Dress Me in Spaghetti, in Slurp & Sew

The mainstays in my Barbies’ wardrobes were clothes sewed by the nuns who stayed with me when my mom and her third husband would go on trips to California and Utah. I wanted clothes that reeked of morning-after glamour but instead I had clothes meticulously sewn to conceal every inch of synthetic flesh. From Western wear to Work wear, my Barbies had the best clothes yet I shunned them in spoiled fashion. Oh to go back three decades and tell the nuns how I would later come to understand and appreciate the time they spent on me via the labors of a conservative closet.

This week I gave my Barbies and Ken away. Mattel sponsors a take back program called “playback” where they turn old toys into new. So before packing up the dolls, I played with them one last time by conducting a photo shoot. From clothed photos that resembled the wacky mediocrity of the opening sequence to Friends, to naked shots that focused on the intimacy of rigid hands in the attempt of clasp, I took the equivalent of a full roll of film. Each picture is weirdly dear to me. The emotion on their faces, the fullness of their personalities. I am so delighted by the portraits that I’ve been posting them to my Instagram stories for the past few nights only to lament over and over again to Jim the next morning, “Why do people not love my Barbie photos as much as me?!” And then tonight, an old friend from my wee-teen years messaged with the probing and enthusiastic question, “Will they scissor????” With the emoji of chin scratching contemplation attached at the end.

I told him, “They’re just gal pals! Plus, after watching the movie ‘Blue is the Warmest Color,’ I was soured on scissoring forever but totally sold on slurpy spaghetti.” 

Blue is the Warmest Color, a 2013 French film, was both notorious and celebrated for its graphic sex scenes, especially the scissoring. Para mi, (a phrase I just learned in my Spanish class), the sex scenes were more exhausting than arousing. But the scenes around the dinner table were hyper sensual. Flatware tinkled and clicked against ceramic plates. Forks tinned against porcelain teeth. Knives were wiped clean by unabashed tongues. And then there was the slurping. Loose knots of noodles were sucked up through the ever narrowing orifice of tightening lips ringed by a saucy nimbus. Their eyes as they ate appeared dead from the normality of it all while the wet openings of their faces gulped and devoured and fed in rapturous glory. Will you ever tire of hearing me say, “what are our mouths when our eyes are departed, but the cunts and anuses of our faces?” 

Slather me in your bolognese and slurp me clean because I’m the bad little ungrateful girl who scorned the nuns’ wardrobe.