I didn’t know it on our wedding day, but as a writer I was marrying a perpetual source of story ideas, good ones. My husband Jon had a way of dropping quotable one-liners on me — funny, pithy and, every once in a while, romantic.
Jon was the personal essayist’s dream spouse. He didn’t care if I wrote about him. He didn’t care if I made fun of him. He was a journalist from a family of journalists. “Whatever it takes to sell newspapers,” he’d say when I told him I was quoting him — again. That is, if I told him. Often, I didn’t bother to tell him what I was up to; time was short, and I knew he wouldn’t mind.
A Nose for Marital News
And now, widowed, I’m reaping the rewards of my decades-long nose for marital news.
Yes. I have photos of Jon from the fifty years of our life together, and that’s great. But I also have stories. As a journalist, I was in the habit of making sure I quoted my husband accurately. As a result, I have scores of the marvelously wry statements that Jon actually made about life in general — and me in particular.
Take for example, our encounter back in 2014 with a sidewalk Superman. (Whose story, I found out much later, came to a desolate ending.)
That Superman was gorgeous, I wanted to tell the world. But, of the two, Jon was the keeper. He was the Superman at my house. This is what I wrote in 2014 and have rewritten a couple of times since:
Stalking Superman in Los Angeles
There he was. In the flesh. Tall and slender and muscled and oh-so-handsome. Sigh.
It was Superman. The Man of Steel of my girlhood fantasies. My dream man.
He was standing on the curb of Hollywood Boulevard, waiting for the light to change.
Right next to him, also waiting for the light to change, was Jon, my actual man. The mere mortal that I had married 37 years earlier.
The light changed. Superman, my dream man, stepped into the street.
I followed.
Jon, my actual man, at my side, muttered into my ear, “If he’s really Superman why was he waiting for the light? Why didn’t he just fly?”
But I was too busy stalking Superman to listen. I was trying to keep up with him. Superman has long legs.
I took pictures. Click. Click. Got some good shots of the red cape flowing in the Southern California breeze.
Just then Superman stopped in the crosswalk to chat with friends. I charged ahead, past him, to the curb.
On the curb, I turned around and got a good shot of him coming toward me.
Superman saw me taking pictures, so Jon and I offered him two bucks, which is what you do when you take pictures of people parading the Hollywood Walk of Fame looking like Darth Vader or Bat Woman or Superman.
The Man of Steel took the two bucks – yes, that’s all we gave him, two bucks – and posed manfully for a photo with me.
What are those muscles made of?” Jon wanted to know.
“Kryptonite,” said Superman.
And with that the two men, my dream man and my actual man, headed off down Hollywood Boulevard together.
I took pictures of them from the back, chatting.
“He’s a nice guy,” Jon told me later.
Back home in Northern California – five days after our encounter with the Man of Steel — Jon called me into the den to see something on TV.
There was my Superman on the screen, red cape, red boots and manly muscles, watching as a bad guy was smashing the windows of an LAPD cop car.
Did he intervene?
“It’s not my job to jump in the middle,” my dream man told the CBS-TV reporter on the scene.
A Superman who can’t fly? Who has fake kryptonite muscles? Who hasn’t the guts to interrupt a crime in progress?
I thought, I’m sticking with my actual man.
Years later, curious about the true identity of my Hollywood Boulevard Superman man, I did an online search.
He was Christopher Dennis, an homeless actor who had died in 2019.
The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office ruled that Dennis’s death was accidental.
He was found entrapped in a charity donation bin. Apparently, he had suffocated while searching for clothing.
More Los Angeles stories at “Los Angeles. — The Good, the Bad and the Truly Ugly.” And, “Wedding Dress Shopping — When Your Daughter Lets You Tag Along.”
Super, enjoyable story, Barbara.
Thanks, Bill. That means a lot coming from you, who appreciates a funny line.
Barbara, I, too, and the widows I know all feel we were married to Supermen. I think we were. Thank you for identifying this archetype that floats in my sadness. Kathleen
Aha! I’m not the only woman with girlhood dreams of Superman! Good to know.
i remember this column, and remember it well, but i enjoyed it as much, if not more, this time around.
It’s a column that I’m now really glad that I wrote. A little love letter to Jon when he was still here to get the message.
I knew Jon to be insightful- witty- self effacing and curious- and wicked smart.
But over the last 2 years I have a full picture of what a wonderful relationship he had with you Barbara
Yes! In the past two years I’ve seen the big picture and appreciated how lucky I was to have Jon in my life.