by Memphis Saltos

I’ve been thinking a lot about Barbie dolls. In Berkeley they are an anathema, designed with unrealistic body proportions to give your daughter eating disorders. I suppose that may ring true, but when my generation was a child Barbies were all we had besides baby dolls (which I was too much of a tomboy to touch). My girlfriends today all remember their Barbies and how they interacted with them. Every girl’s story of her Barbies is elaborate and telling.

During the height of our Barbie craze my sister and I had about 30 Barbies, Kens, Skippers, and GI Joes. I was about 7 years old, my sister two years older, and we lived on 2547 Honeysuckle Drive in Baton Rouge. I loved that rented house, not only for the name but for the abundance of baby’s breath, daisies, daffodils, honeysuckles & other flowers I didn’t recognize yet that grew uncared for all around the yards. In retrospect it might have been a terrible place to live considering it sat underneath an interstate and parallel to train tracks. But it was a 7 year old’s dream house. Decades later I still remember every sharp stony corner and mud puddle. The sound of a train rumbling nearby or the strong smell of creosote brings me back there. It was a perfect setting for Barbie Play.

What always surprises me about other peoples Barbie stories is how sexual there are. One friend first hints that she was a Lesbian was when she had the urge to make out with her Barbies. Other friends seem to work out their sexual wonderment and exploration on their dolls. My sister and I were so incredibly naive about sex that it did not even spring forth in our play. Instead our Barbies were genius adventurers. They were oceanographers, veterinarians and astronomers. Ken dolls were not lovers but smart older brothers (we had no brothers and assumed we were missing out). GI Joes were not scary older men but kind uncles and elder professors. The dolls (well, except for the GI Joes who stayed home and worried) would go on incredible adventures equipped with spies, Nazis and secret missions. Tom Clancy fans today would love our Barbie Play intrigue.

My sister and I would play out these fanciful games on the porch, oblivious to the suffocating Louisiana summer heat, until our mother would call us in for lunch. After wolfing down our TV dinners of soft Salisbury steaks, powdery triangle mashed potatoes and a tan colored apple mush we’d go back out again to continue our games. Those adventures remained so completely chaste, so enterprising and so utterly earnest and brave until we met our new neighbor, Elaine.

Elaine was a tall eleven year old girl, how tall compared to other girls her age I do not accurately know; time has given her an Amazonian stature. She had a round, pug-nosed face, nut-brown stringy hair and small protruding eyes. I never thought she was pretty but knew she was the type boys liked. Not that my young mind knew what boys cared for, it just knew they never seemed to care for girls I thought were pretty. What was most interesting about her appearance was a fossil-like birthmark between her eyebrows, a pale trilobite. The imperfection makes her face much stronger looking and set it apart from the ordinary girls on our block. I never could stop staring at it.

I never imagined someone as old as Elaine would want to play with us, yet one day she plopped to the ground, crossed her long milky white legs Indian style and said “I got an idea for a new happening, let’s make them go on a date with those Kens.”

I wanted correct her and say our Merci, Candy, Julie and Janaci(1) couldn’t date their older brothers but my sister said “OK, let’s put them in the buggy.” The three of us took turns pushing the Barbie jeep for their around the yard date, pretending the sound of the traffic overhead were the cars around the buggy. I was slowly getting used to having mydolls out of character when Elaine decides the Ken dolls must undress and tie naked Barbies to the porch columns. “The boys kidnapped them!” Elaine explained to us.” Now they are having there way with them.”

Although it would be another five years before I would read about Sonny and his mistress in The Godfather by Mario Puzo (page 28 of my paperback version), I had a general idea by the way Elaine said “having their way with them” that our heroes were having sex (whatever that was). And I could tell this was better way of Barbie Play than anything my sister had ever dreamed of. My sister looked as if she had forgotten to breathe. She was nodding her head real fast and her eyes were popping out like those of a cartoon character. “What they do next?” she asked.

I pointed to some of the honeysuckle that was working through cracks in the wood. “Let pretend this here vine strangles them boys and the girls escape!” That wasn’t too odd of an idea given that in the South vines can completely shroud a parked car in one day, or can lift a building off its foundation. I had read were the police once lost the suspect they were chasing because he dived into an empty lot filled with Kudzu and forever disappeared in that vegetative labyrinth. Kudzu, honeysuckle vines, wisteria etc., make for great exciting stories and getaways. However, Elaine didn’t like the idea; she was strictly a Barbie Bondage player. She continued to have our Barbie girls tied and naked with their Ken counterparts pressed to them, arms sticking crudely straight out and scarylike IDAK on Lost in Space. Crush. Kill. Destroy.

Elaine never came to play with us often, but when she did it always had our Barbies wrapped up like some tawdry scene from a straight to video release porn flick. I quickly lost interest in the game, but couldn’t bear to be left out. Elaine and my sister would play out this sex rape scene while I sat nearby with my legs dangling over the side of the porch scrapping the bubbles of chipping yellow (probably lead) paint on the boards next to the steps. I thought it was crude, nasty, disquieting. I couldn’t understand why they did it.

I knew if our mom found out she was ban Elaine from our house and would confiscate the Barbies for some unknown amount of time. I assumed she never knew. Several years later, however, we ran into Elaine at McDonalds. Elaine was an established teenager by this time, giggling and silly with her other teenage friends. My mom said, “Hello Elaine? How are your Barbies? I know you love to play with them!” I knew how my mom said it in a way to embarrass Elaine in front of her friends, that is the way my momma is. I watched Elaine’s trilobite birthmark, which seemed only have grown bigger in her absence, flush red. “No, I never like those baby things.” She muttered glancing nervously around her.

We never saw her again, but to this day my sister and anything porn Elaine Play. I used to think Elaine was insane, and my sister DID grow up to be anorexic and promiscuous. But the more I hear about other girl’s Barbie stories, the more I think I was the unbelievable sheltered and innocent one.

(1) Janaci was my favorite. She grew up to be a horse trainer and first woman president of the United States. She was Native American. I can’t figure out what Mattel wanted her to be, she had darkish skin and blue eyes.