Allen slurps  up the sweet warm sugar goop from a Diet Coke can, and looks down at the address on his iPhone. This must be the place. ACE Bar, even from a few feet outside it, is hot, sticky and thumping with bass, all of which have compounded to dimple Allen’s nose with perspiration. “Here goes nothing,” he huffs, thensmooshes his card table under his arm and wobbles over the doorway.

The bar ungulates with beautiful people he has yet to meet and, if not for the next 16 consecutive Tuesday nights in which he’ll play their personal cipher to the final season of LOST, he never would.

That’s because they’re different than Allen. For example, Jacob’s a cook and a college drop out. Zelda blogs at a gossip site down in Soho and says she’s never heard of the game she shares a name with – even though Allen brings it up every time they meet.

Then there’s Josh, who rents the bar for these parties by night and helps Allen with Omniture reports by day, obsesses over music blogs, Pitchfork scores and hooking people up with great Torrents. Some might call him a geek.

“Calling a music geek a geek is like calling a superhero a kid in a cape.” says Allen as he shuffles through a set of character note cards he’s kept since LOST Season One. “Here’s a test: Is your geekdom getting you laid? If you answered yes, then you are not a geek.”

A few girls say Hi to Allen. He waves them off nervously and knocks back another Diet Coke. “These bars are more loud and crowded than the ones I’m used to,” says Allen. He struggles to open his card table – usually reserved for D&D – with all the people crowding so close to the bar’s big screen TV – usually reserved for football.

Allen puts on disposable plastic gloves and picks up the bar’s microphone, not to fend off any viruses bugs, but because he think they add a certain je ne sais quoi to the proceedings. “Testing.”

There are many young men across the nation just like Allen. Nerds and geeks with a gift: What Zelda calls an “autistic knowledge of pseudo-philosophy and sci-fi anthologies. Want the 7-degrees of separation between David Hume and Cotterpin Doozer? They can do it in three. Or less. “

For the next dozen or so Tuesdays, their niche wheelhouse will be tested to its limits, picking apart the smallest details put in frame be a television programs art team. That book is by Hume. That poster’s for Empire Strikes back. That kid in the background, yeah, right there, see him, he’s playing Earthbound. And it all means something.

5 minutes until show time. Allen fans the note cards across his table. One’s written in swirly female penmanship. “It’s Kristen’s penmanship. She helped me write those out during the first season. Back when it was just a few of us nerds on a couch.” Allen starts to crack open another Diet Coke, but stops. “I should give her a call some time.”