Molly Goatwax

The Manifesto

Let me tell you, I have lately been an unalloyed crank. While I have refrained from shrieking, crying and biting my husband's head off, my family has taken to cowering in the corners shaking with fear. And whilst I was looking for them so that I could nag them to perdition about peeling dirty socks from the floor, I came across several sheets of paper, taped together end to end, with a list in the nine year old's handwriting. Titled "The Declaration of a Girl's Independence", it has thirteen articles of rights listed. Among those that stand out are these; ""Girls shouldn't be stereotyped", "Girls have the rights to play major league sports."and "Girls have the right and power to be president". Amen, sister...err, daughter...and it was signed by thirty school mates as well as some teachers. Wow. I wonder where on Earth she gets these ideas...now, let's list the right to be unapologetic in our hormonal extremes and get out of our way. PLEASE. Before anyone gets stabbed with a nail file, hand over the chocolates. And pick up your socks.

before and after

Remember this? Now it looks like that (see below) and I paint here. Smaller and more spare that any space assigned to me at Art school, we've replaced the boarded up window on the side but it needs an arm chair. Some people have vanity gardens, some put up additions or decks, I've got a little room over a dive bar that I've been working to achieve all my life.

The Beancounter

I woke up from pleasant dreams in a rage and a panic this morning, then mellowed to confusion and despair. In this condition I took myself to the State Comptroller's office to settle some of Molly's sales and use taxes. With two scrawled columns of figures on a rumpled scrap of paper, I apologized to the nice auditor for being mentally disordered and asked for her help in filling out my forms. Sweet, kind, polite and respectful, (State bean counters must get sensitivity training on dealing with the differently abled public) she tapped her French nails all over her keyboard and her adding machine and gave me the total sum owed for the months I was reporting.  Writing the check I asked if it should be made out to William Donald Schaefer and she said no. It had to be made out to the Maryland State Comptroller. Sweet, kind polite, respectful and she must have heard it a million times, but she still had no sense of humor whatsoever. Willie must have hired her for her back side.

Illustration of Mr Schaefer from Bayweekly newsletter.

Status

Today instead of biting my nails, I mopped. I mopped and mopped and mopped for hours. I don't know if  I'll ever get beneath the permagrime at Molly's, but that's fine by me for now. I did lots of dishes. The nine year old also got a drill on the thirteen colonies.  And I will start getting serious about bagging and hauling the detritus from my mother's house. I promise...if only I were not feeling so globular and spongey, I'd fold the laundry and start another load.  I might take a break for some asparagus raviolis with artichoke tapenade. Hold it right there.

True Love

What do you say to your husband when he takes a train north to see a former girlfriend? In my case I said: "Have fun and wish her my best.". And I really do, she had the studio next to mine in senior year and I still send her Valentines. As I circulated about town without him, I ran into a fellow who recounted all the paintings from my very first show and told me how much he's always admired me, with a certain hang dog look in his eyes. Gee. I had no idea. I mistook his dripping snide condecension for disrespect at the time. This afternoon at the grocery store, another guy kept looking and looking at me. Then, he said; "Molly!" And I admitted that it was I as he followed me about the store asking after me as I selected cheeses, cat food , stationary and sandwiches.  He had to remind me who he was because in the fog of time passing I really didn't recogonise him. Oh, right! This was the guy who, when the bars closed at two, would stand on the sidewalk three floors below my window at two thirty and chant "MOTHRA". I never let him in and one day  the level of my disgust came to the scraping of a flattened dried rat off the alley pavement, wrapping it in a medical illustration of a horrible skin disease and sending  it to him with an imaginary return address which happened  to be where another disgruntled girlfriend worked. After a year, he figured out that it was I who sent it, attacked me at a party and told me that he was tripping on LSD when he opened it. Twenty Two years later he wants to get all cosy with me. I must have been really hot.

Complications

The seven months since we started wrestling with the doll factory tire warehouse dentistry were to have come to closing today, but all week I have been on a treasure hunt for more and more documents.  In and out of the weary lines in greenish gray government buildings, the comptroller of the state, the clerk of the court, three different insurance agencies, the Abel Wohlman Municiple building and so on....and so forth. My latest challenge was to prove that the building which houses Molly's is fully insured, the rate at which the property is taxed and that it stands unmortgaged all without revealing to the underwriters of the dentistry's financing exactly what it is that I do there.  All without being what you would call traditionally employed. Ahem. Yesterday I was to have met the dentist to sign a contract extension but was called to meet beer trucks at the bar.  He agreed to accept the extention at Molly's because if I don't open up for the distributors, we won't have any beer to serve. All too tedious to describe, yet I persist with grim determination. Meanwhile, I circle round and around my new studio put out for the lack of a staple gun, or inks, or even my paintbox.

I look out apon a playground

Hubby came to see me in my newly minted office as I pulled the last of the nails from frames that should have been retired years ago. "Can I help you?" I asked as he perched atop a shabby barstool. After he asked me for a fully funded investment loan, he told me that the boarded up window was on schedule to be replaced. We agreed that the floor needed a dozen more moppings and the walls lack paint. And so I sat under a bare bulb pondering  my healing process and some bent staples as I sifted through the images and numbers from the winter...now I ponder a strictly medicinal blueberry ring pudding cake.

Rolling

Yesterday a gallery opening and also a memorial. Both were beautiful, a show of sculptures in the gallery by the water on a state park's preserve and a solemn hoisting of the pint for Ralph at the Tavern. Today I started setting up a studio on the second floor over Molly's. It was mostly ceremonial, with a washing up of an enamel table in an empty room and moving a chair up to it...but it will do for now. Tommorrow I will unframe some paintings there and bring with me a trash can and a pair of pliers. Soon little office machines will sprout in spaces cleared by unfolding our stuff into the dentistry, as it looks as if we may actually close on it. With these humble re-beginnings I will conquer my perview.

Tunnel Joe

After fighting some Feds downtown for a document Friday, I landed in an unlikely strip mall in Mt. Vernon to fax it at a mail store. There I ran into my friend James Earl Reid, for whose class at the Baltimore School for the Arts I once modeled and held a teacher's contract. Asking after his art,  I told him that I had just been by his studio on Eager Street taking pictures of the detention center. Although he still owns the building, he no longer lives there. He misses the local color of the neighborhood though, and told me part of the story of the 1951 prison escapee, "Tunnel Joe", the only guy ever to have dug himself out of that pile of rocks. I guess I'll never look at the prison the same way again, either.

Saint Who?

There are no shamrocks, no brisket, no top hats nor cartoon leprechauns at Molly's Public House today. I wrote on the chalk board "We do not serve green beer!" My Irish friends thanked me.