Getting out

Whatever else I thought I would become, I never imagined I would be twice divorced before the age of 40. As a 16-year-old, through shoplifted volumes of Shelley and Keats, I surpassed the peer-group average comfortably when it came to interest in gushing romance. Four years later, I eloped with my then girlfriend and we were married in a registry office above a music store. My abiding memories are of the registrar's ankle boots of bright orange suede, the unspeakable luxury of spending $10 on a taxi home, and of the feeling, as we pronounced our vows, that the marriage was...