Rector
81
DER LINERS
Recor
CRUISER
WELCOME
ΤΟ
GLADSTONE
POOL
Abandoned by mainstream society. England's Gladstone pool gets a Bert caress from Bod Boyle. Photo: Kevin Thatcher.
(From page 5) them or even write something on them. When you're in a box nobody can see what you write or do unless
they're in it with you, and then it doesn't matter anyway because they're just as much a prisoner as you are. Of course,
those who build the boxes can access them all. They'll keep building, so that even if I leave my box I'll wind up in
another, helpless without a new set of smaller boxes.
I'm realistic. Look at the corner of my block out of my filthy window. Fly over
I'M NOT FRANTIC the grids of Kansas or Los Angeles. This world is round. My skullis round. My
brain is round. But all my life they've tried to make them fit into square boxes and now it hurts so bad I want to crush
my head like an egg in a doorway and make the pain go away. Only if I did that they would just ship me back to
Mom and Dad in a box I could never leave.
I don't have any delusions of hope. Even if I manage to escape these confines, I'd only look up and see one-hundred
boxes looming above me. I'd crouch in the shadow of an immense monolith, scraping crumbs... A wall! Damn it,
I'm back to the walls again, only they have far more depth than I previously considered. They're cement-faced labyrinths
that tremble with the frantic action of their mole-eyed inhabitants who claw each other to death in pursuit of financial
superiority. A select few stand atop the wall and harness this chaotic power, use it to expand and overwhelm the
walls opposite them. Opposing walls on every side build toward each other, thus enclosing the world in a square
noose of perverted progress. This is all capped by a noxious haze of industrial emissions also known as the atmos... No.
NO! It's a box. It's all a big box. I feel so weak. So small.
WAIT
What's that noise? Some teenagers are rolling on skateboards in the street. I hear their wheels roar, then
ride perfect arcs on the wall of Sharpe's Polynesian Haberdashery, land and push out of sight. The urethane thunder
fades, then grows again. They attack from the left this time, the incline boosting their speed as they slide for yards
on a raised painted curb, pump the wave-like undulations on two driveways, then pop up and over the low cement
guardwall in front of Leon's Rib Shack. It must be quite a charge. In fact, I half wish I could be out there with them.
Perhaps the skateboard is a means to escape the massive cubist maze I'm stuck in. Perhaps I can use one to over-
come the angles of all the corners I've been shoved into. Perhaps I can... no. What am I thinking? My youth has
already been sucked away-I'll never find salvation in a toy. No one can. ■
62
WELL, JUE BEEN RITTINGS RECTOR PADS FOR A LONG TIME NOW.
IT'S ABOUT TIME EVERYONE ELSE KNEW HOW RAD RECTOR PADS
ARE TODAY. CHECK COME OUT. FORMER, KNEE SUBBERY PATIENT,
TON MAGNUSGOL
CHECK
SOME
OUT!
FAT BOY
WRIST GUARD/RIOT GLOVE
PROFORMER