Most people, when one  says they have an imaginary girlfriend, after the initial “shock” wears off, you think that they have set themselves up with somewhat of an ideal romantic partner.  Not me!  I say, what’s the use of having an imaginary paramour if you don’t use your imagination!

I awoke this morning to find Wanda fumbling through some compact discs I have stacked up in the “dining room” of my apartment.  You know, the one with windows to my bedroom.  In the winter, these windows are closed, in order to trap the warm air in one space.  In warmer weather, they are left wide open, creating creating an HDTV sized transverse fro one room to another.  I have never seen anyone use this window for anything other than a window, but Wanda was using it for a trashbin.  Out of site, out of mind.

It is always a shock to wake up with Wanda there.  I never gave her a key to my place.  And for good reason:  I don’t exactly trust her.  The night that I met her, she regaled me with stories of sneaking into ex  boyfriends apartments and leaving things on their radiators when they were at work  Dead fish, wigs, cheese.  The real stinkers.  

I figured I would thwart Wanda’s cycle of breaking and entering with a few prudent moves by yours truly.  My first was to not tell her my name.  The second was I wouldn’t let her know anything about me.  Third was she would never, ever learn where I lived.  And last, if all else had failed, I promised myself never to give her a key to the damn place.

Well, the first fail safe flew out the window straight away, because I was wearing one of those “SEAN GOTHMAN” t-shirts I had made up a few months ago.  I wouldn’t have normally worn such a shirt out in public, being the shy lad I am, but everything else I had to wear smelled like dirty socks.

“Who is that supposed to be on your shirt,” she slurred, punching me in the shoulder.  “Is that supposed to be you?  Yeah, maybe twenty years ago, Methuselah.”

As the night wore on, she dragged out of me more information than I would care to admit to anyone nowadays.  Or rather, she read about it.  THe event we were both attending was my art exhibit, wherein my painted silkscreen MySpace pages, one hundred nine of them, five feet by five feet, adorned the gallery walls.  Wanda read every detail I care to tell the word on those walls, and I told her.  Damn.

And, for reals, I didn’t plan on taking her home that night, but she seemed especially easy, as she was putting her hand down my pants practically the whole night.  I know, classy.  Good thing I wore sweatpants, they are easier to maneuver in.

That was six sick weeks ago, and although  Wanda isn’t living here, she’s making sly, subtle hints that she wants to move in.  Like having her mail forwarded.  That’s a good trick.  When I brought this up to her, she played it off. 

 ”What’s the difference, snail mail is dead, anyway,”  she says.  “I’m a traditionalist.  If you prefer the cold, impersonal world of email and texts over actual paper correspondence from the likes of Tom Shane and Nordstroms, then maybe this whole ting won’t work out.”  When I agree with her, she throws a drink in my face tearfully storms off to the fire escape.

Imaginary women.  Humph.

Not to say our relationship has not had its sweet moments.  Once she showed up at my place at four in the morning with a case of food service Fiddle Faddle.  Then another time, when we were at the beach, she held my hand while paramedics resuscitated me from a near fatal Portuguese Man-O-War sting, apologizing all the while for throwing it in my face.

But it was this morning, under a rain of plastic cases and digipacs that, that Wanda had placed me in the gravest of positions.  I liked my privacy.  I like being able to stumble around my apartment without the omnipresent threat of a home invasion.  

“Wan, is that you?”  I bleat out into the barrage. this lets up, and form the dining room I hear:

“Oh, are you home?”

“It’s, it’s…”  I look at my phone for the time.  “It’s 8:35, Wan…and what the hell are you doing in  my apartment?  How did you get in this time?”

“Do you find it hot?”  She sings, ” You know, in the summer and all, with all your god damned windows and god damned doors clamped god damned  shut and locked?  I know I would.”  Then she trails off,  

“Yeah, that’s going to have to change.”

“What, do you think I can’t hear you trail off like that?”  I yell, flipping the sheet off my body.

“That’s why I said it out loud, stupid.”  She says coming into the bedroom.  She stood over me, broken CD in her hand.  It was Cause and Effect, this old band form Sacramento from about a million years ago.  They had a couple of hits you might know.  “You Think You Know Her.”  “What Do You See.”  “It’s Over Now.”  

Wanda held the disc to my throat and purred sweetly, “Way gone Sean, honey dear, I have to move.  Oh god, I hate saying that out loud.  Move.  I want to be stationary, every time, all the time.  Damn.  Ah well, c’est la vie, huh?  Huh?  It’s too bad about Cause and Effect, I need some music to get me moving, no pun intended.  See, it’s been a long night.  I was out all god damned night with this fireman I met at a house fire…oh, uhm, don’t worry, ‘nothing happened’.  

“Anyway, I thought, when I saw this Cause and Effect, I hadn’t heard them since I was twelve, or some such shit.  What is more god damned symbolic than listening to Cause and fucking Effect as I make my way, tail between my legs, back to Sac, and leave all this shit in this god damned town.  Just me, the stol–er–borrowed Subaru, my puzzles, my collection of Midnight Oil 45s, and the renewed sense of self satisfaction that I was once again a Californian.”

Wanda paused for moment and took the disc from my neck.  She got teary eyed and her voice got all worbly, like a GarageBand effect.  “But then I saw you, my little angel, and I know, I can’t.  I can;t leave you behind, my dear, my love, my light.”

I sat up.  Tears were rolling down her face.  I wanted to punch her in the throat for breaking into my house and acting like a looney tune, but all I could muster was a meek, “Uhm, okay.”

Wanda dropped the disc and embraced me tightly.  “I guess I’m going to need to move in.”