And if I dared to ask why my t-shirt with the Golden Age Green Lantern emblem had been transmogrified into an electric green polo with the Ben-10 logo inexpertly sewn on over my left nipple like a name tag from The Lousy Cartoon Store, she would tip her head down just enough to make her bangs fall in front of one eye, give me a look made of equal parts disdain and dismissal, and say “I was just trying to do something nice for you.”

Everytime I unpacked something other than clothes- a phone charger, a book, a ballpoint pen- it would find its way back into my boxes stacked in the corner of the guest bedroom. And if I pulled out, say, a favorite old t-shirt, it would disappear and be replaced by a similar-but-horrible article of clothing.

But somehow, even with a greater than 95% reduction of required space for my belongings, there never seemed to be a place in our – and by “our,” I mean “Sharon’s”- apartment for any of my stuff.

I left almost everything I owned in my place- everything I kept (including my clothes) easily fit in a half dozen small moving boxes.

Sarah and I decided that my guest house- okay, my illegally rented trailer in the back yard of a house in Chatsworth that was bought to be flipped, but fizzled and flopped – was a waste of money, especially when considered with her refusal to spend the night “in a condemned rat-hole at the gateway to Simi Fucking Valley.”

I moved into this apartment six years ago.

As it turned out, I was absolutely right and completely wrong.