Tighten Up
Told by Lex Perez
Written by Adithya Reddy Baddam, Austin Lee Herrmann, Angela Ruth Bonopane, and Laurie Grobman
Lex Perez “grew up in violence.” It began with his parents’ “dysfunctional relationship” when he was a young kid living in northern New Jersey. To escape this abuse, Lex’s mother moved Lex and his two older brothers to the Oakbrook community in Reading, Pennsylvania. But his father eventually followed them. He taught Lex and his brothers that any conflicts they had should be settled through fighting and violence.
Lex’s mother again moved her family away from his father to a home on 12th Street and Oley. But the violence continued: “My biological dad ended up breaking into our house and trying to kill my mom, and then my mom and biological father was fighting downstairs. And then he had a knife to her.” She was saved by a neighbor who called the cops, and Lex’s father was arrested and later imprisoned.
Lex’s oldest brother took on the role of the man in the house and tried to protect his younger brothers, even when Lex’s mother remarried. But Lex’s middle brother got involved in the streets, and Lex followed. Lex started fighting in school and being disruptive in class. He sold drugs for its “instant gratification.” At 13 years old, Lex was arrested for pulling knives on people. After being released from juvenile placement at 14, he continued to sell weed and get into fights, but kept side jobs to convince his mom that he was being smart.
Over the next few years, Lex did pretty well. He was still fighting at school but had a TSS (therapeutic staff support) worker at school helping him. He liked his job at St. Joes Hospital on 12th Street and got along with everyone he worked with. His grades were good. But on Halloween in 1999, Lex bought some weed, and everything changed.
Lex was smoking the weed on the corner when he witnessed a group of kids paintballing someone’s car. When the cops came, a woman pointed to Lex: “Him too.” He and five other kids were arrested. Once they got to the precinct and his charges were formally read to him, Lex realized that he was not being charged for marijuana related offenses, but instead for paintballing the car. He told them he didn’t even know the other kids, but ended up getting convicted when he was identified as being on the corner. He was sent to Fort Charles Young Boot and Hat Camp.
Lex calls that experience his “introduction to literally not care about pretty much anything.” He felt defeated, “super-upset because I was actually working, trying to do good.”
Lex was immediately met with violence at Fort Charles Young. It was a “toxic” and “super volatile” community. He was the only kid there from Reading, and he felt targeted because of his light skin. The other kids were trying to see how much they could mess with the new guy and instigated fights:
“I’m in there fighting all the time because I’m going to protect myself too at the same time. I wasn’t a chump or nothing like that. So I engaged with whatever the situation called for. And that became like a thing to where that situation started changing my character because it wasn’t like I was looking for problems, but I damn sure wasn’t turning nothing down.”
Lex was physically assaulted by a staff member. Despite being passively threatened to not say anything, he spoke up and got the staff member fired. He paid for it: “They had this thing, 15-minute interval workouts that you would do. And they would randomly pop you out for that. I was getting those all the time.” It changed him. It changed his character.
Lex returned to Reading frustrated about his wrongful conviction and traumatized by the violence he’d endured. He was angry. He couldn’t be the person he was before juvenile detention: “So that character took over because I felt like it masked my hurt and then it masked my disappointment and no kind of moral or support or sense of justice. So, from 17 to 19, I created a space of havoc for myself, those two years ended up telling the story for the next 16 years.” He sold drugs, robbed other drug dealers, and got into guns. At 19, Lex robbed a drug dealer for the second time at his house. This time, the dealer’s family walked inside the house, witnessed him steal money, and then leave. It was treated as a home invasion, and Lex was sentenced to 8 to 16 years.
In the next few months, before sentencing, Lex was “getting into a bunch of bad situations” –dangerous and violent. He was shot in his car but lived because he was wearing a bullet proof vest. After going to the hospital, the police were called, and he was arrested. He was sent to Berks County Prison.
Prison was a “war zone” for Lex due to the enemies he had made on the outside. The environment encourages conflicts and violence: “You’re doing a bunch of time with other criminals’ and criminals become a corporation in a way. We’re helping each other out. And now we’re giving ourselves encouragement on staying tough.” The correctional officers who were supposed to urge the inmates toward positive reform didn’t talk to them. They didn’t
encourage him: “Their attitude towards you is like, ‘Keep coming back so we can keep making money. Because if you’re not here and they’re not here and nobody’s here, then I don’t got a job, right?’”
Getting transferred to state prison and away from the people that encouraged such negative behavior provided Lex with the opportunity to change his life around. Meeting new people who were in prison anywhere from 15 years to life changed him: “I started looking at them and saying like, ‘do I want that to be me?’”
He began a journey of self-help and became “a seeker of information.” As a kid, Lex was always reading comic books and storybooks. In prison, it was self-help books. He went to as many prison groups as he could. He often got heckled by the other men because he took a notebook with him. He wanted to understand what was being taught, especially when learning about the brain: “I didn’t know what a cognitive behavior was until I was 23 years old. I started being a little bit more critical with my thought pattern and understanding what triggers I have here, and what causes me to be this type of way. And I started learning that about myself.”
He also rediscovered barbering. A friend from Berks County Prison, Maurice Dunn, cut Lex’s hair in his cell. He taught Lex how to “break apart a razor, put it on like a little comb, and then go to work cutting. And then that became my thing.” Lex remembered the first time somebody asked, “Yo, who did your shape up’? And I was like, ‘I did.’ And they were like, ‘Yo, you could do mine.’” And he did.
The state prison had a barbering program. He couldn’t get into it right away. Before, he’d have gotten mad and impatient. But the older individuals Lex was locked up with carried themselves much differently than his peers at Berks County Prison and stayed out of trouble. If there was a conflict, they’d talk, not fight. An older man, Naim, doing 28 years, helped Lex learn something that would change him and last with him:
“I got to tighten up because I was so impulsive. A lot of times when people act out in violence, it’s all impulsive. It’s all not understanding your emotional reactions to situations. We have to learn how to control that side of us as men just because the more we act out and the more we don’t pay attention to our emotional output into the world, we pass that on to the children because like I said, you see violence growing up.”
As time continued, Lex began setting small goals for himself to feel a sense of achievement and progress while he was serving his time. He joined more prison programs and accumulated 12 credits through Lehigh Carbon Community College toward a business degree, making Dean’s list for the summer, spring, and fall semesters. He finally made it into the barbershop program, and it was “life-changing.”
Then he faced a new hurdle. Lex and his instructor had a small verbal argument. But his instructor retaliated by writing him up and lying, saying that Lex threatened him with a pair of scissors. A lot of the barbers testified on Lex’s behalf, and he was found not guilty. Still, the prison administration shipped him off to another jail, followed by the SEI Retreat. It wasn’t easy to be at a new place with new people. But he was okay. He played chess and finished programs. Though it took some time, he got into the barber program with an amazing teacher, Mr. King.
After serving the minimum sentence of eight years and four months, Lex, 28, returned home from prison. Psychologically, this was challenging, as he was unaware of all the trauma that he experienced and that he was trying to cover up his emotions from this
trauma. It took him a while to realize that this defense mechanism was not good for society, which he was fortunate enough to understand because he participated in regular counseling sessions as part of his program at the halfway house he was residing in: “I was going to counseling for at least 15 months while I was first initially coming home. So that was like a true benefit to my experience because as I was coming home, situations were occurring, and I didn’t really know how to talk to nobody. I was able to talk to her.”
Even so, Lex struggled with life on the outside because his past life was there waiting for him. He fell back into “the character” he’d been before prison, on the defensive and ready to fight. But he realized he needed to eliminate the bad characters he was surrounding himself with because “then it doesn’t feel like you have to act towards every act of disrespect. And you have to learn that about yourself.”
Lex learned it and returned to barbering. He did a 30-day Double Platinum Program with Samuel Sosa. He met Serge Veleria, who owns a barber school and a shop, and related and looked up to him: “He was the first guy I met that actually went through jail, did a lot of time, came home, and built an empire for himself. And I think because of that, he took a liking to me, and we built on a different level.” Serge was also a “savvy businessman.” Lex’s brother also connected Lex with other “guys making moves in the business world and being productive.” Why couldn’t Lex? “These guys are living their life. Why am I out here risking my life?”
Lex could and did do it–with determination and perseverance, and also some luck, $20,000 from a lawsuit from an accident in 2011. He gave the money to his brother to invest with the idea that they could “fix some properties and stuff like that” to make more money in the long run. He continued working at ATS Barbershop and lived off his tips, saving the rest for other ventures such as acquiring property. He had a game plan: “I knew I was never the best barber. But I always had good relationships. I got good people skills. I know how to navigate that very well.” His mother, stepfather, and brother believed in him and invested in him, enabling Lex to purchase properties and grow the All Stars franchise–All Stars Temple, All Stars Sinking Spring, All Stars Shillington–and his other shop, All Seasons Barbershop in Reading. Lex appreciates his family’s support: “when somebody invests with you like that and they show you that they’re willing to help you on this journey, I just think it just paves the way for everything else.”
Lex applies this philosophy to his employees who may be just starting their own journeys, providing opportunities to grow and thrive. As a licensed barber teacher, Lex takes on apprentices who then obtain their barber licenses. And if they decide to leave All Stars, Lex applauds them for taking a chance. The goal is to “create change” in the community, and with about 30 barbers at a time, Lex is “changing 30 people’s lives.” The “best feeling” for Lex “is if one of them turned out to be greater than me, that’s amazing. We want to push all of them better than me. Make sure somebody else has an opportunity. Share everything you could possibly share. Give the information up. I’m all about development, planting the seed, and watching it grow, and then you know you’re giving oxygen to the world.”
Lex is also planting seeds throughout the community through his work with kids. He provides free haircuts, sponsors local sports teams, and participates in charitable drives like Toys for Tots and coat drives. Recognizing his influence, he also offers guidance to children brought to him by various community members.
Lex remembers, at age 13, when his best friend and a few other guys they hung out with got arrested. They talked up their time in placement. That made Lex want to go to placement. Now, he knows why:
“I wanted to test my manhood by actually going to placement, right? So it’s just like there’s a psychological breakdown there when you’re thinking like that because I should have been like, ‘Fuck that. I ain’t going there.’ But it was like, ‘When I go, I’m going to be ready.’ It’s like you’re in this position of trying to prove to the crowd you’re tough. And that’s a problem. And the reason why it’s a problem, one, now more than ever, is because that source of information isn’t just coming from when somebody actually steps outside their porch.”
Social media is flooding kids’ minds. Lex worries about drill music’s impact on young people, noting its main focus on violence and hypersexuality.
Lex wants to counteract those mindsets in his interactions with youth. He provides them with a space where they feel safe and then also where their dreams can grow and manifest. He encourages them to make sure they are being great: “When they leave, I try not to tell them to be safe. I just try to tell them to be great.” Remembering what he learned from Naim, his friend from state prison, Lex always tells them, “Tighten up. Try to make sure your emotions are always in check.”