Free Geekus Interruptus by Mickey J. Corrigan

CHAPTER ONE

 
 
    Take Us to the Geeks

 
    There’s love, and then there’s geek love. For many years, Marcy
Buenaventure believed these were interchangeable aspects of the same wondrous state.
A semiconscious blur of passionate devotion and one-on-one obsession,
culminating in an uncontrollable, allover bodily thrill. By the time she
realized she was wrong about love, it was too late.
    Or so
it seemed to Marcy. This is her story.

 
    ~~~

 
    Marcy fell for a geek, and she married him.
Only later did she begin to question geek love. After she’d adjusted to the dry
hump of her till-death partnership with brilliant software magnate Jess Margate,
Marcy suddenly discovered he was doing her wrong. Nerdy Jess with the myopic
green-gray eyes, the skinny-jeans bod, the twelve-hour days spent in front of a
computer screen. Against all odds, he’d gone and picked up a fuck buddy.
Another girl, it seemed, was now the receptacle for Jess’s geeky love.
    At the time of her discovery, Marcy and
Jess Margate had been married for three and a half years. Signs he had been
cheating on her had been there for some time, but she’d failed to notice them. Because
she never thought he’d have any interest in scoring with other women. He barely
made the time to score with her. And, when he did, she was always willing,
always obliging. In fact, she was dying for his touch and made sure he knew it.
One person carries the fire in any relationship, and Marcy figured she was the torchbearer
in hers. But now it looked like she’d been wrong about that too. Maybe she just
didn’t turn Jess on. Maybe he’d never really clicked with her. Whatever the
reason, he’d found someone else.
    Understandably, Marcy was devastated. She
despised cheats, liars, and home wreckers of either sex. She’d had an
unfortunate experience with a deceitful Don Juan only once in her life, and she’d
learned from that experience. The man, a handsome older guy with a swanky
bachelor pad in the city and a nice little family in the suburbs, had broken
her heart with his lavish bullshit. Marcy still felt guilty over her role as
the unwitting other woman. In her mind, all Don Juans deserved to be outed, scorned,
and properly punished.
    Maybe devastated is not the right word for
Marcy’s condition. Let’s say Marcy was inspired. Inspired by her own experience
and by the painful cognition of her own husband’s untrustworthy behavior. Was
he lavishing some innocent girl with his personal brand of geek bullshit? She
couldn’t imagine it. She would have to see for herself.
    Up until this point, the Margates had
enjoyed a nice life together. They still had the occasional night of passionate
sex (although Jess made love the exact same way every time, and it was, Marcy
had to admit, a lot like the instructions in a do-it-yourself construction
manual—that is, tab A into slot B), and they never fought about money or
travel, the house, or their social engagements. They were very rich. They got
along well. Jess was a huge success as an entrepreneur and software engineer,
and Marcy was beautiful and sexy. With no kids to act as emotional wedges, lots
of income to prevent financial bickering, and a total of six years of dating,
engagement, and matrimonial compatibility, their partnership was stable and
secure.
    Or so it had seemed. Until Marcy realized
something was missing; something vital had gone wrong. What was it? At first she
wasn’t sure. She just knew something had changed between them. And it wasn’t
good. Not good at all.
    For instance, Jess was more withdrawn than
usual (which meant he was very withdrawn, since he was usually withdrawn anyway)
and distracted. He wasn’t home much, which was to be expected because he was a
major workaholic. But, when he was home, he now spent significantly more time
in his downstairs office. With the door closed.
    The other sign something was amiss was the
sharp increase in the frequency of his business trips. He often