Hella Nation - Evan Wright [23]
Tony Hawk remains skeptical. “If Andrew wants Greco on his team, that’s his choice,” he says. “But it’s too bad they don’t have friend rehab where you can send people to kick bad friendships.”
THE MORNING’S WINE AND JACK DANIEL’S have turned to fumes that fill Reynolds’s car. Earlier that day, Greco had passed out before Reynolds made it to the skate spot. Before leaving him in the car to go skating by himself, Reynolds had placed a jacket over Greco, the way you cover something valuable to protect it from thieves. Now, arrived back at their new apartment, Reynolds lifts Greco from the car, then props him on his feet and walks him into the elevator. “Christ, Jim. We just move in, and everyone in the building’s gonna think we’re junkies,” Reynolds says. The whole time, Greco’s eyes are rolled back. He has strings of goo hanging from his chin. The two look like they’re performing a set piece from a comedy in which someone has to walk around with a corpse and pretend it’s alive.
When the elevator doors open, Greco falls to his knees and crawls all the way to his bedroom. Reynolds sits in the waning sunlight beneath high gallery windows. “Jim will be all right when he starts skating again,” he says, with cracked hope.
A moment later, Greco’s voice echoes from his room. He’s talking on the phone to a girlfriend he calls Juice, which is short for his pet name for her, “Juicy Ass.” Then, after a loud crash, Greco emerges from his room, half dressed, clutching a phone receiver by its torn cord. He beats the receiver against the wall until plastic bits fly off. “Who’s holding the cards now?” Greco shouts at the broken phone.
Greco’s theory of relationships is that they all boil down to whoever is “holding the cards.” If, for example, you tell your girlfriend you love her, she gets all the cards. Sometimes, as Greco demonstrates by smashing the phone, a man needs his cards back. There are occasions when you might give your cards to that special person—if for example you want to hook up with a broad and do what Greco calls “rocking the side pipe” with her. But when that’s over you will want your cards back, and to do this there is only one surefire method, “throw the broad’s shit out on the front lawn.”
Greco’s card theory makes for tumultuous relations. Apparently, he is smashing the phone right now in an effort to get his cards back.
Reynolds approaches cautiously. “Just chill, Jim.”
Greco drops the mangled phone. “I’m psychotic,” he begins to chant, and stumbles back into his room.
“He goes through phases,” says Reynolds. “I wish he would just snap out of this one.”
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER, at ten in the morning, Greco sits at his breakfast table sober and clear-eyed. He sips a cup of herbal detox tea that Reynolds has brewed for him. “I’m on a hammer program,” he says, referring to the regimen of sobriety and exercise that he undertakes when skating. “I’m off the booze. I’ve got my appetite back.” He points to a half-eaten 7-Eleven Bakery Stix hot dog. “I’m starting my stretching. I’m gonna skate a little. Take care of my body. I’m gonna do some rips.” He fires up a bong and sucks in a lungful.
He exhales. “If you derange your senses for so long with booze,” he says, “physically, what it does to your body is baraka. Whenever I neglect skating, my life turns to shit.”
Rest has made Greco uncharacteristically introspective. “The most main reason I skateboard,” he says, “is the eight-second feeling I get when I ride away from a hammer. It’s the most intense high there is. It builds juices up in my brain. That’s how I get kicked on a hammer spree. I do one, and they just start popping. Next thing you know, you’ve got all these hammers and your life is going great. Because hammers is all kinds of things. Hammers is dough. Hammers is a nice place to live.”
That afternoon, Greco walks out on the street in front of his building holding his skateboard. This is the first