Cha-Ching!
by Ali Liebegott
City Lights. 248 pages, $15.95
ALI LIEBEGOTT’S FICTION is in a direct line of descent from the road trip novels of the Beat Generation, the writers who chronicled the lives of outsiders in the conservative 1950s. In Liebegott’s work, the marginalized status of her characters is directly related to their gender fluidity and sexual nonconformity.
Theo, the central character of Cha-Ching!, is described from a complex third-person viewpoint as a queer person who moved to San Francisco after high school but found no security in the gay mecca.
Theo and her transwoman friend Olivia joke about Theo’s appearance as a “sirma’amsir,” an exotic female animal that’s often mistaken for male, though Theo has female plumbing and identifies herself as a woman when ordered to leave women’s washrooms. So, Olivia gives her a useful going-away present: a “butch bathroom wig” for self-protection on her cross-country trip. Theo has made up her mind: “[She] wasn’t taking a meandering road trip across America trying to determine her fate through the text of quirky road signs. She’d already taken that trip. Many times. She just wanted to hurry up and get to New York so she could be a new person.”
Theo is planning to lose her addictions by taking a geographical cure. She regrets having missed much of her high school education because she was drinking. Approaching age thirty, she plans to give up drinking, smoking, and television-watching. She imagines herself in New York, working out at a gym and reading the complete works of Dostoyevsky. Notably, she doesn’t plan to give up her biggest addiction: gambling.
The American dream of getting rich quick is represented in this novel by casinos that exert a magnetic pull on the many people who can’t find solid footing in the economy. A brief summary of Theo’s childhood shows where she learned to gamble: “Theo had grown up in casinos. Her family lived in Las Vegas, and when she was a child she would be left in the video arcade for hours with a roll of quarters. But the quarters were gone in no time, and if the arcade was empty she would wander around pulling on joysticks or pushing start buttons in the hope that suddenly the game would do something.”
Near St. Louis, Theo can’t resist entering a small casino and betting away some of her savings. She’s prevented from reaching rock bottom by her responsibility to her traveling companion: the female pit-bull she saved from harm in San Francisco after an illegal dogfight operation was broken up. Along the way, the dog learns to trust Theo, who uses her resourcefulness to keep the dog fed and comfortable.
Theo’s family seems to have disappeared from her life, and she only knows one person in New York. After a period of being down on her luck in Yonkers, she reconnects with her old acquaintance and moves to a more queer-friendly neighborhood, though the apartment that two under-employed dykes can afford is infested with cockroaches and mice.
Amid the black comedy of trying to become upwardly mobile in the Big Apple, Theo meets the gorgeous Marisol, whose father is dead and whose drug-addicted mother has vanished into the prison system. At different times, Theo and Marisol each try to make money in the sex trade, and their failures are presented as amusing lucky breaks. Theo discovers racetrack betting and Atlantic City, and her growing attachment to Marisol gives her a new motive to try to make as much money as she can in marathon gambling sessions.
Theo’s financial ups and downs are described in detail, and they are a roller-coaster. We share her exhilaration when she wins and watch with dread as her luck inevitably runs out. Theo believes that her mood influences her luck, so the mood-altering quality of alcohol is a constant temptation. Marisol has parallel experiences with a prescription drug that makes her feel as if she’s “on vacation.”
Despite the obstacles in their paths, Theo and Marisol learn to understand each other, and they share a love for Theo’s dog. Theo’s story of moving to the city to change her life thus develops into a romance, and the novel ends on a hopeful note that borders on sentimentality. Just as a formerly abused dog learns to trust her caretaker against the odds, two women who’ve had a raw start in life learn that they can be stronger together. The persistence of love and hope prevent this novel from being a journey through hell, and the author’s narrative skill carries the reader along for the ride.
Jean Roberta is a widely published writer based in Regina, Canada.
