Flex O’Connor

January 12, 2009 @ 7:35 AM

(A waitress barges into the conversation to demand payment for the drinks- her shift is over and she doesn’t want the tip to go to her replacement. Sebastian looks into the glass in silence.)

Sorry Flex. So you were saying…
…yeah, so just at the weekends. Then that didn’t work out. I don’t know how old I was- maybe six? Six or seven. Then I got moved to another foster parents for about a year. Then they moved me to another foster home which was more or less all the time. I could see my Mum for two days every two weekends. I was there for like four years when I was fighting to get home because the guy? The guy was crazy. He had a car accident and was crazy in the head, you know? After four years the lady came and when she saw what was going on, right away she said “You can’t be here anymore”.
And I’d been telling them that for four years. The first week, the guy was waiting for me outside school in his car, and as I cycle past he jumps out and pulls my bag off my back, pulls me off the back of the bike and onto the road, throws my bag into the car.
I’m like “What the fuck is going on here?”. I was about eight or something when that happened. And then, I was put into- do you call it a foster home still? Where all the kids with problems are brought together?-

Bs 5-0 fs revert. Ph: Benjamin

I know what you mean.
- I was around 12 then. There were some older kids there who were drinking, smoking…so I started too, stopped caring, didn’t listen in school. Pretty much fucked school off. Protesting to get home, you know? I was there for one year, then they sent me to a really small island where they don’t even have streetlights because its so out there. They knew I was skating, and they didn’t want me to do it. I was always out skating in the street and they were telling me I couldn’t, “You’re not allowed to chill in the street”. Because the thing is, I always used to be in the street as a kid. On my own, you know? Nobody watching over me. So when they saw me out skating always at the main spot, always skating, they wanted to stop that. “You have to go to school. You have to do your homework. You can’t live off skating all your life.”. So they sent me to this island, and we were fighting in the courts. There were two different courts, then it got referred to the highest court in the country. Like if you lose there, there is nothing after that. So they kept drawing out the process, “We need to do some paperwork, it’s going to be two months…”
Then two months would pass, they would say “not done yet"…this went on for I don’t know how many months, but in the end the case was dropped; they could see it was fucked. That lady from the Government? She lied in all of those papers. The papers said that when they asked me if I wanted to go to the island I said ‘Yes’. I said no.
By then I was 14, and I got back home with my Mum. Then I started skating full time.

Who gave you your first board?
When I was 7 or something, I was sitting on oldschool boards, going down hills with my friend from the neighbourhood. There was a little plaza in my city where I saw the older boys, and they were standing up. I was like “Whooooaaa- this is not possible.”
Then I started hanging out with those guys, they took care of me and gave me a board. Every day down those three stairs- tak tak tak. Firecracker down the stairs, all day. Only trick I could do.

Bigflip. Ph: Antton

What about ‘Flex’- where did you get that nickname?
Well, the guy who took me in, gave me boards? He worked in the skateshop, and I bought this cap from the second hand shop, where it says ‘Flex’ on it? That thing was never off my head. And at the shop they didn’t really know my name so they called me ‘Flex’. Sometimes…there have been people I had known for four years who would ask “Hey- is your name really Flex?”. Then, when you tell them, they say it doesn’t fit me because they just know ‘Flex’.

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