Somewhere, There's an Unmarked Grave

Story Submitted by Calvin:

I'm into graveyards.  Always have been, and I don't make apologies for it.  Most people aren't, and I understand that.  Still, front and center on any dating profile I put up is a variant of the phrase, "I like visiting graveyards and exploring them."

Ellen wrote to me, alluding to various aspects of my profile, but no mention of the graveyard thing, even though, as I said, I mentioned it at least once, and most of my photos were taken in cemeteries.

She sounded nice, and she said that she wrote poetry, which I also like.  I wrote back to her and asked her, point blank, if she was okay with the fact that I liked graveyards.  She said that it wouldn't be a problem, and that she liked them, too.

Our first date?  Lunch and a graveyard.

Lunch was disappointing.  She seemed about as interested in me as she was in her placemat.  The one thing that animated her was poetry, and I asked her about everything I could about her verse, her subjects, etc.

After lunch, we hit up an old, 19th-century graveyard near my house.  It was a big lot, and stretched far into the woods.  There's one area in particular that has a stream with three lonely graves looking out over it.  This is where I took Ellen.  It was a sunny spring day with wet leaves on the ground and the scent of flowers in the air.  Idyllic.

When we arrived there, she asked me, "Why do you like graveyards?"

I said, "I like their tranquility, their beauty, and that special air of the sacred that comes over people when they walk into them."

She said, "You're a freak.  Do you dig up any bodies?"

I said, "No.  That would be profane and disrespectful."

She opened her mouth as if I had just called her a slut.  She said, "Fuck off," and stormed through the woods, in the wrong direction.

To this day, my only theory is that she mistook my words and thought that I had called her profane and disrespectful, which I had not in the least.

In any event, I ran after her to stop her, and said, "You're going the wrong way."

She yelled back, "I don't care, faggot."

I stopped chasing her and watched her disappear into the woods.

I hope she's okay.