A thought passed between us that jolted through me like lightening. I thought back to the dream; I thought about the bike race up the hill. I thought of the way his mouth moved when he spoke. I thought about my desire to fight him. I thought that this would be the perfect time, in this empty hallway. I could start the fight, just to see what happens. I could jump him, choke him with my arms, and watch him fall to the ground.
“This is it,” he said, smiling smugly and holding his hand out towards the door in mock chivalry.
Once more, the feeling passed over me like lightning. I opened the door, feeling weak in the joints of my limbs. Jolted like lightening I am suddenly aware of my size in comparison to the nerd, who, even in his skinniness, is bigger than I am. I look back at him, into his sneering, smiling eyes and once again the feeling jolts me.
I pulled him into the closet with me by tugging on the row of buttons on his shirt. I didn’t even need to say anything; the nerd already knew. His body cooperated like water flowing down through a pipe; his hand shut the door behind us, causing my body to be even more constrained between the wall and the nerd. His hands buckled around the balls of my shoulders, stabbing them securely against the wall behind us. He clumsily knocked aside the mops and brooms as I struggled against him, although the struggle became less and less about getting away, and more about proving to him my strength. I wanted to put up a fight as the lightning bolted back and forth from between my legs to my head. The closet smelt of moth balls and suddenly I was smacked in the face by the handle of a broom. The numbing sensation of pain in my face only excited me more, made me struggle against the nerd harder. He seemed to be made of stone now, a completely unmoving tower holding me to the wall.
Then, on my mouth, right where the feeling was most numbing, his lips touched me. The kiss was rough; his teeth slightly tearing at the flesh, but I couldn’t help but cry out. His kiss was painfully sloppy and with so much greed I became overwhelmed at his existence with me in this small space, pushing me to be even smaller.
“I knew it,” the nerd whispered harshly, after he had removed his mouth from mine. He moved his hands away from my shoulders, one of them grabbing at my body with passion and contempt. The other hand was on him. I could hear the snap of his belt buckle.
He laughed again, “I knew it.”
I heard the belt pull away from his pants.
“What do you think you know?” I asked. My words were cut off by the belt being wrapped around my mouth.
He just laughed at my question. He laughed because he knew he had won. I heard his fly unzipping, and the condom being slipped on. I was dumbfounded with my reaction to the situation, confused but lost in the desire of the moment, and with my mouth bound by the belt, keeping any words of protest from coming out. He didn’t even bother to take my panties off before sticking it in; they just stayed bunched up pathetically at my knees.
Then he fucked me, there against the wall of the closet. I held onto the knob with one hand, partly wanting it to burst open and release me from the small space of the closet. But the desire in me had taken over and I was mostly excited by the compression of fucking between two confining walls. My other hand was grasping a fist full of his shirt. I wrapped my lips around the belt and tried to tear into it with my teeth, biting it until my mouth was sore. Everything that had happened previously was shattered by the fight of the sex. I chewed on the leather of the belt, letting myself be swallowed up by the stabbingly rough thrusts, allowing myself to be put in place. The jolts of lightning were exploding everywhere now, with the rough thunder and dull, breaking pain of the nerd’s hips and the belt cutting into my face. In the moment I came, everything I had previously believed rushed up through me and out of my body like splinters of glass.
It was so jarring, so physically shocking I temporarily forgot my name and lost my place in the world. I couldn’t piece together anything that had happened, only that it was now over. I knew that the light from the hallway blinded me when the nerd opened the door, and at that moment I realized that I could now speak; the belt had been removed from around my mouth. There was a soreness, a numbness as I touched my cheek. I ran my tongue across my teeth, checking to make sure they were still intact. I ran my hands across my body, feeling the firm lumps of my round, slightly sagging breasts and soft stomach. I was still intact. Finally, I brought myself to stand up on shaky legs, and pull my panties up from where they limply hung on my crookedly round knees. I tried to piece together what had happened and if I had allowed it to happen.
‘The broom,’ I thought, suddenly remembering what I had originally come to the closet for. I grasped the handle of the broom, straightened the remaining ’contents of the closet, and closed the door. The hallway was lit well and quiet, as it had been only moments before. The nerd had gone back to the office. I could hear him inside the office, only a few doors down, his shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor. I began to slowly walk towards the open door, holding the broom.
I walked into the office. The nerd was sitting in the corner, reading his book. He didn’t look up to acknowledge me. As I lifted the broom to begin sweeping, I watched his face for any recognition of our fucking just moments before. All boys, even nerdy boys, have faces calmed and proud after sex. Their eyes always look softer and more fulfilled, as if their existence had been acknowledged by God. I knew there was no way that the nerd could be exempt from this behavior, but his face remained hidden by a flap of hair and the top of the book. I quickly glanced to see what he was reading- it was The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
Slowly, I swept. He continued to not acknowledge me, and to read The Tropic of Cancer. I had read The Tropic of Capricorn one summer before my junior year of college. I hadn’t liked it at all; I remembered complaining to my friends about how one dimensional and sexist the writing was. I wanted to say something about it to the nerd, but I was still in shock from what had happened. I was afraid to say anything. I was afraid that any words I could think to say would be inappropriate, even about a book he was reading.
All he could do was sit there and read.
‘What am I suppose to do now?’ I thought, the feeling of gory doom taking over, the knowledge that fate and the future would unfold the way it was suppose to. I had been manipulated and used, the way that I always had been by all boys in the past, the way that the bleach blonde woman probably was. The exploitation of my femininity was preordained; there was no way to change it.
“What’s your name?” I asked the nerd. He paused before turning away from his book to look at me. I saw then, that he, like all boys, had the calm and proud look in his eyes. He smiled.
“Peter,” he replied. I wasn’t expecting him to answer my question so point blank. I had expected him to turn it into a mind game, a trick answer to lead me down a path of frustration. But he was still smiling, and I could now see that his smile was different, it did not have that sinister edge and taunting displacement that it had had before. It was a dry, polite smile, barely flirtatious at all, knowing but removed. It wasn’t far off from a smile you’d give to a person on the street you found somewhat attractive, but didn’t ever expect to see again. It felt unsatisfying for him to look at me this way.
Not only this, but as he began to go back to reading, a million questions ran through my head that I had never thought of before. Where did he go to school? Why does he love books as much as I do? Does he write himself? And then I tried to imagine that he was named Peter, and I tried to grasp the concept that his name had been Peter this whole time, when we were locking up our bikes, when we were shuffling through papers, when we were fucking in the closet. The name Peter did not suit him at all, in fact, it seemed too innocent and well-meaning. He suddenly became incredibly human to me, the way he had never been before. I suddenly couldn’t believe I had never even thought to ask him his name. Before he had just been a nerd whose attitude had annoyed me. His identity had intrigued me to the point of obsession, but I had never thought to ask his name, because he was not one person to me. He was a composite of all the boys I had struggled with; just another one of the nerds roaming their city in their button up shirts and glasses, hiding their true feelings behind wordy sentences and shy glances. But now, he was different. I didn’t doubt that it was really his name, but the way it humanized him was causing me to feel too many things, so I asked him the only question I could think left to formulate.
“Do you believe in fate, Peter?”
He paused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you believe in fate,” I explained. “Do you believe we make things up as we go, or do you think every thing's preordained. Do you think our existence has already decided by something bigger than us?”
“I think things have already been decided for us.”
I paused to contemplate his response, as it was much different than I had expected. “So you don’t think we have a choice, you don’t think our decisions are affected by the atmosphere we grow up in or our society at all?”
“Not really. I mean, you are who you are, with or without what you are surrounded with.”
I stared at the nerd for a moment, staring back in his eyes. I had never noticed how small and beady they were, deep set in his head. It looked like his pupils were dilated to fill the whole iris. Finally he looked back down at his book again.
I felt unimpressed with his answer. I had expected him to say so much more, or at least something a little more unique. His words seemed so simplistic and shallow. Did he really believe that a person’s life had already been decided, that they had no control over their future?
‘But why should this surprise me,’ I thought. ‘After all, he is a nerdy boy, and this is the way that the nerdy boys think.’
I stood looking at him. So what he was saying when he said he believed in fate is he had known the whole time that his mind games would work to seduce me. Either that or it had all been coincidental, and his comment was unrelated to previous events. But I couldn’t help but remember how we had discussed Charles Bukowski upon first speaking. All boys liked Bukowski because he excused their actions and thought processes, and even, god forbid, made them artistic. But Bukowski wasn’t a mind-game player; a manipulator. He had been straight forward about his behavior the way that the nerdy boys didn’t. They could hide behind a pair of glasses and a shy, knowing smirk.
Of course, up until that point, I too had been questioning whether or not it was fate that had put me where I was; at the temp job, without a book deal, unsexualized from a relationship with a liar. But looking at the nerd I realized how full the world was of clichés and that I didn’t have to be one. I was forcing myself to be one. I was unconfident and insecure. I was repressed; I was afraid to let my real feelings out. But they suddenly all started to shoot out from my body, as I stood staring at what I didn’t want to be.
The nerd looked up at me and smiled, as if he thought he could read my thoughts. I still felt incredibly turned on, but my fascination had dwindled. He raised his eyebrows and let out a chuckle.
“So where you going to finish sweeping, or what?”
I smiled. “Should I?”
“Well, you are preordained to do so,” he said mockingly. Normally his tone would embarrass me, but I no longer felt on guard.
“Am I?”
“Uh, yeah.”
I dropped the broom without taking my eyes off of the nerd. I grabbed my backpack off of the table and smiled again. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
He was too shocked to react. He had not expected this. It was an hour before my shift was to end, but it didn’t matter. This job meant nothing to me. I could walk out and find a new one easily; I could walk out and start writing a book that night. I wanted my actions to protest against his answer to my question; I wanted to do what he least expected. I knew that there was no way to escape the mind games of the nerd, they would continue. The only way to win was to walk out.
However, there would be other nerds to deal with. Other nerds who smirked knowingly and talked like they knew everything about literature and played mind games. It would be my fate to continue to run into them, to continue to lust after them. But I would still always win their games. After all, they were all over the city, greasy boys riding their bikes with evil eyes. They are a dime a dozen.
