One Cobra's Rage
by Louis Andres

Molesting the municipal highway of Pinchincha sometime around 4 a.m., an aching panic spread across the bottom of my stomach. A fifth of whisky at 2,600 meters of altitude can be an exotic and painful experience all at once, especially when you’re too cheap to spring for mixers. The lack of oxygen, high density of alcohol and deliberate disregard for all manner of structure mix in a man’s hemoglobin and produce levels of exquisite self-destructive inebriation the throngs of mid and upper level socialites will never understand. The last few years of my life have become a bad after-school special, only I no longer technically qualify as a troubled teen, and there’s no prospect of a catharsis, no friends who care enough to intervene.

Reminiscence on the innumerable requests from women to take them to the States suddenly prompted me to laugh out loud at the bad “WWJD” joke formed by the spattering of synapses still functioning. As I desperately searched my pockets for a pen, the passenger appeared to make a pointing finger, and I reacted with the certainty. As we neared the red light I laid on the horn and half-heartedly attempted to turn before tightening my grip on the wheel and heading down the other side of the median. I’d no desire to act outrageously, but I felt it must be done. Santiago, who was screaming out the window, nearly fell out, and the inane conversation over who’d fucked who was replaced with red, glassy saucer eyes. Every sense of all of the six people in the Russian made car sounded; the terrible revelation of who was behind the wheel seemed on point to sinking in.
Regrettably the alcohol had long since drowned out all notions of self-preservation, and after a second we began laughing, save the unconscious Carlos in the passenger seat. I stopped chuckling long before the Ecuadorians did; in America such excess is commonplace, such antics far from lifetime memories. Ahead on the potholed streets the headlights of a terrified man and wife pulled to the side, in back three wide-eyed children too naive to understand why this shouldn’t be happening, or too dumb to care. The poor bastard had no clue why I would behave in such a manner. Rage welled up in his family-sized heart after he gained assurance he was, indeed, on the correct side of the street, his wife already mid-sentence on the inherent evils of people like us. Santiago, once again halfway out the window, yelled something about Longos and broke into hysterics. The experience released lakes of acid in my whisky scarred stomach; why doesn’t this depraved country grow cheap wine like all good Latinos?

After I’d returned to the right lane, it occurred to me, I’d seen that look a thousand times in the berated faces and white fists of hundreds of honest American and European men. Respectable men, who without qualm, would choke the life out of me given the opportunity. And a sinking feeling suddenly told me that it’s the same in all corners of the world. If such acts of society were some sort of construction reserved for dignified and refined persons, certainly Ecuador was a cliff to savagery. However, here, as in any country, the constructs are expected to be strictly adhered to, even at such odd times of the night. But what had shocked me into this reality, and what was the catalyst to act in such a horrible manner? And more importantly what’s it to him?

In all reality, what I did (considering the ample reaction time provided) was safer than most other daily traffic situations. As I approached the car at 70 miles an hour, he was faced with the option of steering off the road or taking a fatal chance at trying to scare me back into my lane. He saw a shitty car and a driver who appeared to be otherwise engaged in conversation with the backseat, and he pulled over in a hurry. He knew he’d given in, and that’s largely the reason his eyes welled with fury as we passed in complete oblivion to the game of chicken we’d just won. The brevity of it all brought the wife to tears. To pull off or take some punks down with you…they were short ended either way.

A few hours later I’m sure Joe Family would have met with morning rush hour and Road Rage. Under these circumstances what it is that’s at stake is often obscured until it blossoms out of control. The situations faced are not life and death, they’re minute, i.e. some bastard delaying your arrival by anywhere from two to five seconds. And to make matters worse the asshole’s right there in front of you, all you got to do is get out of the car. Thus the focus is not on the two seconds but the act of disrespect or disregard for the laws written and unwritten for common human decency. When this happens the representation and the interpreted meaning of the action supplants the actuality. Rule and order are requisite to life: this poor bastard played by the rules, and now he expects others to do the same. At the same time the minutia of the law is so strenuous, one often gains an enormous sense of importance by justifying his personal need to break some laws.

This provides for a festering wasteland of lawbreakers who exact adherence to such laws. There are throngs of these fuckers who justify their superiority by demanding respect and understanding from the rest of the traffic–for their personal need to get to work two seconds early. The backlash is horrible; just look at our country. Americans regularly beat the life out of other Americans for cutting them off, not driving fast enough or any other silly transit related reason they perceive as irrevocably damaging their limited time. Why? Because every bastard cutting you off silently begins a class war within your heart, and as you sit white knuckled, it festers and boils over at shockingly regular intervals. You’re stuck with the notion that you are simultaneously too cool to hold the system in any regard and yet drawn to benefit from it, to break a few and piss off a few because you’re worth it. In short you’re struck by cool kid’s syndrome.

It’s a basic human condition. It’s why communism failed and why we all derive such pleasure from watching cheese dick actors on the silver screen. Hollywood reflects the social dynamic that there’s the cool kid and four or five other side characters that solely exist as His support structure. They build the cool time machines and love potions, but He uses and exploits this genius to nab booty and strumpet alike. Just look back at any Richard Grieco movie ever created, or Cobra, starring Sylvester Stallone.

There is one striking sequence in Cobra in which Sly knocks a Vato’s car to get into his parking space, and then tears his shirt to discourage any show of retribution. A brazen act of self-confidence reserved for a main character. Cobra comes wheeling back in later and seems a bit concerned that the other character might still show some anger, only to find he’s earned the street tough’s ultimate respect and says, “You’re a good citizen.” The dynamic was established from the start and everyone’s happy, including the Vato for some reason.

Naturally this dynamic cannot exist in reality. If anything, people deliberately sabotage the best of friends to avoid becoming the Vato. If I (or any other man) were to invent a love potion, I would begin to make preparations for the twelve on one orgy with such haste, that I’d disregard everyone, even my best friends. I’d stop by my friends’ houses unannounced, steal their cameras and lubricants and leave without saying a word, possibly taking the time to spray their girlfriends with my magic elixir. Blistered and dehydrated, I’d later decide that nobody must know of this potion. “It’s too dangerous for society!” I’d exclaim privately. Well, not likely, actually, but I sure as hell wouldn’t feel like sharing what little I had.

I’d continue down the path of denigration–more and more perverted sexual fantasies, 50 on one, politicians’ wives, senior citizens and strange ethnic combinations, all while my friends sit home on their couches. When finally they look through a crack in my aluminum foiled windows and discover what’s happened, rather than destroy my stash, “for [my] own good,” they’d scheme up some plan to take some for themselves and live as the fabled Cobra for a change. That’s the real world; any action to command respect and special treatment from others is typically met with hostility and violence.

In any event, subliminally, we’ve all internalized this idea that disrespect amounts to being Cobra, the dude that shoots stone queer lunatics and fucks hot bitches. It’s not our fault, but when we act on these ideals all hell breaks loose. My own experience would be the perfect example. The Ecuadorian husband desperately desires to be Cobra, particularly in front of his family, yet he played the Vato yielding to me, politely pulling aside as I looked in the backseat and sputtered sweet nothings about growing a coke nail.

Perhaps if I’d been his aesthetic idea of an action movie star it would have been different. I guess the point being made is: as long as I or anyone else is going to drink at such levels of excess we should wear tea shades, black leather and thick, black sideburns.