Salt and Pepper

Salt and Pepper

The Ken doll is a bigger hit at Toy Fair than Mattel could have predicted. Buyers think Barbie’s boyfriend is a stroke of genius, and mothers feel that Ken makes Barbie less scandalous since she’s no longer a lone woman on the prowl.

Back at Mattel, Stevie worries that Jack may be the one on the prowl thanks to a new secretary, a pretty statuesque brunette. He’s gone out of his way to welcome the long-legged typist and make her feel at home. One afternoon Stevie finds him perched on the secretary’s desk, charming her with some story about his travels to Japan. Stevie feels nauseous watching how Jack’s eyes are trained on the typist’s breasts.

Stevie knows that for now, she’s the only one. But monogamy in Jack’s world has a shelf life, and she can tell they’re coming to the end of theirs. Jack loves women; he cannot help himself. He’s drawn to them, and they’re drawn to him. Where there are women, there is Jack.

Stevie can’t shake the sense that he already has his next conquest in his sights and fears that it’s just a matter of time before he woos the secretary away from her typewriter and into his arms. And then where does that leave Stevie? She won’t share him, but she also knows she’s not quite ready to give him up yet.

Being with Jack is intoxicating. He puts her in the center of a fantasy that he’s created for her. When she’s with him she feels sophisticated and daring, and the past three months have been magical. But at some point, she’ll have to face the fact that being with a womanizer is a little like being on a sinking boat. You plug your finger in one hole only to find another leak has sprouted. Stevie knows she doesn’t have enough fingers to keep from going under.

Not long after the Ken doll is released, Ruth comes home one day to find Elliot up in their son’s room, the door closed. She stares into an Italian movie poster taped up and gently knocks. “Boys?” She hears a soft murmuring through the door. “Ken? Elliot?”

“Ah, give us a minute,” says Elliot. “I’ll—I’ll be right out.”

“Is everything okay?” she asks. “Ken, honey, are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” he says, not sounding fine at all.

Ruth can’t stand being shut out like this. She turns the doorknob, steps inside, and before Ken hides his face in shame, she’s already seen the tears.

“Ruth,” Elliot snaps, disappointed that she couldn’t leave it alone and had to barge in. “Give me a minute with him, would you, please?”

She backs away, wounded that her son doesn’t want her there, that he would rather confide in Elliot than in her. But both her children have a different relationship with their father—dare she say, a better relationship with him. While she’s grateful that Elliot has such a strong bond with the kids, she’s also envious. And yet she understands it. Elliot is more patient, more nurturing. He’s more available to them, too. She’s always on her way to a meeting, getting on an important telephone call or generally just too preoccupied with work.

While waiting for Elliot to come downstairs, she smokes a cigarette, fixes a drink and berates herself for being a lousy mother. As much as she wants to, Ruth knows she can’t change her ways. She’s tried, sometimes taking a sudden and overzealous interest in her children. She’ll be overly solicitous of them, feigning interest in a piece of music or some foreign film Ken went to see, mooning over Barbara’s new dining room table or the kitchen blender she just bought. She comes at them like a tidal wave, drowning them with attention for as long as she can sustain it. And that’s the problem—she never can sustain it. It’s like all her attempts to quit smoking. She can’t keep it up.

Ruth hears footsteps overhead. “What’s going on with him?” she asks Elliot even before he reaches the staircase landing. “Is he okay?”

“He will be.” Elliot squeezes the tension in his neck before coming over to her, his hand extended for her drink. He takes a sip and passes the glass back before sinking onto the sofa. “We really screwed up this time, Ruthie. We never should have named that doll after Ken.”

“But I thought he was fine with the name.”

“That was before the doll turned out to be such a big deal. Barbie and Ken. It’s like salt and pepper. You can’t say one without the other. And now the kids at school are ribbing him. Saying he’s dating his sister. They called him a fairy, even roughed him up a little—”

“Is he hurt?”

“Just his pride. You know how kids are. They’re saying he doesn’t have a penis—you know, kid stuff. But it stings. We should have listened to Barbara.”

Ruth sits beside him, her gin sloshing in her glass. She thought they were doing a good thing, that her children would be flattered and see the dolls as a tribute. She knows how Barbie has affected her daughter—the teasing from friends; the occasional request for an autograph, which Barbara hates—but Ruth never anticipated the Ken doll having any impact at all on her son. “Well, what the hell do we do now? We can’t change the name.”

“Hopefully this’ll pass, and he’ll be able to block it all out or else find a way to make them cut it out.”

And he does. By the fall of 1961, Ken finds himself a girlfriend. He’s seventeen years old and Suzie is the first girl he’s ever shown any interest in. Ken has always been shy and awkward, and though the girl is lovely and quite pretty, Ruth can tell something’s bothering her son. He’s grown moody and spends more and more time in his bedroom. A kid who once played piano for hours a day, he’s suddenly abandoned the one thing that brought him true joy.

As a boyfriend, Ken is going through the motions, doing what is expected. He sends Suzie flowers, buys her a charm bracelet and a necklace. He takes her to the movies and school dances, but his heart’s not in it. It’s like he’s wearing someone else’s clothes. Ruth can’t put her finger on it. Maybe Suzie’s not the right girl. Maybe they don’t have enough in common. Maybe they’re not compatible, although they seem to get along just fine and never argue.

Ken can’t tell his mother or Suzie what the problem is. But the truth is that he doesn’t want a girlfriend. At all. And what he does want terrifies him as much as it thrills him. He steals glances at the other boys in class, admiring their muscular physiques, their strong jaws. When he’s alone at night in his room, his innocent body aches for something he fears isn’t normal. Some would even say it’s disgusting. He scolds himself, denies himself and tries to change himself. But it’s of no use. He knows what he is, and to make certain that no one else knows, he keeps it all hidden behind a forced smile and a girlfriend.

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