3:AM Magazine

By Raymond Cavanaugh Jr.

I’ve been seeking unhealthy emotions these days. Florida’s to blame. That grand southeastern phallus of Mickey Mouse and drug-smuggling is one of the few states which provides public online profiles for inmates, kind of like a mandatory Facebook.com. Each crook gets a snapshot and stat sheet stating such vitals as current length of sentence, scars & body art, most recent crime, and official list of life’s work.

I can’t get enough of these profiles, especially the “lifers”. There’s nothing quite like the face of a man who knows he’ll be in jail forever. It hasn’t quite dawned on some of the young punks, still reveling in their hardcore pride, even if they had to take a bit of cock here and there. But around age 30, the profiles show a change. The vigor is gone, replaced by the knowledge of a life forever wasted.

I haven’t been entirely stripped of compassion. I’d still root for these wretches to break out and, if not make it to Mexico, at least get one last glorious try at whatever crime they most enjoyed. But there’s something so titillating about these doomed faces forced to say cheese.

They don’t dick around down there in the Sunshine state. Armed robbery = life. Derek K. learned. Five years into eternity, his defiant smirk now overshadowed by tombstone eyes.

The images are far more thrilling than any backwoods smut flick, with some part-time cocktail waitress who can wipe the DNA off her face (and the cameraman can take the donkey back to the U-Haul) at anytime.

Derek’s gonna be in jail forever, just like Benny M., old, senile & toothless, hasn’t had a real glass of Florida orange juice since 1951, when a proud bat-swinging store clerk forced gun-packing Benny to graduate from theft to homicide. Hey, Benny: wake up! We put a man on the moon. There’s football on Monday night. The Olsen twins grew tits.

Of course, not all inmates in the database are facing life terms. An inspiring number will return to society and get at least one more chance to screw up real horrorshow. Some are getting that chance in a matter of months. Those profiles are often enjoyable as well. Although their eyes lack the tombstone force of a “lifer”, they show that twinkle of hopeful psychopathic glee.

There’s one character who especially stands out. I’m too spooked to write down even his first name. Barely old enough to buy smokes, he already sports tattooed teardrops beneath a squinting left eye which, with the impish jubilance of the bulging right eye, imbues his countenance with a remarkably demonic aspect. At age 16, this rotten apple got busted for running a cocaine racket. Talk about potential! (And to think I was impressed that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby at age 27.)

At that rate, you almost hope he doesn’t get busted too quickly and have to rot in a cell during the zenith of his criminal powers. Two months from release, his grin exudes the cold excitement of a young man all set to embark on atrocity. What naughty things will this boy do next?

Cruel system that it is, he’ll have to contend with one of those dehumanizing ankle bracelets. But I’m hopeful he’ll find a way ­– some dogs are meant to bite — ­that bracelet will come off, even if he has to put it around his own mother’s leg. He won’t squander such potential, the little Machiavelli. That grin inspires eternal confidence. I’d elect him President, lend him my car or let him hump my dog. Beause I know he’s going to make good, and I’m hoping he’ll be courteous enough to let me know of his progress, ideally through the profiles of the Death Row section.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raymond Cavanaugh Jr. graduated from Boston College in 2006 and now writes for an ethnic newspaper. His work has appeared in Adbusters, Celtic Heritage Magazine, The Iconoclast, and Journal of the American Medical Association.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Monday, December 1st, 2008.