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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
Once Upon A (Near) Date Rape
Sometimes one doesn’t want to freeload on friends. Sometimes, especially if one is married, one wants to be alone. When that happens, and I’m in NY for a night or two, I try and stay at the Excelsior if I can get a deal. I’m at the Excelsior now, typing this in the lobby and checking my email. I lived here, when I was first in New York. It was cheap enough to live by the month. And I did that, off and on, until I could get a place of my own. I was young, green and I didn’t really get it that older successful men asked young girls out to dinner to talk about business chiefly to see if they could get laid. I’d known him through my first real job. I was writing publicity at that time and he liked my work enough to invite me to dinner with him and his girlfriend when we were all working on a project in another city. He was the American president of a very old English firm whose name practically anyone would recognize. I called him when I moved to New York, to touch base and ask for freelance work. He replied by asking me to dinner. I assumed the girlfriend would be there. And the wife would be home in the suburbs. I could tell the woman he traveled with was his girlfriend. And in the press release I had written, I had the info that he had a wife and three children and they lived in the ‘burbs outside of NY. I guess, on a subconscious level l also knew I wasn’t his type. So I felt safe....I Am The Grass And I Am Dead
Pile the bodies high in the Palisades and Malibu, Shovel them under, and let me work, I am the grass And I am dead— (apologies to Carl Sandburg) Even though it rained last night, a really pounding rain, and this morning it’s drizzling, it’s not enough and won’t last long enough to do any good. For months now, whenever I walk the streets of my neighborhood, I think of the grass poem by Carl Sandburg. I am the grass I cover all. My version: I am the grass and I am dead. We need snow in the mountains, and 40 days of rain down here. The kind of rain that causes mud slides and floods. We are drying up here in Southern California. Literally dying for rain. Still, I have to say, for the present moment, it is wonderful to go outside without the blasting sun beating down. My dog Henry, who while born in Arkansas, on Nodie Williams’ Frayed Knot Farm, is freaked out by the rain. He would barely go out for his early morning stroll in the drizzle, and because he wouldn’t do his biz, a measure of how freaked out he is, an hour later, I’ve just come in from taking him out once again. He sniffs around like something strange is going on. I don’t think he remembers too much about the rain, though he’s been in rain in New York. He doesn’t think it’s natural. Or maybe he thinks he’s getting a bath. Henry is three years old and most of the time he’s in LA. He doesn’t have much first hand experience of rain. A majority of my thrifty neighbors in Little Osaka have already let their little patches...The Thrill Will Never Be Gone
I can’t imagine the great B.B. King ever resting in peace. I imagine him up in that great Blues Club in the Sky. He’s leaning into the microphone. It’s smoky in the club, the lights are blue and it smells like booze and sweat and the sweet perfume that some of the ladies are wearing. Lucille is wailing and Bobby Blue Bland, who went before him, is beside B.B. and they are singing a duet of “The Thrill Is Gone” (one of the great pieces of music ever written in my book). Some years ago, the King of Sweden recognized Mr. King for his contribution to music. I love the idea of the son of a sharecropper, born in Mississippi, making it all the way up to the King of Sweden, on account of his genius. The Thrill is certainly gone from the world now that the great, the incomparable, B.B. has left the planet. May his soul soar as he made our spirits soar!...
The New Me
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