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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
Mind Work/Body Work
It was my birthday last week and my good friend L gave me a coupon for reflexology—so thoughtful as I once told her my idea of heaven is having someone work on my feet. “And you can walk there,” she told me, something she also knows I love, to be able to walk where you are going in LA. The New Age healing center where my appointment was scheduled is a place I’ve often passed. It’s a brutal looking two-story post war affair less than half a block from the freeway. My reflexologist was late. I sat in the waiting room reading the magazine published each month by the center. I was deep into an article on “recognizing verbal abuse” when a tall man appeared in the doorway. I was bemused because I had all ten signs of having just been verbally abused by my husband that very morning—and I thought we had enjoyed a fairly mellow time. Obviously the writer of the article has a low opinion of the quotidian dialogue between long married members of the Hebrew race. The tall man was wearing an Indian tan color gauzy shirt and a crystal around his neck. He bore more than a striking resemblance to two very different looking people: the unsettling Bill Cosby; and a good friend of ours, the reassuring John Axness, a very blond, Nordic type. Right away, the Cosby part worried me. While the Axness part reassured me. Here I was in an empty building on a Saturday afternoon with a complete stranger who looked like Bill Cosby. Yet, John Axness is the one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. “How...Famous Desk
In a recent edition of the New York Review of Books, the following ad appeared in Marketplace: FOR SALE: Saul Bellow’s Desk $10,000 Victorian mahogany roll top, leather writing surface, pigeonholes. Part of the furniture of his house, appears in book jacket photo. Details. An email address with the last name of Bellow followed the ad. I answered it. Why? I was curious. And the seller, whom I’m assuming is his son Daniel, wrote right back. At first I pretended to be interested. And in a way, if I had ten grand to blow in such a way, I would be. I’ve always wanted a roll top desk. Also, could talent rub off? I have read somewhere in a feng shui book that one should be careful when buying second hand furniture. The vibrational waves of the previous owner are contained in the intimate belongings. Obviously, we don’t if we can help it, ever wear other people’s underpants. But a chair, think of how much intimate contact a chair has had with its owner. Unwashed encounters, I might add… A desk too, has been facing the heart of the person who sits behind it. If I had to pick five major male writers of the last century, Bellow wouldn’t be on my list. Not even if the list were major Jewish male writers of the last century. But I did like him, and I did read Henderson the Rain King, Humboldt’s Gift and a few others and thought they were great. (He also translated I.B. Singer who is on the top of most of my little lists.) Would I want to sit at Saul Bellow’s desk? Maybe, if it could rub off some of its confidence,...Gender Inequality and the Gentlemen’s Club
The sight of several posters in my neighborhood never fail to infuriate me: Total XXX announces one billboard on the right when I’m driving to the Whole Foods on National Blvd. It pictures a really hard-bodied woman with fake everything and a leering smile. Best Gentlemen’s Club in LA, boasts another on the walk to the movie theatre on Pico (a strange fact of life in LA is that the mile and a half walk to the movie theatre takes less time than driving there and winding one’s way down in a queue of cars in the fume-ridden parking structure.) You hail a cab in New York to get someplace fast. In LA, if it’s close you are far more likely to arrive on time if you walk the ugly mean streets that were never designed for the human foot. Or the human anything. The gentlemen’s club called the “Silver Reign” is closest, across the street from Staples, in back of a little mini mall that features a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, a burger joint that’s been there forever, and is next to “The Wag’s Club” a doggy day care center, that won’t let you come in and look around. I tried once. You have to have an appointment. (Henry isn’t allowed there anyway, because we have yet to do the dirty deed on him.) I think they should switch names. “Silver Reign” is a nice name for a plush and expensive place to house man’s best friend for the day. “The Wag’s Club” is a far more appropriate name for a place to observe man’s worst enemy having a sexual encounter with a pole. Whatever they are named, gentlemen’s clubs (also known as fraternities, stag...
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