Rebecca Marx

Neither Here Nor There

When highway law enforcement gets existential 

West of Salt Lake City, Utah, seventeen hundred miles into my drive from Michigan to San Francisco, I was pulled over by a cop. I’d first encountered him a few minutes earlier; his…

Death and the Suburbs

When visiting home becomes a meditation on mortality

My mother’s friend died last night. Mrs. C. had a brain tumor, and her descent was brutally rapid. She got her diagnosis in the spring, right around the same time my parents’…

For Paul, With Lox and Squalor

He sold me salmon, and became my friend

I’m leaving New York this week. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I do know that there is no Russ & Daughters where I’m going, and there is no Paul.

No Country for Old Milk

When cleaning out your kitchen gets personal

I’ve almost made it through the teff flour. That went into a recipe for peanut-butter cookies that I found printed on the side of its bag. The oat, brown-rice, quinoa, and buckwheat…

Autoneurotic

When you’re an awkward teenage girl, beware strange men in passing cars

On a weekend afternoon not long ago, I was walking home down a narrow side street that was backed up with cars waiting for the light to change. Without giving…

Love, Lust, and Liberty, by the Hour

It’s an innocuous redbrick building, wedged snugly into the triangle formed by West Fourteenth Street, Tenth Avenue, and the West Side Highway. It could be some kind of government office, a place where you’d go to get your driver’s license renewed or apply for the…

Fate Is Just Another Four-Letter Word

Last Monday morning, I was riding the subway to a doctor’s appointment, lost in a magazine article about a musician who got kicked out of Nirvana and Soundgarden and became a war hero. It was an absorbing story, so when the screaming and yelling started, it took…

Sweat and the City

This past weekend, I watched a number of my neighbors pack things — coolers, oars, inflatable toys, children — into their family-sized vehicles and drive off towards the promise of an extended Fourth of July vacation. If the traffic constipating the streets of Lower Manhattan was any…

Two Queasy Pieces

Perhaps you have heard it’s bikini season. Perhaps you are wearing a bikini at this very moment. Do you possess the physical capability to put one on? If yes, then you have a bikini body. It’s not all that different from the sweatpants-and-cardigan body or even the foundation-garments body…