I saw the ad, but I don’t remember what they were selling. Well, of course, we know what they were selling, it’s just that I can’t remember what this particular product was, or how it was going to help me achieve whatever it was I didn’t know I was missing. The picture was a young couple in bed in their underwear. He was underneath her, boxer shorts and rippling abs, even lying on his back. She was poised above him, long, lithe legs and pastel scanties and an intense but sensitive look upon her face.
They are young and fit, of course, and they have to be as the unseen photographer says, “hold it, just like that…a little longer now…now turn your hip slightly” as the lights flash stark and artificial like the supposed intimacy they are illuminating. In reality he may be thinking of his boyfriend and she’s probably thinking how great it will be to get home and put on some comfy flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, or about the mole on the back of her thigh that they will airbrush out. But all that is necessary is that we buy the illusion, buy the sandwich, buy the toothpaste, buy whatever is pictured in the corner of the ad and not think about the artificiality of it all.
Except.
Except, my dear, that this is how you look to me, this is the way you look at me, this is the moment that never gets old. This is the way we were, this is the way we are, this is the way I will always see us. Illusions, allusions, I care not. Whatever you’re selling, my love, put me down for a whole case.
