The Advertisement

Everywhere I go, I see advertisements. When I close my eyes, they remain, burned into my retinas like afterimages of a sun I never chose to look at. I dream in advertisements now. I wake from sleep reciting slogans I don’t remember learning. The voice in my head is no longer entirely my own. I hear advertisements; a persistent tinnitus of commercial demand that follows me throughout the day.

I descend into the subway to visit my friend’s apartment. Advertisements line the kiosk while I wait. Advertisements wrap the interior of the train itself. Vinyl skins promising relief from ailments I didn’t know I had. I insert my headphones. An advertisement plays before the podcast. The podcast itself contains advertisements. The advertisements contain smaller advertisements, nested like Russian dolls of capitalist desperation.

I exit at her stop. We sit on her couch and scroll through Netflix, searching for something to watch. Netflix, a paid subscription service, shows us advertisements for Netflix on Netflix. We select a prestige drama. Every shot lingers on a new luxury sedan from angles so deliberate, so loving, that I begin to suspect I am not watching television but rather a very expensive car advertisement.

The episode ends. My friend and I confess, suddenly and without preamble, our mutual love for one another. We have always felt this way, we agree. We hope the next episode will autoplay without interruption, but as we discuss the years of unspoken longing between us, an advertisement begins in the background. We ignore it. We kiss.

We move to her bedroom. She tells me, breathless, “I got laser hair removal. For free.”

“Free?” I ask, because nothing in this god forsaken world is free. Even god’s love costs 10% lest we forget.

“How did you get that for free?”

We continue to kiss. We undress. I look down to where, in a more innocent era, there would have been a bush or the absence thereof.

Instead, etched perfectly into the remaining follicles, rendered in a sans-serif font optimized for legibility at close range, is an advertisement.

Dr. Robowitz Cosmetic Surgery & Laser Hair RemovalLicensed & Board CertifiedNow Accepting New Patients.