Soon, possibly next week, I’ll shake the dust of this place from my crisp white Reeboks and move on to Lebanon, there to concentrate on my most important short-term goal: Getting the hell out of Lebanon. Oddly enough, I find that I’ll miss this weirdass place; I think the drama and people watching have become an addiction and finally vanquished my prison-induced allergy to drama in all its myriad forms. The people I’ve met run the gamut from good people who made a mistake, to the preposterously and ridiculously insane, to those who are so hideously evil that their crimes defy description. The precious few “normal” people that I’ve encountered are, by far, the minority, and also largely responsible for making my stay at MaCI not only not suck, but rock pretty fucking hard. So here’s to Lord British, Justice, Rick Ross, SouperMan, PorterMan, Piratey Goodness, and (the badass of all badasses) Pops – verily do thou rock.
The most fascinating person that I’ve encountered has also got to be the craziest person I’ve ever encountered – the False Prophet. The FP is, as far as I can tell, barking mad. He believes absolutely that God has chosen him to be His prophet and that God speaks to him in the same way that the rest of us call up our parents and ask for advice. He speaks in tongues, and once I saw him flailing wildly around his bed with his Bible “creating a shield against demons from Hell.” Perhaps the random arm flailing and Bible flapping was very intimidating to the demons that plague him, though more likely the demons, should they exist, were kept at bay by the fact that he is batshit crazy. The FP is one of the Heavies for Jesus, though he operates independently now that Prayer Call has been banned by the State, and thinks nothing of pulling up on a motherfucker and intimidating the soup out of him. He’ll also, if given a radio, alternately freeze solid for long periods of time and then go into some sort of full body spasm that he claims is the Holy Spirit entering him – which, if true, lends credence to the theory that God is a white dude because he has absolutely no rhythm at all – and he’ll chant “There’s a God in me” in his incongruously high quavery voice. This dude scares the shit outta me.
The other fantastically interesting dude – though for entirely different reasons – is Pops, my bunkie. Pops is 79 years old, a former army paratrooper in WWII (the same unit that later became the Airborne Rangers), former coal miner, machinist, beer drinkin’, hell raisin’ SOB. He’s the coolest guy I’ve met in a damn long time, and I’d give a lot to be able to sit down and get his life story on paper.