Taer turned on her iPhone’s voice recorder and Nix talked for three minutes about visiting the MCA and Molly insisting on leaving without her bodyguards. Their conversation was as follows:l
“Does she usually go to museums or do other tourist things while on tour?” Taer asked.
“No, she doesn’t usually do this kind of cultural tourism; not in the U.S., at least. When she goes out of the country, there is more of that kind of thing,” Nix said.
“I guess what I’m asking is, was it unusual behavior for her to go to the museum?”
“Yes. Sort of. I don’t want to say ‘yes’ because she is always doing unusual things. Was this unusual behavior? Yes. Was unusual behavior a matter of course? Yes. I’m not just talking about the crazy outfits and the weird videos. She doesn’t act like a usual person. Even though she never acts normal, you get used to her, and you can predict how she’s going to act or respond to something. This wasn’t predictable behavior. Molly is just as crazy as everyone thinks she is, but at the same time, she is the most level-headed, clear-thinking, sharp person I’ve ever met. No one is like her. And she is nice to everyone. Can I tell you something off the record? And you won’t print it?”
“Yeah, sure. Like, legally, I’m not going to be allowed to print something you say is ‘off the record.’ My editor will listen to this recording. The fact-checker, I mean, they’ll listen to it.”
“Okay. Well, off the record: I’m pretty sure [Molly] had some deep dark secrets she was keeping. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was this huge part of Molly and her life that no one knew about, that she somehow kept hidden, and she just decided to go do that instead. Or it consumed her, without her being able to stop it.”
Nix told Applebaum she had given Taer this strange, almost rambling, conspiracy theory — esque quote, and Applebaum asked her to put it on the record, for reasons Nix still doesn’t understand.m Taer and her editors included the quote in the Tribune article. It was the starting gun for a thousand more conspiracy theories, opinion pieces, blog posts, and status updates. It became one of the most enduring sentiments of the early days of Molly Metropolis’s disappearance.
It also makes Nix seem unbalanced and spastic; she’s not. Nix has a steady temperament. She’s more inclined to recede than to babble. Molly’s disappearance brought out an extreme in her.
As Taer turned off the voice recorder and awkwardly started to leave, Nix burst into tears. She cried into the corner of her blanket, apologizing and trying to stop. When she couldn’t, she hid her face and asked Taer to leave. Instead, Taer grabbed Nix’s upper arm and squeezed it. Nix hated when people said “don’t cry” to try to comfort a crier, and she expected that out of Taer. According to Nix, Taer subverted expectations and said, “You keep on fucking crying for as long as you need to. I’m just going to hold onto your arm like this.”
They sat together for a long time. Nix cried, and Taer held her arm. Taer wrote that she was attracted to people who expressed their deep emotions honestly and even more attracted if the person wasn’t usually effusive; it made Taer feel special. She latched on to Nix that afternoon.
Nix captured Taer’s attention, but Molly Metropolis captured her imagination. Taer wanted to know everything about Molly’s possible secret life. Her pursuit of Molly Metropolis began that night, perhaps even in those quiet moments while Nix wept and she held her arm. Taer’s Molly Metropolis idolatry was already the embodiment of pop star fixation, but with the added hook of a mystery, it developed into a full-blown obsession. Over the next few weeks, she investigated Molly’s secret activities and the deeper mystery of her disappearance. As Taer sunk into her obsession, she too became progressively more secretive, until she also disappeared on a rainy weekend in Chicago.
* “Molly Defies the Sophomore Slump,” last modified December 23, 2009; www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/arts/music/molly-defies-sophomore-slump.html?ref=music.
† “Outrun electro” is a genre of electronic music, sometimes called synthwave, based on 1980s synthesizers played in pulsating, repeating arpeggios. Outrun had a popular following before Molly adopted the style for many of her tracks, but she was the first to introduce the sound to Top 40 pop.
‡ In his review of the album, Los Angeles Times music journalist Sam Lambert called Molly’s sound “dance pop for strange and unusual kids who see ghosts,” referencing Winona Ryder’s famous line in the 1988 movie Beetlejuice: “I myself am strange and unusual.” Before writing his review, Lambert must’ve seen Molly’s first music video, in which Molly’s look consciously echoed Ryder’s in Beetlejuice.
§ From my interview with Nadia Piereson, one of Molly’s backup dancers.
ǁ Cyrus based this description on something Nix said to him in an e-mail, according to his notes, but I have no more clarifying details to offer. It will be important to remember Holly Golightly tried to trick people into thinking they knew her by presenting a false version of herself. — CD
a Here, Molly’s riffing off of two moments from Debord’s book Society of the Spectacle: “Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived,” and “The consumption celebrity superficially represents different types of personality.” —CD
b “Eulogy for Molly Metropolis,” last modified January 10, 2012; www.vulture.com/2012/01/eulogy-for-molly-metropolis.html.
c ValerieVamp22, January 22, 2010 (2:32 a.m.), comment on aPOPcalypse_hereine, “I Can’t Seem to Find Molly”; www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0XL44DcJeeN
d “Why Did Molly Disappear?: Molly Metropolis’s Final Illuminati Mission Complete,” last modified February 6, 2010; vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/why-did-molly-disappear.
e Chicago Tribune, “Review: Molly Metropolis at the United Center,” by Bran Hollis Brooks.
f Cyrus K. Archer didn’t have a chance to fill in the missing links in this account of the day Molly Metropolis disappeared. Molly gave Nix her phone just before the museum trip earlier that day. Molly often left her phone with Nix when she didn’t feel like dealing with incoming calls or messages, so Molly getting rid of her phone didn’t seem unusual to Nix. According to Molly’s dancers and friends, Molly was an unreliable phone user and often forgot to return calls and texts, which was part of the reason that they weren’t particularly worried when she didn’t return messages on the day she disappeared. According to Nix, she discovered Molly was missing when she went to Molly’s hotel room to “give her the heads up it was time to go to sound check,” but found the hotel room empty, and Molly nowhere to be found. Then Nix began her small-scale search. — CD
g Nix believes it “must’ve been Kelly [Applebaum],” who tweeted this. Applebaum believes it “must’ve been Gina [Nix].” Any number of the dancers and PR support staff knew or had access to Molly’s Twitter password, and her account had been previously hacked at least once. Despite vehement denials, Nix is the most likely suspect because she was in possession of Molly’s phone at the time. The final suspect is, of course, Molly Metropolis herself. The police used the fact that no one would step forward to claim authorship of the Tweet as possible evidence that Molly had chosen to disappear willingly.
h When I interviewed Taer’s family members, several of them told me slightly different versions of this story. I choose to include the version told to me by Taer’s paternal grandmother, Louisa Collins Taer.