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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
The Heart Is Not A Lonely Shopper
I have that dreadful flu that’s plaguing so many innocent victims with racking coughs, high fever, and at one point I was hallucinating. So I’ll be in bed for Valentines Day, in the guest room, with a box of tissues popping Tamiflu. And it promised to be the most eventful Valentines Day in years. It was to begin at dawn with the opening of the Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock house that’s been closed for forty years and is now open for 24 hours to certain cognoscenti, my friend Kady being one of those. Then home to do the normal Farmer’s Market shopping, and then out again, like a mad person, to the 11 o’ clock showing for the opening of the dirty grey movie. The minute I said “Yes”–to my friend who adored the books and had to be there for the movie–part of me said, “No.” Why did I say “Yes?” I’ll miss Carolina’s yoga class. But, I like pleasing my friends. I’ve never been to a porn flick, and someone else–I forget who–told me creative types are supposed to do one new thing a week. This was my new thing! D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller wrote the dirtiest books I’ve ever read, so I’m not exactly a spokeswoman for the prevailing zeitgeist. And since I’m trying to tell the truth here, I skipped over most of Tropic of Capricorn. The same thing happened with that book about phone sex that had the great opening line, “What are you wearing?” The book was very well written, but I didn’t want to spoil my admiration for the writer by getting to the hard core. I still love DH Lawrence, but dear DH was never about porno but love. And...In The Absence of Fred Segal
It’s getting on Valentines Day and I miss Fred Segal. While I’m not a fashionista, much of a shopper, or even a lover of bastions of the rich and stylish, it was my go-to place for Valentines and everything else too. Fred Segal was two and a half blocks from my psychotherapist’s office, five blocks from the ocean and three blocks from the movie theater. Talk about location, location, location! There’s still the Fred Segal Annex across the street, with the healthy restaurant, some three hundred dollar T-shirts, and jeans that costs even more. The real Fred Segal was across the street, and it’s been gone since the summer. The owners of the property sold the land and sold out all the small merchants who had boutiques in the cool and wacky bazaar in Santa Monica that was unlike any store I’ve ever been to. The storeowners had exactly one month’s notice. Not that one couldn’t find the same overpriced stuff at Barney’s or Neiman Marcus–one can, and more of it. But Fred Segal was a strange and wonderful place that had among other things, the best women’s pajamas, the best women’s hats and scarves and the nicest men’s shirts—and the best sale that went on for days where you could always find the aforementioned stuff at 75% off if you waited long enough and were just a little bit lucky. My husband knew I liked Fred Segal and every birthday there it would be, the familiar box from Fred Segal containing the nearly-same nightgown that was too big in the bust and skintight everywhere else. I’m rather thin and I have no idea who could fit into the nightgowns he’d bring home and smilingly present other than a...This Little Piggy Went To Santa Monica
I can’t stop thinking about this pig I met today at around noon on Montana Avenue as I was heading toward lunchtime yoga. He’s the same pig I’ve seen ambling down the center on San Vicente that begins at the ocean, and sweeps up with a wide grassy boulevard studded with flaming trees in the Spring, and runners all year long. His owner says it is a commonplace for drivers to screech to a halt, fly toward him and the pig, and he regrets he’s been the cause of several accidents. His name is Rocky, the pig that is. I was late for class and I didn’t have time to ascertain the name of the guy who was walking this cloven hoof creature (or find out if the pig had pig shoes). Rocky is very beautiful, just plain gorgeous. I’d forgotten my phone, so I don’t have a picture of Rocky either. His owner had him tied around his very thick neck, and he was walking really nicely, like some kind of fat strange looking dog. The owner doled out bits of popcorn to keep him going. I wondered what Henry would have made of him. He was such an amiable looking creature, all clean and tidy and not in some low, filthy trough waiting to be slaughtered. That’s the kind of pig one usually gets to see. That’s the kind of pig people refer to–as in, “You’re such a pig,” “You’re fat as a pig!” “What a pig you’ve made of yourself!” “He/she is happy as a pig in shit!” And, of course, the Yiddish for pig, “Vat a chazzer!” And so on. Then there are the sexual slurs associated with piggery, as in, “He...
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