hooker and ken

This will be my last post from Cov for probably some years - if not forever. I will have to make do without internet for some weeks now; however, I will try to write at home and publish from my uni, so I guess my move shouldn't interfere too much with this little experiment.

In dandy_assissin's livejournal I read about the documentary 'The Corporation', and thus decided to watch it myself. It was pretty interesting, but what struck me was a short clip of advertisement for Barbie. I guess most of us know the exaggeratedly curvy blonde whose world is as pink as her brains are plastic. I can remember a time when I truly loved my Barbies. I'd cut and dye their hair, let them scratch each other's eyes out, tailor my own clothes for them, let them have unprotected sex and lead a terribly reckless life - in short: I re-enacted the everyday intrigues and absurdities a 12-year-old is surrounded by.

Well, since the concept of homosexuality did escape my understanding until I was 14 and started reading Trainspotting and other highly educating literary works, the fact that my Barbies had sex implies that I was also the proud owner of 'a Ken'. In fact, I was the less proud owner of two Kens. Or, rather, two half-Kens. You see, that's when it starts to get complicated... so I shall start from scratch and bore you a bit before getting to the point.

My first Barbie (and the Ken to go with her) was a present from my sister, who is eleven years my elder and thus felt now that she turned twenty, she didn't need a Barbie anymore. I was nine, and didn't quite know what to do with this far too grown-up doll that wore terribly old-fashioned make-up. Mind you, I was nine, it was the early nineties, and this frigging doll looked as if she'd hidden from mainstream culture for at least a decade - which indeed she had. I didn't so much mind the make-up - it reminded me of my mum - as the fact that none of her clothes seemed to fit. This was due to my grandmother, a tailor who was always intent on dressing Barbies like her grandchildren: in dresses and skirts that would have made a potato bag look stylish. These dresses also introduced me to the phenomenon of bare breasts long before Janet Jackson did the same for the American public. There was one dress which had neither sleeves nor straps, so due to the afore-mentioned shape it'd slowly... give in to gravity. Not even Barbie's (back then not so) impressive bust could've helped it. Which again proves that breasts teach us something about nature's laws - one way or the other, sooner or later.

My Ken, however, never had the pleasure of running around bare-chested. He was a very particular specimen of a Ken: his waist was bendable. Unfortunately, the rubber-strap that connected the top to the bottom half eventually went the way of all that is mortal and surrendered to material fatigue. So in time, I found myself left with two half-Kens. It proved to be a blessing in disguise, however, as I was given another Barbie for my tenth birthday. Finally, finally the age of monogamy had come to an end!

The two halves (the top was Paul, the bottom Chris) freely swapped their girlfriends (Stefanie and Sabrina - named after two of my arch-enemies at school) and led a happy and promiscuous life. True, Chris had no brains and Paul a bit of a wimp, but hey! I was ten and had no understanding of the fact that brains and sex-appeal usually go together (although the correlation is not reciprocal).

What finally ended the merry adulterous existence of Paul and Chris was - who else could it be - my mum. She found out about my slight misconception of how it all works and probably decided that a threesome would be better than all hips and no brains or vice versa. Thus, she offered me to buy a new Ken if I threw away the two halves. I agreed, for I saw my chance to finally get hold of 'Sport-Ken', the ultra-flexible lad with fully functional knees and elbows. So Chris and Paul went and in came Steve. (He had no bendable waist, unfortunately. I guess Mattel had stopped making these allusions somewhere along the line, though I wonder why. Ever tried to spread Barbie's legs? Good luck, then. The poor lad's been given a dysfunctional girlfriend.)

Steve didn't last long, though. He might have been reasonably fit, but teaching him gymnastics was going a tad too far, I guess. He lost a leg. And I was left with poor impaired Steve and his harem. For the leg I had no use; even though my Barbies used to drive around in worn-out slippers and wed in Kleenex, there were limits to the imagination. My awareness of homosexuality might have been non-existent, but I sure as hell had listened to my class-mates who frequently discussed things such foot fetishism. It didn't sound very appealing, and who knew? Steve's leg might have been the first step on this ladder of a sexual-oddities career.

So, 'The Corporation' reminded me of my first Barbie, the two half-men, and the notorious Kleenex-wedding where the top half would pledge his troth whilst the lower half was making out with the bride's maid (I had a firm grasp on reality even as a child). I recommend watching this documentation, and who knows, maybe then you'd like to tell me whether you ever considered buying Mattel stocks...

As I was watching 'The Corporation', I also became aware of another very unsettling phenomenon in our neighbourhood. I usually fall back on the approved household remedy of watching TV when I can't sleep. Going to sleep quite often turns out to be an accomplishment - my body's tired, my mind's still wide awake. You probably know what I mean.

Anyway. Every night between 4.00 am and 4.45 am, I hear a horse slowly ambling down our street. Yesterday, it was 4.21 am. It takes about ten minutes from when I first become aware of its hoof beat until it is out of earshot. Tadack Ta-dack Tadack Ta-dack. Like a horse. But then again, it always occurred to me as rather strange that anyone would ride his horse through a residential area at 4.21 in the night. Who could it be? A cavalry officer returning from his secret romance - if so, why would he take his horse which is far too noisy to make an undetected escape? A headless ghost looking for victims - if so, why is he not in the city-centre where he is more likely to pick up some girls who are willing to lose their head to any passer-by? A lone horse looking for its cowboy - unlikely, since I am not aware that there ever where many cowboys in the Black Country.

Usually, I've always been too tired to get up and wait for the horse to pass out house. This night, however, I had enough of these idle musings and decided to take vigorous action. I jumped up and hid behind the curtain as soon as I heard the first Tadack Ta-dack - I hid just in case it might really be the headless ghost. And the waiting began. I heard the hoof beat approaching, its empty echo growing louder between the brick walls of the terrace houses. Then it was near. I peeked from behind the curtains, but...

What the hell? A hooker? I stared in amazement at this unforgettable image. A woman, dressed in what she probably considered a skirt. If it wasn't for the fact that any larger piece of cloth was obviously missing, I'd have deemed it a belt, but... The hoof beat was caused by her unreasonably high high-heels. I would find it difficult to even put these on, not to mention keeping my balance when letting go of the wardrobe I was holding on to before. She obviously had managed to leave her wardrobe - or whatever other means she might use to steady herself in the first place - at home and was now heading god-knows-where. On these said high-heels. The problem, however, was not her footwear; rather, it seemed to be a combination of heels plus uneven ground plus more than slight inebriation plus an inability to operate a mobile phone. Hilarious. It also explained the slight irregularity detectable in her walk - every fourth step she'd raise her glassy eyes from the display to assure she wasn't bumping into any parked cars as she staggered along.

Which leads me to my question: For a long time, I've felt an ardent desire to know why women choose to walk on high-heels. Maybe it is my ill-conceived notion of what is a turn-on and what isn't, but I simply cannot see the attraction in an inadvertently staggering woman that will in the long run greet you with a pair of crutches. Unless you consider her an easy prey, that is. It is also a mystery to me why some women choose to stumble through life in shoes that can be heard in a mile's radius, yet complain they don't feel safe at night.* It simply doesn't make any sense to me. I don't even find them attractive - and don't tell me I just don't appreciate a nicely dressed or pretty woman when I see one. These 'shoes' simply are a mystery to me, yet everyone in this country seems to wear them. I even found it hard to get hold of any shoes other than moccasins that did not feature at least six centimetres of heel. Good old Chucks excluded, as should go without saying. No matter how many English girls I asked, they couldn't come no with any good reason for wearing them other than 'But everyone does it. It's fashionable.' If you say so.

I'd still be delighted to find out why British women wear significantly more often high-heels than German women do. Is there any obvious reason? Where you trained at a very early age to walk on them without the help of your significant other? Did you ever break your ankle, got stuck in a gutter - I'm really afraid of that - or missed a bus or train because you just couldn't run fast enough? How do you survive eight hours at work in them - they see to me like the modern day equivalent of the corset. Please, enlighten me. I learnt so much about British culture during my stay here, but this is something I couldn't figure out yet. Much obliged for your answers.

A last good-bye from Cov, of which I've grown really fond over the months.

* It is my belief that anyone should feel and be safe, no matter what time of day and irrespective of his/her footwear, but as we all know, beliefs and reality sometimes are - quite literally - two different pairs of shoes.