I’ve carried that childhood image of the Casas Gemelas with me over the years, a freeing reminder that couples aren’t limited to any particular arrangement of physical space. There are popular models, of course — the sitcom realms of shared apartments, joint mortgages, and til-death-do-us-part marriage beds. But, in reality, the landscapes of love are many and varied.

“Varied” is a polite way of describing my current relationship arrangement. I live alone in a ramshackle Austin house that, by all accounts, was constructed by a drunkard before the advent of the square right angle. My boyfriend, Jeff, shacks up a few streets over — in a 36-square-foot dumpster.

Coming from my hand, the phrase “my boyfriend lives in a dumpster” still seems unlikely, though it’s simple enough to explain why it’s true: Jeff, a science professor and university dean, is leading a yearlong social experiment in which a team of students, designers and engineers are converting a used dumpster into a high-tech, sustainable home in order to test the extreme limits of what one needs for a good life. Jeff, the intrepid guinea pig, is living inside it, on campus, during each renovation phase — from rusty bin to solar-powered über dumpster.

Jeff doesn’t expect anyone else to live in a dumpster and he’s the first to admit there’s a clear element of spectacle that comes with converting a trash can into a mini domicile. But spectacle is kind of the point. After years of teaching undergraduate science courses, Jeff realized he was bored stiff with rote curriculum — and if he was bored, what were the students? Enter professor-in-a-box: a science experiment so extreme — so far-fetched — that curiosity and engagement would be inevitable.

And it works. Students and onlookers start with basic problem solving. Where do you pee? Where do you get water? How do you generate energy? What happens when it’s 102 degrees outside and 130 degrees inside? And — as one first-grader pointed out — where is the chimney for Santa? Logistical and engineering considerations often give way to broader discussions. How much stuff do you need to live well? What can be defined as a home? What happens when you share communal resources with others?

I, too, have my own set of questions, though they have nothing to do with surviving dime-size mosquitoes, thunderstorms or the fury of Texas summers. I’m preoccupied with length, width and height: the tangible location of relationships.

“How’s this going to work?” I asked. It was a gray afternoon in January, and Jeff and I were standing side-by-side atop a mountain of trash after “home shopping” for his new place. The landfill didn’t smell nearly as bad as I had imagined on the overcast drive over. Waste dozers plowed into pyramids of muddy clothes, plastic bags and beer bottles, shifting the debris from one pile to another. We were being shifted, too, but I had no idea where. The landfill visit marked the end of our peaceful cohabitation at my place. He was moving out and his new dumpster home barely had room for one person, let alone two.

Unwaveringly optimistic, he gave me his usual wink and said, “I have no idea, but we’ll figure it out.”

The dumpster project had been on the table since our first OkCupid date a year earlier. He was brimming with so much boyish, freewheeling energy that I hardly felt surprised when, over an initial round, he announced that he planned to take up residence in a trash receptacle. I admired his unabashed, experimental approach to life and he was drawn to my quiet openness. We were an unlikely pair, but we fit together, right from the start.

Fitting together within his experiment has proved more challenging. A few weeks after he moved into the dumpster it became obvious that my place was no longer a shared habitat. For Jeff, my house now poses a threat to the scientific rigor of his experiment with its running water, gas-powered stove, and fluffy queen-size bed. When he comes over, he feels guilty — almost like he’s cheating. We have the occasional dinner at my kitchen table and every now and then a student takes a shift in the dumpster, giving him a night off at my place. But even then, he acts like a temporary guest checking into a hotel. After he says goodbye and walks out the door, there’s no trace he was ever there — not even a spare toothbrush in the bathroom.

The other option — his place — is also complicated, though for different reasons. Nights in the dumpster require a basic understanding of the Pythagorean theorem: At 6-foot-1 Jeff can only sleep diagonally across the 6-by-6 dumpster floor. On the rare nights we both sleep in the dumpster, I hoist myself in through the sliding metal door and make my bed in the small triangle of space beside his long body.

I don’t mind. The narrow territory is a fair exchange for the bizarre magic of our dumpster sleepovers. Before we climb into our sleeping bags, Jeff lights a candle lantern and flips open the roof so I can watch the stars and cloud drifts. I run my fingers through his hair for a while and then he’s out, leaving me to lie awake, cataloging the sounds of the city. Bats flicker overhead. If the breeze is blowing north, it relays eerie guitar solos from the hipster dive bars two blocks away. Sometimes there’s the rattle of a stolen shopping cart. Later, after midnight, the sirens and throbbing car stereos die down and I can make out Jeff’s breathing and the rush of wind-through-trees in the Texas State Cemetery across the street.