Jurassic Park

I'm home alone, bored, lonely, frustrated and a little angry. My knee is up and iced; the brace is loosened, but never off. I manage to get to and from class on the crutches belonging to Che Pablo Salvador Mulholland, but it's very hard work. I'm running a seminar for teachers and I never look good, cool, polished, anything but sweaty and irritable and tired. It's the hottest time of the year and the cart that's supposed to transport me from place to place on the campus never shows up. Finally I'm cleared to drive one myself, but I don't like it so I go back to the clump slump crash of crutch walking.

I miss the boys; I miss hiking; I miss my friend Mike with whom I'd broken up a few weeks before when he made the comment that if I had his kid, I'd be giving birth to my own grandchild. He's only 15 years younger; it'd be half-a grandchild. I'd missed a period and was scared; I don't realize I'm just heading into menopause.

The phone rings.

"Martha? It's Jimmy. Craig and me had this idea."

"Yeah, what?" Grrrrr.

"You do so many nice things for us. I know it's no fun being on crutches and stuff."

"No. I feel like I'm in jail."

"Can you drive now?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Jurassic Park's at the dollar movies Tuesday. We want to take you to the movies and to Mickey D's for dinner. It's 25 cent burgers on Tuesday. That's tomorrow. Can you come?"

I'm dumstruck. All bitter feelings vanish. I have a meeting that night of the Citizens Advisory Council for Mission Trails Regional Park, but I think I'm going to miss it.

"I'd love that, Jimmy."

"We miss you."

"Yeah, well I miss you too." I'm super emotional in this ordeal and my eyes fill. "What time?"

"Come and get us at 4. The movie starts at 4:30. Oh, and Martha, we're paying."

"OK."

I get home from school about 3 and change my clothes and get into the truck and head to IB. All the boys are at Jimmy's house. There's Jimmy, Mikey, Jason, Greg and Craig. They're cleaned up and ready to go, grinning, and silly, and I expect them to start turning somersaults and I feel the same way. Jimmy breaks the spell by saying, "Nice crutches, gimp."

At the movies, they pay my way, very proudly having each pitched in a quarter (except Mikey) and we stand in front of the candy counter and they say, "You can have whatever you want, Martha. We have five dollars." I pick some Red Vines and Jimmy says, "You need a Coke, but we'll get a big one and split it, OK? But I'm not sharing it with butt crust (his little brother)."

"Jimmy!" Mikey whines and sulks and stops and gets his own.

We go into the theater and sit together, two rows from the front. The movie starts. We are the audience, except for a few people scattered in the back. We love the movie even when we think it's dumb. At the end, we leave, a lot less hungry than we were when we went in. It's been a candy orgy, but dinner is yet to come and two doors down are 25 cent burgers. We line up.

"Arrrrgh!" roars Jason at Mikey, holding his hands up like little Tyrannosaurus forelegs.

"RrrrrrrrRRRRGH!" snarls Mikey in return, jumping toward Jason's throat.

"Cut it out, Butt Munch. What do you want?"

"I got my own money," says Mikey, still pissed at Jimmy.

"I'm not talking to you, Butt Crust. I'm talking to Martha," says Jimmy, all largesse.

"Umm, I'll just have a burger."

"You can have fries, Martha. I got enough." He holds out his hand.

"OK. A cheesburger and fries and water."

"Water? Don't you want a coke?"

"Just had one."

"You can have another one, Martha. It's OK."

So we order our 25 cent burgers and sit together in a booth in this freezing cold, antiseptic, yellow and red monstrosity. They are on their best behavior, taking me out. No one sticks French fries up their own or anyone else's nose. I feel a little uncomfortable in this formality, but I adapt and am honored.

Then the event is over. I take them home and head back to City Heights feeling loved, less lonely, less angry and anxious for everything to be restored to normal.

Slaying Dragons

I finish a beautiful October hike up Fortuna Mountain and walk out of the park along Father Serra Trail, the road that leads from the jumps to Old Mission Dam. The road is under construction. There is no pavement and no cars. It’s almost dusk. I’m tired and cold. Cotton socks are stupid and cotton shirts are stupid; they absorb sweat and don’t release it. When your sweat doesn’t dry and the sun drops quickly cotton makes you cold. I’d be better off in wool. My hiking stick is across my shoulders; Molly is beside me. It’s a Saturday.

I talked to my mom this morning. As always, there's something wrong with what I'm doing. She's concerned about the time I spend with the boys. “What does Jim think about it?”

“Jim? He doesn’t care. Why would he?”

“Are you sure? He’s a man and you're his wife! He can't like having all these other men around the house all the time."

“These are BOYS and they hang out with him, too.”

“When?”

“In the garage when they work on their bikes.”

“Does he go with you when you take these boys out?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do their mothers think?”

“I don’t know. They’re happy to have someone to drive their kids around.”

I open my mouth to describe the boys' mothers, to explain and justify myself, but decide not to. Fuck her. She’s an Alice in Chains song waiting to happen. It’s “Dirt.”

“They’re just using you.”

“So what if they are? I go up there to hike, anyway and I have a TRUCK. I don’t care if they’re using me.”

“You need to talk this over with Jim and do what he tells you. It's not right, a forty year old woman spending all this time with teenage boys. I’m sure it bothers him.”

She's a pervert.

I know what I’m doing. I’m hanging out with my friends and playing my sport. We’re all doing the same thing. That the boys feel the same passion for BMX that I do for shoving my ass up sharp hills is the sole motive behind everything.

For the first time in my whole life I am part of a group of friends. I’ve never been that kind of person; I’ve been one-to-one with several friends at a time, none of whom knew each other. But here I am. I’m happy with them. I understand what we’re doing, I know what the rules are, I share their values, we never run out of conversation, we like the same music (until I put a Seal tape in the tape deck). This is what friends do. They hang out, play their sport, eat pizza, talk about stuff, listen to music and have fun. I am 100% behind that philosophy.

About fifty yards from the jumps is a fifteen-foot boulder overlooking the road. I have to look at it and when I do, I see a skinny silhouette. “Hey!” Suddenly, five boys are there, yelling, "Martha! Martha! Martha!”

I wave, walking and grinning, skipping a step now and then, and I forget the wet cold feet and back; they don’t matter any more. My mom’s voice stops rattling in my head. She has no clue, and I can't see that her striving to live in a conventional world where everything makes sense according to arbitrary norms has worked so well for her. She should have seen by now that fate has other ideas and pulled the rug out from under her as it does most of us.

“Look what we got you!” says Mikey, completely radiant. “Craig killed it!”

“Killed what?”

“A rattler!”

“You did? Where was he?”

“Behind that bush over there.”

“It’s still there, you want to see it?”

“Yeah, of course.” We walk over to a remote jump with a forgettable name. They had decided to mess around over there for a change and were surprised by a Mojave diamondback just over three feet long. Craig stepped on it behind the head and cut the head off. Then he cut off the rattles. Boys with daggers. What can you do?

The snake is stiff. This must have happened soon after I dropped them off.

“These are for you!” Craig hands me the rattles, attached to a shred of snake flesh.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, we know you don’t like rattlesnakes.”

“No, I don’t.” I’m not about to give the Nature Bob lecture I would have given any other group of teenage boys. These are not teenage boys. They are knights on raging steeds and they just killed a dragon for me.

Too Sexy

In 1992 I was chosen to go to Hong Kong to conduct a business writing program for Hong Kong businessmen through the American Language Institute. I was incredibly excited and worked it out so that after Hong Kong I would return to Guangzhou, to the university where I had taught 10 years before, and do the same seminar or whatever they wanted. I was going home.

China was the greatest love I had experienced until then and it was years before I recovered from the broken heart of having left. Not that I didn't try to keep the wound open by studying about China, bringing home stray Chinese people I met at the post office, writing a book proving that Pearl S. Buck wrote from the Chinese rather than the Western literary tradition. In 1992 I was still "carrying a torch" for China and going back was all I thought of. Naw, that's not not true. Looking through the journals I wrote at this time, I actually thought of many other things, many of them quite silly.

Jimmy was out of school and hanging out with me whenever he could, including going with me to work. He had conceived a code of honor in relation to those who mattered to him, his family, his friends, that they should be defended from all the dragons and monsters and evil-doers.

I was married. It was a marriage that possibly should have worked, but it didn't work. Bottom line, both of us were just not good at forming an intimate relationship with anyone in our close environment. Jim didn't see such a thing between his parents as he grew up, and I grew up in a house where the closer I was to someone, the more likely they were to hurt me. By 1992, we were very near the end of our marriage, but we didn't know it yet. Jimmy was the first to point it out to me, and the "man" who demonstrated that what I needed and what I had were not the same thing. That is what this story is about, the wisdom of a 14 year old boy offered to a 40 year old woman, and a kind of love that opened my eyes to a world I hadn't known anything about.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We leave tomorrow and Jim's passport is still not here. The INS had a problem legitimizing Jim's presence in the U.S. He was not born here, but rather in Canada, and we've had a whole run around with getting this taken care of so Jim can go with me to Hong Kong. Jimmy shows up early in the morning; he's going to help me photocopy materials for the class. He jumps in the truck.

"You must be excited!" he says.

"I'm very excited. But we haven't gotten Jim's passport yet."

"You're taking that guy? Why are you taking him? He doesn't even like you."

I'm stunned. "He's my husband."

"So? Take me."

"You don't have a passport, Jimmy, or I might think about it." I look at his home-hacked Mohawk, home-poked ear piercing, and know I'd be proud to have him along. Those elderly Chinese women I knew on my old campus, who had come from the mountains of Hai Nan Island, would just think I'd brought my own tribal warlord.

We've been listening to Right Said Fred -- "I'm Too Sexy". The boys mimic the video in a way that that makes parody out of parody with their skinny boy chests, the random safety pin hanging from the random pink nipple, the briefs with the elastic separated from the cotton in back, the jeans falling down not out of fashion but because they're too big, the worn Vans. Mikey, Jimmy's little brother is the funniest, doing his little "...walk on the catwalk." Jimmy turns on the music. Right Said Fred takes us all the way to the intersection of Chamoune and University at which point Jimmy giggles and says, "I'm...too sexy for this tape!" ejects it and throws it out the window in a winsome, elegant little over the shoulder toss.

I laugh. The serious moment has passed. We arrive at school and are ready to begin our last minute prep, when the boss tells me that he got a fax explaining that the program has been cancelled because there was a "fire in the venue."

"Fire my ass," I think. "They don't want me and this is their way of saving everyone's face." Fuck the Chinese. I am over my love affair. I see them for what they are. Not me. Damn them. I know exactly what had happened. The ALI lacks the cultural awareness to fully appreciate that sending a young woman is something of an insult; to begin this relationship -- which they hope will turn into a lucrative contact -- they should send the boss.

Jimmy and I get back into the truck. Jimmy says, "I bet you're disappointed."

"Yeah." I'm actually fighting tears. "I really wanted to go."

"Maybe there'll be another chance."

"Maybe."

We're silent. No music, no talk. Damn. I bought very nice clothes for this.

My husband, Jim, is home when we arrive. Ryan and Jimmy's little brother Mikey are there, too. Ryan is a great kid with a weird mom. Ryan's big liability is that he is physically as beautiful as any girl. Tall, slender, enormous blue eyes, blond hair. He's wearing his Guns n' Roses "Use Your Illusion II" t-shirt which Jimmy mocks mercilessly. Jimmy has intuitively -- and accurately -- determined that Ryan needs a thicker skin or he's going to be crucified.

"Are you hungry?" I ask Jim, thinking we could all go to Taco Bell, but while we're eating lunch, it hits me what has happened and the whole world seems a little askew, surreal, dishonest. I am really disappointed and angry; I'm sad, in fact.

We walk down the street a bit. The light is flat ugly and white. We pass a dead yellow cat in the gutter, really the last thing I need to see at that point. It looks like Sandy, the cat owned by my Chinese brother when I lived in Canton. It seems to represent all my now flattened dreams.

At home I ask Jim if he wants to go hiking with me. A few hours under the open sky will make me feel better, but I’m lonely in my disappointment and don’t want to go just with the dogs. Jim he tells me he has a Toastmasters thing, so no; he won’t go along. As I turn to go inside, I hear Jimmy yell something but the angry noise in my head, angry at the Hong Kong businessmen, my boss and now Jim, blocks the words. Jimmy takes off on his bike. I change clothes as fast as I can thinking, “Fuck Jim,” get in my truck and head to Big Dog Health and Fitness Spa (Mission Trails) for a couple of hours with Molly and Truffle to do as my mom says, "Get my head on straight."

When I return my whole life changes.

Jimmy is sitting on the curb in front of my house. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for you," he says. "I went home to ask my mom if I could go with you, but when I got back, you were gone. You've had a big disappointment today and you shouldn't have to be alone."

"Wow," I think. I was gone at least two hours. To Jimmy I say, "Well, go ask your mom if you can go with me for pizza.”

“Can Ryan go?”

“Sure, and Mikey. I'll go clean up. Come back in about an hour, OK?"

This is our first of many, many trips to Woodstocks. Good pizza, indestructible atmosphere, and the ability to feed half a dozen boys on $20. We sit in the corner that will later become ours, and we play Megadeath “Anarchy in the UK” on the jukebox, then Iron Maiden, then Metallica. We discuss their comparative merits. Only Metallica has any merits. We use paper plates for Frisbees, plug the tops of the salt shakers with torn napkins and loosen the tops on the pepper shakers. We sprinkle too much chili on Ryan's pizza and then the best moment comes. Ryan goes to the men's room and comes back. "Martha, can I borrow fifty cents?"

"What for, Ryan?" I'm amused and flabbergasted; he's 13 and there's only one thing for sale in the men's room. We’ve already put enough into the jukebox. It’ll play our four selections over and over for the next hour.

"They have these cool stickers in the men's room. I'd like to buy one."

Jimmy actually gets Coke up his nose at that, and then it sprays everywhere. At nine years old Mikey has NO idea, and I'm trying not to laugh.

I say. "I'm pretty sure they're not stickers. I think they're probably condoms."

"CONDOMS???"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure? The ones on the machine have cool spiders and stuff. One says, ‘Spyder Skiwear’. It’s got this cool spider on it. I want that one."

"Ryan, people probably put stickers on the condom machine."

"Do you want to come and look?"

"I don't think the other guys in there would appreciate it if I went in there to check out the condom machine."

"Jimmy?"

"Yeah, sure."

He wipes the Coke off his face with his napkin and follows Ryan into the men's room. Mikey and I wait and wait and wait. They finally come back, both laughing like maniacs. I hear Jimmy say, "Dude, you gotta' learn to read."

Don't Call Me White

Montezuma Hall at San Diego State is packed with students watching the riots on the four TVs hanging from the ceiling. With the cops who beat Rodney King acquitted, the riots in LA have us mesmerized, electrified. The students from LA are watching their own neighborhoods. The campus is tense and hushed; not long ago Louis Farrakhan proclaimed, on the free speech steps of this campus, that no minority person could be racist. The suffering and humiliation suffered at the hand, wallet, foot, club and gun of whites justifies the hatred and the anger of people of color. Black people in particular, who had not chosen to come here. Black hatred of Whites is not racism, but a justified desire for revenge.

It is a two way street of ugliness; more white-supremacist organizations are popping up, bringing fascist cargo with its neo-Nazi waybills saying "White men built this country" as if to justify in some heinous way the unjustifiable beating of an innocent black man the year before.

It's Friday, the second day of the riots, and I drive home from school with L.A. Woman in my tape deck. That we are all listening to "L.A. Woman" at this point is just a weird resonance, The Doors movie came out last year and a new generation is listening to Jim Morrison.

A black man in his fifties stands on the corner of Euclid and University, tears streaming down his face, holding a sign, "Can't we all just get along!" These are Rodney King's words, spoken in a moving, generous speech on television, his tearful attempt to bring an end to the riots, but the riots aren’t really about him. Listening to the news, I hear constant discussion about what's really going on. The looting and rioting is not limited to blacks in L.A. (or in the grassfire riots springing up throughout the country). It’s a class war, violent, externalized petulance against the haves by the have-nots. They can get by with it, and they will until they are stopped.
At home, several of hours of daylight remaining, I decide to take a dog up to Chollas Lake for a walk. I know the boys will be around at some point, or I imagine so. Jimmy is still living up here in City Heights with his mom, but the others are in Imperial Beach and need to take public transportation (or ride their bikes) through a couple of San Diego's worst neighborhoods (Barrio Logan, Skyline) to get to this one. As strangely lost and ineffective as their mothers are, they are usually glued to the TVs and may not want to let their boys loose on the streets of San Diego this Friday afternoon.

Chollas Lake is a small reservoir, part of San Diego's water department plan to keep enough water in the city for everyone. It is a sweet little park, a magnet for families in the neighborhood, mostly black and Mexican, to jog, fish, picnic, kiss, and host birthday-party piñata suspended carne asadas. I am very often the only white person walking the 1.2-mile loop over and over to cover five miles. I am curious, admittedly, over how it will be on this day. I park, get out of my red truck, let Kelly jump out with me (as a golden retriever she's the least threatening looking of all my dogs, though she's the only one I've known to bite anyone) and hit the trail.
The park is uncharacteristically empty for a Friday afternoon. People walk, run, talk, sit on benches kissing, as always, but the air is heavy with funereal dread, and I am absolutely the one white person there. After one loop, I notice a couple trying to make eye contact with me, black guy about my age and his girlfriend, passing me going the other way. I lift my head, though my ears are filled with The Doors. I can't hear, and I feel no need to speak beyond an easily managed "Hi!" Another loop. Eye contact rises to friendly waves. I take out my earphones. "Nice day!" I say, talking only about the weather. They stop. We look at each other, our eyes filled with words we read in each others faces. We remember the '60's, the riots in Selma and Chicago and Watts; most profoundly we remember Watts.

I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin' down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman...
So alone, so alone

We don't want it again. We've worked hard, we simple middle-class people, to live and work together, to put old hurts and damage aside; to live in the moment, to acknowledge that most of never cared what color anyone is. We just want to earn a living and hold our lives and families together. We generally want the best for everyone; we know how hard that is to come by. We continue looking intensely at each other, our eyes saying, clearly, "This is so fucked up."

We stand awkwardly, wanting to reach for the other, to make physical contact, to bridge this whole chasm. My heart aches. I believe world peace, in contrast to world war, is won by small brave gestures between individuals.

"How was it?" I ask, a lame question about their run/walk.

"Well, the doc says I gotta' do it. Had a coronary last year."

"Wow, yeah, well then this is the best thing for you."

"My sweet baby here comes along with me every day," he says, putting his arm around the woman beside him. She's wearing a wine-colored jogging suit, gold earrings, a beautiful watch and a large diamond - and new Reeboks. "Got the blood pressure down."

"Good job," I say. Our words say NOTHING. Our eyes are still locked on each other; his girlfriend's suddenly fill with tears. I reach for her and say, "I'm sorry. It's just sad." She takes my hand.

He reaches his hand out, then arm, for a forearm handshake grab of the other hand. "Our family up there. We don't live there no more 'cause of things like this. I grew up in Watts. She from Compton."

My skin feels prickly and cold. "This is insanity," I say. "Complete and dangerous insanity."

"Color ain't the issue. Them peoples' just greedy and don't care nothin' for life."
"You're right. Is your family OK?"

I feel eviscerated by the time I get back in the truck. It's been a long and disorienting day. I don't want to watch the news; I've had all the news I can handle. I am not there; I am in City Heights which is enough. So far things have remained pretty quiet in San Diego but there are extra cops around the bad parts of town. Most of our violence is gang driven, but any imitation of what's happening in South Central LA would break those borders. I feed the dogs, make a tuna sandwich and sit down in front of the TV having changed my mind about the news. I haven't seen any of the boys so figure they're not coming. Usually they arrive by 6 o'clock.

"...the day here is winding to a close the dusk to dawn curfew is in effect. US military troops, army, national guard, and marines have been called in... LAPD will take any extra help they can get. The National Guard were deployed, and that allows the police to make arrests while the Guard sets up perimeters of protection for the troops...LAPD is highly outnumbered; to restore calm and make it last they need all the help they can get from the military and the national guard...It's Friday night, not a work night. They are afraid the riots could turn really deadly. Because many gun shops and sporting goods shops were looted and all the guns and ammunition were stolen, a lot of folks think that because it's a Friday night if you introduce alcohol into any kind of situation w/guns involved it could become very volatile."

Jimmy shows up about 7. "Martha," he calls through the screen door. Molly and Kelly get up and stretch.

"Hey. Did you eat?" My refrigerator is open to them; I buy extra cold meat and bread and cheese every week and they empty it.

"Yeah. Mom got a pizza." Her welfare check would have arrived that day, right. The news had just said that the postal service in LA stopped and people were waiting in line at the post offices for their checks.

"Cool."

Jimmy sits down in front of the TV and watches silently for a while. "This is awful, Martha."

"I know, Jimmy."

"What's gonna' happen?"

"They'll stop it. With the military in there it can't go on much longer. There is enough manpower to make it impossible now. They might be able to get the fires out."
"Why did they beat up that guy?"

"They were assholes." Jimmy wants social justice. He has lived and grown up in neighborhoods where Section 8 housing is a major fixture of the landscape. His classes are so mixed that his green-eyed freckled whiteness is the diversity. He believes in tolerance. This boy is absolutely egalitarian. He has tried to interest the black kids on our street -- notably Darris, Donald and Andre -- in riding BMX by helping them build bikes in my garage. He's had limited success; it's a white sport and he has not realized that. Blacks play team sports; and the individualistic wild-cowboy focus of BMX is more likely to be white than black.

"Yeah. Makes me ashamed."

"You didn't do it. Don't take on someone else’s shame, Jimmy. That's crazy."

"Yeah, but white people?" He's been raised to believe that white guys should be good guys. "Why would they kick that poor guy like that? They were cops. How come they let the cops go?"

"I don't know, Jimmy. Look, a lot of stuff that happens in life doesn't make any sense and you can't force it to make sense; it just doesn't. So what's going on?"

"Well, maybe tomorrow Jason and Craig'll come up, if their moms let them. Otherwise I'll just hang with you and whoever's at the jumps."

"OK," I nod. It's not the best time for those guys to be riding around down there. "I'm going hiking so, yeah, if we get an early start, we can go down and get Craig, Jason and Greg." I sometimes go down to Imperial Beach to get the boys. The news is reporting sporadic outbursts of violence and looting in Barrio Logan where the boys catch the trolley. Nothing much came of it, and it may not even have happened, but we couldn't know that at the time.

"I gotta' go get milk for the twins," says Jimmy, getting up. "I'll come back after, OK?"

"Sure." The front door slams behind him. It is two weeks before I see him again.

Jimmy rides to the liquor/convenience store on the corner for milk. For the first time he has a bike that came with all its original pieces. His mom, aunts, uncles got together the money they could to get this bike for Jimmy for his fifteenth birthday. It isn't a new bike, and it isn't a great bike, but it is the best bike Jimmy has ever had. He is proud of it and maintains it as perfectly as possible; replacing what breaks with the best parts he can. The frame is intact, true, and safe, shiny and silver. He locks it to one of the phone booths by the street, under the light. When he comes out with the milk, the lock has been hammered apart, and the bike is in the hands of a black guy twice Jimmy's age and size. In blind fury Jimmy drops the gallon of milk and runs at the guy, who tosses the bike to a friend, plows Jimmy in the face and knocks him to the asphalt. Jimmy tries to get up, and another black guy kicks him in the ribs. When the ambulance comes for Jimmy he is unconscious with a broken arm and two cracked ribs. It doesn't really matter that the police arrive. They don't catch the thieves or get the bike back and they can't fix anything. Jimmy never lives in City Heights again. I make many more trips to Imperial Beach after he moves in with his uncle, but most of the time after this, he and the others ride their bikes from Imperial Beach to City Heights, to be with Jimmy's mom and to ride the jumps at Mission Trails.

Je suis l'anarchie

Here's a small piece of a big story I've held in a long time from the pain and the beauty of it. Boys on Bikes. My car radio confirmed the realization that I was ready to write it as I was driving back from town Saturday afternoon. I hit the radio button and there was Bad Religion... Zoom!

Jimmy slides into the passenger seat -- his seat because I am "his" Martha. The others can sit where they can in the back of the 1988 Red Ford Ranger under the canopy of the sistine camper, but he's the man of this outfit just as he is the man of his family, a little brother, a little sister and twins -- and a mom, strong, stringy, trashed-out, beautiful-hearted beloved recovering addict mother. These kids are poor; as poor as you can be and still cling to the underbelly of white middle class America in California. His mother's kitchen is wallpapered with German cockroaches and the little kids suffer constant ear infections, but there is nothing she can do; she doesn't rent it. She's basically squatting in a tiny condemned house with a sliding foundation facing an alley a block from me. Her brother was evicted when the place was condemned; she holds her tentative ground until the arrival of the wrecking ball.

Music is critical and my truck rocks loudly down our street. For a while it has been "The Unforgiven" and "Wherever I May Roam" (our anthem and we sing it loudly). We agree that Metallica is way better than "Scummy Posers" or "Megabreath." I feel a kind of triumph driving a bunch of young metal heads through our rap and banda infested neighborhood. We're all going where we love to go to do what we love to do. It can't be better than that. As soon as I start the truck, Jimmy holds up a tape, one of the home-recorded often erased and mangled tapes he uses to copy albums from his uncle or a friend or "Uncle Lisa" his lesbian aunt. He pushes the eject button and our recent soundtrack, Metallica Metallica lands in his waiting hand. He rolls down the window of the truck, ready to eject the tape even further, but changes his mind and tosses it onto the floor. "Do you know punk, Martha?"

"I know a little bit about it." I smile. Ahhhhh.

"Well, punk is better than metal."

"Why is that, Jimmy?"

"Just listen." There really IS no better answer, so I just laugh my agreement and for a few weeks we go to the BMX jumps at Mission Trails Regional Park with a Bad Religion soundtrack.

They had been riding their BMX bikes the ten miles from our street to the jumps maybe once a week. Jimmy never tells his mom how far it is, and when they realize that where I hike is where they dream of riding, they are in my truck almost every day. The weekends are best because Jimmy's friends come up from Imperial Beach to spend two nights. I wait Friday nights to hear the call, "Martha! Come out! Watch me do a can-can! I really got it now!"

They build and rebuild their bikes in my garage from random parts they pick up wherever they find them. One flat, hot August day, we "borrow" a surfboard from an open garage in Imperial Beach, and I am pretty sure they similarly "find" some bike parts. A great day is when one of them brings home a good Haro fork or an uncracked Mongoose frame. At the jumps the bikes break constantly; rims crumple and forks shatter landing from a flight 8 feet in the air over "The Doubles." Over and over they pick themselves up (thank god) bleeding and dusty and throw their bikes on the dirt yelling, "You fucking shit bike!" before picking it up again, cradling it in their arms like a beloved, wounded child, carrying to the scrap of shade in that blistering chaparral dust and fixing it. They have no choice. No one they know can buy them a new one. Until locals see what skillful, disciplined and fearless riders they are, they take a lot of shit because they don't have the fancy expensive bicycles or gear those kids have. They have what can't be bought; sheer guts.

Most times Molly, Kelly, Truffle (dogs) and I hike while the boys ride. We range the sharp hills and valleys, following the beauty. We usually cover six to eight miles, running with the same wild-Indian rage and rapture the boys ride their bikes. The boys have hiked with me and know this, and we are ecstatic happy whenever we are together. I am the right kind of wild adult for them; I don't think what they do is reckless, dangerous or crazy, but rather spellbinding and beautiful. I buy a video camera and begin to film their passionate, daring, impoverished, gallant boyhood. I'm new to the camera and my one habitual mistake yields the name of our production company, "Lens Cap Productions." Form matters; incredible discipline goes into what they do, these boys who flunk most of their classes and for whom high school graduation comes as a miracle. "Jimmy needs to learn to apply himself," said Jimmy's ninth grade report card. Right.

So when the moment comes in the trajectory toward their maturity to make the move from Metallica to punk, it doesn't surprise me; but it does make me proud. Sure it means fewer trips to Freedom Guitar to listen to the way Jason is able to pull a riff from Master of Puppets (for the hundredth time). We listen to Bad Religion, to Offspring, to Black Flag, to the Ramones, Beastie Boys... Then, one day...

"Have you heard of these guys, Martha? They're from your day."

"What's this? My NIGHT?" I laugh.

"You know what I mean. I got this from my uncle." He shoves a tape into the deck, throwing Offspring out the truck window. Jimmy has found the heart of it and the song that comes up is the hymn uniting this very particular 41 year old woman with this 15 year old boy. We don't want to be anarchy; we can't help it.