Prime Time

Ana and I were sprawled on her couch when the commercial came on. Durex. Some new lubricant with a warming effect, the narrator going on about how their love would get hotter. I was eating cold fish nuggets and not really paying attention when Ana cracked an eye open and just laughed. I got it immediately—they were selling lube on regular television like it was dish soap.

The whole thing hit different because I remember when this stuff had to hide. Otto catalog, page 4050, if you knew to look. You had to want it badly enough to dig through a thousand pages of furniture ads to find condoms. But here it was in primetime, sandwiched between other commercials, entirely unashamed about what it was.

Better than those bleak public health campaigns the state used to run, the ones that made sex feel like a disease you had to protect yourself from. This was just direct: people have sex, this makes it feel better, here’s where to buy it. I appreciated that kind of honesty.

Some of the other spots in the campaign had a condom superhero making women happy, which is stupid in exactly the right way. Not trying to be cool or aspirational, just leaning into the slight absurdity of the whole thing. That’s what actually works.