Tagged Out

Shortly before dawn on June 15, 2009, 19-year-old Jordan Wood paced the roof of the Westcott Theater, too wasted to remember how he got there. He had just finished painting his tag, JDK — short for "Just Don't Kare" or "Jeffrey Dahmer's Kid" — on a series of small restaurants and mom-and-pop shops in the area. But spraying brick walls and little-seen alleyways denied Wood the thrill, the heady self-satisfaction, that came from bombing riskier targets. So Wood, with 12 beers and 13 prescription anxiety pills chugging through his system, climbed the drainage pipe in the alleyway between the Westcott Theater and the University Christian Fellowship, pulled himself onto the theater's wrought-iron balcony, and scrambled atop the air

Wood downed enough cheap beer and anti-anxiety meds to black out most of what happened that night, at least in his telling. But he remembers finishing his work and standing at the very edge of the roof, staring into the dark street. Despite the summer heat, he wore a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, hiding his buzzed hair and low forehead. His slight frame almost disappeared in the dark.

The anonymity produced a sharp, euphoric feeling: a sense that he

In the past four years, Jordan Wood has been arrested 21 times on graffiti-related charges, causing some $25,000 in damage and making headlines on six occasions. Before Wood, graffiti kept a pretty low profile in Central New York. Most taggers here belong to in-groups called crews, says Sergeant D.J. Pauldine, a graffiti specialist in the Syracuse Police Department.

The rules generally keep crews off Pauldine's radar, herding them to spots like the I-690, the underside of the Franklin Square Bridge, and the West Side Wall that borders the West Fayette train tracks. Here, taggers can "write" without attracting the attention of the general public or causing the type of private-property damage that spurs crackdowns and clean-ups. It's indicative that Syracuse's graffiti taskforce, which Pauldine co-founded in 1990, fell dormant in 2001. Pauldine tentatively estimates that only six

SMR did not begin life as a graffiti crew. Before Wood and his friends at Solvay High School took to tagging, they assembled in his friend Doug Hague's basement to do other bored teenage things: drink PBR, smoke pot, play videogames, talk. But the routine wore thin for Wood and his friends, a feeling that Jeff Ferrell, a criminology professor at Texas Christian University and a former graffiti writer, can sympathize with. "We live in a culture defined by risk management and

Tagging quickly grew into a habit for Wood and his crew. On an average night, the boys descended on Walmart or the Home Depot and stole as many paint cans as they could fit into a backpack. They returned to Hague's house and, sitting on his couches, downed beers stolen from Wegmans or someone's mom's refrigerator. Once they got drunk, someone drove out to the water towers or the thruway and they took turns tagging — on empty

"It's an amazing feeling," Wood says, eyes squinted slightly. He has the odd habit of slowing or raising his voice at the end of sentences, a mannerism that often seems to express his disdain or skepticism for the person he addresses."Someone might have a better style than you, a style that they took a year to learn, and they may have painted something that took them hours — but in 15 minutes, I can destroy it. I can make it like it wasn't there. And I did it all the time."

Wood says SMR operated the same way as other crews. But competitors saw them, and especially Wood, as rogues — a bunch of guys who didn't play by the rules. "He's a big sack of shit

In September 2009, Wood's relationship with rival crews almost turned violent. Wood and Hague emerged from Trexx, a downtown nightclub, and found five members of H2K waiting outside. While Wood searched for a weapon — he had traded his knife for two shots and a couple Ativans earlier that evening — Hague and his mother screamed H2K down. On top of that, Wood kept getting arrested. Rumors began that he ratted on H2K in jail. But Wood insisted he

By this time, he was drunk more often than he was sober. Wood drank his first beer at an age when most children still think the other sex has cooties. A chubby, friendless kid who grew up pining for his absent alcoholic father and second-shift mom, Wood began drinking at 12 — the same year he repeated the seventh grade and underwent a psychiatric evaluation for what his private-school teachers worried were "suicidal tendencies." Growing up, Wood switched schools and neighborhoods often. His mother worked at Catholic Charities during the day and as a cleaning lady at night. He literally laughs out loud when I ask if he does his own laundry. Wood started

Family history and mental health issues rank among the top risk factors for developing alcoholism, says Susan Scholl, a professor in Syracuse University's Addictions Program and a veteran addictions counselor. "Prognostically speaking," Scholl explains, "the cards were always stacked against him."

By the time Wood hit high school, he regularly drank, smoked pot and cigarettes, and popped drugs like Xanax, Valium, and Atavin. In the

In some ways, drinking helped numb Wood's social insecurity and supplemented the antidepressants that never quite made him feel better. But chemical dependency also tends to amplify underlying issues, Scholl says, spinning manageable mental health problems into high-risk behavior. Wood got into fistfights since middle school, but in September 2008, the violence took a different tone. In a drunken argument with his then girlfriend, Wood pulled a steak knife

Like most of the girls who Wood has threatened or hurt, that girlfriend did not break up with him — even after he drunkenly shoved her to the ground at Trexx and left threatening voicemails on her answering machine. The mother of his current girlfriend, 17-year-old Brooke Kluskie, took out a restraining order against him after he beat her up in September. But when Wood and I meet for the first time, Kluskie comes with him, following a step behind and holding his hand.

As soon as Wood goes to the bathroom, she recounts the drunken argument when, after a prolonged screaming match, he shoved her against

"I did think he might kill me," she stammers, glancing from Wood to the table and back again. "But I really love him, you know? I love him so much. He just became a different person when he was drunk."

He holds eye contact with Kluskie, unblinking and unsmiling, until she finishes the story and gives him a watery smile. He mutters something dark about regret and the evils of alcoholism. Wood can't remember whether or not he covered Kluskie's mouth during their struggle, a critical detail in the still-open case.

Before Kluskie, Wood dated an

"How do you justify what you did to her?" I ask him, three days after Dell told me, near tears, that she still thinks he's a good person.

"Well, I mean, once I wasn't drinking everyday, like once I spent time with her sober, I realized we had nothing in common," he says. He

"But you weren't drinking in jail," I remind him. "You know, when you asked her to put all that money in your commissary account, and when you were writing letters saying you loved her and were going to change for her and stuff."

"Well, yeah," he says, stretching uneasily. "But when you put it like that, I sound like an asshole."

According to the literature I pick up at Wood's Tuesday meeting, the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program only works for people who admit things like being an asshole.

Some of the people at the meeting have lost their families or their jobs. A Hispanic man wearing a gigantic silver crucifix recounts how he totaled his car, drunk, with his small child in the backseat. I glance over at Wood, who stares at the floor. ("This may be the last meeting I go to," he told me in a Facebook message before we came.

"I can relate to what everyone's been saying," he says, his eyes scanning the room. "I used to steal money from my mom's purse to buy alcohol. And when she started putting her money in a lock box, I broke into it — safety pins, screwdriver, hammer, I found a way. And I don't know if she'll ever trust me again."

"Thank you, Jordan," the room says when he's done.

After the meeting, Wood and I

That title belongs to Kluskie now, and as soon as the two of them can roll back the restraining order, they want to move in together. Wood imagines going to school one day to become an English teacher. At one point, he planned to get a tattoo of Jay Gatsby: an idealistic, misguided man just trying to

"So you're not tagging anymore, right?" I ask.

He balances his chin on his coffee cup, looking down at the table, that old smirk sneaking across his face.

"Sorry," he says. "I can't answer that question."