The bed of one particularly disastrous boyfriend was huge, and his cotton sheets were soft from age and printed with a geometric 1970s pattern. I suspected that he had had them since childhood – since it was doubtful he could afford new sheets on his $5 an hour wages at the dreary coffee shop where he worked.

He washed those sheets, often, at his co-worker's house. I later found out that they were having an affair while he used her laundry machine.

His bedroom was in a basement with no windows – when I lay there in the pitch dark, everything in the room was blackly invisible. I couldn't even see the boy sleeping on the other side of the bed.

They say that when one of your senses is removed, you become acutely aware of the others.

When he snored, it sounded like an earthquake.