In the fall semester last year, I went to the observatory on a DATE with a GIRL.

Well the date actually starts with a bike ride into Mount Vernon, then a delicious dinner at Athens, and then on the way back, my significant other to be and I walk up the hill to the observatory via 229. Neither of us had been to the observatory and we didn’t really know where it is. I suggest that we follow the road assuming that eventually we will reach the observatory. My intuition would have served me right. But I’m a sub, so I listen to my date and take a trail that leads us to a campsite. There’s a bike, a tent, some pots and pans etc. Normal camp shit, but I’m shook. I hide my fear by asking questions about the culturally appropriative summer camp that she went to growing up. We turn around, get back to the road and eventually make it to the observatory.

I figured that the observatory is always open and you can go in and fuck around with some expensive telescopes. Not the case. We lie down on the pavement, bummed, looking up at the stars. We see all the constellations: the big dipper, the little dipper, my tiny nipple, Orion, Oh, Ryan?, Hercules, Hercampus, Sagittarius, Sigourney Weaver, NBC’s This Is Us. All of them. We say sweet nothings to each other, and just as I’m about to go in for the kiss, a car rolls up shining a blindingly bright light on me and my lady friend.

I put my hands up and yell, “I’m sorry!” The Knox County sheriff gets out of the car and approaches us. I tell him that we are Kenyon students, and that he totally just cock-blocked me.  I ask him how we should get back to campus. He says, “You can take the path through the woods back to campus, but there’s a guy who lives back there, and he might make you into soup.” He continues, “He lives down that trail in a tent [gestures towards campsite we stumbled upon]. The guy gives me the creeps. He’s probably been watching you this whole time.” The sheriff then got in his car and left us to die.

On our walk back to campus along 229, Juliet told me that this was the best night she’s had this year at Kenyon. The sentiment was not mutual, but I said, “Yeah, same.” We’ve been together ever since.

The moral of the story is that love comes when you least expect it, and there’s a cannibal living in the woods.