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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Acquired Tastes, XXVIII: Nerds


Introduction:

A pair of black, heavy-framed glasses can lend most faces the look of an intellectual.  Add an askew posture (be it slouched-shoulders or curved spine), a slighter or plumper form, and a perceived inability to engage in group sports, and you have the physical ingredients for your basic nerd.  Pile on a bookish nature, at least one quirky preoccupation, and a dysfunctional sense of style?  You have yourself a mega nerd.  Make him gay?  And you are looking at a hell of a good time!

The celebration and appreciation of nerds is a rather recent trend.  Somewhere between the likes of the ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ boys, Urkel,  Superbad’s McLovin’, and the men of The Big Bang Theory, gay men picked up on this minefield of hidden sexual potential.  Their rise to power mimics societies’ overall reverence of all things electronic in the age of technology.  Power is sexy, so it’s no surprise that those once delegated to the front rows of classrooms and the last to be picked for any athletic team, are now viewed as desirable sexual beings.

So, let’s sweep aside the Dungeons and Dragons handbooks, the Star Wars figures still in their original packaging, and Ph.D.’s from M.I.T while looking beyond the high-waisted, high-water pants, the pocket protectors, and the horn-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses, in order to explore the hidden charms and delightful sensuality that make up your typical…

Nerds

Scope of Activity:

A sexual appreciation for nerds.

For the sake of this entry we will limit our examination to male nerds and the gay male population’s sexual appreciation of such.

We are not talking about pseudo-nerds; really handsome dudes who put on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses in order to convey intelligence or cop a pose.  Since the sexualization of nerds has come to be, their look has become a fashion statement in and of itself, and has been adopted by many a gym bunny (usually because they possess no personality of their own).

The Official Line:

From Wikipedia:

 A nerd is a person typically described as being overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired. They may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, obscure, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical or relating to topics of fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Additionally, many nerds are described as being shy, quirky, and unattractive, and may have difficulty participating in, or even following, sports. "Nerd" is a derogatory, stereotypical term, but as with other pejoratives, it has been reclaimed and redefined by some as a term of pride and group identity.

The two types of interests that are most likely to be described as nerdy are:

  • Intellectual, academic, or technical hobbies, activities, and pursuits;  especially topics related to science, mathematics and technology
  • Hobbies, games, and activities that are described as obsessive and "immature", such as trading cards, comic books, television programs, films, role-playing games and other things relating to fantasy and science fiction

Stereotypical nerds are commonly seen as intelligent but socially and physically awkward. They would typically be perceived as either lacking confidence or being indifferent or oblivious to the negative perceptions held of them by others, with the result that they become frequent objects of scorn, ridicule, bullying, and social isolation. However, many nerds may eventually find a group of similar people to associate with.

Stereotypical "nerd" appearance includes very large glasses, braces, severe acne and pants highly lifted up. In the media, many nerds are white males, portrayed as being physically unfit, either overweight or very thin.

Psychological Aspects:

Why the yen for nerds?  They are ‘undiscovered country’.  They possess an element of innocence that is fun to corrupt – like the transformation of an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan.  It’s the film cliché, where the girl with the over-sized pair of glasses removes them, unfurls her luxurious hair, and is transformed into a hottie.  The same can happen for nerds, but trust me, the impact is never as transformative.  Usually, if you remove their specs all you get is a lot of squinting and a bit of whining.  Better to leave those glasses on and enjoy the dirty pleasure of corrupting their pristine ‘Poindexter’ veneer. 

I think our lustful desire for nerds has a lot to do with their ‘hothouse flower’ appeal.  That is where the appreciator gets his jollies; the same sense of power a sexually experienced male gets when deflowering a virgin female.  Not that all nerds are virgins.  Far from it.  In fact, the nerds I have come in contact with are some of the kinkiest, most sexually-advanced bastards out there.  

Precautions:

Never judge a book by its cover.  What may appear to be a nerd may just be a rather unfortunate and unattractive person.

Don’t touch their ‘stuff’ – and by stuff, I mean their Star Wars memorabilia, their comic books, etc. And don’t ask them about that stuff either, or you’ll spend the whole evening in trivia hell.

Don’t pretend you ‘know’ things about Sci-Fi programs or movies.  They will out you for the poser you are.  Also, don’t assume that Sci-Fi is of interest to them.  Both of these things are also true of anything technological in nature, such as computers and video games.  

Don’t offer to help them pick out clothing.  You get a nerd, you take that nerd as is.  Trying to change them into something they are not will rob them of all their charm.  And the gay community doesn’t need more well-dressed, ineffectual, socially-challenged, undefined men… we already got plenty of those.

Don’t back your nerd into a corner regarding putting out sexually.  They will bite.  And kick you out of their apartment.  And block your number on their cell phone.

Don’t plunder the bevy of nerds at your place of work.  This should go without saying, but never grab dick where you earn your paycheck.

Be careful with their hearts.  Some nerds are socially inexperienced and this can lead to some assumptions on their part (no, darling, fucking my ass does not constitute a ‘relationship’), misunderstandings that can lead to hurt feelings.  Just as I cautioned you not to back them into a corner, don’t hurt their feelings – they bite.

My Experience:

There is something about fucking around with a nerd that makes me feel even more like a dirty old man than I actually am…  I’m fixated on that whole corruptibility factor, even though, as stated above, the nerds I have played with have tended to err on the kinky side.  In one instance, I met this guy from Duluth.  He was easily half my age, but as long as he didn’t run screaming from the room once we met in the flesh I figured he was old enough to know what he wanted.  We never had sex in the ‘traditional’ sense.  Lots of touching and posing.  Lots of talking.  And lots of smelling.  His sneakers were grossly smelly and he seemed proud of it.  He thought it would be cool if I would learn to appreciate them, too.  I liked his armpits.  I liked his body.  He was a lousy kisser, but I thought that is a skill that can be taught.  I might have liked his dick, but it remained wrapped up in his jeans and a pair of tighty whities.  He had no ass, which, I kind of found sexy.  If I was still in die-hard top mode, I might have tried to rape his cute little ass.  That would not have gone well.  Nerds will fight back– and they are not good at it, so you will get hit in places you are unaccustomed to, scratched, and it will hurt a lot.  ‘No’ really does mean no.    

I like my nerds sexually deviant.  Because of our preconceived notions about them, they always have the element of surprise on their side.  This is particularly true when it comes to kink and… dick size.  Those little fuckers may have spent a lot of time masturbating alone in their rooms, but frequently it turns out that was probably because they had so much to work with!  Big dicked nerds are the best kind of nerds… but then, it could also be said that big dicks are the best kind of dick!

Okay… confession time.  I was a big nerd, though I did not wear glasses.  I was smart, but really on the low end of smart; more clever than intelligent.  But in high school, it was enough to get me adopted by the nerds.  As it turned out, they were also very artistic and musical, so it was a good fit and during those years I got to be in my first two ROCK BANDS: a really daring punk outfit and a really boring Journey/Toto/ARS kind of thing!  Anyway, I definitely was a nerd because all the social aspects of high school – parties, drinking, dating?  It all escaped me.  I was more interested in theater, technology, music, and masturbating.  I was clueless, naive, and weird – a bad combination when navigating the halls of your local high school and beyond. Also, fashion?  I had no sense of all, and this deficit followed me well into my adult years. I thought fashion wasn't important, so I wore bell-bottoms and tight polyester pants long after anyone should have.
 
I probably stopped being a nerd during my first year in college.  After that I simply morphed into being a total weirdo.  I still didn’t get the clothing thing (and wouldn’t really until after my vintage period (as in, I wore nothing but vintage clothing) in the mid-80’s, when I finally came to realize the value of good jeans and a tight t-shirt.  I remember a former best friend once telling me how much he hated me upon sight back in 1982.  He teased me horribly and made fun of me and was mean to me.  So, of course we became best friends, a relationship that lasted for 20 years before disappearing in a puff of smoke.  He was an ice queen and I was a nerd.  He gave me a sense of fashion, or at least pointed out my many failures, and I… I tried to warm him up a little for general consumption.  It was a good pairing… for about 20 years.

He had a thing for nerds long before I recognized their allure.  Now, looking back at it, I think the thing I liked most about nerds was that I could take out all my aggressions on them in the sack.  Behavior they took as me being a dom top, was really simply me taking out all my pent up anger from being bullied… on those I knew to be like me – something, I guess, I couldn't see until I started writing this entry. 

Which opens a whole thing about the bullied becoming a bully – which is behavior I could only get away with in the sack.  As for those nerdy types I took my willful suppressed rage out on?  I do believe they enjoyed themselves.  On occasion I would get a complaint and need to dial it back a bit.  There was a production of A Midsummers Night Dream, where I had to wrestle around with the incredibly handsome homo playing Lysander to my Demetrius, whose shoulder I subsequently dislocated because I refused to ‘play nice’, even after he had asked me to, several times.  Shakespeare always brought the worst out in me.  In Taming of the Shrew, as Petruchio, I had a scene with a tailor or haberdasher – where I was to wail away on them.  Despite their many protests, and a few rebukes by the director, I could not seem to hold back and had a horrible tendency to leave bruises.   So, when given the opportunity to be a bully, I knew what to do, because I had been bullied.  And something about being given license to perform in such a manner on stage translated to the bedroom, where I took perverse pleasure in dominating nerdy little dudes.  Weird.  But probably pretty common.

Now, I’m a bottom.  I get aggressive, but never to the point that someone asks me to dial it back (although my porno talk can get to be a bit much and tops will frequently either cover my mouth with their hand or tell me to ‘shut the fuck up’). 

I fucked a lot of artsy nerds.  Several painters, in fact.  Lots of costumers.  Oh, and the video store I once worked in?  That was like a candy box full of nerds.  I preferred the painters or the film buffs; slim of build, smooth of skin, pliable, flexible, and as clueless as I. Something about their vulnerability would bring out the beast in me. 

So what happens to nerds once they become older?  They tend to cease being nerds (although the corners of numerous office buildings housing aging CPAs would probably prove me wrong) and find a comfortable niche where their nerdy tendencies warp into some type of myopic fetish.  The leather crowd is full of former nerds who now take out their submerged aggression by donning a pair of leather chaps and grabbing a cat-o-nine tails. Or… they take their art pose to the extreme, becoming a playwright or (gasp/gag) theater critic.  Or they become common schlubs; grey-skinned creatures who inhabit many a studio apartment throughout metropolitan areas 

And this nerd?  What did I become?  Why, someone who writes odd, erotic essays and posts them on the web for the occasional perv / stranger to read.  I would like to consider myself more worldly and more sexually advanced than I once was.  I’m certainly more experienced (used old whore).  And I’ve managed to subdue the nerd within by camouflaging him in nondescript dark clothing and a good pair of boots.  Also, I hit the gym regularly, because old nerd bodies?  They tend not to age well.

Ah, well, I tell myself.  It could have been worse. I could have ended up being an old theater nerd; delusional, pretentious, and sad.  They are the WORST!  (Though probably not much better than dried-out, old hose bags who recount their sexual adventures via rarely read blogs like an old lady showing off her medals!)

The Big Bang Theory has done a lot to elevate the esteem of nerds; celebrating and putting on display all the idiosyncratic debris that populates their world.  But they are not my kind of nerd.  I don’t find any of the archetypes presented on that show all that sexual.  Perhaps, that is my own personal blind spot in relation to nerdism.  Many nerds are asexual; which helps explain why they don’t appear on my radar, as I tend to only focus on people with a little juice to (in) them.  If it gets a woody, I am so there!

My favorite nerds?  The Jewish ones.  They have black-haired covered butts and, sometimes, full heads of curly hair.  I like the smaller, pale, thin ones.  The plump ones?  Not so much.  That said, Howard Wolowitz?  Not my thing.  He knows too much and comes across as smarmy.  I like them a little shy; all the better to psychologically plunder them.

My Conclusion:

 It takes more than a pair of glasses to make a nerd.  It takes intellect of a specific nature, a myopic view of the world, and a total disregard for the conventions of adolescent development and fashion.  Throw in a fascination with masturbation or some other fetish, and you got yourself a real winner!

These men were born with genitalia, and therefore do develop as sexual beings, even if that means asexual ones.  My favorite nerds are the chronic masturbators.  I love talking to them about it and watching them squirm.  On occasion they like to show off or play the voyeur – both of which gets my crank rotating.

The nicest thing about the recent evolution, acceptance, and celebration of nerds?  People have stopped trying to turn them into something else.  We now recognize their intrinsic value and that of their peculiar culture.  And those of us with a kinky yen for them? 

We appreciate them naked, blushing, and clueless. 

2 comments:

O!Daddie said...

"naked, blushing and clueless"

Sounds like my intro into the Gay world.

As a Gay Nerdette (somewhat cool but not WAY cool like Upton, I had a rocky start, but the first guy I actually had sex with told me that I was a NATURAL.. that I took to sucking cock like a duck takes to water. Sincerely flattered to my very core, that gave me the confidence to morph from ugly Duckling into confident Top Swan.

Now, I need to become a confident Bottom. Any takers for a quick study?

Bruce said...

I was at a bar for the first time in years and a drunk kid looked me up and down and said, "Nerds are hot!" Ha! I'm sure he thought it was a compliment... I was wearing a button front with a sweater vest over it, if I remember correctly. Eh, I guess it's true. I'm a nerd. And I'm okay with it, whether they're "in" or "out"