Molly Goatwax

A Man walked into a bar....

"Do I gotta have a shirt on to come in here?"  I regarded the sun-reddened rolls of adipose tissue spilling over the front of his pants and observed rivulets of sweat from the 95 degree heat coursing through the hairs on his man-breasts. I told him that I preferred my customers in shirts, and not wrapped around their heads, as his was. He held up another shirt, this one fashioned into a sack containing some mysterious, limpid bundle. "You wanna buy some meat?", he queried.
"No. We're not buying anything. Never. Get out."
"What kind of idiot is trying to sell stolen meat out of a dirty shirt on a day like this?", my customer asked me.
"Junkie." I said, watching the hairy back flab make its way out the door and leaving it open for the air conditioning to escape.

In Memoriam

Every once in a while when I see a disheviled man with paint spattered clothes aimlessly walk into the street in front of my car  I mistake him for Dennis. I still think I'm seeing Susan when a  tall slim blonde starts jumping up and down. From the corners of my eyes I glimpse my former mother in law, my father, Dave, some times Sam and of course my mother...These wraiths are still peopling my landscape. But, this day is for solemnly honoring more than our personal losses. While I remain a pinko pacifist who deeply regrets the loss of a million countrymen to war, my polical view is eclipsed by the sacrifices our soldiers, sailors, marines, nurses and pilots made for theirs. All of these people have helped teach me the value of a life worth living.

Hello Princess

"I got my tire replaced. It's a brand I've never heard of but I guess it doesn't matter, 'cause it's just going to pop anyway. How many tires do you think I've popped since I started driving?", I asked Styx, who's known me from my days as a pavement pounding pedestrian.
"I don't know...", he said, pondering.
"You've popped more tires than anyone I know!", posited Chris D.
"It's what she does.", Hubby added. I couldn't answer with a witty rejoinder because, in fact, any tire placed on my car is doomed to a premature replacement. The Pirellis it came with exploded long ago and that probably is not all Boy Mayor's fault. So I returned my attention to the wildly impractical clock lunchbox that Styx had retrieved from the trash and repaired for me as a gift:

The life of Riley

I got a new telephone and it has none of the numbers I so carefully programmed into the old one instead of writing them down. I got my car back from the repair shop only to shred a tire a day later. I was going to collect from Stix a Hello Kitty clock lunch box when the sound of the tire flapping aborted our mission and I let him out at the bus stop on my way back to the shop. I start on one set of errands only to be completely sidetracked by minor emergencies, so that the neglect of those routine errands breeds more minor emergencies. Don't even ask how the major projects are coming along. BUT! I can offer you a pomegranite Cosmo or put fruit balls and twists into your cocktails now that I am warming up for the First Martini Styling Competition at Molly's Public House. I have laid in some cool prizes. Stylin' prizes.  I have on offer a set of stainless cocktail mixing implements, a bobbling dashboard Hula doll and a pair of martini shaped wire earrings collected to award those talented stylists who shine above the competition. If nothing else comes of this foolishness, I will have become a better bartender for it.

With Valet Parking

"Pazo does not rhyme with spaz-o", I reminded myself Saturday evening as I stood in an incredibly opulent bathroom stall wondering how on earth my six dollar bottle of beer had exploded into a million shards of glass, some of which I unthinkingly flushed....

An Invitation

Next Saturday, the 27th, we will be hosting  a martini styling competion at 6:00 pm. Participants may bring their own stemware and garnishes, Molly's will provide alcohols for purchase, or water if you just want to style and not drink. Entries will be photographed and published. Prizes will be awarded. Each of the prospective contestants with whom I've discussed this project are certain they will win. How about you?

photo by  swankmartini.com

Generate, cut and paste

Imagine four goats
inside a hundred dollars worth
of cupcakes
not a hundred dollars
worth of gravy
And
Other than trying to go
sling drinks in her Bentley
the steering felt imprecise
and that I hope to be
noted, clearly,
that
New Yorkers are
eating trees
as I
was so spying this morning.

Step away from the car

After hearing the nine year old detail the plotline of her latest project, a comic book called "The Adventures of Minivan Mom", (the load of cupcakes she's hauling all fly forward at a sudden stop) and being unable to figure out how to get gasoline into it, yesterday I ditched the van and walked to work. On the way I meandered by the grocer's, the pharmacist, the locksmith and the bank. I was reminded of the not so distant past, before I got my license, when my entire world was a mile in parameter. By the time I got to Molly's, I had collected a "sanctuary"scented candle, some flowers and a sizable chunk of 2x12 charmed off a guy on a rehab site. Three guesses as to what I'm going to do with it...

We can't all be doctors

This morning the nine year old and I climbed into Mom's minivan for the drive to school. When I finally found the ignition and turned it on, I exclaimed at how quiet it was. "And high up!", the nine year old added, asking how else it was different than the convertible. I told her the steering felt imprecise and the acceleration mushy, and that it felt like I was driving a dishwasher, but it would be good for hauling ice to and cardboard from the bar.
"Well why didn't you get a minivan last year when you and Dad had JOBS?" Apparently she's feeling a bit stigmatized, socially, by our eccentric vocations. I reminded her that I have a perfectly good job as a bar maid and free-lance banker. As she looked out the window politely declining to comment I recalled seeing her best friend getting fetched from school in her grandmother's Bently.

Sorting stuff out

Such chaos, so much disarray and the paralysis of depression have been constricting my movement to the point where all of  the cars in the household are in the shop. I have lost my telephone and no recovery effort has been successful. The relative for whom I have been tasked to set up a trust fund has come up with a string of manufactured emergencies that had me throw up my hands in dispair and proclaim; "It's not my fault that this person's life is out of control, no wonder this super binding trust thing was set up". And then I had the epiphany*...It is my responsibility if my life is out of control. So then I cleaned up all the broken glass, bleached everything and got on the phone to start to get a handle on it. I made lists. I sent e-mails. And, no. I don't lead a normal life. Imagine going to the bank to move masses of other peoples' money around and then coming back in to discreetly advise the manager that you have arranged to have your disgracefully kept yuppie pig mobile towed from their parking lot because you have to go sling drinks in that dive down the street ....

*Thank you Saint Dymphna!