The Ex-Con

“When you’re locked up, and you’re not in New York, and you’re seein’ shit on TV, CNN, HBO, and everything is filmed in New York, downtown, y’know? You reminisce.”

Elloheim Tucker wipes his sweaty brow with an axle grease-stained forearm, squinting his eyes at the late afternoon sunlight. He absentmindedly reaches in the shirt pocket of his mechanic’s uniform, perhaps searching for a misplaced memory or two. But no; for experiences like the ones he’s describing, he won’t have to dig too deeply into his subconscious.

He laughs when he remembers the awe of finally returning home after having spent five years in prison. The overwhelming combination of relief, apprehension and pure joy that comes with sudden freedom clearly evident in his eyes, he tells his story with the self-deprecating humor of one who has been “through some shit,” and can now afford a chuckle or two.

“So, here it is I’m back in New York; I ain’t been in New York for five years, and when I touch down, I’m right in the heart of it. I’m walkin’ around the Empire State Building, Macy’s, lookin’ up and takin’ in the sights with the rest of the mu’fuckin’ tourists. I felt like a foreigner.”

During the time when the average American teenager was spending his or her post-graduation summer pondering the seemingly endless possibilities, Elloheim thought about gettin’ money. Fast money. Rubber-band stacks in a shoe box money.

That wasn’t always the plan, however. And he did have a plan, but as so often happens when one is faced with more choices than can be found at a local Baskin-Robbins, he changed his mind.

“My high school—Park West High School in Manhattan—gave a course, basically, on fixing elevators,” he recalls. “I studied that shit for four years. The school had the hook-ups with the elevator mechanics’ union, so I thought I could get a job after high school. After I graduated, shit got real crazy. The elevator union went on strike, and I got tired of goin’ through the bullshit. So, I just got my hustle on.”

Unfortunately for him, the Feds knocked his hustle after only nine months. And with the (then-new) federal drug laws being what they were, 18-year old first-time offender Elloheim Tucker was hit with a 60-month sentence, the first year and a half of which he spent concocting even more C.R.E.A.M. schemes. That is, until a conversation with an older inmate who was doing time for tax evasion caused him to re-evaluate his choices for generating income.

“I met this old guy named Mr. Hunt, who turned me on to gettin’ money the legal way, like with stocks and real estate. He would tell me that nothing was impossible, that I could achieve anything I wanted to. I just had to go for it. That right there changed my whole outlook on life.”

Another change of plans, but this time, he wasn’t after the ends so much as he was after the means. He decided to pursue a life-long dream that nobody, absolutely nobody knew about. Not his mother, not his girl, not his closest friends—nobody would have imagined that Elloheim Tucker, young Black male from Harlem, USA, had always wanted to be an actor.

“Peer pressure’s a mu’fucka,” he declares. “Not sayin’ I was a follower, but I had different groups of friends that I would only do certain things with. Like, for example, I hustled, but if I wanted to play ball, I wouldn’t play ball with the cats I hustled with because that wasn’t their thing. I had another group of friends who I’d play ball with. So, with all of that, I never had anybody that I could tell about me wanting to be an actor. Nobody ever thought about some kid from Harlem, growing up to be the next Denzel or some shit like that. I thought I’d probably get laughed at or something.”

But one of the flyer aspects of growing older is the maturity that enables one to ignore critics, naysayers and pessimists, and upon his release, Elloheim—five years older, wiser, and more cognizant of the need to set goals—set about pursuing his dream.

“I had a little bullshit job sellin’ toys and books ’n shit door-to-door so I could satisfy the requirements for the halfway-house, but then this union shit came through. Since I knew all this elevator shit from high school, I figured I’d do this to pay the bills. After that, I checked out this one acting school, and I liked what they were about, so I just took it from there.”

And like a satisfied Baskin-Robbins customer who—after tireless deliberation—has settled upon his final choice, he won’t be changing his mind for quite some time. Elloheim Tucker the ex-convict/elevator mechanic/actor has found his perfect flavor.

“Right now, I’m a nobody,” he says. His fingernails dirty from earning the day’s wages, he carefully ties the laces on his Tims. “Yeah, I was an extra in Howard Stern’s Private Parts, and HBO’s Subway Stories, but I’m trying to get to the point where casting directors know me. For now, I make sure that my home is tight, na’msayin’? I live with my girl, Tyshawn, who’s behind me one hundred percent. And we got a one-year old, Lil’ Heim, my little dawg. I need to make sure they never want for nothing.”


**originally published a long-ass time ago, at a plantation, far, far away...**