The Ishmael Gradsdovic Papers, part thirty-nine


13 February 1995:

It's a little after eight and I'm fed and packed. I think this morning I'm going to search for a billboard I remember seeing around town. If I remember it right, its two young white people, probably a couple, on either side of a car, as if preparing to open the doors and get in, they're wearing colorful winter clothes -- maybe it's a ski vacation -- and the car is covered in a thin layer of snow. Someone has taken advantage of this fact (it isn't clear who) to write the word "Pleasure" on the windshield by displacing snow with a finger-tip. This word is front and center in the ad. The name of a cigarette brand forms the backdrop for the whole scene.

I'm having a hard time understanding the motivations of whoever it was who wrote the word "Pleasure" on the windshield -- it doesn't seem to be the kind of action the billboard protagonists would find it worthwhile to do, nor does it seem to be in the modus operandi of the typical cigarette consumer. Perhaps it is an in-joke amongst the skiing buddies of the two pictured -- maybe it's not even their car, and they're writing enigmatic and disconnected words on every windshield in the parking lot in some sort of harmless yuppie vandalism.

I'm going to take a closer look. I stayed awake a lot last night worrying about this, now I have to know the answer.


Ah! I erred! It's a black couple, and it's certainly their car because they're in the process of getting in or out -- the woman is in fact inside the car and is leaning out the window, looking across the car at her male companion, smiling and pointing at the word with a gloved hand as if she had just noticed it. The man has his eyes closed and a big open-mouthed grin. His door is open, window too, so he can lean on the open frame and look over the door to get a better view.

The car is a banana-yellow volkswagen bug, and is placed a little off-center in the ad so that the surgeon general's warning won't cover the hood. The background is Celtics-green, the "Newport" logo, almost obscured by the scene in the foreground, emergency orange with a black shadow. Another sign in the neighborhood says that Newport is "Alive with Pleasure," so the word is part of their (new?) theme.

Still, I wonder at their motivation for seeming so amused -- I mean on one level they're being paid to be amused, but they're also supposedly reënacting a scene of some sort, put together with great care -- note the few flakes of snow in her hair -- a scene in a larger drama that is supposed to have some relevance to me as a viewer.

What does this code word mean to them? And why is the writing of it on a windshield the cause of so much mirth. Nobody else will see it -- the photo hints at no other observers or participants, and the word will be wiped away when the windshield is cleared for driving. No, it must be amusing to them alone.

And why are both windows open? If they were open when they got to the car, the vehicle would be filled with snow from the recent fall, and neither would be smiling, except perhaps at the irony of the word "Pleasure" describing sitting on soggy seats.

Or are we to believe that on a cold day like the one pictured, the two have decided to roll down their windows upon entering the car?

Ah, it's a mystery. I mean really, we can't be expected to believe that they're both Newport smokers who are so enthused by their brand choice that they've memorialized their feelings in a transient, devil-may-care way. Sure, they'd like us to believe such a thing, but how likely is it, really? It must be more pavlovian -- they want me to associate the idea of Newport cigarettes with the idea of pleasure, as enacted by the billboard people. But I'm left with a more confusing picture. The words "Newport" and "Pleasure" are joined only by a surrealist escapade of dadaist window-scrawling and wind-chill factor driving mixed with uncontextual or intoxicated mirth. I'm left wondering only how cold it must be in that VW bug, driving in flurries with the windows down, smiling like a fool, trying to keep my hands warm by cupping them around my lit Newport.



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