this chapter is dedicated to forbidden planet, the british chain of sci-ence fiction and fantasy books, comics, toys and videos. forbidden plan-et has stores up and down the uk, and also sports outposts in manhat-tan and dublin, ireland. it's dangerous to set foot in a forbidden planet— rarely do i escape with my wallet intact. forbidden planet reallyleads the pack in bringing the gigantic audience for tv and movie sci-ence fiction into contact with science fiction books — something that'sabsolutely critical to the future of the field.
forbidden planet, uk, dublin and new york cityms galvez's smile was wide.
"does anyone know what that comes from?"a bunch of people chorused, "the declaration of independence."i nodded.
"why did you read that to us, marcus?""because it seems to me that the founders of this country said that gov-ernments should only last for so long as we believe that they're workingfor us, and if we stop believing in them, we should overthrow them.
that's what it says, right?"charles shook his head. "that was hundreds of years ago!" he said.
"things are different now!""what's different?""well, for one thing, we don't have a king anymore. they were talkingabout a government that existed because some old jerk's great-great-great-grandfather believed that god put him in charge and killed every-one who disagreed with him. we have a democratically electedgovernment —""i didn't vote for them," i said.
154"so that gives you the right to blow up a building?""what? who said anything about blowing up a building? the yippiesand hippies and all those people believed that the government no longerlistened to them — look at the way people who tried to sign up voters inthe south were treated! they were beaten up, arrested —""some of them were killed," ms galvez said. she held up her handsand waited for charles and me to sit down. "we're almost out of time fortoday, but i want to commend you all on one of the most interestingclasses i've ever taught. this has been an excellent discussion and i'velearned much from you all. i hope you've learned from each other, too.
thank you all for your contributions.
"i have an extra-credit assignment for those of you who want a littlechallenge. i'd like you to write up a paper comparing the political re-sponse to the anti-war and civil rights movements in the bay area to thepresent day civil rights responses to the war on terror. three pages min-imum, but take as long as you'd like. i'm interested to see what you comeup with."the bell rang a moment later and everyone filed out of the class. ihung back and waited for ms galvez to notice me.
"yes, marcus?""that was amazing," i said. "i never knew all that stuff about thesixties.""the seventies, too. this place has always been an exciting place to livein politically charged times. i really liked your reference to the declara-tion — that was very clever.""thanks," i said. "it just came to me. i never really appreciated whatthose words all meant before today.""well, those are the words every teacher loves to hear, marcus," shesaid, and shook my hand. "i can't wait to read your paper."i bought the emma goldman poster on the way home and stuck it upover my desk, tacked over a vintage black-light poster. i also bought anever trust t-shirt that had a photoshop of grover and elmo kickingthe grownups gordon and susan off sesame street. it made me laugh. ilater found out that there had already been about six photoshop contestsfor the slogan online in places like fark and worth1000 and b3ta andthere were hundreds of ready-made pics floating around to go onwhatever merch someone churned out.
155mom raised an eyebrow at the shirt, and dad shook his head and lec-tured me about not looking for trouble. i felt a little vindicated by hisreaction.
ange found me online again and we im-flirted until late at nightagain. the white van with the antennas came back and i switched off myxbox until it had passed. we'd all gotten used to doing that.
ange was really excited by this party. it looked like it was going to bemonster. there were so many bands signed up they were talking aboutsetting up a b-stage for the secondary acts.
>
how'd they get a permit to blast sound all night in that park? there'shouses all around there>
per-mit? what is "per-mit"? tell me more of your hu-man per-mit.
>
woah, it's illegal?
>
um, hello? you're worried about breaking the law?
>
fair point>
loli felt a little premonition of nervousness though. i mean, i was takingthis perfectly awesome girl out on a date that weekend — well, she wastaking me, technically — to an illegal rave being held in the middle of abusy neighborhood.
it was bound to be interesting at least.
interesting.
people started to drift into dolores park through the long saturday af-ternoon, showing up among the ultimate frisbee players and the dog-walkers. some of them played frisbee or walked dogs. it wasn't reallyclear how the concert was going to work, but there were a lot of cops andundercovers hanging around. you could tell the undercovers because,like zit and booger, they had castro haircuts and nebraska physiques:
tubby guys with short hair and untidy mustaches. they drifted around,156looking awkward and uncomfortable in their giant shorts and loose-fit-ting shirts that no-doubt hung down to cover the chandelier of gearhung around their midriffs.
dolores park is pretty and sunny, with palm trees, tennis courts, andlots of hills and regular trees to run around on, or hang out on. homelesspeople sleep there at night, but that's true everywhere in san francisco.
i met ange down the street, at the anarchist bookstore. that had beenmy suggestion. in hindsight, it was a totally transparent move to seemcool and edgy to this girl, but at the time i would have sworn that ipicked it because it was a convenient place to meet up. she was readinga book called up against the wall motherfucker when i got there.
"nice," i said. "you kiss your mother with that mouth?""your mama don't complain," she said. "actually, it's a history of agroup of people like the yippies, but from new york. they all used thatword as their last names, like 'ben m-f.' the idea was to have a groupout there, making news, but with a totally unprintable name. just toscrew around with the news-media. pretty funny, really." she put thebook back on the shelf and now i wondered if i should hug her. peoplein california hug to say hello and goodbye all the time. except whenthey don't. and sometimes they kiss on the cheek. it's all very confusing.
she settled it for me by grabbing me in a hug and tugging my headdown to her, kissing me hard on the cheek, then blowing a fart on myneck. i laughed and pushed her away.
"you want a burrito?" i asked.
"is that a question or a statement of the obvious?""neither. it's an order."i bought some funny stickers that said this phone is tappedwhich were the right size to put on the receivers on the pay phones thatstill lined the streets of the mission, it being the kind of neighborhoodwhere you got people who couldn't necessarily afford a cellphone.
we walked out into the night air. i told ange about the scene at thepark when i left.
"i bet they have a hundred of those trucks parked around the block,"she said. "the better to bust you with.""um." i looked around. "i sort of hoped that you would say somethinglike, 'aw, there's no chance they'll do anything about it.'"157"i don't think that's really the idea. the idea is to put a lot of civiliansin a position where the cops have to decide, are we going to treat theseordinary people like terrorists? it's a little like the jamming, but with mu-sic instead of gadgets. you jam, right?"sometimes i forget that all my friends don't know that marcus andm1k3y are the same person. "yeah, a little," i said.
"this is like jamming with a bunch of awesome bands.""i see."mission burritos are an institution. they are cheap, giant and deli-cious. imagine a tube the size of a bazooka shell, filled with spicy grilledmeat, guacamole, salsa, tomatoes, refried beans, rice, onions and cilantro.
it has the same relationship to taco bell that a lamborghini has to a hotwheels car.
there are about two hundred mission burrito joints. they're all heroic-ally ugly, with uncomfortable seats, minimal decor — faded mexicantourist office posters and electrified framed jesus and mary holograms— and loud mariachi music. the thing that distinguishes them, mostly,is what kind of exotic meat they fill their wares with. the really authenticplaces have brains and tongue, which i never order, but it's nice to knowit's there.
the place we went to had both brains and tongue, which we didn't or-der. i got carne asada and she got shredded chicken and we each got abig cup of horchata.
as soon as we sat down, she unrolled her burrito and took a littlebottle out of her purse. it was a little stainless-steel aerosol canister thatlooked for all the world like a pepper-spray self-defense unit. she aimedit at her burrito's exposed guts and misted them with a fine red oilyspray. i caught a whiff of it and my throat closed and my eyes watered.
"what the hell are you doing to that poor, defenseless burrito?"she gave me a wicked smile. "i'm a spicy food addict," she said. "thisis capsaicin oil in a mister.""capsaicin —""yeah, the stuff in pepper spray. this is like pepper spray but slightlymore dilute. and way more delicious. think of it as spicy cajun visine ifit helps."my eyes burned just thinking of it.
"you're kidding," i said. "you are so not going to eat that."158her eyebrows shot up. "that sounds like a challenge, sonny. you justwatch me."she rolled the burrito up as carefully as a stoner rolling up a joint,tucking the ends in, then re-wrapping it in tinfoil. she peeled off one endand brought it up to her mouth, poised with it just before her lips.
right up to the time she bit into it, i couldn't believe that she was go-ing to do it. i mean, that was basically an anti-personnel weapon she'djust slathered on her dinner.
she bit into it. chewed. swallowed. gave every impression of having adelicious dinner.
"want a bite?" she said, innocently.
"yeah," i said. i like spicy food. i always order the curries with fourchilies next to them on the menu at the pakistani places.
i peeled back more foil and took a big bite.
big mistake.
you know that feeling you get when you take a big bite of horseradishor wasabi or whatever, and it feels like your sinuses are closing at thesame time as your windpipe, filling your head with trapped, nuclear-hotair that tries to batter its way out through your watering eyes and nos-trils? that feeling like steam is about to pour out of your ears like a car-toon character?
this was a lot worse.
this was like putting your hand on a hot stove, only it's not yourhand, it's the entire inside of your head, and your esophagus all the waydown to your stomach. my entire body sprang out in a sweat and ichoked and choked.
wordlessly, she passed me my horchata and i managed to get thestraw into my mouth and suck hard on it, gulping down half of it in onego.
"so there's a scale, the scoville scale, that we chili-fanciers use to talkabout how spicy a pepper is. pure capsaicin is about 15 million scovilles.
tabasco is about 2,500. pepper spray is a healthy three million. this stuffis a puny 100,000, about as hot as a mild scotch bonnet pepper. i workedup to it in about a year. some of the real hardcore can get up to a halfmillion or so, two hundred times hotter than tabasco. that's prettyfreaking hot. at scoville temperatures like that, your brain gets totally159awash in endorphins. it's a better body-stone than hash. and it's goodfor you."i was getting my sinuses back now, able to breathe without gasping.
"of course, you get a ferocious ring of fire when you go to the john,"she said, winking at me.
yowch.
"you are insane," i said.
"fine talk from a man whose hobby is building and smashing laptops,"she said.
"touche," i said and touched my forehead.
"want some?" she held out her mister.
"pass," i said, quickly enough that we both laughed.
when we left the restaurant and headed for dolores park, she put herarm around my waist and i found that she was just the right height forme to put my arm around her shoulders. that was new. i'd never been atall guy, and the girls i'd dated had all been my height — teenaged girlsgrow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature. it was nice. it feltnice.
we turned the corner on 20th street and walked up toward dolores.
before we'd taken a single step, we could feel the buzz. it was like thehum of a million bees. there were lots of people streaming toward thepark, and when i looked toward it, i saw that it was about a hundredtimes more crowded than it had been when i went to meet ange.
that sight made my blood run hot. it was a beautiful cool night andwe were about to party, really party, party like there was no tomorrow.
"eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."without saying anything we both broke into a trot. there were lots ofcops, with tense faces, but what the hell were they going to do? therewere a lot of people in the park. i'm not so good at counting crowds. thepapers later quoted organizers as saying there were 20,000 people; thecops said 5,000. maybe that means there were 12,500.
whatever. it was more people than i'd ever stood among, as part of anunscheduled, unsanctioned, illegal event.
we were among them in an instant. i can't swear to it, but i don't thinkthere was anyone over 25 in that press of bodies. everyone was smiling.
some young kids were there, 10 or 12, and that made me feel better. noone would do anything too stupid with kids that little in the crowd. no160one wanted to see little kids get hurt. this was just going to be a gloriousspring night of celebration.
i figured the thing to do was push in towards the tennis courts. wethreaded our way through the crowd, and to stay together we took eachother's hands. only staying together didn't require us to intertwine fin-gers. that was strictly for pleasure. it was very pleasurable.
the bands were all inside the tennis courts, with their guitars and mix-ers and keyboards and even a drum kit. later, on xnet, i found a flickrstream of them smuggling all this stuff in, piece by piece, in gym bagsand under their coats. along with it all were huge speakers, the kind yousee in automotive supply places, and among them, a stack of… car bat-teries. i laughed. genius! that was how they were going to power theirstacks. from where i stood, i could see that they were cells from a hybridcar, a prius. someone had gutted an eco-mobile to power the night's en-tertainment. the batteries continued outside the courts, stacked upagainst the fence, tethered to the main stack by wires threaded throughthe chain-link. i counted — 200 batteries! christ! those things weighed aton, too.
there's no way they organized this without email and wikis and mail-ing lists. and there's no way people this smart would have done that onthe public internet. this had all taken place on the xnet, i'd bet my bootson it.
we just kind of bounced around in the crowd for a while as the bandstuned up and conferred with one another. i saw trudy doo from a dis-tance, in the tennis courts. she looked like she was in a cage, like a prowrestler. she was wearing a torn wife-beater and her hair was in long,fluorescent pink dreads down to her waist. she was wearing army cam-ouflage pants and giant gothy boots with steel over-toes. as i watched,she picked up a heavy motorcycle jacket, worn as a catcher's mitt, andput it on like armor. it probably was armor, i realized.
i tried to wave to her, to impress ange i guess, but she didn't see meand i kind of looked like a spazz so i stopped. the energy in the crowdwas amazing. you hear people talk about "vibes" and "energy" for biggroups of people, but until you've experienced it, you probably think it'sjust a figure of speech.
it's not. it's the smiles, infectious and big as watermelons, on everyface. everyone bopping a little to an unheard rhythm, shoulders rocking.
rolling walks. jokes and laughs. the tone of every voice tight and161excited, like a firework about to go off. and you can't help but be a partof it. because you are.
by the time the bands kicked off, i was utterly stoned on crowd-vibe.
the opening act was some kind of serbian turbo-folk, which i couldn'tfigure out how to dance to. i know how to dance to exactly two kinds ofmusic: trance (shuffle around and let the music move you) and punk(bash around and mosh until you get hurt or exhausted or both). thenext act was oakland hip-hoppers, backed by a thrash metal band,which is better than it sounds. then some bubble-gum pop. then speed-whores took the stage, and trudy doo stepped up to the mic.
"my name is trudy doo and you're an idiot if you trust me. i'm thirtytwo and it's too late for me. i'm lost. i'm stuck in the old way of thinking.
i still take my freedom for granted and let other people take it away fromme. you're the first generation to grow up in gulag america, and youknow what your freedom is worth to the last goddamned cent!"the crowd roared. she was playing fast little skittery nervous chordson her guitar and her bass player, a huge fat girl with a dykey haircutand even bigger boots and a smile you could open beer bottles with waslaying it down fast and hard already. i wanted to bounce. i bounced.
ange bounced with me. we were sweating freely in the evening, whichreeked of perspiration and pot smoke. warm bodies crushed in on allsides of us. they bounced too.
"don't trust anyone over 25!" she shouted.
we roared. we were one big animal throat, roaring.
"don't trust anyone over 25!""don't trust anyone over 25!""don't trust anyone over 25!""don't trust anyone over 25!""don't trust anyone over 25!""don't trust anyone over 25!"she banged some hard chords on her guitar and the other guitarist, alittle pixie of a girl whose face bristled with piercings, jammed in, goingwheedle-dee-wheedle-dee-dee up high, past the twelfth fret.
"it's our goddamned city! it's our goddamned country. no terrorist cantake it from us for so long as we're free. once we're not free, the terroristswin! take it back! take it back! you're young enough and stupid enough162not to know that you can't possibly win, so you're the only ones who canlead us to victory! take it back!""take it back!" we roared. she jammed down hard on her guitar.
we roared the note back and then it got really really loud.
i danced until i was so tired i couldn't dance another step. angedanced alongside of me. technically, we were rubbing our sweaty bod-ies against each other for several hours, but believe it or not, i totallywasn't being a horn-dog about it. we were dancing, lost in the godbeatand the thrash and the screaming — take it back! take it back!
when i couldn't dance anymore, i grabbed her hand and she squeezedmine like i was keeping her from falling off a building. she dragged metoward the edge of the crowd, where it got thinner and cooler. out there,on the edge of dolores park, we were in the cool air and the sweat on ourbodies went instantly icy. we shivered and she threw her arms aroundmy waist. "warm me," she commanded. i didn't need a hint. i huggedher back. her heart was an echo of the fast beats from the stage — break-beats now, fast and furious and wordless.
she smelled of sweat, a sharp tang that smelled great. i knew i smelledof sweat too. my nose was pointed into the top of her head, and her facewas right at my collarbone. she moved her hands to my neck andtugged.
"get down here, i didn't bring a stepladder," is what she said and itried to smile, but it's hard to smile when you're kissing.
like i said, i'd kissed three girls in my life. two of them had neverkissed anyone before. one had been dating since she was 12. she hadissues.
none of them kissed like ange. she made her whole mouth soft, likethe inside of a ripe piece of fruit, and she didn't jam her tongue in mymouth, but slid it in there, and sucked my lips into her mouth at thesame time, so it was like my mouth and hers were merging. i heard my-self moan and i grabbed her and squeezed her harder.
slowly, gently, we lowered ourselves to the grass. we lay on our sidesand clutched each other, kissing and kissing. the world disappeared sothere was only the kiss.
my hands found her butt, her waist. the edge of her t-shirt. her warmtummy, her soft navel. they inched higher. she moaned too.
163"not here," she said. "let's move over there." she pointed across thestreet at the big white church that gives mission dolores park and themission its name. holding hands, moving quickly, we crossed to thechurch. it had big pillars in front of it. she put my back up against one ofthem and pulled my face down her hers again. my hands went quicklyand boldly back to her shirt. i slipped them up her front.
"it undoes in the back," she whispered into my mouth. i had a bonerthat could cut glass. i moved my hands around to her back, which wasstrong and broad, and found the hook with my fingers, which weretrembling. i fumbled for a while, thinking of all those jokes about howbad guys are at undoing bras. i was bad at it. then the hook sprang free.
she gasped into my mouth. i slipped my hands around, feeling the wet-ness of her armpits — which was sexy and not at all gross for some reas-on — and then brushed the sides of her breasts.
that's when the sirens started.
they were louder than anything i'd ever heard. a sound like a physic-al sensation, like something blowing you off your feet. a sound as loudas your ears could process, and then louder.
"disperse immediately," a voice said, like god rattling in myskull.
"this is an illegal gathering. disperse immediately."the band had stopped playing. the noise of the crowd across thestreet changed. it got scared. angry.
i heard a click as the pa system of car-speakers and car-batteries in thetennis courts powered up.
"take it back!"it was a defiant yell, like a sound shouted into the surf or screamed offa cliff.
"take it back!"the crowd growled, a sound that made the hairs on the back of myneck stand up.
"take it back!" they chanted. "take it back take it backtake it back!"the police moved in in lines, carrying plastic shields, wearing darthvader helmets that covered their faces. each one had a black truncheonand infra-red goggles. they looked like soldiers out of some futuristicwar movie. they took a step forward in unison and every one of them164banged his truncheon on his shield, a cracking noise like the earth split-ting. another step, another crack. they were all around the park andclosing in now.
"disperse immediately," the voice of god said again. there werehelicopters overhead now. no floodlights, though. the infrared goggles,right. of course. they'd have infrared scopes in the sky, too. i pulledange back against the doorway of the church, tucking us back from thecops and the choppers.
"take it back!" the pa roared. it was trudy doo's rebel yell and iheard her guitar thrash out some chords, then her drummer playing,then that big deep bass.
"take it back!" the crowd answered, and they boiled out of thepark at the police lines.
i've never been in a war, but now i think i know what it must be like.
what it must be like when scared kids charge across a field at an oppos-ing force, knowing what's coming, running anyway, screaming,hollering.
"disperse immediately," the voice of god said. it was comingfrom trucks parked all around the park, trucks that had swung into placein the last few seconds.
that's when the mist fell. it came out of the choppers, and we justcaught the edge of it. it made the top of my head feel like it was going tocome off. it made my sinuses feel like they were being punctured withice-picks. it made my eyes swell and water, and my throat close.
pepper spray. not 100 thousand scovilles. a million and a half. they'dgassed the crowd.
i didn't see what happened next, but i heard it, over the sound of bothme and ange choking and holding each other. first the choking, retchingsounds. the guitar and drums and bass crashed to a halt. thencoughing.
then screaming.
the screaming went on for a long time. when i could see again, thecops had their scopes up on their foreheads and the choppers wereflooding dolores park with so much light it looked like daylight. every-one was looking at the park, which was good news, because when thelights went up like that, we were totally visible.
"what do we do?" ange said. her voice was tight, scared. i didn't trustmyself to speak for a moment. i swallowed a few times.
165"we walk away," i said. "that's all we can do. walk away. like wewere just passing by. down to dolores and turn left and up towards 16thstreet. like we're just passing by. like this is none of our business.""that'll never work," she said.
"it's all i've got.""you don't think we should try to run for it?""no," i said. "if we run, they'll chase us. maybe if we walk, they'll fig-ure we haven't done anything and let us alone. they have a lot of arreststo make. they'll be busy for a long time."the park was rolling with bodies, people and adults clawing at theirfaces and gasping. the cops dragged them by the armpits, then lashedtheir wrists with plastic cuffs and tossed them into the trucks like rag-dolls.
"ok?" i said.
"ok," she said.
and that's just what we did. walked, holding hands, quickly andbusiness-like, like two people wanting to avoid whatever troublesomeone else was making. the kind of walk you adopt when you wantto pretend you can't see a panhandler, or don't want to get involved in astreet-fight.
it worked.
we reached the corner and turned and kept going. neither of us daredto speak for two blocks. then i let out a gasp of air i hadn't know i'dbeen holding in.
we came to 16th street and turned down toward mission street.
normally that's a pretty scary neighborhood at 2am on a saturdaynight. that night it was a relief — same old druggies and hookers anddealers and drunks. no cops with truncheons, no gas.
"um," i said as we breathed in the night air. "coffee?""home," she said. "i think home for now. coffee later.""yeah," i agreed. she lived up in hayes valley. i spotted a taxi rollingby and i hailed it. that was a small miracle — there are hardly any cabswhen you need them in san francisco.
"have you got cabfare home?""yeah," she said. the cab-driver looked at us through his window. iopened the back door so he wouldn't take off.
166"good night," i said.
she put her hands behind my head and pulled my face toward her.
she kissed me hard on the mouth, nothing sexual in it, but somehowmore intimate for that.
"good night," she whispered in my ear, and slipped into the taxi.
head swimming, eyes running, a burning shame for having left allthose xnetters to the tender mercies of the dhs and the sfpd, i set offfor home.
monday morning, fred benson was standing behind ms galvez'sdesk.
"ms galvez will no longer be teaching this class," he said, once we'dtaken our seats. he had a self-satisfied note that i recognized immedi-ately. on a hunch, i checked out charles. he was smiling like it was hisbirthday and he'd been given the best present in the world.
i put my hand up.
"why not?""it's board policy not to discuss employee matters with anyone exceptthe employee and the disciplinary committee," he said, without evenbothering to hide how much he enjoyed saying it.
"we'll be beginning a new unit today, on national security. yourschoolbooks have the new texts. please open them and turn to the firstscreen."the opening screen was emblazoned with a dhs logo and the title:
what every american should know about homelandsecurity.
i wanted to throw my schoolbook on the floor.
i'd made arrangements to meet ange at a cafe in her neighborhoodafter school. i jumped on the bart and found myself sitting behind twoguys in suits. they were looking at the san francisco chronicle, whichfeatured a full-page post-mortem on the "youth riot" in mission dolorespark. they were tutting and clucking over it. then one said to the other,"it's like they're brainwashed or something. christ, were we ever thatstupid?"i got up and moved to another seat.