I wish I had a picture of myself with the Barbie Dream Bed, but unfortunately it was confiscated shortly after it was given to me as a gift. If you think that sounds a bit odd, you're right, it was. The truth was, I had been collecting Barbies for a while, but the only ones I really liked were Barbie and Ken (Skipper could fuck right off as far as I was concerned). I didn't have any of the big accessories or anything, and I had asked my mom if there was any chance I could have one for Christmas that year.

It's funny to me that I liked Barbie and not Miko, because I'd way rather be a brunette than a blonde these days, but hey, this was 1984. Blondes were in. Anyway, Christmas drew closer and closer, and I had a suspicion that I might get something really cool that I could use to play with Barbie and Ken.

It was around the same time that one of my classmates, a boy I remember as always looking slightly scruffy, had started to talk about sex to a few of his friends. I had no idea what it was, but I was one of those friends, so when he explained that ladies and men take their clothes off to do the sex thing, I was curious. I was a little confused about the doing it in bed thing -- couldn't you do it anywhere? -- but it seemed like a comfortable choice, I guess. Anyway, you can see where this is going.

So Christmas morning comes, and I rip the gift open and it's Barbie's Dream Bed. It's pretty pimp too, a big four poster affair with a pink quilted comforter that's all ruffly looking and stuff with white lacy edges, and I'm pretty excited I got it. So I ask my mom if I can go play with it, she says sure, and off I go to my bedroom to finally try out the experiment.

So I take Barbie and Ken's clothes off, stick em under the covers and start trying to kind of arrange them how I imagine it might go. The scruffy boy at school had said that he would stick his thing inside a hole in Barbie, but I couldn't find one. I remember being really confused, because I knew where it was supposed to be, but it wasn't there. They just had little nubs. Well, I was going to have to use my imagination (and it was working overtime by this point).

So, my mom found me not long afterwards, and as you can imagine, she was pretty appalled. The bed was swiftly snatched away, and I think I was punished, although I couldn't tell you one hundred percent for sure because I can't remember. Funny thing about it though, I never got the bed back. She must have returned it or something, because I never saw it again. I do recall that my Barbie and Ken were off limits to play with for a while, too.

Well, maybe mom made the right choice. After all, you can see what kind of tomfoolery other people got up to with a later version of the bed if you take a look in the gallery, and that sure seems a lot worse than what I was trying to do. Lesson learned: don't play sex games with your toys until you move out.