There is a commercial for diamonds that recently played on television, I suppose in honor of the holiday season and in the hope that people would buy diamonds for other people this holiday season. This is not a commercial sponsored by any business in particular but rather, it seems, sponsored by the diamond industry in general, and perhaps paid for by this or that association or society of diamond producers or manufacturers, or perhaps, more likely, diamond dealers, given the fact that diamonds are neither produced nor manufactured but, in fact, mined, and at that by people who most certainly do not have the power to organize themselves into societies or associations that could subsequently fund television advertising ventures, and if they could we can be quite certain that their message would be something other than to encourage their audience to go out and buy diamonds. The story of this particular commercial, in any event, is as follows: It is early in the morning. Perhaps it is Christmas morning. This much seems likely. It is winter, and you can tell this because of the way the light filters into the bedroom, white and muted, as though passing through or reflected off of snow. This is a bedroom in an upper middle class suburban type house. It is the kind of house that is featured in holiday type movies about upper-middle-class suburban type people, the kind of house whose semiotic weight is not wealth -- not an opulent mansion, that is -- but, rather, whose modesty assumes a wealth far beyond the means of most. In just this house, a man and a woman are sleeping next to each other, but, as the commercial gets underway, the man wakes up, stealthily climbs out of bed, folding back the heavy comforter, and a moment later we see him, as I recall, downstairs, plucking a small gift-wrapped box from under the Christmas tree. A moment later, we are in the bedroom again, and this man is gently and stealthily climbing back into the bed, holding, we can imagine, that which he has taken from this small gift-wrapped box he has plucked from underneath the Christmas tree. It is, we can see, a necklace with an elegant diamond pendant. Back in the bed, he leans over the woman, who we can more or less assume is his wife -- perhaps we even see a wedding ring on his hand when he reaches to pluck the small, gift-wrapped box from under the tree -- and gently places the necklace, without clasping it, around her neck, so that the elegant diamond pendant rests lightly against her sternum, then puts himself back into sleeping position, on his back, in the bed next to her. A moment later, we can imagine due to the light pressure it is exerting against her sternum, the sleeping woman, who we can assume is the wife -- do we see her own wedding ring now? -- reaches up with her hand and grasps the diamond pendant. She opens her eyes and holds it in front of them, just above the bridge of her nose. In the next moment, from a classic sex-scene camera angle, at bed level and very close to the lovers, we see the face of the wife above the face of the husband, lowering toward him. As her lips move closer to his, we see him break into a smile, and then the screen goes to black -- while, we can imagine, she is beginning to fornicate him vigorously in celebration of this joyous surprise -- except that at the center there is the image of a small diamond and underneath that image, as I recall, the word "diamond" or "diamonds," or perhaps, the classic tag-line, "diamonds are forever." Now, I know that this holiday season, in particular, turned out to be a tough go for the diamond industry -- the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle Blood Diamond reputedly blew the lid off the already far too well-known ills and evils of the diamond industry in Africa -- and I know that things in the advertising department at the association of diamond dealers, or whatever it is, must be getting a bit desperate, but I have to say that there is something about the narrative presented by this commercial that really doesn't work at all. To understand exactly what, try the following experiment: The next time that you are sleeping with somebody other than yourself -- you lush! -- come morning, while that person is still sleeping, and while muted, white light is filtering in through the bedroom window as though through or reflected off of snow, or even if it's not, stealthily sneak out of bed and go find something about the weight and density of a small, elegant diamond pendant -- perhaps a Cheerio or a paper clip or half of a toothpick -- and then, after stealthily returning to the bed, gently place that item on the sternum of the person with whom, you lush, you are sleeping. Now, watch what happens. I can quite nearly guarantee that the person with whom -- you lush -- you are sleeping will, if the pressure against the sternum is light but detectable, stir irritably and then, without opening his or her eyes, rather than carefully grasping that which you have set upon his or her sternum and holding it up for examination, will in fact swipe at it like an indistinct itch or, even more likely, flick it away like an irksome bug. Because this is what we do when we are asleep, or even half asleep, and even often when we are awake, and we feel a light unidentified touch: we flick it off, or flick it away. It is, therefore, at precisely that point at which the husband gently sets the diamond necklace around his wife's neck without fastening it -- which would surely wake her up at once -- allowing the small, elegant pendant to rest lightly against her sternum, that the narrative of the diamond commercial here in question loses its verisimilitude: the wife in this case would almost certainly flick off the small diamond that sits lightly against her sternum and the small, light diamond would, like just such an irksome bug, go flying, and it would probably end up lost amongst the copious winter bedding, or roll off into the darkness under the bed, or slip into the crack between two floorboards, and the husband would leap up in a panic -- he spent seven hundred dollars on that thing, for God's sake -- and bedding would be overturned and shaken out or there he would be, down on his hands and knees, hurling invectives, crawling under the bed and then knocking his head hard enough to rattle his teeth on the way out, and the wife would be crying, and perhaps the small diamond pendant would never be found at all, which would of course constitute an unspeakable disaster, become a symbol of what was lost already in their marriage, and what no mere jewel could return, and perhaps result eventually in divorce. Or perhaps, more likely, it would be found, but already, by the time it was found and it was hers, it would be saddled with this negative energy, or the pathos of this near-disaster would be clinging to it like residue, like the very filth from which it must have been mined by suffering and interchangeable Africans in the first place, and in the moment of its reception would not be one of joyous discovery, as the commercial intends to suggest, but rather, at its very best, one of relief that it wasn't lost and money was not wasted, the irony of which would be that, in fact, if the purpose of the gift is to produce just such a moment as the commercial depicts, then even if the pendant were found, at this point, the money would have been wasted, since its purpose was not precisely to acquire this pendant but rather to produce this moment, not of relief, but of joyous discovery that leads to vigorous fornication. Do people who can afford diamonds fornicate vigorously?

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