On this fourth and remaining day of the Day by day Heller Barbie commemoration, beneath is an excerpt from my memoir, Rising Up Underground, that describes my teenage love affair with an actual life Barbie surrogate—a really profitable tv industrial actress. The story spans 1960–1966, when, throughout my metamorphosis from tween to teen, I watched extreme hours of Saturday morning TV with dozens of commercials for dolls, racing vehicles, assorted standard toys and different gender-targeted consumables, contributing to the Marxist-Capitalist I’m right now.
This portion of my memoir begins with a recollection of being launched from confinement in a nightmarish personal prep college right into a progressive highschool that was my heaven on earth. It segues right into a miraculous encounter with a fantastic dream woman who was the embodiment of the transistional Barbie “stereotype”. Though we had been complete opposites (my shaggy hippie persona was the anti-Ken, whereas her unblemished pert look was Barbie incarnate), extremely we had been an ideal match.
(I made a decision to not present the one {photograph} I’ve of her from again then for privateness causes; the photograph of me beneath was taken by her at the moment.)
The McBurney reprieve modified my deeply dour teenage life and ended my descent into Dante’s 9 rings of highschool hell. It was a dream come true. If I nonetheless had any doubts in regards to the miracle of redemption, I grew to become an unequivocal believer in a divine energy when a second unimaginable dream got here true. I used to be on karma roll.
A few years earlier I had a vicarious crush on a toddler actress-model who appeared in scores of ubiquitous commercials for the advertisers and sponsors of dozens of Saturday morning community TV children’ exhibits. These fantasies had been by no means overtly erotic—I merely daydreamed that we had been going regular—and just like the lyrics of so many pop songs, I imagined that she “wore my ring.” I used to be sensible sufficient to know she was an unattainable obsession. Dreaming, wishing or praying was not going to make our relationship actual. She was so fairly; she was the quintessential embodiment of blemish-free American Barbie perfection, the talisman on commercials for toys, dolls, video games, cereal and extra. She was a well-recognized, welcome presence on all the tv exhibits from when she was 6, 7 or 8 years previous till she was, say, round 11 or 12 years previous. Then she simply disappeared. I reasoned she was the sufferer of “previous age.” I forgot about her.
Till one night time. Because it occurred, I used to be residence alone whereas my mother and father had been off on one in every of their lengthy holidays. I used to be watching Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Present” when, close to the sign-off at round 1 a.m.—the time most networks aired their obligatory pro-bono public service commercials—I noticed an oldie that had performed a number of years earlier. I remembered it vividly. It featured a younger boy and woman sitting on a constructing stoop reciting their strains in a name and response singsong method: “Mayor Wagner does it,” mentioned the boy, “Mickey Mantle does it,” mentioned the woman. “Willie Mays does it,” and so forth. After a pair extra names, collectively they appeared instantly on the digital camera, smiled, and in unison uttered the catch-line: “All of them pitch in for a cleaner New York.”
It was the woman!
The exact same actress I had such a crush on from these Saturday morning commercials. Since this PSA was produced a number of years earlier than, I thought that she was older and lovely too within the well-scrubbed, bright-eyed means that typified an American ideally suited. She was my ideally suited. I questioned if she had been nonetheless an actress. Remembering my classic recollections, I drifted off right into a deep sleep.
I can let you know she was, certainly, older and lovely. Essentially the most lovely woman ever. How did I do know? In spite of everything, there was no Google Picture search engine in 1966. It was like being in essentially the most exceptional dream anybody may ever hope to have.
The fact, nevertheless, goes like this. The very subsequent night, that woman on TV walked into my mother and father’ house. I wasn’t hallucinating or delusional (I didn’t do any medicine, then or ever). Sure, she was older. Sure, she was a hanging redhead, sporting crimson lipstick with a TV mannequin’s smile. If I hadn’t believed in a merciful God earlier than, this marvel definitely cinched the deal.
As random as this visitation may appear, it was not as divine as strolling on water, making fishes into loaves, or curing the blind. I used to be pals with fairly a number of children who had been working in present enterprise. (I even tried auditioning, but gave up after failing to get any elements, even walk-ons.) My pals went to the Skilled Kids’s Faculty or the Lincoln Sq. established for skilled baby actors, musicians, singers, and dancers. One inevitability of rising up in New York’s personal schooled, middle-class social circle was being classmates or teammates or occasion pals or steadies with the kids of well-known folks or befriending children who had been themselves reasonably well-known in roles on TV soaps or Broadway theater. At McBurney my pals included Chris Roberts, son of Pernell Roberts of Bonanza; Jason Robards III, son of actor Jason Robards Jr.; Keith Kaufman, son of Murray Kaufman (Murray the Okay), WINS disc jockey and the so-called fifth Beatle; and Richard Thomas, who the 12 months after leaving McBurney Faculty grew to become John Boy, star of the hit present The Waltons on CBS. I frolicked for some time with Mia Farrow’s youthful sister Tisa and fairly a number of different children who then or later grew to become actors and present enterprise personalities.
One such pal, Jan—a 15-year-old aspiring singer-actress and the daughter of a veteran Broadway performer—would often cease by my [parents’] house [in Stuyvesant Town]. Jan’s finest pal was Virginia (Chicky) Mason, that woman on the Saturday commercials. Her divorced stage mother had left her job as a industrial artist (I had no concept what that was) to handle her daughter’s transient although profitable and, I assumed, profitable profession. Jan and I went out now and again however weren’t unique. We’d make out, principally. It was a coincidence that on that night time, after I’d watched the previous PSA, she introduced Chicky to my home on the possibility we’d make a pleasant couple. We did.
Coincidence or destiny? I don’t imagine that it was a coincidence, however I’m skeptical about destiny. It was beneficiant of Jan, I’ll say that.
Chicky was the primary woman I ever cherished and who cherished me again. We spent all our free time collectively. Life appears to go extra slowly once you’re that age; in actual fact, we had been collectively solely six or seven months earlier than an argument led to a tragic breakup. I nonetheless assume fondly of these occasions along with her.
[And with the release of Greta Gerwig’s riff on the American myth, I have been thinking a lot of how my few months going steady with a real-life Barbie influenced my circuitous adolescence.]
