Jan 26, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
I have quite a few single friends both male and female. Without exception every female talks about the concept of “the one” after every promising date. As in “maybe he’s the one.” Or, “I’m not going to see him anymore. He’s not the one.” Though none of the males speak in this way. I believe the concept of “the one” is related to the Knight in Shining Armor, the big Daddy who is going to save the day with his love. Maybe because I made it a habit from early on to listen to the conversations of my brother and his friends, I am not so idealistic. And have never dreamed about the perfect guy, the one who would send me roses, read serious books, remember all significant events in our relationship, though I have to say, I have always yearned to have a relationship with a man who wears a beautiful cashmere topcoat.
Obviously this phantom doesn’t live in Los Angeles, because it’s not cold enough here to justify owning a topcoat. Like getting to walk to a museum, it just isn’t going to happen to me here.
I do have one long-term fantasy. And that’s of the perfect housekeeper. She’s a very clean Buddhist woman who has taken a vow of silence. Once upon a time she was quite rich and saw the inherent inequity of her life and joined this Ashram where her dharma is to clean and be silent. (This is a crucial part of the fantasy because she can leave her life as a maid at any time and go back to her trust fund and her former wasteful existence).
She comes on Saturday. When she turns her key in the lock, Henry jumps off the couch and wags his tail and doesn’t bark and have a shit fit. He’s so glad to see her he goes downstairs to greet her warmly and quietly in person. He rubs up against her leg and licks her clean feet in their shiny Birkenstocks. She has long thin unpolished toes and the nails are always perfectly clipped. Before she has come to the house, she has stopped by the Farmer’s Market on Arizona in Santa Monica, early, when the chefs get there, and she’s picked out the best stuff they’ve got. She knows which stands have the good apples, the sweetest berries, the most outstanding carrots, and the spiciest radishes. And so on. And with her three -tiered cart, she carefully places these perishables in so they don’t get damaged.
She drives some sort of impeccable little van, or someone from the ashram where she lives, waits for her and they slide my fruit and vegetables in.
When she arrives at the house, we greet each other, my perfect housekeeper and I with a formal nod of the head and a long slow Namaste. She keeps her clean shining head bowed for a long time. We smile at each other then. I am her favorite client and she looks forward to cleaning my house.
Now that she’s in residence for the morning, Henry is so pleased he is sort of moaning in terrier pleasure (only if you have a terrier can you recognize this slight opening of the jaw, the pleasurable thing that emits from the back of the throat.)
I nod my head and head out the door to yoga, to the class I never get to go to because in reality I’m always at the Farmer’s Market early on Saturday morning when the chefs get there so I can get the good stuff.
The class is great. Afterwards, I stroll out with my bag, and I stop for a cappuccino with one of my yoga friends, and then I go to the beauty supply place and do things like buy lipstick and hair conditioner at my leisure.
When I get home, the house is clean and sparkling and smells of non-toxic cleaners and white vinegar. My husband has returned from the gym (another fantasy, my husband refuses to exercise). He says, “She never moves my stuff. I love the way she makes the bed with those tight hospital corners.” And so on. I smile at him serenely.
The lettuces are washed, the carrots and berries are too and everything is put away in tidy little bundles. My paragon of a housekeeper has even had time to walk Henry, who is all tuckered out on the couch from having been run by a tireless Buddhist with a serious dharma.
She’s not quite done, this perfectionist, and Henry is passed out in the room I work in. My husband and I decide to go out to lunch, and we have sushi down the street before the crowds hit. We have hand-rolled salmon skin, yellowtail, spicy tuna and many other wonderful dishes and I order the salad with sprouts and the special dressing they make.
She’s gone by the time we get home, my marvelous housekeeper, leaving a lingering smell of lemons. She’s left me a note, in her perfect script:
Dream on! I don’t exist! I am a figment of your ridiculous imagination, and can’t you think of better things to do with your time than creating a wish-fulfilling slave to answer all your needs. Grow up!
And of course, she would be right.
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Jan 21, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
I have an artist friend who says when she feels blue she eats a lot of orange food because orange cancels out blue. And I think she’s right, because I’ve been inexplicably sad for days, nothing can cheer me up. Until I walked into the Japanese market on the corner and saw that the sumos are in.
Sumos, like the name implies, are big and fat. In fact they are cross between a navel orange and a mandarin. They are very expensive, close to three dollars a pop, so I am always saying a little prayer and not buying more than two at a time. The rule is if you buy a whole flat of them, they are going to be bitter and hard and juiceless. If you buy only two they will be perfect and you will gobble them up one after the other.
What is it that makes a sumo so unlike any other piece of citrus? Weight, is one. A good sumo weighs close to half a pound. It’s dense and heavy, and as sweet as the sweetest orange you’ve ever tasted, but with the added interest and zest of a tangerine. I wouldn’t think of adulterating a sumo in a fruit salad, though if I were a chef at a fancy place I might just make a fresh sumo tart with kiwi and raspberry. Though the custard and the tart are totally unnecessary and sort of a sin when a sumo is involved. Like a great piece of art, a good one stands alone.
I only have one friend who feels as I do about sumos which is that they cancel out the sense of loss and sadness that happens after the last of the fuyu persimmons have left the stands not to return until just before Thanksgiving. Post fuyu tristesse…. Sumos have a much shorter lifespan, just about a month. And probably for that reason they are to me the sweetest and most fleeting of all fruit. Fuyus are so abundant in California from Thanksgiving until about the middle of January, people are tossing them in green salads and throwing them in pasta. They even get cheap. You’d never treat a sumo that lightly. And they are never two for five bucks or anything like that. If a fuyu persimmon is a sweet juicy princess, then a sumo tangerine is a monarch who sits on his throne with a jeweled crown and scepter. The sumo rules.
I just ate my first one and I’d say it was an 8.5 out of a possible 10 which is pretty damn good for the first batch of the season. I wish I had eaten it more slowly and savored it more. I’m going to try to save the other one for later.
I hide them from my husband because he will casually peel one, gobble it down, then say,”it’s okay, I don’t think they are that good.” A friend of his who is a very good cook, thought they were “okay” too, and so did his wife, and last year, I parted with two, from a very good batch, one for each of them and I’ll never forget their “okay” and will never try and please those two again. That’s the thing with sumos that I don’t feel about any other piece of fruit, greedy, possessive, sort of a theme and variation of “if you don’t get a sumo, then you don’t get me.”
That ‘s the thing. I always want to feed people and please people, and in the end it’s a big waste of time. And emotion.
I’m sure I’ll go back to the old eager beaver who wants everybody’s approval, but maybe not until sumo season is over.
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Jan 19, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Maybe because I grew up in a small town in Louisiana at the end of the Jim Crow era, I especially love King day. I love that schools are out, I love that the mail isn’t delivered. I love that the great man is honored as he so richly deserved.
I haven’t yet heard the “I have a dream” speech. Someone usually plays it on the radio and I catch it in the middle when I start up the car and invariably if it’s a short ride, just stay there listening to his voice and his words. I cry every time I hear it and I’m covered in goose flesh. I think the “I have a dream” speech is right up there with Beethoven’s Ninth, Mount Rushmore and the great Bronze of Balzac. It’s a perfect piece of art, sui generis, majestic and awe inspiring.
Reverend King may your name live on through the ages and your great speech thrill future generations as it still thrills me every time I hear it.
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Jan 15, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
There it was, on the little message area of Facebook, my first request for on line sex.
“Online only,” the perp has keyed. The perp has a made up name, and, I’m fairly certain, a fraudulent picture. The name is generic as all hell, and the image he posts of himself is beefcake on a motorcycle. Here’s part of what he wrote:
“Online only, safe fun and I am going to make you cum.”
Ha, ha, very clever. The English teacher in me wants to scold him: “incorrect usage of cum which refers to excretions not a physiological response.” But of course, I’m not going to write him back. In the note before that, one I didn’t answer either, he told me I was pretty, he told me I was hot. And I wonder how many of these he puts out there a day. A president of a big advertising agency I used to work for, always made a play for the new girls on their very first day at work. (Yes, if that doesn’t date me, I don’t know what does!) One was called in to the big guy’s office at the end of the day, one was offered a drink, and was told in rather plain unromantic language, what would happen if one said yes, which was getting to work on the best accounts, a front office, higher Christmas bonuses, the list went on…and I had thought the guy was sort of sexy when I got hired. Before, the astonishing, though not surprising power play. I was living with my husband in those days, who was my boyfriend, and I told him about it when I got home from work.
“What did you say?” he wanted to know.
“I said I was going home to make dinner for my boyfriend.”
The women who are out there today have no idea what they don’t have to go through. It’s shocking really. Still, to this day, I’m sure the wider you cast your net, the more fish you’ll catch. Which is what I’m guessing Mr. “safe fun” is doing. Hitting on every new “friend” who (dare I say) comes his way.
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Jan 12, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
A snow-white Pit Bull with a metal chain leash that gleams in the hot southern California sun is just across the street. I watch as the dog sits down on the curb the way well behaved dogs are supposed to. His master is all in white too. He’s a pumped up youngish guy with really nice arms. Something is gleaming around his neck.
Henry and I are standing outside the house. We’d been out just a half an hour before this, but moments ago, I found him at the front door, as if to say, “I can’t hold it in another second!” Sometimes he doesn’t, so I am, to say the least, rather well trained to meet his demands. Now that we’re out again, he doesn’t want to walk or relieve himself. He just wants to sit and watch the people go by. He wants to bark at the skateboarders. He wants to ingratiate himself with the random someone or other who pleases him. And there’s absolutely no way of predicting who that will be, though usually the someone will be pretty and young. Henry is a real chick magnet. And if he’s at the beach he goes right for the cleavage.
I see the guy in white is moving the arm that’s holding the leash and the pit promptly getting to his feet. By now Henry is barking his little head off. Jumping up and down and biting the leash. And I’m embarrassed, especially in front of this well-trained Pit Bull.
They are heading toward us now, the guy in white and the snow-white pit. Henry is pulling and yowling. And jumping so high he’s practically at my chin.
“I’m sorry,” I say abjectly to the guy in white. “It’s a good thing he’s little –I’d never be able to control him if he weren’t.”
“Not to worry,” says the guy. “My dog is perfectly trained. No matter what your dog does, he’ll never attack him.”
The guy in white with his gleaming metal leash and his pure white dog smiles pityingly at me.
“Sit!” he tells the pit. The pit sits. “Lay down!” he tells the pit and the pit complies. “Roll over!” and the pit rolls over. His legs are in the air and Henry thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen, he isn’t yowling anymore; he’s grinning from ear to ear. You can’t imagine how big his grin is.
“Would you look at the schmuck?” he seems to be saying.
The pit, I notice, now is sporting the most elaborate metal collar I’ve ever seen. In fact the closest thing I can think of to compare it to is behind glass in one of the Medieval rooms at the Met, where they house armor, chastity belts, and other form of torture used on men, women, and animals. It has prongs and it’s made of metal; probably every time the pit moves it does something shocking to his beautiful thick neck.
The thing that’s gleaming around the master’s neck is a big silver crucifix. I think of something my father-in-law said once: that he thought crosses were alarming like wearing a little replica of an electric chair around the neck. I’ve just now googled the Star of David; it’s much more mellow, and certainly a Buddha is even more so, though truthfully, I’ve met quite a few hostile Buddhists. Never mind hostile Jews.
I wasn’t saying anything like that to the guy, however.
He’s telling me, “You have to run them until they are dead tired. I mean dead tired.”
“I do that,” I say. “We run every day.”
“Then you have to put them through twenty-minute intervals of rigorous training. At least five times a day. And you must withhold all affection unless they totally obey you. And only feed them once a day.”
“Yeah, well.”
“He’ll never obey you.”
“No, I guess he won’t.”
Henry calms down a little after they move on, the well-behaved dog and his master. And we go inside again.
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Jan 8, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
It is December 30 and I am in a terrible mood. Lots of noise outside at home. Hard to work. Traffic so bad, I can’t just escape and go to yoga. Henry looking at me reproachfully if I don’t take him with me every time I leave the house. Gridlock reigns on the street I take to the Whole Foods where I’ll be ripped off as I am several times a week and maybe more today because I’m buying all the ingredients for the stuff I’m bringing to various parties. The Whole Foods parking lot is so crammed full of upscale automobiles they’ve hired two people to direct traffic. Things wouldn’t be so bad if I could just walk to the damn Whole Foods market where I spend all our money.
Shoulders hunched over the wheel, a couple of hundred dollars poorer, I’m driving home when I see him: he’s got to be homeless because only a homeless person would eat a plate a food off the top of the newspaper box. I also wonder how long newspaper boxes will be on the sidewalks. When will they go the way of the phone box?
This is on the corner of Olympic and Barrington where he’s finishing his lunch. There’s a bone of some kind and he’s lifting the last piece of bread to his lips. He’s smiling. He’s so happy. He’s grateful for the plate of food. And I get it suddenly, I get it long and hard and it’s now January 2 and I still get it.
Mary Marcus, quit complaining about stuff that doesn’t matter. Count your blessings. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Resign your long standing role as one of the kvetch sisters.
Remember his smile and be grateful!
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I have quite a few single friends both male and female. Without exception every female talks about the concept of “the one” after every promising date. As in “maybe he’s the one.” Or, “I’m not going to see him anymore. He’s not the one.” Though none of the males speak in this way. I believe the concept of “the one” is related to the Knight in Shining Armor, the big Daddy who is going to save the day with his love. Maybe because I made it a habit from early on to listen to the conversations of my brother and his friends, I am not so idealistic. And have never dreamed about the perfect guy, the one who would send me roses, read serious books, remember all significant events in our relationship, though I have to say, I have always yearned to have a relationship with a man who wears a beautiful cashmere topcoat.
