Backward Compatible: A Geek Love Story

by Sarah Daltry

  “Don’t get cocky, shit stream,” Katie says. “I’m about to give you your first hand job. A hand job of death.”

  Be still, my heart.

  Katie

  At around seven in the morning, Lanyon’s mom comes into his room, where we’re all eating Cheetos and still playing Goldeneye. We’ve moved on to paintball mode, though, and I use Lanyon’s distraction at his mom’s presence to turn the back of his head a nice shade of cyan.

  “Um,” she says and looks at me and George. George waits for the slow moving temple door to open and I blow a huge wad of orange across his melon.

  “Suck it,” I tell him.

  “Lanyon, can I see you for a second?” his mom asks.

  Lanyon follows her out into the hallway and, of course, George and I find his spawning body and cover him with paint. Then, George pauses the game and we listen. Lanyon’s mom is speaking low, but I make out the words gallivanting, job, and adult.

  He comes back in, looking pretty sheepish. “I need to bring you guys home,” he says. “And I’m grounded.”

  George coughs on his Cheetos. “Grounded? She does realize you’re old enough to go out drinking all night, right?”

  “She does.”

  “And she knows you have never actually gone out drinking all night?” George continues.

  “Everyone knows that. Thank you for reminding me of my amazing patheticness.”

  “Well, if you get ungrounded,” I tell him, “let us know. We could use your sleuthing skills.”

  “For?” he asks.

  “Is your brain broken?” I ask. “Murder mystery night.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right. Our three-way.”

  “What?” George asks, coughing out a small burst of fluorescent orange cheese.

  “You and Katie, her friends, and me and my large-breasted date. Our three-way.”

  “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means,” I say.

  George groans and throws away the Cheetos bag. “Sadly, I think he does know what it means.”

  Lanyon shrugs and smiles. “A guy can hope.”

  “A guy can also remain a virgin into perpetuity,” I advise.

  ***

  George invites me over, but I figure I should get some sleep and he should fix his car. But we agree he’ll text me when he gets home with Crimson Lightning and we can either go on Live or go out somewhere.

  I text Anna after I wake up a few hours later. As soon as I mention that I had a date, she replies that she’ll be right over. And she is. It’s less than ten minutes, which means she was actually ready to leave her house. Weird.

  “Where did you meet a guy?” she asks.

  “Should I be insulted?”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind. He stole my game,” I tell her.

  “Oh. Him again.”

  “Yes. Him again.”

  She sits on my bed and starts twirling her hair. I wish I could pinpoint when Anna’s brains imploded. I think it was around the time she first had sex. Apparently she kept her brain cells in her vagina.

  “Chad has a friend. You should meet him,” she says.

  “I’m glad he has a friend. That means he can form more than basic grunts. However, I don’t want to meet this friend. I’m perfectly happy with George.”

  “Are you with George?” she asks.

  “Obviously,” I say, but then I realize it isn’t obvious at all. Am I with George? We never made things official, but he did give me Link’s heart. Damn, I left it in the backseat of his car. “Oh, shit. I left my heart in his backseat.”

  Anna raises an eyebrow. “Where to start?”

  “It was a heart made of construction paper. Long story. And we were in the backseat to stay warm, after his car died. Nothing happened.”

  She sighs. “So, about Todd…”

  “Who’s Todd?”

  “Chad’s friend.”

  “Of course he’s named Todd,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing. But Todd and Chad notwithstanding, I like George. Like a lot. A whole bucket of lot.”

  “You’re weird, Katie.”

  “Thank you, best friend since preschool.”

  She looks at her phone. “You wanna go to a movie? Chad’s working until six. And after, we can buy you underwear.”

  “Why would we buy me underwear?”

  “Because you like this guy. You want nice underwear. Nice underwear is critical with guys.”

  I think about George and wonder if he would even notice if I didn’t wear underwear. Maybe he doesn’t actually like me. It seemed like he liked me, but then again, as soon as we weren’t in his car, he seemed over it.

  “Okay,” I give in. “We’ll buy underwear.” It’s worth a try anyway. I realize I need to up the ante on this relationship.

  George

  My suave attempt to woo the lady back to my lair has predictably failed. Shit, I can’t even seduce a gamer girl when I construct a heart and play iconic music. Oh, brave new world with such horseshit in it. What am I to do? Sleep? Perhaps. I get in amongst the Empire once more.

  Something is amiss. No matter how many alien races I think of or how many loud car horns I hear, I can’t get to sleep. My brain wants me to take action. Black Ops? No, not that kind of action. Something else. It must have to do with Katie because Borg is up and at attention. Crazy Starfleet member; you never know what he’s getting up to. I chuckle at my own shitty puns and wish for an audience.

  Bruce Campbell and his chainsaw arm mock me from the poster on my wall.

  “What do I do, Ash? Give me your words of enlightenment,” I say.

  Maybe I’m still asleep, because he talks back. “You can’t just sit there like an ass on a window seat. You need to man up and get that girl.”

  “I agree. I one hundred percent, bet on the mermen agree. But what can I do? What skills do I have?”

  “From here, it looks like you have two skills.” I already know where this is going. “Jack and shit. And Jack left town.”

  “Funny, but not helpful,” I say. “Come on, man. You manage to look cool even when covered in waste and murdering monsters by the dozen. You must have some advice for a sad, lonely nerd like me.”

  “Sam and Rob are hikers on the road.”

  “Okay, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I can read the Latin, asshat. Of course, I can help you. But this isn’t something as simple as shooting a witch in the face with a shotgun. It takes finesse. It takes style. And do you know what kind of style really gets the ladies damp in their britches?” he asks.

  “No. I quite obviously do not. Can you just tell me before I wake up?”

  “Will do. Poetry, shit stick. Ladies love poetry. So why don’t you wake up, jerk off, and go write some?”

  Ash disappears and that is exactly what I do.

  I’m actually quite a big fan of poetry. I know that doesn’t do much to add to my coolness level, but it has come to this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I tried my best with the Link heart. I tried a thirteen-year-old kid’s best with the reservoir. Now, I have to do what every young boy needs to do at some point in his life. I must take advice from Bruce Campbell.

  I spend maybe an hour on my poem. I read it over several times. It’s not exactly Keats, but despite some iffy meter issues and a few just crap lines, and then rhyming a word with itself, I don’t think it’s a complete mess. But then again, I’m quite tired.

  I grab some lemonade from downstairs and walk around aimlessly outside for about half an hour. Then I return and reread my poem a final time. I realize that I just don’t have the talent to make it any better. This is what I end up with.

  The Gamer Nerd’s Love Song

  I lack the skills you see

  Not good at poetry

  But if you want to see

  How much you mean to me

  Then it is time for us to go

  Through the warp where green pla
nts grow

  Where there is fire, mountains, and snows

  Yetis, Bowsers, dragons, and hoes

  You are the weapon at my spawn point

  The banana in my maze

  The princess in the prison

  The joker for my games

  I’m the turkey for your Valkyrie

  The blueprint for your mission

  The Big Daddy for your Sister

  The distracting sexy vixen

  I hope it’s okay that I put on my doublet

  I’m about to unleash my heroic couplets

  You’re the pellet for my Pac

  I’m the Daxter to your Jak

  You’re the Triforce in my sky

  And the golden in my eye

  You’re the hammer for my barrels

  I’m the crossbow for your Daryl

  I can be the Ratchet to your Clank

  You can cast Bravery on my tank

  I’m the Rad-X for your radiation

  The workshop for item degradation

  You are the shell that lets me extra damage take

  The booster I need to kick off my limit break

  Though life is tough when the system lags

  You give me one ups and uber frags

  And…

  Even if we’re killed by Crawmerax the Invincible

  I am sure we will always be backward compatible

  I sigh and have a moment while looking at my poster of Ash when I almost tear it up. But I figure what the hell. Girls like poetry, don’t they? Shit, I hope so. Bruce Campbell has never let me down before.

  Katie

  “People like this shit?” I ask Anna halfway through the movie. Some unbearably whiny girl is crying for the 9,965th time in eighty minutes about a guy who has done nothing so far except flex a lot, take off his shirt, and drive too fast. On a motorcycle.

  “He loves her,” she whispers back.

  “How? Love requires sentience.”

  She turns, looks at me, and considers. I think she debates about explaining, but then realizes I’m hopeless and instead, she asks for the popcorn. She takes two bites and hands it back. On the screen, meathead Mike or whatever the fuck his name is bangs on empty-skulled Sally’s door. There’s some violin music and it starts to rain as he kisses her and spins her around on the porch.

  “So things worked out?” I ask Anna.

  “Yeah, but she still needs to deal with her asshole fiancé who cheated on her.”

  “Wait. There are two guys?”

  “Yeah.” She goes on to describe the fiancé, but he sounds just like the now half-naked man on the screen. There’s a really awkward sex scene with a lot of moaning on her part and growling on his.

  “Is he a werewolf?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “A zombie?”

  “No.”

  “A chupacabra?”

  “What the hell? No. Why would he be those things?” Anna asks.

  “Why does it sound like he wants to eat her?”

  “He’s showing her that he loves her.”

  As if on cue, they finish grunting and their sweaty sex ends. He then holds her and gives a big monologue about how she’s his and he never wants to see her look at another man.

  “He seems a little controlling,” I say.

  “It’s romantic.”

  “Really?” I’m not even fucking around. I don’t get it. Anna just sighs and then, as the violins start up again, the bimbo confesses how torn she is about leaving her fiancé, because her life has always “made sense” and now she doesn’t know how to love or something. “She seemed to know just fine while he was grunting at her,” I whisper to Anna, but it’s hopeless. She’s sobbing like a baby.

  After the movie, I pull out my DS and play a bit of Brain Age.

  “What are you doing?” Anna asks.

  “Recovery,” I answer.

  She seems appeased, though, and just drags me by the arm while I do some math problems. We’re in Victoria’s Secret when I look up. She predictably brings me over to the rack of floss she calls underwear.

  “I’m not sure that actually does anything,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, why even wear it? Just go commando.”

  “It’s sexy,” she says slowly. “Sexy is good.”

  I hold up a pair. “I don’t think this is sexy.”

  Anna stares at me, letting her eyes travel from my Doc Martens up my tattered jeans and to my Buckner’s Cabin t-shirt. “Perfect.”

  “Hey.” I may be bad with guys, but I’m not dumb. I know she’s making fun of me.

  She fills my hands with more thongs and then some bras. I actually have boobs. They’re even good-sized and they work well for cosplay, but outside of that, I admit I have no real idea what they’re good for. The few guys who’ve touched them have mostly just smacked them around a bit. According to the movie we just saw, that’s supposed to be erotic or something, but it’s kind of bothersome in reality. Still, Anna seems pretty happy with Chad and maybe George likes bras. He seemed to like my skirt a lot. He’s definitely not gay, that’s for sure. Something was happening on his car before it died.

  We get to the register and the girl working blinks a few times.

  “Do you have a store card?” she asks.

  “What do you think?”

  “Would you like one?”

  “Please refer to my previous answer.”

  She sighs very loudly and makes a big deal of looking at all my panties and bras. I feel a little violated. The worst is that I realize this girl is probably, like, 17 and knows far more about these things than I do. Leave it to a trip to Victoria’s Secret to make you wish you were born a different gender.

  “That’s $187.43,” she says.

  I cough. “Come again?”

  “$187.43”

  I whip my head around to Anna. “Do you realize what I could do with $187.43?”

  “Probably something that would explain why you need this instead.”

  “Fuck you,” I say, and then I turn back to the teenager at the register and hand her my credit card.

  George

  “You could probably smack her boobs around a bit,” Lanyon says, as my dad does his magical staring at my car trick again.

  “What are you talking about?” I don’t know why I ask.

  “You said something about double Ds, didn’t you?” He’s smiling, all proud of himself, like a douche Eskimo.

  “Double date, you halfwit. You know goddamn well I said double date.”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t think of a way to work in a story about boobs with that.”

  I shake my head. “Speaking of boobs, do you actually want to go on the triple date or whatever with Katie and her friends?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Lanyon produces and unwraps another in his endless supply of Snickers bars.

  “Might be good. I have a bad vibe about this friend and her date. Would be nice to have another ally there. You’d need a date, though. Can you get a date? Is that something you do?”

  “Sure, no problem. I’m actually quite adorable. The ladies love me.”

  “Then how come you spend all of your time with me?” I ask him.

  “Think that about does it,” my dad calls, although he has yet to do anything except shine a flashlight into the engine.

  “I like spending time with you. It makes me feel handsome and smart,” Lanyon replies.

  “The term cock face was invented just for you.”

  “Thanks. You know what would be even better than a murder mystery dinner?” Lanyon asks.

  I jump into my car, smack it a few times, and turn the key. It starts. “Dad, you are a mechanical god.”

  “Thorburetor. Lord of, uh, valves?” Lanyon scratches his chin.

  “Right.” My dad, as has been his deal for a decade, ignores our idiocy and gets to the point. “So you still need a new car. Stop leaving it places.” He jumps into his own car and is off, leaving Lanyon and me at the
reservoir.

  “I thought you were grounded,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah. I think my mom forgot about that. Bonus round.”

  “So, what would be better than a murder mystery dinner?” I remind him.

  “There’s an 80’s dance contest thing coming up. That would be cool.”

  “You dance?” I’m skeptical at best.

  “Do I dance? Do I dance?” He smiles and nods his head with confidence. “Not well. But I do dance. Especially to sweet 80’s tunes. Men without Hats, men with hats, hats with men, hats fucking other hats, all excellent bands.”

  “I’m only gonna tell you this once. If you want to keep working here, stay off the drugs.”

  “Drugs don’t create dancers,” he says. “Drugs make dancers more creative.”

  “Great. Listen, we need to find you a date. That way, if Katie’s friends are dick platypi, I can have someone to mock them to.”

  “Date, huh?” He shoots his finger into the air. “To the library!”

  ***

  The library is a short drive from the reservoir and we arrive less than five minutes later. It’s a large old building with a giant wall of stairs leading up to the entrance.

  “Oh no,” says Lanyon.

  “What is it?”

  “My one weakness. Stairs.”

  I ignore him and start trudging up said stairs. He follows at a less than brisk pace. “Come on,” I tell him. “Your ability to walk short distances without dying will be Handsome Jack’s downfall.”

  He huffs and puffs and pushes the library door in. As one may expect, it’s quiet in the library. At least it was before Lanyon arrived. “Look at all these books. I wonder if they still have that stuff on Flamel in the restricted section,” he says.

  “Why the fuck are we at the library?”

  “What is wrong with you? Don’t you like learning?”

  “You are a dumb-fuck.”

  “You know, cursing is often a sign of ignorance. Now peruse these many luxurious tomes and increase your motherfucking vocabulary.” He pauses. “Shithead.”