Unsuccessful Thug

by Mike Epps

  Then there was my older brother John. Man, my brother John, he was always shorter than me, even when I was born. It seemed like it, anyway, but John was always my bodyguard, you know? John was my brother that always gave me my confidence to do anything bad. To be funny, to act the fool, or whatever. He had my back. He was real protective of me.

  So those were my three older half siblings. My only full brother or sister was my younger brother, Tommie Jr., nickname: Chaney. My mom called him that after an Aretha Franklin song she loved, “Chain of Fools.”

  Chaney was my first fan. He was also my sidekick and my best friend. My mom dressed me, John, and Chaney all alike in Garanimals shirts and those fucked-up Toughskins jeans with the built-in pads in the knees. Those clothes were sturdy, and we could share them because we were close to the same size, but we hated them.

  Chaney and I were together so much, I think people thought he and I were the same. But we weren’t. I was naughty and Chaney was always a good kid. Smart. Shy. Good student. But sometimes he went along with my crazy plans and ended up in trouble, too.

  Here’s an example: Chaney loved that 1970s PBS TV show The Electric Company. People don’t remember what a big deal it was, but the cast included Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, and Rita Moreno. They’d teach you spelling and reading and stuff, using skits.

  Chaney loved Mark, played by Morgan Freeman. He wanted to dress like Mark and talk like Mark and be Mark. So one day we’re about five or six, we’re walking down the street, and I say, “You know what Mark do?”

  “No,” says Chaney. “What does Mark do?”

  “He keeps a bean up his nose.”

  “He what?”

  “A bean. He sticks it up his nose and just leaves it there.”

  “No way,” Chaney says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I don’t believe you,” he says.

  “Fine, don’t believe me,” I say finally. “All I’m saying is, if you don’t want to be like Mark, don’t put a bean up your nose.”

  You can guess what happened next—Chaney went and found a bean and stuck it up his nose, just like Morgan Freeman didn’t.

  Of course, when Chaney tried to take the bean out later, he only pushed it further up. And again, days later, he tried to take it out, and pushed it further still. Eventually he had to go to the hospital to have this fucking bean removed from his nose.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” our mom asked Chaney once the bean was out.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding along with my mother, “that was really dumb, Chaney.”

  “You told me to, Mike!”

  My mother shook her head sadly. Again, why my mom took so long to catch on to how much I lied, I don’t know. Like I said, I was bad. Couldn’t help it. But Chaney kept hanging out with me. Because I may have been bad, but I was also fucking fun.

  One day when I was around seven, we were visiting at our dad Tommie’s house and I convinced Chaney that we could drive our dad’s truck, which was parked in the driveway. So when our dad wasn’t paying attention, we got in.

  “Hey, Mike, I don’t think Daddy gonna want us to drive this truck,” Chaney said.

  “It’s just in the driveway,” I said. “Trust me, it’s cool. We gotta learn to drive sometime, right? Why would he leave the keys in there if it wasn’t okay?”

  “I don’t know,” said Chaney.

  “He’s not gonna say nothing,” I said. “And if he does, you know they won’t say nothing to you, Chain Brain, ’cause they like you better.”

  Chaney had to agree. Everyone did like him best. He was quiet and smart, while everyone thought I was a little crazy.

  “I don’t think it even runs, so it probably won’t even come on,” I said. “Look, I’ll even put my foot on the brake while I take it out of park.”

  So I started the truck—and drove it right into the garage door.

  My foot wasn’t pressing on the brake—it was on the gas.

  Right away, our dad came running out of the house.

  “What the hell?!” he yelled.

  “I know!” I said, standing by the dented garage door. “I don’t know why Chaney did that. He’s crazy.”

  “Chaney!” Dad yelled. “I would not expect this of you!”

  “It was Mike!” Chaney yelled. “It was Mike! C’mon, you know it had to be Mike!”

  At least we both got in trouble that day, but poor Chaney . . .

  Sorry, brother.

  Most days that we were not winding up in the hospital or driving trucks into doors, Chaney and I went for long walks looking for adventure. In our neighborhood, we saw a lot of fucked-up stuff. Not a lot of good role models out there, you feel me? But to us the local crooks and homeless guys and winos became characters in the show that was our life. And Chaney would draw pictures of everything—he was a real good artist from when he was little.

  Me? I was a good talker.

  Chaney and I always explained away the stuff we saw, good or bad, by telling each other stories about people on TV, like from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. We would blend those characters with people from our neighborhood.

  “Hey, man, did you hear?” I’d say. “Bert went to jail last night.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Chaney would say.

  “Yeah, man. They pulled Bert and Ernie over. They let Ernie go. But I think they found some weed in Bert’s pocket.”

  “What you think they’re gonna do to him?”

  “I dunno. Mr. Snuffleupagus might go down and make his bond.”

  “What else been going on?”

  “Oscar the Grouch and Gonzo got in a fight over Miss Piggy in a parking lot. Gonzo went to the hospital.”

  “Dang! What else?”

  “Big Bird finally got that money he been waiting on. He sued Ronald McDonald because they had the same beautician.”

  And we could talk for hours about the Count. With the cape? Always counting his money? No one had to tell us twice that he was a pimp.

  “The Count, man,” I’d say, “he starts throwing $50 bills in Big Bird’s face, right?”

  “Oh, Big Bird doesn’t like that shit,” Chaney would say.

  “That’s right. The Count goes vone, vtwo, vthree, and BAM! Big Bird shot him.”

  Chaney and I could do that for hours upon hours. We told so many stories, it could have been whole seasons of a cartoon cop show.

  And I was always looking for new material. My mother used to tell us, “Don’t go over on that next block!” but I couldn’t stay away. We could see people selling heroin and weed or hookers leaning into cars, just on the block over from us. I used to go over there and just find somewhere to sit and watch the hustlers running to the cars and police locking them up and chasing them and the shoot-outs and the fights.

  I’d go home and replay everything these muhfuckas did, but with my toys. I’d turn the corner of the wall into the liquor store. A little Matchbox car would pull up on the corner. A little army man would say, “What up, man? You got what I need?”

  If you were on the outside watching, you’d just see a cute little boy in the corner playing toy cars and talking to himself.

  How cute, you’d think, he’s playing with his little toys.

  Oh naw—those little action figures were doing drug deals, having sex in alleys, holding up stores.

  One of my favorite places in those days was Bradley’s Candy Store. Mr. Bradley was a seventy-year-old black man who had been part of the Great Migration back in the day and come up to Indiana from Nashville. He owned a lot of property, including taverns and liquor stores. He was the first black entrepreneur I ever saw. I tried to model myself after him. He’d take me with him to the dog track sometimes, and he’d insist I wear a suit if I expected to ride in his Cadillac. My friends didn’t understand why I wanted to hang out with an old man for. They didn’t get that I was learning things. I was soaking up some game. He taught me how to play cards, like one eleven-card game called Coon Can’t—“Because some coons c
an and some coons can’t,” said Mr. Bradley.

  Now I know that this was the beginning of me in both crime and show business. I thought those guys were fascinating and I wanted to try doing what they did, making money just from hanging out on the right block. I also got to copying what they did and just enjoying what it felt like to play the role of the dealer or the hustler—do their voices, learn the things they said, the way they moved. Always, I could make nothing into something. I could make anything into something.

  Here’s one: When I was maybe eight, my brother Chaney and I started a crazy fad in our neighborhood. I really loved dogs, always wanted one, but it took a while before my mom said yes. So while I was waiting for my dog, one day I got a log from the firewood stash someone had given us and I put a leash around it, and then I went out and walked my tree-log dog all around the neighborhood. People looked at me like I was fucking nuts. (“Must have been that umbilical cord: scrambled that boy’s brains.”) But it was just me making something out of nothing, and it was fun. Then Chaney got himself a wooden dog, too, so now there are two of us walking logs on ropes around the neighborhood.

  I had another best friend in the neighborhood, Ryan Bembry. He was littler than me, but he was still my bodyguard. He’d kick anyone’s ass—his granddaddy called him Ryan Heart, like Lionheart. He got himself a log and a rope, too, so now there were three kids dragging log dogs around.

  Well, word spread. Before you knew it, every kid in the neighborhood has a log dog. You got all these kids walking around, dragging pieces of wood, naming them, talking to them. It was better than Pet Rocks, because those wood dogs were heavy, so you’d have fun and get a workout, too. And this was how you made something out of nothing.

  As we got older, my brother and I watched the same lineup every night: Good Times, The Jeffersons, All in the Family.

  My mother liked classic television, like Lawrence Welk, with the bubbles and shit. Mary Tyler Moore. Bob Newhart. Those were her characters, and I think she found those shows inspiring. She wanted her house to look more like those houses, and her clothes to look more like those clothes. Like I said, she was a very classy lady.

  Television is one of the places where people like me learn shit, where they learn about America. America taught people in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s—through TV—how to look, how to act, how to be. (Reality shows do that now, I guess, so I guess that’s why we dress like shit now. Back then, the people on TV were aspirational. They wore pantsuits and had perms. Now? Oh naw . . .)

  Our favorite show when we were kids, though, was Diff’rent Strokes. Chaney and I could relate to those two kids so much. And we saw that they had it good. We would say: “Mama, we want to go live with a rich old white man!”

  We really did, too. We wanted to live with my guy Mr. Drummond. We talked about it all the time.

  “Imma tell you something,” our mom would say. “At least you know your mother and father. Those kids’ parents died.”

  Then there were commercials. So many good ones! Chaney and I made long lists of all the shit we wanted: Motorcycles and leather jackets. Big Wheels. Star Wars shit. Board games. Slinkies.

  We couldn’t afford any of it, but one day, we knew—somehow—we’d get it all. We’d daydream about what it would be like when we struck it rich.

  All us kids loved TV, but I think I loved it the most. Starting when I was just a few years old, I started doing impressions of sitcom characters and of the people in our neighborhood. Honestly, I think the people on TV sometimes seemed real and the people in our neighborhood seemed made-up. And all of them were fair game for me and my impressions.

  “He’s a good marker,” my sister used to say. That’s a word we used for copying: marking. I marked everyone in the neighborhood, and everyone in the family. I was really good at it. I was so good at it, people started to notice, and to ask me to do bits. Like, my guy Boo-Boo’s father had a limp and was always shouting, so I’d hobble around shouting, “Boo-Boo!” Everyone would crack up and say, “Do it again, Mike!”

  I had a friend named Greg Mack, and his mother’s name was Ms. Mack—Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack! All dressed in black, black, black!—and she used to cuss up a storm. I’d come over to their house, knock on the door, listen to her curse and curse, and I’d take notes so I could do that shit for our friends later.

  I had jokes and bits from age six—real jokes. Yeah, okay, some of the bits were a little nasty, like taking my boogers and wiping them on other people’s faces. I was a bad kid. Bad, but sweet! I had anger streaks, and crazy streaks, but I’ve always been a nice guy, too.

  “You’re a real funny kid,” my mom would say.

  To me, her laugh was the sweetest sound in the world.

  I’d do anything to hear it.

  2

  The Baddest Kid in School

  Now, my mom loved me, but was she proud of me back in those days? I don’t know about that. I was “a real funny kid,” but I ran fucking wild. When she was showing off her kids, she’d say, “This is Robbie. He plays football and music. This is Julie. She designs clothes and sews. John does martial arts. This is Tommie Jr. He’s an excellent artist.”

  “And who is this boy over here?”

  “Oh, that’s Michael.”

  Just Michael. I didn’t do anything she could brag on. I was a damn fool, if you want to know the truth, always raising hell. When I think now about all the ways I found to get in trouble, I can’t believe how dumb I was.

  For example, one day I wrote down every curse word I ever heard and stupidly left the piece of paper lying around. My mom found it and she taped it on the front door. She told me that if anyone came to see us I’d have to explain it to them. Soon enough, some family friends came over. My mother called me into the entryway.

  “Michael,” she said to me, “tell everybody what this is. Read the words.”

  “It’s a list of curse words,” I said. I was so ashamed I started crying. Through the snot and tears, I read, “Shit . . . bitch . . . fuck you . . . asshole . . .”

  “What’s that one?” my mother said, pointing to a word I’d skipped.

  “Pussy . . .” I said, sobbing.

  You know the worst-behaved kid in your neighborhood, the one everyone would assume was guilty if something ended up stolen or busted? Yeah, that was me. I was always doing stupid shit. Once I threw a heavy film reel up in the air and it came down on my head and split my skull open. In my family, they like to say that was my first time in the movies. I threw rocks at windows. I glued a girl’s hands together when she fell asleep. (Don’t worry, she got them apart eventually.) I would beat up Chaney all the time. If I got bored in a diner, I’d take the paper off a straw and tear it into tiny pieces and, with spit, stick them all over my face, like I had paper chicken pox. My mom was always popping me for that shit, but it didn’t do any good. If I got a laugh for it, I’d keep doing it no matter what the consequences were.

  I was real dramatic about my badness, too. It wasn’t like I was a sneak. In fact, I was terrible at hiding things. I got caught for pretty much everything I ever did wrong. And the stupider I was being, the more I wanted everyone to hear about it. Like, one day I got mad about something and went and sat in my bedroom window up on the second floor.

  “I’m getting ready to jump!” I shouted down. “I’m gonna do it! Say good-bye to me now!”

  “Momma!” Julie shouted. “Michael’s getting ready to jump out the window! Come quick!”

  “Well, let the damn fool jump, then,” I heard our mama say from downstairs.

  I guess after five kids you can tell when someone is bluffing a jump from a window. She was right. I didn’t jump. All I wanted was attention.

  At school it was no different. Our mom was sure glad, I think, to be free of me a few hours a day, to let the public education system do what they could with me. I got in trouble all the time, though, and got sent home plenty. Every single year, I was the worst kid in class, and my mom heard about it. I don’t
know that they had speed dial back then, but if they did, you better believe the principal had my mom on it.

  My mother would have to drag me out of bed in the morning to go to school. I hated school. I mean, at first I liked my elementary school pretty good, School 48. School 48 was a cool place, man. I remember on Fridays when they would let out, they sold real good popcorn. I loved that popcorn. If I close my eyes, I can taste it now . . . Mmmm . . . That was worth showing up for. But the rest of it? Naw.

  Shiiiit, I got left back twice.

  I even got left back in kindergarten. Do you know how bad at school you have to be to fail kindergarten?

  Maybe it was the umbilical cord thing. Maybe it was the three bowls of Cap’n Crunch I ate every morning for breakfast, which meant I’d be a Tasmanian devil all morning, then crash in first period and fall asleep at my desk. By the time I woke up again, I’d have lost track of what was happening, so I’d just look around, trying to think of shit to make everyone laugh, something to shout out, someone to make fun of. I didn’t care if it would get me sent back to the principal’s office, get my mom called. Again, if I got a laugh, it was worth whatever happened.

  I was always making up stories, telling jokes, trying to get everyone to crack up. Schoolwork was boring, and math was fucking impossible. So instead I’d spend my days trying to think up pranks. I’d put tacks on kids’ chairs, make funny noises, shout things out of turn.

  I really don’t know why I was so bad. I’ve just always been a mischievous guy. And I can’t control my mind sometimes. I can’t help what I think is hilarious. All I know is that at school every day was a new challenge to be badder than the day before. Usually it was just for a laugh and no harm done.

  A lot of the teachers actually liked me and thought I was funny, even though they still failed me. Not all of them liked me, though. Some of my teachers hated me and told me so, too. No joke. They wanted me to suffer. I know this because they said so.