the yearning for uniforms may be a yearning for security, reliability, protection, and unification... Joanna
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Anonymity?
Through most of the prison-industrial-complex system I sought anonymity and achieved it, one in thousands. It was a great relief to flow en mass down the mercilessly alienating halls, through the multi-tiered lock down labyrinths, punctuated by klaxons, along the miles of chain link fence, twenty feet high, slouching into the next temporary bungalow baking in the heat, into the back of every class, handing in homework (kiss my ass), staring ahead into the void, and leaving the machine eyes of the teacher for the tiled solace of bathrooms, concrete gym locker rooms, steaming cafeterias of stainless steel tables with pebbled wire re-enforced windows, unscathed, un-noticed, un-touched, un-effected, utterly immune---ice water veins emptying into the lava caldrons of rage, dark loathings, and subterranean rivers of hate.
Goosh, Mr. Anderson, why did he kill all those other kids, huh? I don't know Jimmy. Some boys just aren't right...
I used to figure the exact uniform that got no attention, cast no shadow, and when that failed a scowling, arrogant, jerk-off attitude, fuck you too, asshole... seemed to work.
I escaped in a daze every afternoon, hitting the sea of parking lots looking for my nowhere car to smoke and rage my way home in early rush hour, at sixteen, feeling not a day over forty, stalled in traffic watching the huge blood red sun crash into the toxic sewer of la Ciudad de Los Angeles....
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