My Life in the Gutter

A Brooklyn Bowling Story

This story was one of the first I ever dared to put up online and it’s the one people most often refer back to. So ICYMI, and enhanced with my own lovely voiceover…

There was a distinct scent inside a bowling alley in rough and tumble Brooklyn in the 1970s — metallic and dusty, the indelible whiff of last night’s beer, watery cheese fries, and cigarette smoke hot on the stale air. When my mother was her happiest, her easiest and least angry, it was often in the sunken pit of an occupied lane.

Once a week, for as long as I remember, Mom bowled on a league. The women wore their teased bouffants buoyant, and grounded their thick thighs into tight leggings. They were moms once the older kids got out of school, but at Maple Lanes every Wednesday morning between 9:30 and 12:00, they were “Pink Ladies.”

Painstakingly, they embroidered names in white on fuchsia satin jackets and arranged for substitutes to take their place when they couldn’t make it. Real and precious money was on the line. More than that, there were bragging rights. I had fantasies of being old enough to get myself onto the roster, but I knew that was far into the big, scary future.

My older sister and I trailed behind Mom as she stopped in the entryway to check her team’s standings on loose sheets of paper, push-pinned to a bulletin board. Mostly, and for decades, the “Ladies” remained solidly in the middle of the pack, content to chase teams like, “The Pin Ups” or the “Bowlin’ Baller Babes.” Their goal was not to get too far behind “The Flower Girls,” who came to the alley with a carnation behind their ear and a breezy smile, despite their lower third standings.

Armed with lane assignments and a scorecard, we’d make our way through the wall of noise to the back. I made a game of picking out the individual sounds among the din. The plunk of the ball being released and the smooth pop or rolling bang of its landing; the isolated cheers when teammates managed strikes; the rotating ball, either on its way down the lane or making its way back along the tube to retake its position with a hollow clack against the others waiting in the lineup.

Lockers housed their personal twelve pound balls stuffed inside leather bags, beside their flea market, regulation bowling shoes. The team paid $3 a year per bowler, often covering for someone who couldn’t swing it.

Competition was not so much about the game, but over who scored the most earth shattering rumor. I ran screaming when my mother tried to bring me to the playroom where the other kids were. I promised to keep my head down, preferring to hear what the adults had to say, trying to make sense of everything. Or anything.

I puzzled through the convoluted bowling math needed for scoring, which the ladies did in a blink and loved to explain with their half-sized pencils, eyes squinting against rising fresh smoke in filthy ashtrays. If we were good, Mom let my sister and me pick out candy from the vending machine — a rare treat. We’d blink in wonder and consider our choices carefully.

I settled on something delicious and easy to get through — like chocolate, barely making it to my mother’s not-so-gentle reminder.

“Wash that gunk off your hands before shoving it in your mouth!”

My sister went for the slower burn, something to roll her tongue around and hold onto so that long days after I was done, she was hoarding her leftover lifesavers underneath the bed and offering up their purple aftermath on her tongue as proof of her moral superiority.

My mother’s game record was a 266 for which she received a broach with a bowling pin and the “Pink Ladies” etched underneath, plus the kitty from the league — something like $300, an amount that meant a lot.

My own bowling career began in the early-1980s. I’d established myself as a mediocre bowler in middle school, rarely scoring higher than a 140 and losing interest by the eighth frame.

But when I became a teenager and realized that boys had a real fondness for a girl who could manage a spare, I was willing to take a second shot. Striped burgundy and blue bowling shoes were hard to make sexy, yet the tight fuzzy neon yellow sweatshirts and leggings were on point.

Scoring had stepped up a bit and now could be done from a beat up and barely working touch screen to a monitor overhead. We tried to come up with enticing three-letter character names. I called myself KIS and my friend called herself LUV and we both set a special shake to our ass as we took the three steps to release the ball with a pop and listen for the sound of cement kissing varnish.

We smoked endlessly and tested out talking sexy, having fake but very mature conversations about our guys who were away — in the army sometimes, or on an oil rig. You wouldn’t imagine two overly made-up and earnest prepubescents would be able to pull this off, but we did. All the time. A girl only had to breathe.

The one I settled on was blonde and blue eyed and bowled an average of 220. A perpetual cigarette hung from the side of his mouth and he ordered his food from the greasy bar, not just the vending machine. In my eyes, that made him classy. And there was a particular pressure he gave the Reset button when the balls didn’t return automatically that made me giddy.

My 9 pounder was a swirl of blue and silver that looked fabulous when it rolled down the oiled up lane. I was more transfixed by its journey than the bowler’s arm around my shoulder, or the amount of pins I was able to knock down. I did like it when he hit three strikes in a row. It made the cartoon turkey dance on the screen above and he’d turn to me with a wink that made me woozy.

Just when I was getting comfortable, he left me to date a woman who had better assets, and by assets I mean she bowled an average of 210. I’d never broken that 140.

My mother’s Pink Ladies went on long after I’d moved to college and gave up the alley. It had never been about the game for me anyway. I spent a large chunk of the 90s in college and then in Los Angeles, looking for my own Pink Ladies, but my mother was always ready to give me all their gossip, which I treasured.

In the early aughts my father passed away suddenly, and Mom kept facing each frame as if it were the beginning of a three strike turkey no matter how small her odds were. Too soon Alzheimer’s threw her a 7/10 split, where the pins on opposite ends were all but impossible to spare. She’d missed too many Wednesdays, she said, and didn’t want to leave the Ladies hanging.

She asked me to clean out her locker, unable to face the concern she was sure to meet. Alone, I took one last walk into that alley. I smiled as the noise and smell sent my memory reeling. The pants had changed, the hairstyles were looser, but the shoes were the same and the kids were just as loud and happy. Teams of women looked up to monitors that scored it all automatically.

Everyone was concerned for Mom. They wanted her number and to stay in touch. She was close to 70 by then. The man behind the counter told me she’d been there over 40 years, more than half her her life once a week. I gave them my phone number and the place she’d be staying, and walked into the quiet night on 60th street in Bensonhurst.

Tires swished against pavement, wet from a recent shower. My mother’s ball bag heavy in my hand, I opened my car door, not knowing that less than a decade later, Maple Lanes would also become a ghost.

I’ve been to other bowling alleys with my children. And my husband. I’ve lounged in sunken pits of high tech lanes and missed the simplicity of what used to seem so complicated. These new alleys with their gutter guards and air purifiers and lack of smoke that makes the air hang dirtier to me somehow. They throw Midnight Bowling Dance Parties where they serve sushi and artisan beer.

But once I’m done missing everything time has stolen from me, I take a closer look. Families still play, girls preen for young men that try to look cool as they return from bowling their frame, taking a bow or smiling at the cheers and jeers rising above the noise.

Ten pins in a triangle and a big metal ball aimed expertly down a waxed alley. Simple. When you hit the spin just right, you can make it all 12 frames.

See you next week