Companies - by Sasha

It seemed like no one could get a moment of peace this days. Neon lights flash constantly around every corner, sending multicolored beams through the misty air. Loud advertisements were the norm, shouting to lose weight and eat less or screw it all and do what you want! Look at these pictures of the mountains, of the beach, of all the places that are better than where you are and more like where you want to be! Bright, iridescent messages about money, beauty, and power shone at all hours of the night. Even the panels on the sides of the bus glittered and moved as it approached the damp corner of 122^nd and 39^th.

It was raining, and in sharp contrast to the downtown light show, the bus was plain and white underneath the layers of dirt and grime. It shuddered as it drove through a mud-filled pothole, and screeched rather dangerously to a very abrupt halt in front of the dilapidated wooden bench.

The doors creaked open and the new passenger was greeted with the soulless image of an automated driver. He swiped his pass across the pay panel at the front of the bus and sat down, only to be bombarded by screens on every free surface, the city trying its best to soak up money from any potential advertiser. In this case, the entire bus was dominated by the face of one woman, though each screen was comically out of sync with the next.

The passenger didn’t consider himself to be any sort of pop culture fanatic, but in this day, not knowing the biggest celebrities was nearly impossible. Their faces showed up everywhere, spewing their supposed wisdom every minute from his early morning commute to the minute he closed his curtains at night, blocking out the billboard across from his apartment. Of course, the biggest companies tried to show each other up – from Coach to Prada to Chanel, each spokesperson was more exciting and glamorous than the last. But those weren’t the ones that really bothered him. Their words were empty and their slogans were frankly unimaginative. No, there was only one spokesperson who really bothered him, and she was the one currently winking at him from every panel on the bus.

The Real Canadian Superstore, that’s what he called her now. She’d had a different name before, but that hardly mattered at this point. Her face was everywhere, and anyone living in Canada knew who she was. Why a glorified grocery store needed such a ubiquitous spokesperson was beyond him, but for years Real Canadian Superstore had been at the top of the advertising food chain. Most people couldn’t remember when they first saw her, only that everyone in the country could recognize her.

“Real.” He scoffed at the thought. Sure, that was definitely what the ads were going for – with her undyed, straw-colored hair, the smattering of freckles across her brow, the small but noticeable gap between her front teeth – in contrast to the beauty companies, she was supposed to represent a more everyday sort of human being. Someone you could see walking past you on the street, maybe glance twice in her direction, but nothing more. And sure, maybe that’s what she’d been in the beginning – just a normal, nondescript woman (though he knew for a fact she was from Iowa) – but that was certainly not what she had become. Big dreams could take someone to a strange place, and even though her eyes were still that same stunning grey, they seemed to have left some of their depth behind.

The bus couldn’t drop him off quick enough. When it finally pulled up to his brick apartment building (one of the few without a giant billboard plastered to the front), he hopped out of it as fast as he could, leaving her picture behind. He always thought, somehow, that if he could just avoid seeing her then maybe she’d disappear, and maybe tomorrow he’d get through his morning commute without being told how great he’d look in Joe’s fall line.

As he entered his apartment and pulled his dark curtains over his living room window, he found himself wondering, as he too often did, how much better things would be if the world had never become like this. All of these advertisements, all of the consumerism, the misplaced loyalty to companies that never actually cared as much as they professed they did. Perhaps if he’d never gotten into the advertising game, he’d never have met her, never had his heart broken, never have failed. Or perhaps, maybe he just shouldn’t have chosen to become the face of a company like Michael’s.