South of the Border
is busily manufacturing
reality. Here I can visit
a simulacrum of the third
world, a frontier trading
post where I can exchange
my dollars for suddenly
unfamiliar commodities,
while playing at having
contact with the Other.

Of course in the Hot
Tamale Fireworks Store,
the Other I meet is not
Mexican at all. He is a
white teenager named
Bobby, who says,