1. Conscription for the robot war has begun early. Princeton is torn to shreds. Dorms are set aflame and the sky has turned a darkness blacker than the depths of Overlord Eisgruber’s eyes. Wilson College still looks the same. I have fortified the walls of my room with Huff socks and weaponized a pen, an iron, and condoms into a projectile tattoo gun—the robots’ only weakness is radness, and I am invincible. As I heely back to my room, I see her engaged in battle with a rogue coffeemaker around campus coordinate 45.23, 72.19. But it is too strong. I throw myself into the fray, defeating the evildoer with a swift heely to its pot. She looks up at me, our faces stained with motor bearing lubricant and coffee grounds. “You saved my life.” We kiss passionately.
2. I head to the laundry room to pick up my clothing. Many hours have elapsed since my dryer cycle ended, and although it is usually prudent to pick up laundry on time, all of my clothing is made of leather & extremely conductive metals and is scalding hot, if not aflame, after a dryer cycle. As I enter the laundry room, I see she has been badly burned by attempting to remove the fiery remains of my leather jogging pants from dryer number two. Screaming apologies, I try to ease her pain by uncorking a bottle of aloe vera juice and dousing her quickly scabbing flesh. As steam fills the room, we lock eyes. We kiss passionately.
3. We run into each other in the hallway. She asks me if I know the code to the women’s bathroom, and it is her lucky day, because I carry a physical copy of the Theta spreadsheet of women’s bathroom codes—five 8.5” by 11” sheets of paper total—on my person at all times. I unfold the spreadsheet and refer to it with an oddly sensual precision. When she exits, I am still in the hallway, because refolding the spreadsheet is an arduous task that usually requires three people and a hot glue gun. She thanks me for my help, and as we kneel on the floor folding the sheets back together, our hands brush against one another. We kiss passionately.
4. I am having extremely loud sex and blasting dubstep in the privacy of my room at 2 a.m. on Dean’s Date Eve. She angrily bangs on my door, hollering at me to “shut the hell up” because she is “trying to fucking study, asshole.” I dismount and open the door. We kiss passionately.
5. I am on the TI dance floor. She is on the TI dance floor. We kiss without any passion or emotion at all: our dead, unfeeling tongues formlessly mash against the other out of obligation.
6. We meet through a mutual friend and exchange numbers. I ask her if she’d like to uhh eat food, well, with me sometime, and we go through the motions at a place in town. After dinner, we linger under the light outside our entryway, and it’s getting late you know, so. We kiss passionately.
— AJS ’15. Illustrations by RF ’17