I have made a monumental discovery.

Now when I say monumental, I wouldn’t say it’s on par with the moon landing or Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell. But it was life-changing.

I have found a new favorite bench.

Don’t get too excited about this. But do know that I’m now a man in love. It has everything I want in a bench. It has a view, it’s big enough for a man of my stature to lie down and it’s never occupied.

This is something that is almost unheard of at Syracuse University, where you have to aggressively guard your outlets at the library or wrestle people to death to get one of the coveted chairs facing the windows in Panasci Lounge.

But on my new favorite bench, I am blissfully alone and able to lie down and eat my bagel completely drenched in cream cheese. It’s like an old Jewish man’s Narnia.

It was on one of these glorious bagel days that one of my friends walked by. This friend then proceeded to reveal to me the real story, the deep, dark secret of the bench that I was sitting on — the kind of secret that truly tests the love of a man and his bench.

It was the legendary Kissing Bench.

For anyone who hasn’t been on one of those prospective student tours of the university where they tell you facts only your parents would find interesting, let me fill you in on the lore.

The Kissing Bench sits right outside the Hall of Languages. It’s made of stone and big enough for two people — or one very large man and his bagel — to sit comfortably.

According to legend, if you kiss your main squeeze on said bench, you apparently either get married, stay together forever or both. Either way, it’s about as binding of a contract as anything the state of New York can draw up.

But apparently, the catch is that if you sit on this bench alone — as I have blissfully done many times before — then you die alone. Let that sink in a little. Alone. All by yourself. Your life becomes that Celine Dion song.

I’m a pretty superstitious person. To this day, I still avoid all cracks in the sidewalk to ensure the safety of my mom’s back. I make it a point to cross to the other side of the street if I see a black cat. That last one is both superstition and safety, because cats either find me incredibly arousing or very, very threatening — two emotions that elicit less than ideal interactions between felines and myself.

So when I heard I was cursed to die alone, things became mighty bleak for ole Christian Unkenholz. What was the point of living if I could never make my family and friends decide whether they want to eat mediocre fish or chicken at my wedding reception?

I wished I had more specifics about this curse. I also wondered what the appeal process was for such curses. Was there a way to counteract it?

Days later, I got a text — from the same friend who informed me about my now-cursed life — that there was a girl sitting alone on the Kissing Bench.

“A girl,” I thought. “I can find her and we can both die alone together!”

Clearly I had not thought out this paradox, but I left to go find her anyway. When I passed the bench, there was no girl to be found. I sat down with my bagel, defeated.

A glob of cream cheese fell onto my shirt, which I promptly scooped up with the remnants of my bagel. I ate it before realizing I was in public and being watched by a gaggle of women. Maybe curses are the least of my problems.

Christian Unkenholz is a sophomore public relations and political science major. He can be found on eHarmony.com under the username “cursed@cuse.” His column appears every Thursday in Pulp. He can be reached at cdunkenh@syr.edu. 

 

Published on September 25, 2013 at 11:22 pm