My Marriage A to Z
The title says it all, I think. My adventures in wedded bliss. Illustrated & forthcoming from Cinco Punto press out of El Paso. I really love that guy Johnny Stanton & somehow we ended up married. Here's how it starts:
Assassin. We were in the West Village, on 4th and Mercer, across from the Bottom Line. A Sunday morning, just swinging along, thinking about breakfast and the book tables by Washington Square Park. A little old man with a neat white beard and black beret passed us. I barely noticed him until Johnny said, “Did you see that guy? He was a famous mob hit man when I was a kid.”
“Wow!” I said. “But I didn’t get a good look. Can we walk around him?”
“Absolutely not,” Johnny said.
Later, when I told my mother, she said, “I would trust Johnny Stanton when it comes to assassin etiquette.”
My sister Varda, who refers to Johnny as The Most Handsome Stanton in Manhattan, said, “I’d trust him too. After all, wasn’t he called the 18-year-old knife fighter in that poem of Ted Berrigan’s?”
After I’d told people for years about my husband recognizing an actual murderer, Johnny finally told me that he’d made up the story on the spot. When I believed it so excitedly and unquestioningly, he didn’t have the heart to tell me the truth.
Other entries include Beds, Bets, Hate, Karate... & on through the alphabet...