Ode to the Geek Girl

From age eleven to present, the type of female I am most likely to have a crush on/be sexually fascinated with are chronologically, as follows: The Hippie Girl, The Punk Rock Girl, and the Geek Girl. I’ve been lucky enough to date a wide variety of ladies, satisfying my adolescent needs as opportunities presented themselves. I lost my virginity to a Hippie Girl in a sun-dress and sandals, reeking of patchouli. Punk Girls made up the better part of loves throughout high school and early college. I’ve dated hipsters and preppies, Art Girls and athletes. Hell, once I even dated a Republican. (Once.) But the Geek Girl has ever eluded me.

Having been raised, as I was, in the redneck-ed mountains of Middle Tennessee, my pubescent interests were shaped mostly by the fleeting encounters with anything but the frizzy haired football fans that typically surrounded me. Luckily, there was a hippie-dippie granola college nearby, complete with prep school attached. I convinced my parents to let me forego the hell of Tennessee public education, and soon enough I was indulging my early infatuations with the fair creature known as the Hippie Girl. Shortly thereafter, I discovered punk rock, and along with he Minor Threat cassettes and Misfits stickers came a deep appreciation for girls in fish-nets and Doc Martens. If she wore ripped t-shirts and spiky bracelets, I was in love. But I am ever the nerd, and the one affair I have to enjoy is the Geek Girl.

Mind you, my current girlfriend is a beautiful blonde fashion Girl, and I would not trade her for all the doubloons on the Spanish Main. She is smart and funny and talented and sexy as hell. But a little part of me will always miss the Geek Girl I never knew.

And what is a Geek Girl? She wears glasses (but of course), and her hair is cute in a doesn’t-quite-work kinda way. She has a crush on Dan Clowes and there are vinyl Dave Cooper dolls on her shelves. She wears sneakers, but not because she’s athletic. Just the opposite in fact. Underneath a set of mismatched (possibly vintage) clothes, she is either too skinny (lanky and awkward with perfect little A-cup breasts), or slightly pudgy, with a soft round belly barely peeking out over the waistband of red corduroys. (Both types are enormously sexy, mostly because they have no idea just how sexy they are.) The Geek Girl wears silly socks. She has big eyes, from a lifetime of reading fantasy novels. She has experimented with Dungeons & Dragons, but not drugs. At least not until she reads the INVISIBLES, and becomes Grant Morrison Geek Girl.

You see her at conventions, primarily Small Press events. She waits in line to have Craig Thompson sign her copy of BLANKETS, and everyone watching can tell she is totally in love. It’s like the time she met Neil Gaiman, but without all the Goth kids getting in the way. Sometimes she makes ‘zines or her own comics, and when she has ideas she jots them down in a Sanrio notebook. Often the Hipster Girl gets confused with Geek Girl, as she has stolen so much of Geek Girl’s look. Geek Girl doesn’t even know how fashionable she has become.

Every time I see a Geek Girl, I sigh and wonder what might have been. Would we have agreed in our love of SEAGUY? Would she be too heavily into Manga, slowly breaking my heart? Would she like sci-fi television? Would it all be over when she admitted to loving FARSCAPE?


Ahhh, the Geek Girl. Unrequited love in cat-eye glasses.