Alissa Nutting - Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

But the thought of becoming a mother is a weirdness I want to feel out a little more. I will live with it for a while longer as if it were truly a baby; I will let it grow and see what shape it takes before I decide what to do with it. Until then, I can go on living each day as Missy’s secondary mother, a giant rodent who is slightly repulsed by her human offspring.

He and I make a toast to ourselves, to purposelessness lives and our candlelit table; dinner is expensive but the sex afterwards will be free.

My boyfriend Ginno is a pro-bowler. It is not as glamorous as it doesn’t sound. I was on the streets for a long time so I took the first chance I got to settle down. Ginno doesn’t know I’m really a man, but other than that we’re completely honest with one another.

I keep saying I don’t want to get married because “Honey, it’s a piece of paper. Know what else is a piece of paper? A dry-cleaning receipt.” Luckily Ginno isn’t much of a detective. He doesn’t dig too deep. He just goes to the alley and rolls the balls.

That was where he and I first met. Ginno was breaking the house record and a big crowd had gathered around him, so I put down my Sea Breeze and went to go see what the fuss was all about. My Tuesday night regular had been a no-show. This was fine by me; the guy’s cologne was suffocating. He liked to wear a captain’s hat and made me pretend the botched anchor tattoo on his arm didn’t look like a green worm.

I knocked my way up to the front of the crowd and there he was: trim moustache, thin-rimmed glasses, white bowling shoes that made him look kind of disabled. I don’t know, Ginno saw my breast implants and makeup and big hair and just fell for me. I do it up 80’s style or I don’t do it at all, go big or go home. That kind of thing.

He took me home that very night. When we got back to his place, I looked around and just decided this is it: I will become the queen of kitsch. Cuckoo clocks, red dice napkin holders, all of it. It was a gamble but it paid out almost instantly. The first week I moved in he won a regional that paid $10,000 and he split it with me 50/50.

I didn’t do what you’re thinking, drugs or whatnot. I put it back into us. I gave half of it back to Ginno to help with a down payment on a conversion van and spent the rest on gear for tournament travel — an eight-piece set of rolling luggage and a handful of velvet pantsuits. We also got a little dog named Gogo that I could take to all the practices and the games for company. I’m really in this thing with Ginno, committed. I go to every game, every time.

He practices weekdays at Pins and Pockkkets, an alley right down the street from our condo that opens at 9 a.m. It’s run by white supremacists. Ginno somehow hasn’t caught onto that. Please don’t get me wrong, that’s not my belief system — I’m a minority too, my upstairs vs. my downstairs. But it’s right next door and they just love Ginno so I turn a blind eye. I take Gogo (Chinese Crested, ugly as a newborn) there with me, and she and I sit at the gaming machine for most of the morning and the afternoon. I keep my fingernails long to tap cards on the screen with. It hardly takes any energy.

And they let me drink for free, because Ginno’s such a wiz. Their well vodka tastes awful but it’s not bad with 8oz of Clamato mixed in. All day long I get my vegetables. They let me play the claw machine for free too; I just have to give back all the stuffed animals I win before I leave because I’m so damn good.

Sometimes they talk about “queers” and throw around the n-word. It’s hard to keep my peace, but I don’t really like to open my mouth when I’m at the alley anyway — my breath smells like tomato and clam and Virginia Slim Menthols. When I see Ginno start to walk over towards me, I shove Altoids into my cheek pockets like I’m a hamster.

“You’ve given me a whole new life,” Ginno tells me every time I blow him. I don’t think that he was a virgin or anything before we got together — maybe he was; he doesn’t ever move during it, he just lies there frozen like he’s witnessing an earthquake. He certainly has never been with someone as experienced and in-tune to the cravings of the male organ as me. Few have. Less than eight hundred, I’d guess, if you count clients as well.

Supportive as I wanted to be, life at the alley got a little dull. So I found a hobby I could take to the lanes while Ginno practiced: bejeweling and sequencing holiday-theme sweatshirts. I began rolling my whole setup with me to the alley in the little suitcase from our new 8-piece luggage set. It took me a while to learn how to keep from gluing things on crooked when my buzz creeped up, but I adapted. Whatever I am, I’m nothing if not adaptable.

The sweatshirts got better and better. One day Ginno said, “Babe, those are good enough to sell.” So I went to a few boutiques and started consigning them. Things were rosy for our whole little family: just picture us in the living room after dinner, Gogo running around in a mini jewel-sequins bowler shirt, myself in a human-sized matching one, she and I literally the sparkling light of Ginno’s life.

Thank God, his mother is all the way across the country in a Montana nursing home, something about her spine. His sister lives there too. He doesn’t talk about his mother or his sister much, but I get the feeling that growing up they bossed him around. Even though he’s getting to be quite a big-name bowler, I hear them treat him like a nobody on the phone.

They didn’t even call when we were on ESPN with Gogo. Ginno placed second in Nationals—$30,000! Of course I ran from the stands with Gogo and we both planted kisses all over his face and the brushy inchworm of his moustache, “Jesus I’m SOMEONE!” I wanted to scream. Both of us, we were finally really somebody.

But the sad thing is, everybody is always somebody, even when he’s nobody. And I used to be a nobody’s somebody. I used to belong to a pimp named Daddy Valentine.

A few weeks after the win Gogo and I were multi-tasking: taking instructions off the TV on how to cook a roast and painting our nails at the same time. My toes were all stretched out with cotton balls and polish, the same color as Gogo’s. She’s a princess in pink.

When the doorbell rang I was a little baffled — Ginno wasn’t due home from the lanes for hours and it’s not like we have friends. But the vodka had made me cordial — vodka before cooking; vodka so that if and when I start another grease fire I don’t get overly agitated.

When I opened the door, a large zebra-print shoe landed on my toes and I yipped. “It’s your man, it’s Daddy V.” He took off his sunglasses, looked around the condo and whistled.

Daddy had been flipping through channels during Ginno’s bowling game and he’d recognized me on ESPN.

Gogo offered a small growl but was afraid of Daddy’s fur coat.

“Get out of here, Daddy. The person you knew is long dead. I mean it; leave or I’ll call the cops.” The estrogen has done such a great number on my voice. Despite feelings of terror stinging me all over like jellyfish tentacles, I couldn’t help but savor how much I sounded like a distressed heroine.

“Well now see,” and then Daddy reached into the purple silk lining of his leather jacket and pulled out a folder. I realized: I’m totally sunk. “I don’t think you’d want the police here, because then your lover man would find out he has a lover man.”

I paused. “What do you want?”

He wants the money. All of it, the whole pot of Ginno’s winnings. Daddy didn’t change the channel until he saw Ginno receive an oversized $30,000 check.

The terrible part is that I know I could invent some story that makes it seem like I really need the money and Ginno would have no problem giving it to me. Somehow that means there is no way that I could ever bring myself to do it. He’s the first and only decent man I’ve ever been with. And that makes me a decent woman.