Product Placement by Clay McLeod Chapman image : Jeff Smack Flip to page four of this morning’s paper and you’ll find a photo of my wife. Hadn’t planned on finding her there, myself. Didn’t expect to open up the early edition today and see her lying in the road all over again. But there she was -- sprawled out along the highway, just how the police found her the night before. Only now she’s bookended between ads for ladies’ lingerie and pain relievers. Instead of paramedics, she’s surrounded by women in their bras and panties. The ditch is lined in with clearance sales, as if she’d run her car into some department store instead -- these price tags folding over the fender, as fragile as the thickets growing along the road. Marked down by the bumper, slashed right in half. The picture had been taken right after the accident. Most people probably wouldn’t even recognize her, from the way she’s facing the camera. Her hair’s covering most of her face. But if you squint, if you strain your eyes hard enough, taking in every pixel -all those tiny dots of newsprint form into her face. Suddenly it’s Susan. Your ad is printed directly next to the windshield.
Nine out of ten doctors recommend Relieve more than any other brand of pain reliever sold in supermarkets today. For the temporary reprieve of headaches, backaches, and all the other aches and pains your body can muster -- choose relief. Choose Relieve. There’s this woman holding up a bottle to the camera, smiling -- acting as if your product was the answer to all her prayers. You can tell she’s not hurting anymore. She’s sitting next to Susan, as if they were friends posing for the same picture. There’s barely any border between the two photographs, the line dividing your ad from her picture blurring together. It’s funny. Take two completely opposing photos and place them right next to each other -- and suddenly, your eye will connect them together. Your mind turns them into one. I’m sitting in the kitchen this morning. The newspaper’s open, this article about my wife’s car accident right there in front of me. Only I can’t read it. I can’t take in the words. All I can do is look at the ads surrounding Susan, sticking with the pictures -- until I’m linking lingerie with skid marks, shattered glass with child-proof bottle caps. GARDEN
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MAYHEM 57