You might want to ask Mrs. David Lettermen — I’m guessing she’d say no (although, one of Letterman’s paramours, Merrill Markoe, joked, “As you can imagine this is a very emotional moment for me because Dave promised me many times that I was the only woman he would ever cheat on.” Gotta love her sense of humor).
And so Letterman’s wife, Regina Lasko, becomes the latest in a string of wives who have been cuckolded — actually, cuckqueaned, but that just sounds so not OK— by their spouses (although the affairs occurred before they were married, Lasko and Letterman were in a long-term, committed relationship at the time).
I went to hear Elizabeth Gilbert last night. I must confess, I didn’t like “Eat, Pray, Love,” although there were moments in her massive best-seller that I did like. I thought I might be the only woman who felt that way, but I have met a few others. It seemed to show the worst of women — needy, neurotic, obsessive, self-absorbed — made even more so by the fact that it was published after “The Last American Man,” whose subject, a self-styled man, is often viewed in mythic ways as the best of manhood.
And in person, she is warm, self-depricating, genuine; then I felt bad that I wrote the book off, perhaps too quickly.
But Gilbert is back with another book about — perhaps not surprisingly — marriage. As in her own: "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage." She marries “that guy,” the Brazilian-born Australian, José Nunes, whom she met in the “Love” part of the book (when he was called Felipe), even though they both feel strongly against marriage and agreed that they didn’t need to be married to love and commit to each other.
Why she marries him is to keep him in the country; his too frequent travels to the US caught the eye of Homeland Security and that was that.
I suppose that’s a good enough reason to marry — I know people who’ve married for less-compelling reasons, including me. But given the divorce rate for second marriages — at 60 percent, it’s higher than the rate for first marriages — you have to wonder why people get married again.
The singles event at the spacious Piazza Market in San Francisco was about to start when a pretty middle-aged woman walked in, sat down at my table and surveyed the scene. I knew just what she was observing.
“Why are there always more women who come to these things?” I asked, seeking a conversation entry point.
“Men don’t want to improve themselves,” she said. “They’re lazy.”
Well, this is shaping up to be a typical singles event, I thought, although in all honesty this was my first singles event, and not one even one solely to meet members of the opposite sex, so how the heck would I know, anyway?
Not that anything great has happened to me personally, but I know five people who are getting married and one is pregnant.
When you get to be middle-aged and you watch your friends and acquaintances get divorces or become empty-nesters as their kids graduate high school, it’s nice to experience the excitement of new love in its various forms.
The most amazing story of all the weddings, however, is the one of my recently retired co-worker, Beth Ashley. At age 83, after two marriages — one that ended in divorce, another that made her a widow many years ago, she is getting married. What’s even more heart-warming is that it’s to a man on whom she had a crush as a child.
