In my Barbie dreams, the doors open for me right away, the hands of dozens of Kens balancing the heavy metal and glass on their pinky fingers. The other fingers are for me: an index finger for stroking my chin, a bag of tiny, plastic shoes hanging from his strong Ken thumb, and a ring finger for something neither of us can remember.
We ride around the strip mall in my Barbie convertible, running over anyone who talks shit about me or says how demented my shocking blue eyes look. We got some nasty stares at the KFC but I made sure everyone knew that the doll had already been beheaded when I ripped the eyes out to replace my own.
Ken says they’re just avant-garde. I correct him. “They’re Barbie,” I say.
Everything is Barbie in my Barbie dreams. The little cotton candy-scented cloud swinging from the rearview mirror. The corn in my mashed potatoes. My sobs when the plastic eye pops out and Ken has to put it back in for me. I realize that Ken isn’t good for much besides driving us around, so we drive in circles until I stop crying. He wipes the Sharpie tears from my eyes. My Barbie convertible never runs out of gas or the Xanax I keep in the glove box with my sequins and bows.
Ken wants to stop at Home Depot for wood. I wail at the clerk when I realize none of it is pink. Maybe building a dream home isn’t so easy after all. Someone once told me that being Barbie would be impossible. That it was too hard to be that perfect. But I am so good at walking on my tip toes. I have been doing it my whole life, after all.
Ken cries as the Home Depot fades into the distance. I don’t like when Ken cries. I tell him it’s unbecoming of a Ken. But he says he’s missing something and it makes him sad. When I ask him what he’s missing he says he doesn’t know.
I tell Ken it’s okay to be missing something though he really does need to stop crying. We are all missing something. That’s why we have so many jobs. To overcompensate. But I forget that Ken only has one job: a driving me around and around the strip mall until something new catches my eye.
Ken nods and cries some more. I tell him he really does need to stop but I find that I too am now crying. My eye pops out again and I leave it this time. I take the wheel and keep driving, just one eye on the road and my Barbie dream.