Arriving late to a dinner party a while back, my husband and I approached the dining room, where people were already seated. A woman rose up from her chair, pointed a finger at David and cried, "My God, you're the one who raped Edith Bunker!"

I glanced at him. He'd already been established as a cross-dresser, and he'd confessed to Frank Sinatra, of all people, that he was the ice-pick killer. My husband smiled calmly. "I didn't rape her," he explained. "I tried, but she hit me in the face with a hot cake from the oven."

My husband is an actor, in case you haven't already guessed. And of all the strange marriages I've witnessed in my life (competitors in politics or business, for instance, or lovey-dovey Siamese-twin-like unions), none come close to the existential challenge of life with a thespian.

The day of our wedding I knew I had not only married an actor, I had also married an actor's life -- and thereby taken a role in a "partnership" akin to that between an orbiting astronaut and Mission Control. As I waved goodbye to my new mate, hurrying off from the reception to his evening performance as Salieri in "Amadeus," I realized I was waving goodbye to the way I'd lived up till then - as a poet and teacher of writing, a life that had provided me with a modicum of control over my own fate.