How love hit me smack dab on the nose

It was a hot August day in Heidelberg, Germany. Mars had not been as close to Earth as it was that summer for thousands of years.

That August had something aggressive about it that made one want to rip apart photos of one's foes or knock down bicycles.

I was in a martial mood myself, being in the throes of my first quarter-life crisis: My master's thesis on Melville's Moby-Dick was going nowhere, and at 25, both my career and dating prospects were looking bleak.