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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
On Gender Inequality, Rape, Internet Porn, and Kindness
Henry and I were settled in for the evening. My husband who had been working late and had just come in, was mumbling about a man who had been fired off the show he’s working on for downloading child porn. I moaned. Henry growled sympathetically. My husband left the bedroom, still muttering. I continued on with the book I’ve been reading On Kindness by the brilliant British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and the equally brilliant social theorist Barbara Taylor. I could hear the familiar sounds of pipes filling with water, a toilet flushing, the motorized hum of the electronic toothbrush: The sounds effects of domestic life in safe middle class America. I thought about a man going into a room turning on the computer, pressing a few buttons and filling his eyes with terrible images, images I didn’t want to be thinking about at 11 at night, or any other time come to that. The poor, poor children….. It was then my eyes alighted on the following sentence. I read it over and over and finally tired though I was, got up out of bed, and with Henry loyally at my heels, bumped into my husband in the hallway. “Where are you going? You’re not mad at me?” “No! I’m getting a pen.” I had to underline: “Like all emotions, kindness had always raised tricky questions about which feelings were suitable for which sex. From antiquity on, pro-kindness thinkers had worried that too much sympathy might undermine manly gravitas.” Now ain’t that the truth, sisters! Now we know that our brethren, who have always worried about their masculinity, have further cause...
East, West, Armpits and Gender Inequality
One of the great things about the East Coast versus West Coast is the sight of armpit stubble on women, who in the East, don’t keep their arms rigidly down if there’s anything sprouting there. I’ll be in class, arms are in the air, and there it will be, a tuft here, a stray hair there, a five o clock shadow somewhere else. And every time I see such evidence, I am filled with glee. As I keep reminding readers, ad nauseum, I am from the South originally, where such underarm goings-on are frowned upon and now live a lot of the time in Los Angeles, the world’s preeminent leader in the bleach-blond-no-body-hair look. I have dark hair and light skin so for me there’s never been anywhere to run and hide. I have two very close friends who are cringing as they read this. Because I know every morning in the shower, come rain or shine, they are in there with their Venus razors sliding the folic-i away. Yes, most women (and two of my very favorites wouldn’t be caught dead without a smooth armpit.) This is, of course, a very big gender inequality issue. Though I have to say, I have a female relative, who has never done anything about armpit hygiene and when she lifts her arms (as she is want to do) it is not a pretty sight. It is a scary sight, one reminiscent of that scene in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the one that horrified me throughout my young life when the bodice of the night nurse is ripped open and there it...
Strangers On The Hampton Jitney
I saw her again today, in town, a woman who once told me her life story when we were sitting next to one another on the Jitney from Manhattan to East Hampton some years ago. It was in my pre-Henry days, when I was traveling without dog. She told her life story on a Friday, and when I saw her the next day on Main Street in town, waved and said hi, she looked at me blankly like she’d never seen me before and turned away. And in fact, she hadn’t during our three-hour drive asked me a single question about myself. I was a perfect stranger, or shall I say, a perfect looking glass to her. I’m guessing she’s close to sixty. She’s thin, physically fit, sharp featured, and she’s got this great thick thatch of badly dyed hair–and her haircut is worse than her dye job. Since I heard her life story, and know where she lives in town, in one of the huge houses near the Maidstone Club–she lives in one house and her husband lives next to her in another. With all that bread, how come the terrible haircut and the bad dye job? I confess, I’m one of those people who seems to illicit life stories from total strangers. I don’t think it’s my face, I think it’s something fundamental like in my pheromones. Something I’m giving off, seems to tell people to give me their life stories, every detail. It’s been happening to me my entire life. In the semi gloom of a movie theatre a woman once told me her life story and kept on going until well into when the feature started. It’s why I ended up writing, probably....
The New Me
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