Nov 10, 2016 | Blog - Mary Marcus
I received this email from my friend in England. Diana Francis an international Mediator for Peace and author of the book, People Peace and Power. If all of us were more like Diana, not only would the world be a better place, we would be surely happier, healthier and more sane. And we’d have a different leader of the free world. Read Diana’s book—essential for this crazy time! In fact, let’s all read more, and watch TV less. Our frenzy for the screen got us into this mess in the first place. At least that’s my small opinion.
I wrote more of Diana’s wisdom into a blog post about Memorial Day this year. Find it here, “Memorial Day.”
Just to say that we are thinking of you, Mary. It must feel as if the sky has fallen. It feels pretty awful here, so it’s hard to imagine how terrible it is for you.
However, more of you didn’t want this outcome, so all is not lost. I hope it will augment the energy to take things in a more humane direction.
With love from Nico and me,
Diana.
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Oct 26, 2016 | Blog - Mary Marcus
There’s a new huge billboard on Westwood Blvd that went up recently. It’s that discreet color of pink with a curly script font that always signals female: the pink of the baby girl bow, the pink of the breast cancer awareness bow, the pink of a tutu, the pink of a rose and so forth. The only other demonstrably pink item of clothing I can think of that is not strictly female is the pink of the Wasp-y golf shirt, or Brooks Brothers oxford cloth. What could be Wasp-ier than a blond man in a pink shirt with wire rims and suspenders? A blond man in a pink alligator shirt wielding a golf club?
The billboard, which interestingly enough replaced the one that had a running tally of how many people were currently dying of cigarette related illnesses is in a very central and I’m guessing expensive spot, on the southeast corner of Santa Monica and Westwood Boulevards. I pass it several times a week when I’m driving home at 6 from yoga.
The pink sign is an advertisement for a procedure that is meant to renew the vagina. Ugh, there I’ve said it, the dread word. And there’s a website too. www.divedown.com
I just did a search and came up with a vibrator, some kegel exercises but nothing about the procedure or any information about the doctor that is paying for that huge billboard. Probably the billboard will go down soon.
The billboard will go down, but I’ll still be thinking from time to time why the V word is so hard for me to say. I don’t think I’m alone.
I didn’t see the play about the V. Monologues. I’m sure it had some merit if so many people loved it and it traveled all over the world. I didn’t go see it because I didn’t want to hear the V word said out loud so many many times. I’m sure (being an inveterate potty mouth) I’ve said the F word literally tens of thousands of times. I doubt if I have said the V word out loud even two dozen times in my life. And if I never had to say it again, I wouldn’t miss it. I’d be relieved.
I’m not at all prudish. And if it weren’t the V word, I don’t think I’d have a whole lot of trouble saying out loud a word about an area of the body specializing in sexual pleasure and culminating in its purpose: birth and procreation of the species. The V word is hard to say because the word itself is ugly. A little uglier (in my view) than penis. Which isn’t as pretty as bird. Bird is a nice word. Bird as in ‘shoot someone the bird’ is nothing like its harsh, female corollary, the V word. And of course you never shoot someone the V. Is this because men were the ones who wrote down the language?
My friend L calls her V, her Virginia. Ha. Much cuter than the alternative. Friend S calls it her Woo. Even better. Myself, I have no pet names because being a writer I’m a snob about words, and think euphemisms are for everybody else except me. I wouldn’t, for instance, be caught dead saying anything like “lady parts.”
I just decided not to do a search. And went upstairs and looked in my two volume shorter OED. What a relief not to do a search. What a relief to leaf through some pages and look down a long column that isn’t lit from behind and requires my reading glasses. The dictionary is like the ancient pleasure of looking through a card catalogue in the good old Dewey Decimal days.
Here’s what I found: Vagina Dentata! A gem! It means the motif or theme of a V with teeth which occurs in myth or folklore and fantasy and is said to symbolize fear of castration. Anyone with half an ear could notice when you add the dentata to the V word, it mitigates some of its sins. I would have no trouble saying Vagina Dentata. I might even enjoy myself.
I also found another wonderful one. Vagitus: a cry or wail specifically by a newborn child.
Vagitus. Now that’s one gorgeous word. The kind of word you only find if you are meandering around the OED.
Just to be certain, I just did a search of Vagitus. Nothing on line. No cry, no wail, no newborn entering this crazy planet. There were a whole lot of different spellings of a V word, most of them sexual slurs.
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Oct 14, 2016 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Like millions of other females this past week, I too have been remembering the times when I was afraid for my life, for my body, for my ego and psyche.
For me, I was bred to it, starting with my father, and ending with the last time I felt in peril for my life: in India, at a fancy resort, when I thought I was completely safe and then momentarily fell prey to a stalker. (Gentle reader, I can run and I escaped!)
I counted twenty times, not counting the incestuous encounters for which I have no actual memory, just a dark ooze spreading over my spirit and body.
And yet, the encounter that resonates for me, is the one that sounds most like Donald Trump and happened at my Sunday School and was delivered by the Rabbi. I was walking down the long hallway of B’nai Zion Temple in Shreveport, Louisiana, with my buddy Cathy, a blond girl with cherubic features. I was tall for my age, dark haired and as always skinny: I probably looked a bit like Anne Frank.
Our rabbi appeared from behind the coat closet on the side of the chapel.
“Hello, Rabbi,” we said in unison, Cathy and I.
“Hello beautiful,” the holy man said to Cathy. And she repeated “Hello, Rabbi.”
And then he looked at me and said, “Hello, less beautiful.”
I knew it was true. I’m sure Cathy knew it was true. But still, what a thing to say to an eleven-year-old girl, one who had recently lost her father. Not that the man of the cloth knew that losing her father wasn’t exactly the worst thing that could have happened to that girl.
Cathy didn’t say anything. And I didn’t either. To this day, I wonder why the Rabbi thought that was a cool thing to say, because he did, he chuckled and repeated it again, “Hello, less beautiful.”
Powerful men, (to myself, I’m always saying powerful white men) don’t just use their power over the weaker sex. If they are so inclined, and so many of them are, they use their power to hurt and destroy little boys who fall into their clutches in locker rooms, in seminary, in schools, in cub scout troops.
And of course in their own homes. So in this week when so many of us are stepping up to the plate with our microphones let us not forget the little boys too.
Statistically, they do worse than we women, who are after all the stronger sex, maybe not physically, but certainly mentally. We can tell each other even if we can’t tell our mothers, or our mothers don’t want to hear. It is the history and the sad truth that little boys often are too ashamed to tell and turn to drugs and self-destructive behavior instead.
Women of my generation, the boomers, are used to such treatment. Yet, girls today are also used to it with the rape culture that is perpetrated in frat houses here, in religious circles all over the world, and of course, everywhere where girls are sold as chattel—which is all over the world. Yes, here even in this country.
Maybe Mr. Trump has given us something at long last: a moment to reflect on this culture of dominance.
May I say I am not just horrified by the Republican candidate for president, Mr. Trump, I am grateful.
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Oct 6, 2016 | Blog - Mary Marcus
I’ve never cared that he’s one of the vainest human beings I’ve ever met. Nor do I judge him for the fact that the inside of his garage has two highly polished sports cars (one vintage), and is so perfectly organized and clean, you’d be happy eating dinner off its floor.
I even like his preposterous outfits, one nuttier and more expensive than the next.
And I don’t care that he is around my age, perhaps even older, and his little trophy wife is my son’s age, maybe less. I like his trophy wife. I even like him. But when it comes to Henry, he’s always made me feel terrible. I don’t want my dog bad-mouthed around the ‘hood. The aforementioned man lives next door. And in the past, whenever Henry would bark in the morning, or anytime at all, he’d complain. When I was out of town, he even confronted our dog walker.
“What’s wrong with that dog!”
Lupe said, “He doesn’t like you.”
And it’s true: Henry hates him. Henry barks like he’s on speed whenever he sees him. Apparently Henry is the only dog this man has failed to charm.
“All dogs love me,” said he on numerous occasions.
He’s also said so many times, “You should train your dog! He wakes me up in the morning! My God, I’d know his bark anywhere. He’s like some horrible beast! I need my sleep!” And so on….
Then one day, his wife came home with a dog. And the dog is darling. The dog is adorable. Almost as cute as my Henry. He’s a little Pomeranian, with a custard yellow coat like mink and the sweetest little face you’ve ever seen. And while we are on the subject of Pomeranians, the dog did make me think of one of my favorite short stories, the masterpiece, Chekov’s, The Lady and The Lapdog. The aging roué meets a young woman at a fashionable watering spot, seduces her, and the dog in her lap is a Pomeranian—the eponymous lap dog. I always wondered when they had their trysts in his room both at the watering hole and back in Petersburg; she had her dog with her. What was the dog doing whilst they were doing it? If I took Henry to a tryst he would never shut up. And Chekov, who thought of everything—why didn’t he think of this?
You could see all at once, my neighbor had his first serious rival.
“I don’t know if we’ll keep him! We travel too much. It’s far too much of a responsibility. We’re taking him back!”
But then on the late night walk, there he’d be walking the little Pomeranian, with a hat and a scarf around his neck, if the temperature was below 60 degrees, the little dog would be wearing outerwear too like his master (or should I say, his slave).
“I’ve never met a dog like him. He’s an extraordinary dog.”
And he was for a while. Until he starting feeling more at home. I remember when I first brought Henry back, he was meek and quiet as a little mouse, grateful he was with these complete suckers in his forever home.
Henry’s upstairs barking as I write this. He’s probably trying to get my attention since my door is shut.
Maybe it’s something in the water on my street. Maybe it’s the vibe. This little Pomeranian is worse than Henry! Whenever anyone walks by the balcony, he barks his little head off. The cry is piercing, it goes right through you. I smile and say nothing, and walk on by.
Just a few minutes ago, on route to the Ralph’s a few blocks away to shop for dinner, the little yellow ball of fire jumps out from the foliage in front of my neighbor’s house and leash-less, heads toward me, yapping his brains out.
I don’t like to see leash-less dogs here, we are one very short block away from a hugely busy street, and we almost lost Henry one day this way. I squatted down, held out my arms and called out the dog’s name.
The owner several paces behind is madly chasing him. Until he sees me. Then he stops.
I call the dog’s name again. The little yellow thing approaches me, I reach down, and between ferocious barking he bites me.
Not a bad bite. Not much of a bite really, but a genuine nip.
I look up at my neighbor, who by this time is by our side, and is scooping his little scoundrel up in his long pumped up arms. I could tell he saw the nip.
“Just like Henry,” I smile. Then, suck on my palm a bit. Hamming it up.
He smiles. I smile more. The Pomeranian continues on with his nut job yapping, one might think he was actually a Jack Russell like Henry! I turn toward Ralph’s whistling a happy tune.
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Sep 28, 2016 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Why do men shout behind the wheel of a car? It is some throwback to the cave? Some nod to the cowboy days when we women were home keeping the fires burning and they were out on the range, whooping it up with guns and ammo?
My son calls my husband a “pioneer of road rage” and it’s true, he’s been cursing and shouting behind the wheel as long as I’ve known him. I just got back from a road trip with this trailblazer and Henry to downtown.
LA is in the midst of an insane Santa Ana. The likes of which I’ve never experienced in my twenty years on this coast. Yesterday, when I was driving back to West LA from Santa Monica, the temperature was 103. Today, as we were heading further east, it was 107. And these geniuses who say they want to run the most powerful country in the world claim there’s no evidence of climate change!
Climate change is all around us. When you live in LA, you see it every time you leave the house. The patches of parched earth where grass used to be. The giant Evergreen trees that are dead roots standing. You see it when you look at the dashboard of your car and read the temperature outside the speeding car. Henry knows climate change: when he hops up in my husband’s Beemer, he goes straight for floor, the coolest place to be in the car. And how about California! We are the first state to make it legal to break a window in a car and save a dog that is about to expire from heat. Sometimes (not today) I love California. We are also the first state to ban assembly line eggs. The chicken gets to move a little. Good for CA!
Going downtown was unavoidable. I knew what was going to happen. By the time we were fifty feet out of the driveway, I was engaged in a deep breathing exercise to release past anger and rage (when I learned about the exercise, it said nothing about present anger and rage) the breathing really did seem to help. In case a gentle reader is interested: the breathing exercise is eight sharp inhales followed by a holding of breath and a long exhale. And even though all the calm male meditation teachers will assure you that the calmer you are, the calmer everyone will be around you, this is not true if you are driving in traffic with my husband, or anybody else’s husband. I was sharply exhaling and my husband was spewing and foaming at the mouth. “Asshole!” he shouted at one car. “Cock bite!” to another. “You f’ing Mother—F-er!” to another. Why I ask, is the term Mother—F‘er the most derogatory in the language? You never hear the phrase, “Father—F’er.” And why is this? Far more men molest their daughters, than mothers molest their sons. But once again, men wrote down the language, not women.
I thought of the debate last night. How cool Hillary was, as the Trump spewed forth with his nonsense. Was she churning inside, listening to this out of control male lose it? And why is it that women are always having to keep the lid on male rage? We do it naturally. To spare ourselves, to spare our children, in the case of the very wise and elegant Mrs. Clinton, to save the world.
“Why are you so angry?” I asked between breaths. “No one is threatening your life. What’s going on that makes you so nuts?”
“These assholes make me nuts!” said he and sat on the horn for several very long seconds.
I thought back to one of the few times I have driven downtown with just females in the car. It was a few years ago. My friend Mae was here in town from New York to give a talk in conjunction with her then new book, The Lucky Ones. Our mutual friend Aimee joined us. I had printed out the directions from Map Quest. And then written my own version of them.
Take street outside of house to Olympic. Then Bundy. Take that to freeway. Get off ——-. I remember being very nervous. But it was a sweet little ride downtown. Traffic was bad but not horrendous. We got to our destination with enough time to go shopping! Afterwards we had dinner with some friends of Mae and we got home without getting lost or anyone screaming. We all remarked about it at the time. How calm it was going downtown with a woman behind the wheel. Even with me, one of the ten worst drivers you’ll ever meet.
My husband was still foaming at the mouth when we got downtown. And parked the car.
Our destination was one of those giant office towers that take up a whole city block. Henry and I walked him there, and we waited downstairs in the lobby on the cool marble floor. Henry being the genius that he is, sprawled out on the white marble, happy to have it against his fur—not the sidewalk. I wished ardently, I could do the same.
Driving home, we got lost a few times, and my husband had a couple more temper tantrums. But there was no traffic–—a miraculous reprieve. It will be a cold day in LA, before I do that again.
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Sep 20, 2016 | Blog - Mary Marcus
I was coming home from my dear friend Mae’s wedding in DC. Such a cosmopolitan affair, her husband wore a kilt, she wore a celadon colored silk gown that made her look like a member of the Chinese royal court during the Ming Dynasty. She looked regal and gorgeous and perhaps unlike a female member of the royal court back then: radiantly happy.
I was trying to get back home to the little house in the woods where I’ve been staying all summer, and which I’ll be leaving, not without regret, day after tomorrow. I landed in the little Islip Airport, and caught a quick cab to the bus stop somewhere on the Long Island Expressway. The bus, a.k.a. the Hampton Jitney, stood me up. I wasn’t surprised—everything had gone so seamlessly well getting to DC and so far, getting back. Nut jobs were blowing up street corners in Chelsea, and the airport security was pretty tight and made me hand over my conditioner and tweezers. Still the plane left on time. And, forty minutes out of Baltimore we were at MacArthur, one of those small town airports that seem so charming to me, since I’m always going between the two behemoths—LAX and JFK.
What do you do for fun on the expressway with two hours to kill and one convenience store and gas station, waiting for the bus? I hadn’t seen TV all summer since there isn’t one here, so I watched The Donald in a baseball cap and his chubby cheeked face telling the cameras what the Saturday night explosion means to us as a country. I watched Hillary do the same. She was infinitely more sane. And while I’m on the subject of Hillary, why do so many women dislike this very accomplished fellow female so much? Women, what’s wrong with us? Her marriage to Bill is not my business, or your business or anybody else’s business. What our business should be is to elect a sane president—enough said.
I bought some nuts at the convenience store, and I looked for something like a big chief tablet and a bic pen. I finally got the guy behind the counter to give me some printer paper, and luckily I did have a pen in my purse. I thought about what this said about us as a country, the convenience store had five aisles full of junk food items: chips, cookies, soda, red bulls, candy, and a full aisle labeled “Children’s Candy.” There were five feet of painkillers, antacids, condoms; even some discreet sex toys, but not a one big chief tablet or pad of paper, or a paltry pen. Yes, I was lost in Long Island, but I was also lost in America.
I thought of Rabbit Angstrom, Updike’s ex-football player and ultimately rich owner of his Toyota dealership; the lyrical descriptions of the chips, the cookies, the candies that he wrote. Updike was talking about an America who has swelled and swelled so much more since he wrote Rabbit at Rest, the last of the books when Angstrom blows up like the frog in the fable, dead of lechery, gluttony and sloth.
I also thought of Nabokov, riding across the country chasing butterflies with Mrs. Nabokov, staying at the muttering retreats of one night cheap hotels, his tongue was traveling across the palette and Lolita was being born right here in America.
I thought too of Albert Brooks and Julie Haggerty getting Lost In America, and the police stopping Brooks and asking him to “step outside the home!” And even though I didn’t want to, I thought about my own childhood in Shreveport, and how lonely and out of it I always felt. But back then, there were tablets of paper. And those had saved me.
By now I was one and a half hours into the experience. Luckily I had a little charge left on my phone. I called the Hampton Jitney a couple of more times.
Pretty soon the bus pulled up, I sat down, drank one of the tiny waters they give out, fell sound asleep and dreamed my parents were still alive. There he was, Big Daddy and even in the dream I knew he couldn’t get me anymore. As usual, he was swigging off his coke bottle, he was smoking a cigarette and there were the dingy patches under his eyes. Mama was young and she was wearing a lace cocktail dress and smoking too. They seemed far, far away, even in my dream.
When I woke up with a start, there were the great big heavy shade trees in front of the Hunting Inn on Main Street, and I wasn’t lost anymore.
Gentle readers: I rejoiced!
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