Jake the
Snake
By John Rogan
The television glowed blue. My mom was falling asleep on
the couch. I went to the wicker basket and got a model race car and two action
figures. The car would be racing down some street, weaving, Bazooka would be
duking it out with G.I. Joe’s arch nemesis Cobra. But maybe Cobra would win
this time. Cobra’s shrill voice was always screaming out in desperation and I
am sure there were times when Cobra privately wept since all his plans were
constantly thwarted by the handsome, muscular mercenaries on The G.I. Joe Squad.
No more crying alone for Cobra. The car began to race down the street. My dad
popped his head into the television room and asked for the checkbook, something
for the food store. He eyed the TV suspiciously. The TV glowed blue a big
stadium, a square, canvas ring, and announcers talking about strange characters
and their intense conflicts with other stranger characters. Cobra was prying Bazooka’s fingers off the
side of the car. Bazooka clung and fought for dear life. They were going fast,
Bazooka saw it coming but could not stop it, finally. Cobra could maybe rejoice
with people, friends. Cobra could smile for a bit, be relieved that something
he set out to do had been successfully attained by himself. No more shrill
crying once the show ended. One last kick to the face and Bazooka would spiral
off the top of the car into a skyscraper or the radiator. Then a hissing
snake’s head came on the screen. “Damien”, I said to myself. A tuxedoed
announcer speaking Southern twang asked Jake the Snake about his opponent in
the upcoming match “You see people wonder why does he do the things he does,
you know why does he do that? A lot of people want to know where is he going?
To know where I’m going you must know where I’ve been, and believe me you do
not have a clue where I’ve been. It’s as simple as this, Jesse, you know and I
know it is much better to be the hunter than the hunted, and what I’m in the
WCW for is very simple I don’t want a piece of the world. I want the whole
world.” Jesse responds
“Jake
Roberts I don’t mind telling ya in my estimation, my opinion, humble as it may
be you are a rather sick individual with that snake especially.” Jake gives a
short laugh.
“Thank
You.”
“You
actually take that as a compliment.”
“Sure
I live the way I want to. I don’t live by your rules. I don’t live by their
rules. I live by my own rules because they fit me the best. Doing what I do I
have to go out there and create and, and be the man I want to be. I have the
opportunity to do that. Not many people have enough guts to do that, but I do.”
It was 1993 and my parent’s dreams were destroyed by their kids. My mom was not
the lawyer she was, in fact she was not a lawyer at all, she was a stay at home
Mom now. My Dad’s 30’s had given way to children, marriage and the irreversible
life of a “working-stiff” There was all sorts of little conflicts. My mom
upset, overburdened. My Dad angry, swearing, overwhelmed. I remember coming in
from the backyard because the mosquitoes were biting my back with my shirt off.
The girls accused me of cheating at capture the flag. It was not cheating I
just thought of something they did not. An owl always cooed as the sun went
down in my backyard, but I never saw it once. My living room dark, thickened
with shadows after hot dogs for dinner. I was doing aerial bombardments like
the Stealth fighters in the Gulf War on TV. All the intact personalities of my
neighborhood: the cliquey girls, my two friends, the younger boys peeing their
pants, the younger girls taking off their shirts like the boys. The older girls
telling the younger girls to put their shirts back on. Me and my friend found a
bunch of Band-Aids and gave it to his mom. One day we ate grass. The next day
we played war. But we were all intact, everything was present, and the future
was as far away as Kuwait.
“Just
let me be a part of the show and I will do my share. She was just such a kind
little thing, you know, right there’ll probably be, you know, she’s going to
live for the rest of her life, probably, and have seven kids and seven
husbands, and whatever, wind up being a lady truck driver that cross dresses or
something. She’ll always remember tonight, man, you know.” Things sped up. Kids
went to different schools. People moved. Oklahoma city blew up. American
Embassies blew up. Moms smelled cigarette smoke on their kids. I heard rumors of a kid getting a blow job in
a bathroom stall. The girl filled her thermos with vodka and by lunch she was
falling down and the teachers were freaking out. My Dad had to make sure there
was money for college, even though he spoke of the various enemies out to screw
him in his office. My Mom went back to work booking vacations for a travel agency, not the Supreme Judicial court like before I was born, but
hey kids or career.
“My
mother was thirteen years old when I was born. Why? Because my Dad raped a
little girl that was in a room asleep. My Dad was going out with my Mother’s
mother, there you go, there’s some bones for Jake the Snake.” I got really into
Marxism as soon as I could read. I was beginning to realize that I, my birth,
was a well-organized plan, and I like all my contemporaries of my neighborhood
were assembled by-products of our parent’s ability to hope for something better
than their own life. There were all these people assembled and I had to stay on
my feet with them. Endless competition. Incessant human interaction. Classroom
after Classroom. Pressure. Stress. And the need to escape. “I used to tell
myself I would never do drugs, never, it’s for losers, and we were Wrestling
26, 27 days a month, twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday, catching 8,9 planes a
week. It’s basically a necessity just to continue. You took pills to go to
sleep, you took pills because you had pain, you took cocaine to wake up so you
could perform, you drank to go to sleep, you took sleeping pills. It’s a trap.
Cocaine speeds me up so fast I can’t think about my past. Speeds me up so fast
I don’t have to be responsible.” Kids were trying to go to college, but most
kids I knew dropped out. All that coming down. Messed up parents just trying to
do their best, but inevitably causing some major psychological snap. A support
system not there. Day-in, Day-out with the absence. Systemized obligation
taking the place of neighborhood afternoons. “My Dad was never there for me…I
would do anything to gain my father’s love and I reached a point coming out of
high school I was going to go to college, and I said Dad I’m going to go to
college. He said good luck, huh, gee Dad thanks, you know, and right then something
inside me said you know if you are ever going to get him to love you, you got
to be better than he is at what he does, so I went out to the ring and I jumped
in there and got the crap beat out of me.” When I was little I blamed my parents
for all this awfulness, the school, the work, the absurd responsibilities, but
it was not until later I realized they were just people like me entangled in
this horror of mandated obligation looming over my own horizon. What people
told me in a far off kind of way was adulthood. All the people suffering out
there on the TV were just like me. I did not realize it, but it was coming
fast. “Sometimes you don’t understand, see, it’s like when I was growing up I
swore up and down I would never treat my kids like my father treated me, and
twenty-four years later I look back and say, my God, you’ve done the exact
stinking same thing.” Then when I got to be legally an adult I realized if
everyone disdains responsibility and obligations then everyone must be in some
way fake, because they told me they enjoyed their lives. Things lost the aspect
of being genuine. Disillusion and alienation with the modern world constructed
before me consumed me and I saw an interview with my old favorite wrestler Jake
the Snake. It was good to see him still around. An old warrior. Most of his
later interviews were drunk. His most recent interviews were about sobriety.
But I always remember the old matches as the heel with the snake around his
neck, shirtless, long hair in the mullet-like late 80’s early 90’s style “Me
and Damien don’t forget. Now it’s my turn I’m going to make you beg! This time
you’ll be the one that’s humble, this time you’ll be the one who’s humiliated
and this time you will be the one who grovels for the money.” I guess I wonder as
not being kids anymore what we fight over, what we are upset about. If the
external goals I set out to accomplish have substance and if I set out the
time, energy and sacrifice to accomplish these goals will this uneasy sense,
weaving in and out of my days, leave me. Lots of people have good ideas and
suggestions, but I know they stare down the barrel of the same uncertainty. I
guess that’s when I feel alone, like other people are fake for just being part
of the world. I feel fake if I am part of things, but at the same time
incredibly scared of being alone or somehow left behind. “I wish he could be
real more often. It would really help him and I think it would help us. It’s
part of an act and part of it’s real. I mean his hurt is very real, I think.”
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