Joe's first marriage
Joe's first marriage
On 1961 August 23 Joe married Claire Gardner in Queens. Joe had turned 23 4 days before; Ms Gardner had turned 20 13 days before. Because the marriage license had been issued on August 9 their ages are listed as 22 and 19. Ms Gardner was a student who had been born in New York City.
In ‘Cocktails before dinner’ (1986), beginning about 8:10, Joe says:
‘In the back of my bedroom closet, in a shoebox, I have a 22 caliber pistol. I bought it as a young married college student in Iowa during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. My wife urged me to. She was afraid that in the aftermath of a nuclear war, there would be a reign of terror — the country overrun by armies of bloodthirsty criminals, escaped convicts, depraved motorcycle hoodlums, and masses of vengeful urban poor people who'd pillage, rape, torture, murder and enslave others. The nuclear war would usher in a dark age more terrifying than any period in history. So to satisfy her, and also because I shared to some extent her fears, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought the pistol. Then, on a cold fall afternoon, I drove out to the country and stood on a hillside shooting at a row of soda cans.’
In ‘No show’ (1986) Joe tells the counselor he calls that he hasn't been married for about 15 years. (About 15:30 into the hour-long version.)
From ‘The Believer’'s interview with Joe from 2013 , conducted by Jonathan Goldstein:
JF: I haven't lived with someone since I was first married, which was when I was twenty years old. We were married for almost three years. Turned into a very horrendous alimony situation. Because I didn't want her to be nervous about finding another husband or being on her own and having no money, I made the blunder of signing an alimony contract that entitled her to alimony until she was remarried.
BLVR: How long was that until she remarried?
JF: Well, at the time that we split, our tacit understanding was that once she found her footing and could make her own living, or married again, this arrangement would stop. As it turned out, this went on, I think, for seventeen years.
BLVR: Seventeen years!
JF: It became a very unhappy, contentious relationship, because I remember—not frequently, but periodically—calling her and saying, you know, “This is really unfair. This is a betrayal of our understanding as far as I'm concerned.” So we had a lot of arguments. This is in the way of explaining why I took so long to get married again.
New York publishes marriage certificates more than 50 years old, so here it is: Page 1 and Page 2
They never publish divorce information.
I haven't found further information about Ms Gardner. Searches on that name turn up different people. She may have married again, taken a different last name.
