The Title Epiphany Hasn't Happened Yet
		I started to play with Barbies the fall after I turned twenty-two.  I was reading an article about Barbies and body image in some feminist magazine, and it got me thining about playing with them.  It seemed irresistibly fun.  I thought it was just a passing desire, but it got worse and worse.  All I wanted, all day, was to play with Barbies.  During sex, I thought about Barbie sex-- permanently smiling, plastic dolls fucking woodenly, sans genitalia.  I considered buying a pink canopy bed.  When driving, I imagined myself in a pink SUV, like Barbie drives.  It was weird-- I hate SUVs.      I never played with them when I was young.  I played outside with bikes and balls or acted out scenes from Scooby Doo with the boy across the street.  (I was Daphne and he was Shaggy.  We omitted the other characters from our plotlines.)  Once my brother and I dragged a garden hose to the top of our slide and made a water park, then charged kids a quarter to get in until our dad found out and made us stop.  If I had to stay inside, then I read.  I never did anything that even remotely approximated playing with dolls.      After about a week of Barbie fantasies, I couldn't stand it anymore.  I drove to Toys 'R' Us and dropped about two hundred dollars on Barbies.  I bought blonde Barbies, brunette Barbies, Asian Barbies, two Kens-- one with plastic hair and one with 'real' hair, regular Skipper, Skipper with breast buds, Barbie beds, couches, tupperware, cars, and clothes.  Oh, the clothes!  Barbie would be better dressed than I was.  Though the clerk didn't ask, I made up some bullshit story about my niece's birthday, put them on my credit card, then drove home as quickly as possible.      During that time, when I first got them, they were porno Barbies.  My girl friends had told me stories about the dirty things that their Barbies used to do.  One of my friends had even told me she had acted out bondage fantasies with them, when she was nine or ten.  She'd take the rings out of their fingers, and then use the little ring-holes to pin them to the wall with thumbtacks, in a line, then let Ken have his way with them.  Mine mostly had menages a trois.  Sometimes Plastic Hair Ken would be British.  I'm not into bondage.
	After the newness wore off, I only wanted to play with them for maybe an hour or two every day.  I'd usually do it when I got home from work-- just to wind down.  Naturally, I had to do it in secret.  Thank God I no longer had a roommate.      There was one close call with my boyfriend, right after Christmas.  He was supposed to be at some sporting event until God knows when.  But he knocked on the door around four.  I froze in terror, as if a serial killer with a meat cleaver were the person knocking.  Being careful not to knock over Barbie's Brothel, I stood up gingerly and tiptoed to look out of the peephole.  There he was, arms around a bag from New World Deli.      He knocked again.  "Greer?"      I would simply pretend I was not home.  I sank cross-legged to the floor and resumed the losing of Breast Bud Skipper's virginity to Real Hair Ken.  There was no male counterpart to Skipper, so she was forced to sleep with older guys.      I had forgotten he had a key, but then I heard it scraping in the lock.  I jumped up and flipped the deadbolt.  "Jeremy, don't come in!"      "Why not?"       Hmm.  Why not?  This was sensitive.  He might think I was cheating on him if I wasn't careful.  "I'm waxing my bikini line."  Yes, that was sufficiently gross, but now I'd have to actually wax it.  Shit.                                                                                                               More soon....