In 1968 I met my future husband. He walked into the classroom and I was smitten. We were students at Monterey Peninsula College taking a psychology class in which we had to enroll in an Esalen-like “encounter group."

Tony was handsome, 5’7”, with straight sandy brown hair, dark smiling eyes. His crooked smile bespoke of dangling a cigarette from the corner of his mouth when he worked. His nose, slightly bent due to a deviated septum, still Roman. In his old tweed jacket with leathered elbows he exuded professorial confidence, arrogance and intelligence that I found attractive and intimidating, and he smelled of Lucky Strikes. I soon began to smoke Luckies.

He was married. Two small children, a boy and a girl. But in an unhappy marriage, he was open to our brief encounter with madness. We had lovely trysts on campus in the Student Union. One of his friends ran interference for us. And we often met at our favorite gravestone in the Monterey cemetery across the road. There, we hid behind the stone, huddled with the dead and kissed. He talked openly without fear since nobody could hear. But for me, I had secrets. I wanted to remain mysterious.

When I saw him, when I even thought about him, my body turned to mush. Goose bumps ravaged my skin. I sang as I walked up the hill to campus. In a state of bliss, bathed in the glow of twilight, I bicycled my way through Cannery Row. This elation, this physical response to his presence went on for years after we were married; even after it had all started to go bad. I couldn’t wait for him to walk through the door.

Our affair took its toll after a couple of months. We parted with the understanding that we did not like that we were hurting his wife and kids. That lasted about a week. He showed up at my work needing a place to stay. I accommodated him. He divorced his wife. We married after living together for two years.

He was a carpenter by trade, an intellectual by gift. When I was growing up, marrying a "carpenter" never entered my waking mind. I expected to get married and have babies, but what I really wanted to do was study and teach English Lit and write, not get married. But I said I do. And I did, and college quickly went by the wayside. English Lit went back to England.

With many bumpy roads and splits, counseling, screaming, temper tantrums, learning to hate each other, we divorced after twenty-two years; after years of losing my self in his world; after years of a neurotic fear that a smarter woman would take him from me; after years of his emotional and intellectual distance; and years of holding the secret that I would never—in spite of his all-consuming desire for it to be so—I would never be able to love his son exactly like he did. Love wanted to conquer all, but it couldn’t.