On more than one occasion, I had been caught engaging my Barbies in "inappropriate intimate behavior," or as I liked to call it, "naked kissing." She probably felt that adding a Ken to the equation of an already frisky community of boy-hungry Barbie dolls, would push my tiny imagination far over the boundaries of where it should have been at the age of five. So, as a way of maintaining the hetero normative idea of what I was subliminally taught romance should look like in plain toast society -I recruited one of my "no name" Barbies as the "Ken.”
The "no-name" Barbie was a doll named Cindy -a foreign knock off of the graceful original. Cindy was not like my other dolls. She had a disfigured head, short straw-like hair, and smelled like rabbit poo. It didn't feel right, but like all life circumstances, I would have to make the most from what I was given, so I renamed her, Mr. Cindy.
I made due with Mr. Cindy for quite some time, but after a while, it just never felt right. I wanted a Ken.
My best friend at the time owned a real Ken. She was excessively clingy over him. While we were playing, she never gave me any turns and even went as far as to keep the Ken at an unbearable distance from me. To add more pain to torture, she also discouraged me from engaging her Barbies and the Ken in any "inappropriate intimate behavior", or in other words "no naked kissing."
She suggested we stick to stupid games like “wedding role play” instead. Week after week, in a sick spiral of sheer insanity, the same Barbie would remarry Ken. This served as a problem for me, but since I was just happy to be in the presence of Ken, I went along with the charade and pretended to enjoy it.
I longed for a Ken of my own. I longed for ANY version of him to complete my community of Barbie fun. Until one day, my prayers were answered. Upon the arrival at my best friend's house, she excitedly informed me that her mother had bought her a brand new Ken.
"You can take my old one if you want. I'm bored of him," she offered.
She was offering to GIVE me one of her Ken dolls! TO KEEP! In that moment, I felt as though I was going to self combust.
However, my excitement was quickly clouded by the possibility that my mother would disapprove and throw Ken in the garbage. My friend suggested I hide the Ken from my mom. It seemed like a legit plan. So I stuck my new Ken in my little backpack and waited for my mother to come pick me up and take me home.
When we got home that afternoon, I couldn't believe what I had gotten away with! I snuck Ken out of the bag, and took him up to my room, where I buried him into a discreet mountain of miscellaneous McDonald's Happy Meal toys.
The entire next day was spent playing with my new Ken. He was introduced to all the Barbies in my room. By lunch time he had dated and broken up with all of them. He even had an experimental fling with Mr. Cindy. I loved Ken and he loved me. By sunset I had ran out of scenarios, so I made the choice any young girl in my position would do -I decided to take his clothes off. I had just removed his tiny cotton pants, when I was suddenly interrupted by a shrill scream.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
It was my mother, standing in the doorway of my room. I sat there, frozen, clutching bottomless Ken in my tiny hand.
Snatching him from out of my hands, she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the kitchen.
“WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT HIM?!,” she screamed, “HE IS NO GOOD FOR YOU!”
And with that, she ripped Ken’s head off his body and threw him in the garbage.
Maybe it was the fact that I was deprived of something I wanted, or maybe it was the trauma of witnessing the decapitation of my one true love, but it was then and there that I vowed to find him again.
And on that day, a love slut was born.
HAHAHAHAHA
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