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.