Coyote Agonistes

     Wile E. Coyote? A junkie strung out on bunk dope.
     What's the visual you get with this guy? Yep, it's this flea-bitten yoyo plummeting earthward from 5,000 feet as that beep-beeping sonofabitch of a bird waves goodbye from above and boogies on into a tunnel or something.
     But then, on a deeper, more human level, you find that--already!--you can relate to the trials and travails of a predator nitwit who will not go out and chase rabbits or horned toads--creatures he might run to earth--because he's got to do what has never been done and eat what has never been sucked down a gullet in life.
     The question is, what put him there in mid-air, hurtling toward lizards and hard rocks below?
     I'll tell you exactly:
     His classmates in high school, especially that fine little blonde with the legs and the lungs who sat by the window up there in front--they all put him down as a nosepicking dweebster, right from day one til the morning he slunk to the freightyards and hopped on the boxcar that took him to Yuma and into the desert forever.
     You remember that blonde, do you not? Yes indeed...
     Hey, snap awake!
     The point here is, Wile E., a cultural icon of ours, is chasing the Dream, the American Dream, that somehow, some way, he can deep-six that putz jacket once and for all, the minute he gnaws that damn bird off the bone and washes it down with a Bud.
     He also dreams of the day that will come at long last--the day he attends his high school reunion...
     He lands his Lear jet right in the middle of Timber Wolf Field, the fifty-yard line of the home of the state high school football champs the two years he went there--where once they wouldn't even let him haul water. He blases on into the banquet room down at the other end of the campus. He surveys the crowd with a casual smile. All chit-chat stops. A cathedral-like hush grips the room.
     The beautiful blonde with the legs and the lungs... She sees him there haloed... Her eyes go way wide. Her breath quickens now as his smile lands on her...
     She gets up from her chair, leaving her date like a lump of uneaten meatloaf, and walks toward Wile E., slowly, entranced. Her eyes probe with questions, seeking the sign in his eyes that will transform her world.
     A deafening silence...
     She melts in his arms...
     Wile E. is king of all he surveys!
     He dreams the dream we all dream of!
     His story is ours!
     Quick aside: I'm talking to guys here, of course. Not that women don't have their dick dreams, they do, that's a given. It just that, a lot of their dreams involve daycare and stuff, and unless the kid's screaming and she's got the car, a guy never ever gives daycare a thought.
     Wile E. never has...
     

     Anyway, Wile E. dreamed the impossible dream. He did seven bits in the joint behind charges involving explosives. His hospital bills hit the moon. He owed Acme billions.
     He risked and lost all, or damn near.
     Then finally he said, fuck all this falling off cliffs! Fuck dancing with trains in those tunnels!
     And fuck that roadrunning, beep-beeping bastard forever!
     These days Wile E. is a vegan! Yessiree, Bob! In October '09 he inked a fat contract to push Bird's Eye's new veggie health foods on prime time TV. The guy's stacking bank like a one-man cartel!
     And, finally, in June of this year, he dropped in on his high-school reunion--via parachute, man, right out of that Lear jet!--and, cool as Denzel, he scooped up that blonde with the lungs and the legs and took off for a small private beach in Aruba...
     Dreams do come true!