The Toxic Avenger:
The Novel
by Lloyd Kaufman and Adam Jahnke

Chapter Two: The Nerd[1]

There are few jobs in the world less glamorous than being a janitor. Some, but not many[2]. But as with any job, there's a definite pecking order and in the field of custodial services, your status depends almost entirely on what kind of establishment you clean. Janitors at huge corporations in fancy glass towers rank near the top, since they don't tend to handle anything more disgusting than discarded evidence of insider training. The bottom rung of janitors consists of those poor bastards who are forced to clean up bodily excretions. These misfortunate fuckers work in hospitals, rest homes, XXX-rated theatres, and health clubs, the sum total of all human detritus.

Melvin Ferd had been the janitor (or as he was unaffectionately referred to by the clientele, "mop boy") at the Tromaville Health Club for almost five years. It had begun as a part-time job. Just a way to make some money so he could support his loving mother, a possessive, smothering cunt of a bitch. As a side benefit, it was also Melvin's way to get as close as possible to those who were more popular than he was. Granted, just about everybody in Tromaville was more popular than he was, so he really could have taken a job just about anywhere and achieved the same goal.

But the sad fact was that Melvin, unlike a lot of nerds, geeks, misfits and dweebs, simply wasn't all that smart. Often an annoying laugh, bad hairstyle, and/or ill-fitting and unwashed clothes will mask an intellect the size of New Hampshire. Not in Melvin's case. With Melvin, what you saw was what you got. Not that that should be a problem. In a perfect world, personality and disposition should carry you pretty far. And if that were the case, Melvin would be the All-Seeing Overlord of the Universe at this point. They don't make them much sweeter or more inherently decent than Melvin Ferd. Let's face it. It takes a remarkably goddamn even-tempered person to collect other people's sweat-stained jocks and wipe down their shower leavings eight hours a day without complaint.

But this is an imperfect world and even by flawed standards of comparison, Tromaville was a pretty fucked-up corner of it. Back in high school, Melvin had attempted to demonstrate just what a good-hearted person he really was. One lunch period as Melvin was chowing down on his banana-and-liverwurst sandwich, he spied something across the cafeteria that struck a chord. A number of seniors were playing keep-away with a new transfer student's lunch tray. For the first time in his life, Melvin's blood boiled with anger. Or perhaps it was jealousy, since ordinarily the seniors would be tormenting him instead. But Melvin had been around for awhile and it was at least momentarily amusing to see how a kid with only a tenuous grasp of the English language would respond to a bullying.

Either way, Melvin felt he couldn't simply sit idly by and let the new kid suffer. Unseen by anyone, Melvin stood up and marched over to the melee. As the tray passed from hand to hand, Melvin sneaked in between and lunged for it. Milk, creamed corn, and tuna casserole splashed everywhere as Melvin rescued the lunch and returned it to its rightful owner. Sab Sada, the Asian transfer student, accepted his ruined lunch with no small degree of amazement. Melvin turned and faced the bullies head on. "Hey," he squeaked. "Leave him alone. He didn't do anything to you guys."

The seniors looked at each other, then back to Melvin, struck dumb(er) by the fact that Melvin had willingly put himself in the line of fire. Fortunately for Melvin, before they could retaliate (as they surely would have), all eyes returned to Sab, who had become hysterical.
Sab sat at the long table, weeping into his lunch tray. "What you do?" he cried.

Melvin didn't know what to say. "I.... hey, it's OK. Sorry your stuff spilled. You can have some of my lunch."

Sab slammed his palms down on the table and stood, eyes blazing with red fury at Melvin. "You.... big nerd! You dishonor my family! Sab Sada descendant of long line of samurai. Sada clan not be rescued by nerds!"

The seniors began to laugh, now a bit sorry that they'd picked on Sab Sada. Looked like he was one of them after all. Melvin glanced behind him, his bravado deflating quicker than a blow-up doll in a cheap motel. "Look, I'm sorry...I didn't.... I mean... I was just trying to help. How was I supposed to know you were a samurai?"

Sab's head rolled back on his neck as he let loose with a primal scream of embarrassed anguish. "Sab Sada looks weaker than puny Yankee dog nerd?!"

"Well, no... not weaker," Melvin backpedaled. "Maybe as weak as."

Sab reached down and grabbed a butter knife from his tray, holding it out to Melvin. Melvin's eyes grew wide with fear as he flinched back a step. Sab breathed long and deep, peas and white sauce dripping from the end of the knife. "You dishonor Sab Sada. You dishonor Sab Sada's samurai ancestry."

The seniors pressed against Melvin and shoved him forward. One of the more creative bullies started a chant that quickly engulfed the entire cafeteria. "Fight fight fight fight Fight FIGHT FIGHT!!!"

"No, Sab Sada, I'm sorry. No dishonor intended. Honest."

"Stupid, stupid nerd. Remember Sab Sada. Remember!" With that, Sab Sada flicked the knife around and plunged it into his own stomach.

Those standing closest gasped. Melvin shouted, "No!" and reached to pull the knife out. Sab and Melvin's eyes locked as they fought for control of the stainless steel weapon. Instead of pulling it out, the struggle wedged it in deeper, turning a small puncture wound into a gaping abdominal cavity. Blood began to spray from Sab Sada's stomach, hitting Melvin in the eyes and face. The appearance of blood into the cafeteria got everyone's attention and that's when the screaming started. The screaming...and the vomiting. After all, everyone in the room had just filled their bellies with school cafeteria tuna casserole. That alone is enough to precariously put your stomach on the verge of revolt. But following that up with a ritual disembowelment for desert was too much.

When it was all over, Sab Sada lay dead on the puke-slick floor. Melvin sat next to him, covered in blood and in a state of complete shock. Teachers, paramedics, cops and reporters came in waves and each new arrival started off a systematic chain reaction of regurgitation as the newcomers were overwhelmed by the sights and scents of the cafeteria.

So ended Melvin Ferd's career as a hero, not to mention his academic career. While Sab Sada's death was eventually ruled a suicide, the board of education felt it was perhaps a preventable one. For everyone's benefit, they expelled Melvin six weeks later. Even if they hadn't, Melvin probably wouldn't have come back to school. It isn't easy to concentrate in class when half the student body calls you names like "Gutbuster" and "Dr. Ke-dork-ian".

Although most of Tromaville had long since forgotten Melvin's inadvertent role in the hara-kari death of poor Sab Sada, his life had not exactly improved by leaps and bounds. Even as a janitor he was subpar and in any rational corner of the galaxy, Melvin would have been fired a long time ago. Or, considering the disdain in which he was held by both his employer and the clientele, he would have quit in a glorious rainbow of "fuck-yous" and "eat-shits" hurled at every man, woman, and child who was unlucky enough to be in the building when Melvin reached his breaking point.

There had been plenty of opportunities for either scenario to play out over the years. As an employee, Melvin was loyal to a fault but his actual work was...well, somewhat flawed. Not that Melvin didn't have what it took to be a good janitor. It's just that Melvin was a dreamer and, like all dreamers, tended to lose focus on the task at hand.[3]

It wasn't uncommon for Jerry Wilkins, who owned the place, to see Melvin cleaning a window as Jerry was heading out for lunch. Jerry would then cruise down to the other side of town, enjoy a leisurely blow job from Pepper, his favorite pre-op transsexual hooker, drive back to the club, and find Melvin still standing at the window, wiping the same square foot of glass. On more than one occasion, Melvin had been distracted while restocking and put Deep-Heat Penetrating Muscle Relaxant cream in the soap dispensers. And Melvin's mop had been accidentally rinsed in the jacuzzi so often that most everyone knew to stay out of it past one in the afternoon.

But Jerry had other reasons for keeping Melvin around. He knew that the vast majority of his image-obsessed customers were never, ever going to see any results. Especially if they kept on buying the repackaged candy bars and milkshakes he sold as "energy boosters" and "smoothies" at the club's snack bar (which had itself been repackaged as "The Power Station"). What they needed was somebody that they looked good in comparison to. Melvin was the perfect specimen of anti-health. He was scrawny enough to be mistaken for a junkie, except that one glance would tell you that there was no way this guy was cool enough to score some heroin. His face was a struggle for domination between his enormous set of buck-teeth and his bulbous nose. The icing on this misshapen cake was a flurry of unkempt, Brillo-pad hair. The only remarkable thing about his appearance was a strikingly beautiful, crystal-clear complexion that had never been touched by the zits and pimples that usually visit losers like Melvin in adolescence. If his skin had been wrapped around a more attractive framework, it would have been the envy of every man and woman in New Jersey. As it stood, Melvin resembled nothing so much as a rag doll made out of wet paper towels by a retarded child in a hurry. Compared to him, even Jerry's flab could be called muscle with a straight face, so Jerry kept him around for just such a purpose.

On the other hand, Melvin himself had had ample opportunity to throw this dead-end job back in Jerry's acne-scarred face. Melvin schlumped around the club, stealing glances at people more attractive than him out of the corner of his eye, and lighting up like an emergency flare at a traffic accident whenever somebody deigned to speak to him. This combination of shyness and desperation made Melvin an irresistible target for anybody who wanted to look tough without really trying. I know it's hard to imagine that a health club would attract that sort of shallow, self-centered egomaniac but it's true. And the Tromaville Health Club had them in spades. [4]

Melvin's primary nemesis was an evolutionary throwback called Bozo. A lot of people thought Bozo was a nickname. A lot of people were wrong, which may help explain why Bozo was such an asshole. You see, Bozo's mom was a clown fetishist. A lot of kids grow up with an irrational fear of clowns but Bozo's fear made a sick kind of sense. Bozo and his mom took in the circus on a regular basis and every time, Bozo's mother would disappear just as the clowns ended their act. One time, five-year old L'il Bozo got curious and went exploring. The gruesome details of what the kid found are perhaps best left to your imagination. Suffice it to say, try to remember when you were a kid and you walked in on your parents having sex. Now imagine that same situation, only you're in a fairground reeking of elephant shit and stale cigars. Calliope music is blaring from every speaker. You've become separated from your mom and you're wandering around on your own. Suddenly, you see a tiny, garishly colored clown car rocking back and forth, its windows coated with steam. The door swings open and three half naked clowns tumble out, laughing and slapping each other on the back. You approach the car, peer inside, and there before you is your mother. Naked, red and white makeup smeared all her face and body, at the center of a clown Bukkake party. [5]

At any rate, Bozo's rather special childhood trauma didn't justify his present behavior. Besides, if Bozo had really wanted to freak out some psychiatrist, he could have whipped out a couple dozen other "traumas" from his formative years, most of them self-inflicted. All Bozo or anybody else knew was that there were certain things that sent him over the edge. Any form of weakness or stupidity (except, of course, for his own) stressed him. And when Bozo was stressed, you paid for it.

Everyone in town had paid something for Bozo's stress, from his Pagliacci-sucking mother on down. Even the aptly named Slug [6], the closest thing Bozo had to a real friend (due mainly to the fact that Slug would do absolutely anything Bozo told him to do), had suffered a kicked testicle or two thanks to Bozo. But Melvin had paid more than most for Bozo's stress. For though they could never admit it, Melvin and Bozo were in love.

Well, maybe they weren't in love, exactly. What happened was this. Melvin and Bozo had first made each other's acquaintance in the health club's men's room. The far stall of the men's john was (and still is) known as Plato's Retreat [7]. The reason for this was a glory hole drilled in the dividing wall between the two stalls, usually covered by the seat cover dispenser. It was understood by the club's clientele that if you were in the "receiving" stall, you were ready, willing and able to satisfy whatever Plato happened to be in the stall next to you. Bozo considered Plato's Retreat to be his office in the club. Not that he was gay, at least as far as he was concerned. But Bozo figured if you couldn't see whoever or whatever happened to be servicing you, it didn't really count. At this point, we should all take a moment and thank all the gods that have ever been or ever will be that Tromaville was not a farming community.

At any rate, one afternoon Bozo wandered into the men's room to see a pair of stained, untied sneakers in the receiving stall. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth [8], Bozo slid into Plato's Retreat, slid down his shorts and assumed the position.

Unbeknownst to Bozo, the catcher in the next stall was none other than Melvin Ferd, hard at work restocking the ass-wipe and wiping the diarrhea off the porcelain. Of course, not being a member of the in-crowd, Melvin had never heard of Plato's Retreat or the unwritten law of the receiving stall. And not being a stickler for detail, he didn't really notice when the wall next to him suddenly developed an erect (though not as large as you've probably heard) pillar of flesh.

If Melvin were a faster worker, things would have been different. He could have finished his job and left the stall. Bozo would have been pissed that the catcher hadn't lived up to his end of the bargain and burst out of the Retreat ready to dole out an ass-whupping, but once he'd seen that it was Melvin, he likely would have breathed a sigh of relief, glad that he'd dodged at least one bullet in his lifetime. As it was, the introduction of Bozo's dick into the glory hole happened right around the same time as Melvin began to restock the seat covers. Melvin unlocked the dispenser and opened it wide, pinning Bozo's love rocket between the wall (painful) and the cold, sharp metal edge of the dispenser (agonizing).

It was the most intense orgasm Bozo would ever have.

For about thirty seconds, the men's room echoed with girlish screams. Bozo hollered first, in a depraved mixture of pleasure and pain. Melvin's screams came in stages. First, a yelp of surprised alarm reacting to the noise Bozo was making. Next, a freaked-out shriek once he saw the ejaculating penis he'd trapped.

Melvin tried closing the dispenser, but a wedge of trapped foreskin prevented it from shutting. There was no other option but to grab the ejaculating penis and pry it loose before slamming the dispenser shut. Bozo bucked and writhed against the wall, trying to free himself from the grasp of both Melvin and the metal door. The harder Bozo struggled, the tighter Melvin held on. Bozo began to wonder if he would ever stop cumming.

With the dispenser shut, Melvin let go and collapsed against the wall, scared, sticky, and confused. Simultaneously, Bozo fell backwards and lay on the floor, coddling his raw and bloody privates. After they'd recovered for a moment, they looked up. Their eyes met through the gap between wall and floor.

Melvin's eyes widened in fear to the point where half his skull was nothing but eyeball. Bozo's eyes did the opposite, narrowing down into hateful, stressed slits.

Bozo chased Melvin along the floor, both of them scuttling under the stall walls through puddles of mop-water and piss. Bozo grabbed Melvin's ankle and dragged him back, hauling him up to his feet in stall three.

"Mop-boy," was all Bozo could muster. The stress had grabbed hold of the tiny part of his brain that at least tried to string words into sentences.

"B-b-b-b-b-b-bozo," Melvin cleverly stammered in reply. "I-I-I-I..."

Before Melvin could stutter another syllable, Bozo grabbed him by the crotch and upended him, dunking his head in the toilet while squeezing Melvin's nuts as hard as he could and flushing with his foot. It was an historic moment. Melvin's first swirlie.

Ordinarily, Melvin would not have escaped this encounter with his life. But a part of Bozo realized that if he slaughtered the mop-boy in the john, he'd probably have to come up with a reason. The real reason could never be revealed, of course. And coming up with a lie would require wits. Or at least half of one.

So Melvin walked away from this meeting with a nose full of toilet water, a set of aching testicles, and a sworn nemesis. Bozo would make it his duty from that day forward to make Melvin's life a living hell. And in that, he was quite successful. Ever since the glory hole incident, a typical Melvin/Bozo encounter went something like this.

Bozo is at a workout machine, concentrating on his pecs/delts/abs/fill in your own annoying muscle group abbreviation. Slug is in his usual position, spotting him [9]. Melvin enters the room, mopping the floor. As usual, he has decided to perform this task at a time when the workout room is at its most crowded [10].

The sight of Melvin sets Bozo's eyelid to twitching. Stress begins to build.

Melvin mops away, sneaking peeks over at a couple of girls at a nearby workout station. One is doing curls, the other is her trainer, and Melvin smiles at the sprouting raisins (Melvin's euphemism for hardening nipples) pressing against their leotards. He's mesmerized at the sight of the trainer's hand gliding along the other girl's arm, feeling the muscles tighten and work. Whenever one of them makes eye contact, Melvin just grins shyly and stupidly and looks away as swiftly as his eyes can dart.

The smile infuriates Bozo, who feels that Melvin has absolutely nothing in this life or the next to smile about. He certainly doesn't deserve to get anything even remotely like the same kind of pleasure he gets from staring at women in workout clothes. The twitch becomes unbearable.

Melvin continues his work, his back to Bozo, fantasizing about an alternate universe in which he actually knows how to operate one of these machines and impresses everyone with his feats of physical stamina.

Bozo cannot stand Melvin's proximity and decides to warn him off before he gets so close that Bozo has no choice but to introduce Melvin's teeth to the back of his throat. This is Bozo's idea of a good deed.

"Hey, Mop-Boy!"

Startled that somebody's actually said something to him, Melvin whirls all around, scanning the room for the imminent threat. As he does so, he swings the wet mop, dripping chemicals, dirt and mopped-up sweat in a tight circle around him and, inevitably, slapping Bozo square in the face.

Furious, Bozo grabs the mop, leaps up and wraps his fingers around Melvin's throat. The usual "oh-shit-I-fucked-up-again" look takes residence on Melvin's face.

"Bozo, I'm sorry! I didn't see you there!"

"Didn't see me there?! I'm ALWAYS there! This is MY machine, Mop-Boy!"

Slug leans in, grinning and practically drooling at the promise of impending violence. "That's right, Mop-Boy. Nobody touches this machine but me and Bozo."

"Shut the fuck up, Slug," Bozo mutters, not grateful for the support. "Look, Mop-Boy, you know this machine is here, right? So if you know the machine's here, you know I'm here! Right?!!"

"Yeah, Bozo, I guess!"

"You guess?!! NO, you fucking dimwit asshole, you don't guess! You KNOW! Look!"

Bozo shoves Melvin down and lies him on the bench. This is the closest Melvin ever gets to a piece of actual exercise equipment. And while he couldn't be 100% positive under the circumstances, Melvin was pretty sure he could feel a familiar protrusion coming to life beneath Bozo's shorts while he was straddling him.

"What the fuck are you lying on?"

"A machine."

"A machine?"

"Your machine, your machine!"

"That's right, shithead. MY machine. And do you have any idea what it's like to taste your fucking mop when I'm on my machine?"

"Bad?"

"Fuckin'-A-right, it's bad! Here! Try it!"

Bozo grabs the mop and wrings it out over Melvin's squirming face.

"Whaddaya think? You like that?"

"No, Bozo!"

"Yes you do. 'Cause you're the fuckin' Mop-Boy, ain't you? You love everything about this thing, don't you?"

"Yes, Bozo! It tastes good!"

Bozo mashes the mop into Melvin's face and lets him go.

"Maybe to you, you fuckin' retard. But normal people think it tastes like shit. You watch where you're swingin' that thing or next time, I won't go so easy on you."

Melvin nods and runs out, chased by the laughter of the women he'd been gawking at moments before. Slug grins and pats Bozo on the shoulder.

"That's showin' him. You OK, Bozo?"

"No, I'm not fuckin' OK! He's stressin' me, Slug. That weaselly little Mop-Boy is always stressin' me."

"You've gotta relax, man."

"Yeah, you're right. Jacuzzi! Let's go!"

With that, Bozo and Slug would adjourn to the Jacuzzi with most of the girls.

This sort of thing happened two or three times a week.

Now most people wouldn't put up with this kind of abuse on a regular basis. They'd find a job where they weren't required to drink mop scum all the time. But quitting would require a spine or something like it. In strict medical terms, yes, Melvin did have a backbone. It was badly curved and barely strong enough to support Melvin's 95-pound frame but it did exist. Melvin knew it was there and had read enough classic literature to know that it wouldn't take much to strengthen it and give him the confidence he so sorely needed. His readings proved that all it required was a good healthy dose of gamma radiation or cosmic rays or the bite of a radioactive insect of some kind. But most of the radiation in Tromaville seemed to be pretty well contained and channeled through the power plant these days. And while there were probably plenty of irradiated bugs crawling around loose, Melvin was too scared of being bitten to let any of them anywhere near him.

So Melvin had resigned himself to his lot in life. Besides, a wise man once said that with great power comes great responsibility [11]. Well, fuck that! Who needs that kind of pressure? Anyway, a superhero usually requires some kind of supervillain to fight and all Melvin had was Bozo. Melvin thought Bozo was basically a dickhead but he didn't think he was a villain, much less a supervillain.

As usual, Melvin thought wrong.

*Focus is also not a term frequently used in descriptions of the breathtaking cinematography in most Troma films.