My new roommate, Jack, has officially owned his condo for three weeks now, and neither of us is living there yet. My excuse is that I don’t want to start staying there until Jack does, and Jack’s excuse is that he doesn’t want to start staying there until all of my crap is out of his living room and put away.

The problem is that I went from a larger bedroom with a massive closet and two kitchen closets that I entirely claimed as my own–one of which was slightly larger than an entire studio apartment–to a smaller bedroom with a smaller closet, a shared closet just inside the front door, and a linen closet that’s technically in Jack’s bedroom but he’s being kind enough to share.

If Jack and I were renting the place as equals, I would absolutely kick him out of both closets, fill them with all of my tchotchkes, and take over the bigger bedroom while I was at it. But since he owns the place and I’m just his tenant, I feel like I have to defer to him when he says I have to keep my Avenging Unicorn Playset from Kamran and The Birds Barbie from Tracey out of plain view.

See, Jack’s apartment is very modern, and he’s keeping the decor chic and sleek. When he asked me, for instance, if I had any magnets for the refrigerator, I took it as an invitation to gleefully slap my 6″ Dick and Jane likenesses and the homemade Tracey and Katie photomagnets Tracey gave me when I moved into my last apartment four years ago all over his new appliances. But it turns out he was just asking in order to prepare himself for what I might try to fight for. Luckily, only the sides of the brushed metal refrigerator are magnetic, so he can hide most of my transgressions while making me feel as if I’m leaving my imprint on the place.

To be fair, he did allow me to put my bookcase in the living room and has so far not said a word about the things I’ve put on it. I’m not sure he’s seen my jar of plastic pickles or my Penis Pokey book, though.

My old roommate, Wen, and I had our very last evening in the old apartment last Tuesday. When I left him on Monday night, the place was still absolutely filled with his things, as his movers weren’t coming until the next afternoon. In fact, when my movers had come the Saturday before and taken apart a shelving unit of his in the kitchen in order to wedge my couch out the front door, he’d put it back together as soon as they’d left instead of using it as a head-start on his packing.

Our landlady came over to either wish us good luck or ensure we didn’t make off with any of her fixtures and stood around watching as Wen threw out a white trashbag packed so full of plastic grocery sacks it could’ve served as the base for a seven-foot-tall snowman. I loaded into a shopping bag my cutting board that looks like a pizza (classy!) and my Cocomotion, a gift from my best friend’s mom that was literally designed to make hot chocolate and nothing else. I plied the Go to the Head of the Class and Let’s Be Safe board games I’d used as wall décor in my bedroom off with a bottle of Goo Gone, and much-taller Wen scraped off the adhesive I couldn’t reach. Our landlady took my new address and promised to send a check if any of our security deposit remained but reminded me that the navy blue with gold moldings in the kitchen probably broke the “no dark paint colors” clause in our lease.

When the only things left were my two shopping bags, my over-the-door mirror, and Wen’s duffel bag, he actually let me take a picture of him for the second time ever to remember the apartment by:

I sure am going to miss those stenciled deer heads over our bedroom doors.

Deciding it was too unwieldy, I tried to pitch my mirror onto his desk and bookcase piled on the sidewalk outside the house, but he snatched it up and carried it to the subway alongside me. Outside the Whole Foods knockoff on our way to the G train at Lorimer Street, a hipster couple saw our armloads and yelled, “Trash day!” We were offended, and I could only think to yell, “Your face is!”

We took the train downtown together–me to my new apartment in Downtown Brooklyn and him to his girlfriend’s dorm (hott!) in Clinton Hill–talking about our Thanksgivings and how excited his mom is to have him back home in Queens for a month while he looks for his next place. We hugged goodbye in a way that felt possibly meaningful, I said I’d e-mail him about grabbing dinner sometime, he said “shhhhhhure”, and then he left with the mirror and four years of memories of me telling him that he’s Asian and will never have curly hair no matter how much of my special shampoo he steals.

It’s strange to leave a place you spent years of your life in and know you’ll never see again.