“Sweetie, what the hell is this?”
I’m crouched on the floor of Boyfriend’s bedroom, surrounded by pyramids of clothing. It’s Saturday afternoon, two weeks and counting until the official start of Project Cohabitation, and for the first time in our relationship I’m excavating the anthropological site that is his closet. We’re moving in together, it’s official, the “dating, but living separately” gates have been lowered and it’s time to begin that uncomfortable delve into each others’ Pandora’s Box of personal gremlins and idiosyncrasies. I figured his sock drawer is a good place to start.
“You realize that you have an entire drawer filled with unmatched decomposing socks?” I gesture towards the swarming mass of cotton spilling over the sides of its wooden container.
“Yeah well, I’ve been meaning to clean some of those out.”
“Since when, your last move?”
“Oh come on, it’s not that bad. Most of them are fine.”
I hold up the mangled corpse of an athletic sock, loose string dangling like snapped tendons from its toe. “Um, yeah, fine. How about I get rid of anything that looks like it’s survived Nagasaki?”
I grab a trash bag and start tossing in socks, t-shirts, showing no mercy for anything ripped or frayed. The calm of Organization settles over me, and I feel the rush that accompanies getting rid of unnecessary crap. After a few minutes, Boyfriend turns from his shelf-construction project, suspicious - I’m too quiet, chances are I’m up to something I know won’t make him happy.
“Hey! What the -” He steps towards me, then sighs at my over-innocent expression. “Look, honey, I love you, but you’re like the Grim Reaper with my everything I own. You can’t just throw all my stuff away and get rid of everything you see.”
He’s right, it’s true; my OCD aversion to clutter is legendary. I justify my fits of possession-ejection by saying that I hate feeling owned by objects. If I had my way, I’d haul a leaf blower into the apartment at least once a month and feed anything it displaces to the dumpster. Boyfriend, on the other hand, is more than happy to step over the foot-high stack of takeout menus and Village Voice copies from 1998 that currently flank his couch. Throwing away his old t-shirts sounds like a decent compromise.
“I’m just trying to help! See - look I’m only getting rid of the ones with holes.”
He sighs again, shakes his head and goes back to hammering. On to the next drawer - boxers. As is the drawer directly below it.
“Uh, Boyfriend? Just out of curiosity, why do you have two separate underwear drawers here? Neither one is full.”
“Oh, that one is all stuff that doesn’t really fit. It’s all tight in the waist.”
“Let me get this straight, you have an entire drawer filled with underwear that doesn’t fit?”
“Well, yes.”
“So why not get rid of it, buy a couple more pairs that do fit, and then you can wear actual underwear that fits on a daily basis? Imagine the novelty.”
At last, the bottom drawer. It occurs to me that in all our years of dating, I’ve never once seen him actually open it. I pull the handle and meet surprising resistance, so I grasp the knob with both hands and heave.
“What the hell do you have stashed in here, spare cinder blocks?”
With a final burst of effort, I yank the drawer open, then gaze inside in disbelief.
“Oh you have got to be kidding me with this.”
“What now?” He turns from the small mountain of sweaters I demanded he sort.
I gesture at the open drawer and the pure absurdity inside. “An entire dresser drawer filled with nothing but loose change? Are you kidding me? I mean honestly - this is a joke, right?”
“Oh yeah, my change drawer. I had forgotten about it.”
“There are hundreds of dollars in here!”
“Yeah, so? What’s the big deal? Plenty of guys I know keep change around.”
“This is unreal, Boyfriend, come o-” I stop and smack my scalp with an open palm in disbelief. In two years of dating, I’d never once seen him open the drawer, and he has containers of change in the living room that I watch him fill every night. Meaning that when he moved in to this apartment three years ago, he opened the drawer, dumped in around 50 pounds of coins and never opened it again. And I, the girl who regularly re-lines her lingerie drawer with alternating lavender and vanilla rose scented adhesive paper, am moving in with this man. Lord deliver us both.
I stare into the abyss of spare change, wondering what I’d find if I stuck a hand inside. Maybe a ring? Copper-stained boxer shorts? A severed finger? What kind of person keeps an entire dresser drawer filled with change? How the hell is this moving in together thing ever going to work? Is it destined to fail? Anxiety is fermenting in my stomach at warp speed. Crying seems like an option, though a bit melodramatic given the situation.
Boyfriend turns and reads my pained expression with near-Dionne Warwick accuracy.
“Sweetie, it’s going to be fine, we’ll both have to make adjustments with our living styles but we’ll figure it out, don’t worry,” he soothes. “Ok, so we’re both used to things being our own way - it doesn’t mean anything. Nothing is ever doomed from the start.”
He’s right as usual, always the Relationship Confucius ready with a speech to calm my fretting.
“I know, I know. It’s not that big a deal. Everything will be fine.” I gesture at the open drawer, its bottom sagging under the weight of solid metal. “But first, grab a duffel bag, you’re helping me carry all this to the coin bank. And dinner tonight is definitely on you, even if we have to pay in quarters and dimes.”