, a spangled cape that whips around as he vogues, and this big whoop goes up and us chickees tear off the cape and all he’s wearing is a white leather vest and a matching codpiece and there it is, Der Weinerschnitzel, sitting up like a pleased little puppy. It all comes together now: he’s a queen. A big flaming murder-’em-with-my-abs queen. Perfect.
Then his date appears, Marcie the Production Ho, trussed up in a tit-spiller, buried under blue eye shadow, and throwing sass. The pair of them, what a freak show, like Rocky Horror without the singalong.
But what the hell! The music’s good and the gin’s cast a certain forgiving silliness onto everything and I’m enjoying flailing around in the belief of my sexiness, which is being reinforced by the menfolk, who ask me if I’m a naughty girl and do I want detention and paw my skirt and gaze upon my hair like it’s a divine accomplishment. I mean, how many of these nights does one get, anyway?
I can feel Brisby checking me out from the edge of the room, where he and fiancée are poking at the remains of the appetizers. They’re both dressed in prison stripes and dopey little hats, with a little plastic ball and chain between them (get it?) and it’s obvious Elle Elle Bean is in one of her snits, wants out of here, away from the depravity, and even though Brisby is probably my last link to common sense, to my not doing something marvelous and stupid, I’m ready for them to ship off into their goddamn bloodless duet of a life and leave the rest of us to gobble each other up. What it is: I don’t like the look on Brisby’s face, so glum and smug that I want to walk over there and slap him, though before I can even take a step in that direction, he’s gone. Of course.
I turn back to the party and there’s Lancelot, launching into this exuberant B-boy Pentium Chip dance routine, which is sexy in a Tourettesy sort of way, and highly effective as a herding strategy. He backs me into this dark, quiet corner with his goddamn sensational cock of a cock, away from the music but still in plain view, and I can feel the booze thickening my tongue, my resistance going to pudding.
Where’s your date? I say weakly.
He looks around. Who? Marcie? Yeah, she looks cool, huh?
Very escort service, I say. Very STD.
I don’t see your partner in crime, he says. What’s his name? Bixby?
Which almost makes me laugh, because Lancey obviously thinks we’re a thing, he’s that out to lunch. But before I can make the next crack, he takes a step forward so that he’s actually, um, against me.
You’re cool, he says. You know that? I like you.
For just a second I step back from the situation and look at this dumb brute in what amounts to cut-rate lederhosen and try to figure out whatever happened to subtlety, restraint, courtship, the wise gentle dance of desire against its tether. Then Lancelot leans down and presses his mouth against mine, and his lips are soft and wet on the inside and I can taste the Geek Player Binaca on his breath as he nibbles his way into my mouth, and his body grinds against mine, warm and hard. We start macking right there, in front of more or less everyone, so that I am magically reduced from Prepubescent Catholic School Girl to Office Slut and what’s more, I’m happy about this, because I can feel his complicated grid of back muscles, his thighs, the silk of his armpit hair and I realize that even though this experience is total bullshit, it’s also absolutely perfect, like in the movies, one of those deals where our differences are actually complementary and everyone goes: Oh, of course, why didn’t we see it all along? They’re soul mates. As opposed to real life where they say: You let him put his tongue where?
Here in the veiny arms of Lance the Computer Boy, I’m ready to surrender the idea of the perfect guy, someone I can talk to about anything on earth, because, really, in the end, isn’t talk sort of over-rated? Isn’t talk just a way of pushing some romantic agenda that never works anyway? And besides, I could learn to speak computer, all those ones and zeroes, and I might even be able to train Lancey to burp with his mouth shut and not say skank so much, and having kids will settle him down; I sense he’ll be a good father, because I can feel already how much he appreciates the maternal role, just by the way he keeps kneading my hips, like a Lamaze coach.
Then there’s this loud pop and a fuzzy static sound and the music goes dead and the entire room turns on us, like we somehow dry-humped the music into silence, which, as it turns out … that little ledge against which I was seeking added pestle leverage seems to have been, in fact, an outlet. Nay, the very outlet into which DJ Dennis (DJ Dennis?) plugged his suspiciously karaoke-compatible DK2 Partymaster system.
Reentry into the world of the dwindling party would be shitty enough, but old Lancelot just has to complete the show by calling out, Thanks for the dance, babe! before ducking behind the appetizer table in an effort to conceal his raging shaft of manhood.
On the plus side is the fact that Marcie the Production Ho has taken X, rendering her unable to do anything worse than hug me fiercely and offer to pierce my septum.
I slip outside, into the lousy mucky air. Everyone watches me leave, the slutty aging reporter chick, which, if I were still drunk, might actually be a step up from aging reporter chick. But the booze is all through with my blood; it’s coming off in acetone fumes, and the parking lot is empty and I’m leaving alone.
I don’t want to worry about what anyone else thinks of me, because that’s not the point. It’s that I’m worried about what I think of me, what’s become of me, why am I spending these precious years I’d always dreamed would involve a good man and a marriage and a little kid or two, why am I spending these years mooning over some smoothie from the Kingdom of Cheese?
This red Tercel tears into the lot, which is weird, because Brisby drives a red Tercel, and then Brisby himself lunges out of the car, still in his prisoner’s outfit, and heads for the club, looking strangely pissed off, his little plastic chain dragging on the ground behind him. He must have forgotten something, keys or wallet. He’s always forgetting something. A minute later he comes out again and I duck behind this pillar thing, but I can hear him crossing the lot and just the imagined sight of him, his goofy walk, his mouth pinched at the corners, the disappointment in his eyes, that alone is enough to start me blubbering. By the time he reaches me, I’ve collapsed into his arms and I’m sobbing, Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s not my fault I fell for Computer Boy. I didn’t mean to. But he’s cute and he likes me and I’m not getting any younger, Bris. I’m thirty-fucking-three years old, you know? And besides, besides, you weren’t there. You were supposed to save me. You were supposed to keep me from doing something stupid. What was I supposed to do without you there?
I’m not sure how much of this is intelligible, though, because my head is buried in his chest and the words are coming out all snotty. Brisby puts his arms around me and tells me it’s okay, shhh, it’s okay, and strokes my hair. I was just worried about you, he says. That’s all. You had a lot to drink.
Then he lets me cry until I’m all done crying.
Maybe we could get some coffee, he says finally. Okay?
And it’s such a sweet gesture, so much what I want. Just to sit there and sober up and shoot the shit with Brisby. What about Christine? I say. Won’t she be waiting up?
Brisby looks down for a sec, shakes his head. Don’t worry about it.
Is everything cool? I say.
And now I can see him struggling to keep his game face on. He reaches down and jerks at the plastic chain around his ankle. What a stupid costume, he says. I should have come as Unsightly Grout Fungus, like I originally planned.
The stripes make you look taller, I say.
I guess. It wasn’t my idea.
He’s still got his arms around me, loose, but not too loose, and I keep thinking how this should be awkward, the way our bodies are touching, because we’re such pals. Then Brisby does this wonderful thing. He takes his thumb and forefinger and gently lifts my chin and presses his lips to my forehead and keeps them there for a minute, breathing through his nose. And I don’t know what this means exactly; Brisby’s holding me and there being nothing awkward about it, him holding me and saying shhhh, his breath flowing into my hair, the two of us on our way to get coffee, to talk, but not talking yet, just standing there in this empty parking lot, swaying, and that’s all.