Apparently, when people experience something incredibly painful the mind won’t allow itself to retain an accurate memory of the experience. This phenomenon is used to explain the existence of women with more than one child and the decision of Manhattan twenty-somethings to move.

Due to a misguided desire to live alone and the disparity between my roommate’s salary and my own (guess who is on the losing end?), I began my apartment hunt a week ago. I told myself to stay realistic. I, quite rightly, expected to pay too much to live by myself in a tiny crap apartment that smelled like curry and had bars on the windows.

Bring it, I thought. During my last apartment search the roommate and I had contemplated renting a place with a moveable shower unit on wheels. When in use, the unit needed to be attached to the kitchen sink through a hose. I was prepared for the worst.

I was not, however, prepared to not be allowed to see the worst.

For the past seven days, I have been averaging one e-mail/call per hour, not including time spent sleeping or commuting to work. Not one person has responded to me.

E-mails go unanswered. Voice messages go unreturned. Granted, I was trying for a no-fee apartment, which meant the competition was probably chicken-fight insane. Still, you would think someone, somewhere would say something. But instead they were, quite literally, saying nothing.

The first time a live person answered her phone, I was hung up on. The next time the owner did not hang up, but remained on the other end of the line, breathing, as I asked “Hello?” Who in God’s name was getting these no-fee apartments? And how?

Last night I made yet another call to a no-fee apartment and again heard a human voice answer the phone. After my introductory speech, there was the getting-to-be-familiar silence. Half-joking, half-in-the-moment-desperate, I blurted out “I’ll do anything.”

“Really?” asked an interested male voice on the other end. “Anything?”

I hung up.

So now I understand my options. Become a real-estate whore or go into debt. I wish I had more gumption and less so-called integrity because the real-estate whore option is clearly, objectively, the better one.