The Safety of Objects: Stories (14 page)

We were lying on my bed, curled into and out of each other. Barbie was on a pillow next to me, and I was on my side facing her. She was talking about men, and as she talked I tried to be everything she said. She was saying she didn’t like men who were afraid of themselves. I tried to be brave, to look courageous and secure. I held my head a certain way and it seemed to work. She said she didn’t like men who were afraid of femininity, and I got confused.

“Guys always have to prove how boy they really are,” Barbie said.

I thought of Jennifer trying to be a girl, wearing dresses, doing her nails, putting makeup on, wearing a bra even though she wouldn’t need one for about fifty years.

“You make fun of Ken because he lets himself be everything he is. He doesn’t hide anything.”

“He doesn’t have anything to hide,” I said. “He has tan molded plastic hair, and a bump for a dick.”

“I never should have told you about the bump.”

I lay back on the bed. Barbie rolled over, off the pillow, and rested on my chest. Her body stretched from my nipple to my belly button. Her hands pressed against me, tickling me.

“Barbie,” I said.

“Umm humm.”

“How do you feel about me?”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, and slipped her hand into my shirt through the space between the buttons.

Her fingers were like the ends of toothpicks performing some subtle ancient torture, a dance of boy death across my chest. Barbie crawled all over me like an insect who’d run into one too many cans of Raid.

Underneath my clothes, under my skin, I was going crazy. First off, I’d been kidnapped by my underwear with no way to manually adjust without attracting unnecessary attention.

With Barbie caught in my shirt I slowly rolled over, like in some space shuttle docking maneuver. I rolled onto my stomach, trapping her under me. As slowly and unobtrusively as possible, I ground myself against the bed, at first hoping it would fix things and then again and again, caught by a pleasure/pain principle.

“Is this a water bed?” Barbie asked.

My hand was on her breasts, only it wasn’t really my hand, but more like my index finger. I touched Barbie and she made a little gasp, a squeak in reverse. She squeaked backward, then stopped, and I was stuck there with my hand on her, thinking about how I was forever crossing a line between the haves and the have-nots, between good guys and bad, between men and animals, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop myself.

Barbie was sitting on my crotch, her legs flipped back behind her in a position that wasn’t human.

At a certain point I had to free myself. If my dick was blue, it was only because it had suffocated. I did the honors and Richard popped out like an escape from maximum security.

“I’ve never seen anything so big,” Barbie said. It was the sentence I dreamed of, but given the people Barbie normally hung out with, namely the bump boy himself, it didn’t come as a big surprise.

She stood at the base of my dick, her bare feet buried in my pubic hair. I was almost as tall as she was. Okay, not almost as tall, but clearly we could be related. She and Richard even had the same vaguely surprised look on their faces.

She was on me and I couldn’t help wanting to get inside her. I turned Barbie over and was on top of her, not caring if I killed her. Her hands pressed so hard into my stomach that it felt like she was performing an appendectomy.

I was on top, trying to get between her legs, almost breaking her in half. But there was nothing there, nothing to fuck except a small thin line that was supposed to be her ass crack.

I rubbed the thin line, the back of her legs, and the space between her legs. I turned Barbie’s back to me so I could do it without having to look at her face.

Very quickly, I came. I came all over Barbie, all over her and a little bit in her hair. I came on Barbie and it was the most horrifying experience I ever had. It didn’t stay on her. It doesn’t stick to plastic. I was finished. I was holding a come-covered Barbie in my hand like I didn’t know where she came from.

Barbie said, “Don’t stop,” or maybe I just think she said that because I read it somewhere. I don’t know anymore. I couldn’t listen to her. I couldn’t even look at her. I wiped myself off with a sock, pulled my clothes on, and then took Barbie into the bathroom.

*  *  *

At dinner I noticed Jennifer chewing her cuticles between bites of tuna-noodle casserole. I asked her if she was teething. She coughed and then started choking to death on either a little piece of fingernail, a crushed potato chip from the casserole, or maybe even a little bit of Barbie footie that’d stuck in her teeth. My mother asked her if she was okay.

“I swallowed something sharp,” she said between coughs that were clearly influenced by the acting class she’d taken over the summer.

“Do you have a problem?” I asked her.

“Leave your sister alone,” my mother said.

“If there are any questions to ask we’ll do the asking,” my father said.

“Is everything all right?” my mother asked Jennifer. She nodded. “I think you could use some new jeans,” my mother said. “You don’t seem to have many play clothes anymore.”

“Not to change the subject,” I said, trying to think of a way to stop Jennifer from eating Barbie alive.

“I don’t wear pants,” Jennifer said. “Boys wear pants.”

“Your grandma wears pants,” my father said.

“She’s not a girl.”

My father chuckled. He actually fucking chuckled. He’s the only person I ever met who could actually fucking chuckle.

“Don’t tell her that,” he said, chuckling.

“It’s not funny,” I said.

“Grandma’s are pull-ons anyway,” Jennifer said. “They don’t have a fly. You have to have a penis to have a fly.”

“Jennifer,” my mother said. “That’s enough of that.”

I decided to buy Barbie a present. I was at that strange point where I would have done anything for her. I took two buses and walked more than a mile to get to Toys “R” Us.

Barbie row was aisle 14C. I was a wreck. I imagined a million Barbies and having to have them all. I pictured fucking one, discarding it, immediately grabbing a fresh one, doing it, and then throwing it onto a growing pile in the corner of my room. An unending chore. I saw myself becoming a slave to Barbie. I wondered how many Tropical Barbies were made each year. I felt faint.

There were rows and rows of Kens, Barbies, and Skippers. Funtime Barbie, Jewel Secrets Ken, Barbie Rocker with “Hot Rockin’ Fun and Real Dancin’ Action.” I noticed Magic Moves Barbie and found myself looking at her carefully, flirtatiously, wondering if her legs were spreadable. “Push the switch and she moves,” her box said. She winked at me while I was reading.

The only Tropical I saw was a black Tropical Ken. From just looking at him you wouldn’t have known he was black. I mean, he wasn’t black like anyone would be black. Black Tropical Ken was the color of a raisin, a raisin all spread out and unwrinkled. He had a short Afro that looked like a wig had been dropped down and fixed on his head, a protective helmet. I wondered if black Ken was really white Ken sprayed over with a thick coating of ironed raisin plastic.

I spread eight black Kens out in a line across the front of a row. Through the plastic window of his box he told me he was hoping to go to dental school. All eight black Kens talked at once. Luckily, they all said the same thing at the same time. They said he really liked teeth. Black Ken smiled. He had the same white Pearl Drops, Pepsodent, Osmond family teeth that Barbie and white Ken had. I thought the entire Mattel family must take really good care of themselves. I figured they might be the only people left in America who actually brushed after every meal and then again before going to sleep.

I didn’t know what to get Barbie. Black Ken said I should go for clothing, maybe a fur coat. I wanted something really special. I imagined a wonderful present that would draw us somehow closer.

There was a tropical pool and patio set, but I decided it might make her homesick. There was a complete winter holiday, with an A-frame house, fireplace, snowmobile, and sled. I imagined her inviting Ken away for a weekend without me. The six o’clock news set was nice, but because of her squeak, Barbie’s future as an anchorwoman seemed limited. A workout center, a sofa bed and coffee table, a bubbling spa, a bedroom play set. I settled on the grand piano. It was thirteen dollars. I’d always made it a point to never spend more than ten dollars on anyone. This time I figured, what the hell, you don’t buy a grand piano every day.

“Wrap it up, would ya?” I said at the checkout desk.

*  *  *

From my bedroom window I could see Jennifer in the backyard, wearing her tutu and leaping all over the place. It was dangerous as hell to sneak in and get Barbie, but I couldn’t keep a grand piano in my closet without telling someone.

“You must really like me,” Barbie said when she finally had the piano unwrapped.

I nodded. She was wearing a ski suit and skis. It was the end of August and eighty degrees out. Immediately, she sat down and played “Chopsticks.”

I looked out at Jennifer. She was running down the length of the deck, jumping onto the railing and then leaping off, posing like one of those red flying horses you see on old Mobil gas signs. I watched her do it once and then the second time, her foot caught on the railing, and she went over the edge the hard way: A minute later she came around the edge of the house, limping, her tutu dented and dirty, pink tights ripped at both knees. I grabbed Barbie from the piano bench and raced her into Jennifer’s room.

“I was just getting warmed up,” she said. “I can play better than that, really.”

I could hear Jennifer crying as she walked up the stairs.

“Jennifer’s coming,” I said. I put her down on the dresser and realized Ken was missing.

“Where’s Ken?” I asked quickly.

“Out with Jennifer,” Barbie said.

I met Jennifer at her door. “Are you okay?” I asked. She cried harder. “I saw you fall.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?” she said.

“From falling?”

She nodded and showed me her knees.

“Once you start to fall no one can stop you.” I noticed Ken was tucked into the waistband of her tutu.

“They catch you,” Jennifer said.

I started to tell her it was dangerous to go leaping around with a Ken stuck in your waistband, but you don’t tell someone who’s already crying that they did something bad.

I walked her into the bathroom and took out the hydrogen peroxide. I was a first-aid expert. I was the kind of guy who walked around waiting for someone to have a heart attack just so I could practice my CPR technique.

“Sit down,” I said.

Jennifer sat down on the toilet without putting the lid down. Ken was stabbing her all over the place and instead of pulling him out, she squirmed around trying to get comfortable like she didn’t know what else to do. I took him out for her. She watched as though I was performing surgery or something.

“He’s mine,” she said.

“Take off your tights,” I said.

“No,” she said.

“They’re ruined,” I said. “Take them off.”

Jennifer took off her ballet slippers and peeled off her tights. She was wearing my old Underoos with superheroes on them, Spider-Man and Superman and Batman all poking out from under a dirty dented tutu. I decided not to say anything, but it looked funny as hell to see a flat crotch in boys’ underwear. I had the feeling they didn’t bother making underwear for Ken because they knew it looked too weird on him.

I poured peroxide onto her bloody knees. Jennifer screamed into my ear. She bent down and examined herself, poking her purple fingers into the torn skin; her tutu bunched up and rubbed against her face, scraping it. I worked on her knees, removing little pebbles and pieces of grass from the area.

She started crying again.

“You’re okay,” I said. “You’re not dying.” She didn’t care. “Do you want anything?” I asked, trying to be nice.

“Barbie,” she said.

It was the first time I’d handled Barbie in public. I picked her up like she was a complete stranger and handed her to Jennifer, who grabbed her by the hair. I started to tell her to ease up, but couldn’t. Barbie looked at me and I shrugged. I went downstairs and made Jennifer one of my special Diet Cokes.

“Drink this,” I said, handing it to her. She took four giant gulps and immediately I felt guilty about having used a whole Valium.

“Why don’t you give a little to your Barbie,” I said. “I’m sure she’s thirsty too.”

Barbie winked at me and I could have killed her, first off for doing it in front of Jennifer, and second because she didn’t know what the hell she was winking about.

I went into my room and put the piano away. I figured as long as I kept it in the original box I’d be safe. If anyone found it, I’d say it was a present for Jennifer.

*  *  *

Wednesday Ken and Barbie had their heads switched. I went to get Barbie, and there on top of the dresser were Barbie and Ken, sort of. Barbie’s head was on Ken’s body, and Ken’s head was on Barbie. At first I thought it was just me.

“Hi,” Barbie’s head said.

I couldn’t respond. She was on Ken’s body and I was looking at Ken in a whole new way.

I picked up the Barbie head/Ken and immediately Barbie’s head rolled off. It rolled across the dresser, across the white doily past Jennifer’s collection of miniature ceramic cats, and
boom
it fell to the floor. I saw Barbie’s head rolling and about to fall, and then falling, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was frozen, paralyzed with Ken’s headless body in my left hand.

Barbie’s head was on the floor, her hair spread out underneath it like angel wings in the snow, and I expected to see blood, a wide rich pool of blood, or at least a little bit coming out of her ear, her nose, or her mouth. I looked at her head on the floor and saw nothing but Barbie with eyes like the cosmos looking up at me. I thought she was dead.

“Christ, that hurt,” she said. “And I already had a headache from these earrings.”

There were little red dot/ball earrings jutting out of Barbie’s ears.