by Mike Epps
Still, I kept trying. I lied to the work-release center and said I worked at this place called LD’s Garage. (LD was just a guy that was a mechanic that used to work on my cars.) The guy who ran the center, Lloyd Bridges, liked me, so even though he could have sent me back to prison a million times, he never did. Every time I showed up, I told them I’d been at work—a cash job—and I would hand over to them $120 a week. The way it worked there, you’d bring them your paycheck and they’d help you manage and save it so you could get back on your feet, learn about having a real job and paying your bills on time and all that. I was learning, though, that I didn’t know how to make any money that wasn’t drug money.
There was a bright spot to that period of time: my girlfriend Yolanda, aka Pookie. Yolanda was standing on the corner with her friends, and when I saw her, I did a U-turn in the middle of the street. I fell so hard in love with her. Yolanda was a down-ass chick for me. She’d show up to the work-release place, bring me my favorite food and all the news from Mapleton. We had a real Romeo-and-Juliet thing going, too, because as far as I could tell, her parents fucking hated me. I couldn’t much blame them. I didn’t have a lot of prospects, and I hadn’t made the best impression even before I wound up incarcerated. Eric (nicknamed Boo) and Karen Sharp were great people, hardworking, and I was wild. I’d even borrowed Karen’s car to go sell drugs in.
Besides Yolanda, the person I was closest to back then was this guy I met in work release named Otis Brown. This dude touched my life so much, man. He was like a mentor to me, so inspirational. He talked about the streets, and about trying to be a gangster, and he talked about those things in the past, like they were over and didn’t have power over him anymore. Now he had a dream. He knew the way out.
I remember one freezing day in the middle of winter when he was whistling while he unpacked boxes.
“Why you so happy?” I said.
“I just did thirteen straight years in prison,” Otis said. “And now I’m free.”
This didn’t look like freedom to me.
“Even better, I got a plan!” Otis said. “I’m going to start all the way from scratch. I learned how to cut hair in prison. I’m going to do $5 bald-head fades until I make enough to open my own place.”
That was his favorite thing, $5 bald-head fades. He’d do them on anyone, anytime. He’d give your cat a bald-head fade if it sat still long enough.
“I’m going to come up,” he said.
Otis also worked at Wendy’s, so he’d be there all day and he’d cut hair at night. And he saved and saved his money. Eventually he got a job at a local barbershop, until he got enough money to start his own, and I would go there and get my fade and sit and talk with him.
There was a guy who also used to hang there at the barbershop, Gary Bates, and he’d been to prison, too, but had gone straight. These guys became a good influence on me. We’d sit and listen to the radio, and I loved to make them laugh. When I did, Otis would tell me I belonged on the radio. Whenever guys got interviewed by the DJs, Otis would say, “You’re better than they are, Mike. You got better stories and better jokes. You should be on that radio. You sure as hell shouldn’t be out there in the streets.”
Meanwhile, I had to make money, though. I couldn’t imagine doing what Otis did, year after year of bald-head fades. I knew I was meant for something else; I just couldn’t figure out what that was yet.
I spent my days just really confused. I didn’t know really what to do with my life. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a criminal. I didn’t know if I wanted to work a regular job. I didn’t know what the fuck I really wanted to do at the time. I was just trying to find myself, you know? But I wasn’t doing anything to get there. I was just doing drugs, hanging out with my girl Pookie, and spending a lot of time at the barbershop, trying to make Gary and Otis laugh.
I moved into one of these big Midwest boardinghouses, with room and board. When even the boardinghouse rent got to be too much, I bounced around from place to place, staying with folks I knew.
For a while I lived with my sister, Julie, then I ended up living with my brother John. That was going okay until one night while he was sleeping—he had to be at work at five a.m.—I borrowed his car to take a girl home. I got in an accident and totaled it.
John seemed more disappointed than angry. “You need to just leave here and do something with yourself,” John said. “You want that fast money. You’re taking too many risks. You’re too adventurous. You need to figure out a plan soon or you’re going to end up dead.”
But I kept fucking up. I’d moved on, but one day I realized I’d left some drugs at Julie’s house and I needed to get them right away. I went to Julie’s but she was at work. I didn’t have a key anymore and I didn’t know what to do, so I got my tools and I took the door off its hinges. I propped it up next to the doorway. By that point I was late for something, and I wasn’t thinking so clearly, so I just left the door there without putting it back on.
Well, Julie came home from work and found her front door leaning up against the wall. She wasn’t real happy about it.
How she knew it was me, I don’t know. “What in the world did you do to my door, Mike?” she said when she called me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was in a rush. I had to get in the house.”
“You better be glad I was living on the third floor and there weren’t people walking by, or I’d have been robbed and I’d be even madder than I am at you,” Julie said. “You need to get your shit together, Michael.”
Things were getting real dark. I knew I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. By this time I’d already caught two drug felonies, and with one more I’d go in for thirty years. Even when I was on the straight and narrow, other guys in the neighborhood wouldn’t let me alone.
Crime came to find me, even though I didn’t have shit to steal. I couldn’t even afford my own car, so one day I was driving my guy Jeff’s drop-top car around. I was stopped at a red light when this guy suddenly appears and sticks a gun to my head. Fuck, I was mad, and I knew Jeff would be even madder when I got home without his car.
But I couldn’t try to be a hero or I’d violate my parole. And I didn’t want to get shot in the head. So I got out of the car. There were a bunch of guys there, and I’m guessing they thought I’d go get my friends, which I maybe would have; so instead of just driving off, they put me in the trunk.
Now, a word on this kind of car theft: It’s not how we did things before 1992. But the Oliver Stone–produced movie South Central changed everything.
That movie taught America a lot: that gangs were everywhere, and very hard to leave; that it’s hard to turn your life around. Oh, and it taught urban America something else: carjacking. That movie was the first time a lot of us saw anybody rob cars with a gun. Naptown learns fast. And that was how I ended up in these guys’ trunk, maybe about to get shot.
Riding around back there, I was scareder than a motherfucker. I prayed to Jehovah, Buddha, Allah—every deity I could, lying there in that trunk. When the guy stopped at a stop sign and they cut the music down, I beat on the back of the backseat.
“What?” one of the guys yelled from up front.
“Play that again!” I yelled. “That’s my song!”
That made them laugh.
I kept yelling stuff from the trunk to make them laugh.
“This guy’s crazy,” I heard one of them say.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the car stopped. Footsteps. The trunk opened. Was I about to get shot? I squinted up at them.
“You can go,” the guy said.
I climbed out of the trunk, and they got back in the car. As they were about to drive away, one of the guys held the gun out the window and pulled the trigger. A flame came out. It was a cigarette lighter.
Jeff never has let me forget that I got carjacked by some guys who had seen South Central, and with a cigarette lighter, no less. I blame Oliver Stone.
“You’re better at comedy than crime
,” my friend Otis Brown said one day at the barbershop. “You’re funny around here. Think you can go onstage and do it?”
All I had to do was find somewhere. We were listening to the radio one day and heard that Seville’s—a cool old club where the NFL and NBA players used to hang—was going to have a comedy contest. There was a cash prize and everything.
“Hey, Mike,” Otis said, “I bet you $500 you won’t get up on that stage.”
“Yeah?” I said. “You’re on.”
God bless Otis. I knew what he was doing. He thought I could make it, but he knew I’d only take the bet and get onstage if I’d be okay either way. If I failed, fine. I’d make $500. Otis was that kind of guy. He thought it was worth risking that much money just to get me to find out if I had what it took or not to take a chance on myself.
By the time I got there, the audience was drunk and ratchet, so I figured, Why not? and got good and drunk, too. By the time I got onstage, I was wasted. I stood there and just smoked a cigarette and talked about my family. And every time I said anything funny, the audience laughed. And whenever I flubbed a line, they laughed. They didn’t care what I said. They just seemed to like me up there. I liked being up there, too.
I blew that place up. I won the contest. I would have to go give Otis $500 of my winnings. But it was worth it.
THE NEXT DAY, I called 411 and asked for the phone numbers and mailing addresses for every major agency in Hollywood: CAA, William Morris, all of them, plus for Def Comedy Jam. Then I went to the post office and bought envelopes, paper, and stamps, and I wrote seven copies of the most honest, most personal letter I’d ever written. I poured my heart into it, said things I’d never told anyone before.
In the letter, I wrote that I was a comedian looking for an agent and a break. I told them I was twenty-two and I’d just gotten out of jail and won a comedy contest at Seville’s, and that it made me realize all I wanted to do was perform. I knew I could be a star—I just needed a chance.
I was so honest that I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t write back.
I waited a few days and then I called to follow up.
The operator answered the phone and said, “CAA.”
“Hello,” I said. “This is Michael Epps. Can I speak to the head of the company?”
“I’m sorry, but who are you?” she said.
“I’m Michael Epps. I’m a comedian in Indianapolis. I’d like to speak to the head of CAA about representation, please.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said.
“Then how does it work?” I said. “Please tell me.”
“To speak to the head of the agency, you have to at least have an agent here.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s what I want, an agent. Can you help me get one of those now, please?”
“No,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “can you find out if my letter has been received? I sent a letter last week.”
“I can call down to the mail room and see,” she said.
I listened to the hold music and waited. I was sure she would come back and say, “Oh, Michael EPPS! Why didn’t you say so? You’re the one that sent that amazing, heartfelt, honest letter. We’ve all read it and everyone’s fighting over who will get to be your agent. I’ll put you right through to the very best one.”
Finally, she came back.
“We get so many letters,” she said. “No one knows if your letter is here or not. I’m sorry. Good luck to you.”
Click.
I had calls like that with every organization. And I had them every single day, because I kept calling them all every day for months.
After the first couple of times, that CAA operator got to know my voice, and when I called, she said. “Excuse me, sir. I need to put you on hold.”
She put me on hold and never came back.
Every day I’d call and she would do the same thing. I still kept calling.
Looking back now, I realize that this is not how you make it in show business. But what did I know? I was from Indianapolis. All I knew was what I learned in work release. So I did that, just trying to get a job as an entertainer rather than as a stock boy. I called like I’d filled an application out.
I never did get on the phone with an agent, but I did make one of the girls laugh on the phone at Def Comedy Jam.
“I’d like to talk to Russell Simmons, please,” I said.
“You’re crazy, man!” she said, laughing. “I’ve worked here a long time, and I don’t even talk to Russell Simmons!”
People talk a lot about diversity: How can we make companies more diverse? How can we hear from diverse voices? Well, what I ran into maybe shows a little bit how hard it is. They can’t find us, and we can’t find them. So the people who wind up succeeding are the people who are already around, the people who know how to play the game. They’re not the best people—not at all—but they’re the ones who get the jobs, because the really good ones are stuck back in their little towns, writing letters on loose-leaf paper.
People underestimated me because of where I was from. They’d hear I was from Indiana and they’d think I was square. This is something I think about all the time now when I’m around stars from the coasts: Good fucking luck surviving what I survived.
They wouldn’t make it. They’ll crumble. They’ll realize how not-tough they are. They’ll realize a whole bunch of shit about themselves, and it’ll make them appreciate where they’re from. If you came from California, or New York, or Chicago, any of them big cities where you got access to a bunch of shit, just know that you were born on third base; you didn’t hit a triple. Bring your punk ass to my hometown, where it’s fucking fucked-up. Yeah, become somebody out of that, motherfucker. People don’t make it out of there because there ain’t no fucking outlets. Where you out-letting at?
It kills me when I think about all the smart, good people I knew back in Mapleton, the ones who never had a chance, never knew what they could be or do. I think about my friend Ryan’s mother, Ms. Bembry. She reminds me a lot of Tupac’s mom: street but so smart—a genius. She could have gone to Harvard. She was also an activist, so if the police were about to arrest someone, she’d come on the street and make sure they didn’t do anything illegal. If the world were fair, the Bembrys would be running things.
But it seems like all the opportunities go to kids who already have everything.
Maybe we should establish a kind of reverse Fresh Air Fund, where rich white kids spend a summer in black public housing—trying to live on food stamps, figuring out which gang to join. It couldn’t hurt race relations in this country, know what I’m saying? I’ll start it. The Mike Epps Naptown Cultural Exchange Program. Bring your ass out here, New Yorkers and Hollywood folk. Come to Indiana—see how you do.
Respect the fact that I had heart to move to your hometown and become somebody. I never met your funk ass here.
Once I won that Seville’s contest, I felt like I was basically at the top of Indianapolis fame. Seville’s invited me back for a second performance, and I couldn’t wait. This was going to be proof that I was the best comedian the town had ever seen, and I was going to make it.
Other people’s expectations were high, too. In my neighborhood I was an instant legend, and I invited everyone to this second gig—the whole neighborhood, my entire family, even people I owed money to. I’d been so drunk at my first show that I hadn’t been able to enjoy it, so this time I was going up there stone sober. I was going to feel all the feelings. I was going to show them all how good I was. It was going to be this show, and then late-night shows, and then a mansion in Hollywood.
I bounced up onstage, as sure of myself as I have ever been, in a three-piece suit bought specially for the occasion. I told my first joke.
Silence.
I told my second joke.
Silence.
I told my third joke.
Boos.
I kept talking, starting to sweat in my suit, and nothing worked. I walk
ed offstage to a smattering of pity applause from my family and groans from the rest of the room.
I bombed.
That was the last cue I needed to leave town. I needed a fresh start. I wanted to do comedy somewhere nobody knew me, so I could fuck up without having to hear about it for the rest of my life. I also had to go to a place where I could actually make it, where the stages were bigger and the lights were brighter—not to mention to a city that wasn’t full of guys who wanted to put me in car trunks.
I also had to go somewhere with the promise of a job, because shit was about to get really real: My girlfriend, Yolanda, told me I was about to become a father.
9
A Comedy Club and a Sewer in Atlanta
The day my daughter Bria was born was one of the happiest days of my life. The second I saw her, I loved her so much.
“Damn,” I said to Yolanda. “We got a daughter.”
I could not kiss that baby’s head enough—I kissed it over and over.
For the previous nine months I’d been in denial about being a dad, because it was such a huge responsibility. Deep down, from the second Yolanda told me she was pregnant, I’d been scared and I wanted to run from reality. She wanted to get married, get a house, all that, but I didn’t want to do any of it. I was still running in the streets. I didn’t have no money. I was trying to find a job. I was hustling.
I didn’t understand the magnitude of having a child. I didn’t know how to be a father, a boyfriend, or a decent person at the time. When Yolanda got pregnant, I was still trying to sell drugs and living in a boardinghouse. And I was a bad boyfriend even though Yolanda always treated me nice. She did anything in the world for me. I wish I could’ve treated her much better. I just felt so much shame about not being there for her and the baby that I just did more drugs. I wanted to destroy myself.
But now, looking at Bria, I felt a change in me. Bria was so innocent, just this cute, fat, tiny girl with squinty eyes. She was just so sweet and beautiful. Looking at her on the first day she was alive, I was so fucking happy. Whatever bad shit I’d done, I’d done this one good thing: I’d helped bring this wonderful little person into the world.