My Boyfriend, Templeton

by Gwen Cooper — October 15, 2007

As the weather in New York (finally!) starts to turn colder, the nesting impulse is kicking in. Robert and I have been talking with increased frequency about the possibility of moving in together. Robert even went so far as to invite me to join him in conducting a sort of inventory of his furniture and belongings, so we could think about what he might bring with him and where we would accommodate everything in my apartment (currently the larger of the two). I've been in Robert's apartment innumerable times, obviously, but it wasn't until this weekend that I realized the horrifying truth: I'm in love with a packrat.

For those of you who remember the childhood classic Charlotte's Web, you'll understand what I mean when I say that, looking at all of Robert's stuff, I had the surreal feeling that Templeton the rat had morphed into a full-grown man—one who'd lived in the same New York apartment for nearly two decades. More than enough time to accumulate boxes upon boxes of comic books, action figures, baseball cards, football cards, matchbooks (25 pounds of matchbooks! Is my boyfriend an arsonist?), high school yearbooks, holiday cards dating back to the Reagan administration, and God only knows what-all.

I'm probably the exact opposite of Robert when it comes to my "stuff" philosophy. With the exception of a few pieces of jewelry and a small handful of items that hold some sentimental value, I'm much more of a purger than an acquirer. There's almost nothing I own that I couldn't cheerfully part with at a moment's notice. Perhaps it's because, for one reason or another, I've moved roughly five times in the past 10 years. There's only so much you want to lug with you from one move to the next, and so you get in the habit of discarding some of your stuff each time. Eventually, you realize that almost nothing is that difficult to part with.

It's not that I'm completely heartless. I understand that Robert is different from me in this sense, and that he's much more apt to become attached to knick-knacks and memorabilia than I am. But...still. 25 pounds of matchbooks? Elementary school bowling trophies? I don't ever want to make Robert unhappy, but I truly can't imagine where in my apartment that much stuff would go.

The trade-off, of course, is that I would get Robert himself. And that makes it...well, almost worth it. I mean, there has to be some room for compromise, right? Even if we could whittle that 25 pounds of matchbooks down to something a tad more reasonable—say, 10 pounds of matchbooks—I think I'd feel much better about cleaning out my own closets to make some room.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.