Working Stiffed

My husband was jobless, and my resentment was growing.

I didn't marry for money. I met my husband at an artists' colony, where people knew one another for their

creative pursuits first - art in his case, writing in mine. Most of us did something else to pay the bills. Bill

had a sweet deal, I thought. He worked two to three weeks at a time, helping museums around the

country set up their exhibits. Other weeks, he painted.

Soon after I started working with him at a small-town radio station, The

Monk cooked me dinner. He wasn't actually a monk anymore, but I was

intrigued that he had been one, in Ananda Marga, an India-based

spiritual organization I'd never heard of before. I was a lapsed Jew,

practically an atheist, and I found this rather exotic. I was drawn to his

air of calm authority, unusual for his 31 years, and the simple way he

lived.

MODERN LOVE

WE were standing in the aisle of a crowded predawn bus, deep in

conversation, oblivious to those around us. He was telling me about a new

staging of “A Streetcar Named Desire” that was all the rage in the field of

queer theory. Stanley was played by a woman, Blanche by a man. “I saw it at

a conference last semester,” he said. “It was great.”