Barbie and Ken

Driving through the rain gives me freedom. It feels as though anything could happen. As though I can just drive off into the night never to be seen again. You donn't need to have done horrible unspeakable things to want to start over: a clean fresh slate. Sometimes the most unspeakable wrong is not one ´you've commited , but one you'´ve invited steadily: with every car you bought, every pickett fence you've buit , every steady job you've taken, all the furniture, tvs and pearls you bought to keep your wife at home , because you feel youre so boring she might leave if she ´isn't occupied with something or distracted. The evil you´you've invited goes by the name of monotony. Said monotony is the sad reality of the american dream.

I look down at the dashboard. I´ve got more then enough gas in the tank to drive to the airport right now and enough money in my pocket to buy a plane ticket. Why don´t I? Even the thought of it makes my chest open up bubbling with excitement and freedom , like the body declenches when it´s unclothed of a restricting item of clothing. I could , but I won´t and really I know why... There are a lot of whys. Sarting off with my own question of "why not?" followed by a lot of questions beginning with why , like "why did daddy leave us?" ; "Why is my husband such a unreliant bastard?"; "Why didn´t he just sta: make his money, make love to his wive and secretary, watch his daughters grow up to give them away to men just like him, so they can make their money, make love to his daughters and cheat on them with their secretaries?"

Suddenly I pull up on the drive way. I haven´t even noticed. It´s as though my supconcious pulls me back and makes me gravitate towards this place , not allowing me to diverge from this well internalized route. It´s become ingrained in my brain and happens without me having to think about it , even worse when I decide I want to do something different , I still always end up here.

I turn the key slowly, as to not wake anybody and slip inside. The entire house is deadly quiet and dark, lifeless, but there in the darkness I catch a speck of white on the floor. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I make it out to be a piece of paper....a letter.

I bend down and pick it up:

Dear Ken, I took the car, but left the kids. I know I´m a horrible mother. But I´d rather be a horrible mother then be nobody at all. The last few weeks I felt like I was suffocating, part of the furniture. I know you enjoy this life and I know I should to. It´s everything , everybody told us it should be, but I think I know better now. I love you, but I´m scared to talk to you in a white empty room. I´m scared of getting to know you, not the idea I had of you all these years. I felt it was wrong to leave without saying good bye. Tell the little ones mommy died. It should be easy enough,because Mommy is dead. Barbie is dead...there´s only Barbara and I don´t know her yet. Tell them how I died in a carcrash, was lost at sea, please do me this one favour, as I do you this one. I know you´ll be a better father then I ever was a mother, once you´re forced to spend time with them. By now you should hate me, which makes it easier to leave. Thank you. Always my love, goodbye Ken.

barbie

My brain skips a beat, to then slowly start up again. I´m not even angry. The first and only question that pops up is: What are we running from? And why can we only seem to escape it alone?

Reality has not set in yet. I´m not yet fully assesing the situation, not worring about what my future will look like. I resign myself to my usual habits. Impeneterable and blissfully ignorant. And Ignorance is bliss. I continue on with my evening rituale, hiding in convention. I walk to the bar and fix myself a drink. Waiting for the numbness of habit to seece. Waiting for the tidal wave of realization.

I sit in my armchair and the taste of whisky still on my lips close my eyes.

I´m awoken by the sound of the front door opening. At first I think it´s a waking dream. There´s a woman in the front room closing the door. Her Hair is a birdsnest, her eyes black pits and the caked on make up is cracking , like thin ice.  

It speaks and I know the voice in an instent. It´s broken from crying and lack of sleep , but it´s her all the same. My wive is back, but why?  

I´m back. I found out I was looking for something I didn´t want to find.

She sounds defeated. I stay quiet, letting her pass, surpressing my excitement and the urge of sitting her down at the kitchen table and ask her what it was like to actually do it and go out looking for that "something" I´d thought of seeking so many times and leaving everything behind and above all why she came back once she found it...With all it´s white bright cleanlyness suburbia is designed to be one thing above all a place to be blissfully unaware of everything. If it is one thing its save. But why would my wive risk so much to get out of suberbia, only to save herself by coming back? What was the greater evil out there that made ignorance bliss? A greater evil that would make you save yourself to suburbia, after just saving yourself from it.

I realize it´s morning and that suburban life hasn´t forgotten us. It´s time for breakfast. A breakfast served with a side dish of secrets. A little while later my wive comes down the stairs. She looks composed, neat and groomed as every day previously to this fateful night. there´s next to nothing that gives her away, if I didn´t know better. The Kids will never know. She makes her way to the kitchen quietly her eyes fixed on the door her gaze unwavering. There is something zombielike and submissive about her movement. Soon the house is filled with the usual smell of pancakes and cooked breakfast. But today it´s inticing smell herrolds her submission to this life we are ment to have. Some time later the children clumsily pitter patter down the stairs barefoot and thats when the thought hits me. What if I had left? Unaware and expecting my wive to be where I left her? Our children would have been completely abandoned by both of us. What would they have done? How long would it take for people to notice these two children where home completely alone? Then again who would ever think that two loving parents would both just leave and at that not even together....Noone would think or even fathom such a horrible selfish act. I follow the children into the kitchen. They innocently and eagerly follow the warm homely smell of home cooked breakfast. My wive is tending to food over the oven a thrilly apron around her wasp waist, constricted by hard shapewear. Her body just as constricted as her soul. It makes me chuckle darkly at the analogy. Eventhough I´ve never worn a womens shapewear I know how the corset feels. Men are constricted by other means, internally, through convention and the single acceptable path we are groomed for. Just as girls are groomed to be homemakers, men are groomed to be bread winners..women just have an additional outside representation of being squashed into something. A mold, a way of life, an idea. The children gobble up their pancakes and my wive wipes their little mouths. Hungry just like their souls. Will we go on to surpress that hunger with diet pills, convention and grooming. The same things that made our life so empty and exchangeable? We are like every other american family. Nothing would change if we seeced existing. We are all completely interchangeable. The ideas and afterwar luxuries and opportiunities and above all the promise of freedom that were sold to us made us all the same and we will stay replaceable. That is if we don´t do something different and that different is out there somewhere and Barbara has seen it, even if Barbie won´t admit it. I feel a sense of urgency flare up again, to catch her alone and finally confront her, but she as I did hides behind the smoke screen of her,..our daily routine. It´s unbearable. I cant even catch her eye. Once the kids leave for the bathroom to wash, groom and clean themselves, the moment comes.We are left alone in the kitchen. My wive is leaning over the sink washing the dishes. She seems to feel my stares piercing the back of her head. She stops apruptly and swings round to face me folding her arms across her chest.

I know what you´re going to say. So go on say it.she spits..I´m a bit taken back by the response, its full of viterol rebellion and fear. She´s ready to defend herself infront of both of us. I rush towards her and take her hands in mine full of bubbly excitement and enthusiasm and blurt out: Only you really don´t...this..this is one of the best things that could have happend to us...

She´s completely taken aback by my response and stays perfectly still and looks at me worried, like she suspects I might have finally have lost my mind or as if suspecting it´s all an elaborate joke. I continue :you know every night on my drive home I think about what if..what if I just drive and never stop, what if I left it all behind, but I was never brave enough to do it...but you! You did it! You were brave enough... Tell me everything! I need to know what it´s like outside of suburbia.. Now she speaks, the words errupt from between her lipstick covered shapely lips: Excuse me, WHaat?!?? Aren´t you angry? Mad? Furious?You should be! You have every right to be?. It´s more of a sceech then a sentance. Full of the desperate need to be punished, her sins admitted. But she will not get the response she craves, I´m far to excited and a strange sense of pride fills my chest.

The first thought I had when I finished reading your letter was that I wished I had come with you..or gone first) This response once again baffles her and I lead her by the hands I´m still clutching to the kitchen table and sit her down. Tell me everything.

WIVE ;

The reason I left was Freedom. We´ve been leaving for freedom for years. Our very country was the result of people seeking freedom elsewhere and finding the worst of themselves, once they can´t focus on their pursuer. Freedom... People are overwhelmed by it. Because Freedom has a lot to do with finding yourself. You find yourself to find your own type of freedom. A custom made gown, requires mesurements. You get to know your body. A gown of the rack in a chainstore gives you a tag, a single number, a size you either fit into or don´t and if you don´t you´ll loose or gain weight to fit into it, you don´t need to get to know the width, shape and size of your whole body and how it´s different, you can just fit into the size that fits millions of other women and not think about your own body and it will still be flattering. A personalized life is scarier then suburbia. There´s no recipy, no size, no route, no sign to point you in the right direction. You´re left with a stranger, the person you know least about. Yourself.

She delivered her speech similar to a theatre monologue. It was truth imitating fiction and it was mesmerizing. Like the play of our life had suddenly taken momentum, the previous years being mere build up till the actual plot kicks in. I had never been so attracted to my wive as I was in that very moment. It turned out I didn´t have to fill the empty room , she was more then capable to fill it for the both of us. All my life I had been told it was all up to me, the man. It was up to me to ask the girl out, to propose, to bulid a life for us and I needed to supply conversation, staisfaction and money. The woman had nothing to do, but to sit silently and indulge me. But in that very moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks, I didn´t have to and she was more then capable to supply conversation, imagination and life, like I never could. If I only let her. There was a minute of silence, which seemed to be dedicated to our past life as well as filled with my silent admiration for my wive. My eyes never once left hers and I think we could see each other for the first time since I met her all these years ago. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, for me they were the doors to freedom.