Lance Olsen - Calendar of Regrets

Iphigenia struggling against the flock of hands holding her down, eyes an outburst of shock and panic.

Her father's face darting above her, now a stranger's: indifferent, blank-eyed, unwavering.

Be still, it says. Be—

The knife a long flash of sunlight.

The knife a silver bird plunging down, its solitary voice choking her head with language, saying welcome , saying

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Welcome to another episode of my own little pirate podcast coming to you semi-live and completely indirect every week from a different corner of the godforsaken Salton Sea, deadest body of saline solution on the deadest stretch of southwestern desert you'll ever want to forget.

You're listening to Jolly Roger and his whole sick crew… and that means you, too, baby.

Maybe a friend told you about my revolving website. Maybe you stumbled upon it late one night while looking for someone else's. Maybe something made you click that URL at the bottom of that piece of spam you found in your inbox this morning that you just knew you shouldn't open.

And here you are.

That website is where I keep my let us call it transitory cell-phone number. Scroll down to the lower lefthand corner to find it. Use it or lose it within twenty-four hours. I take your call, you're on. I don't and, well, try, try again. Jolly Roger plans on sticking around long enough to hear what everybody has to say who Time and The Ordinary have put out of mind…

The clock over the sink tells me it's a hair's breadth past two in the a.m. I'm sitting at the kitchen table, which also happens to serve as the living room couch, in what for the rest of tonight we'll refer to as my home. Actually, it's a quote friend's unquote… although he won't exactly be in a position to figure that out till he returns from what I suspect is a brief but relaxing camping trip into the nearby mountains or a supply run into Calipatria.

Me, I've got a glass of whiskey in my left hand, a tasty Marlboro in my right. My laptop is glowing on the table before me. The front and back windows are shut. The air conditioner, such as it is, is on. The living room, which, I should mention, also serves as bedroom and closet, smells of fish and fungus. It's piled almost to the low ceiling with bundles of old newspapers, empty cardboard boxes, jumbled clothes that stink of unwashed hair, and neatly stacked cans of beans, tomato soup, chicken soup, broccoli soup, and pureed carrots. Inside, it's maybe eighty degrees. Outside, I'm guessing eight-five.

Walk through the rattly aluminum door behind me, you will step onto a plot of dead earth perhaps one-hundred-feet long by one-hundred-feet deep. It's surrounded by cyclone fencing on which is hung a sign, red lettering on white background, that sayeth: Don't worry about the dog. Beware of owner. Turn around at that fencing and look back, and you will observe a peeling white outbuilding twice as big as your average phone booth. It's empty save for a lone pitchfork leaning in a dark corner. In front of that shack, a little to your right, you will make out a wood-framework tower, maybe twenty feet tall, on top of which sits either a large propane or water tank. And in the foreground notice a rusty pale green Airstream trailer partially surrounded by a rickety white picket fence.

Look through the closed front window, compadre, and you will see my back hunched over this table.

That Airstream resides on the corner of two unpaved streets a block up from the massive berm on the other side of which stretches the Salton Sea in an environmental calamity that back in the fifties developers marketed as a little piece of heaven. My closest temporary neighbors live in similar shacks maybe fifty feet away. Perhaps they think I'm someone else. Perhaps they don't care. Perhaps they've left this place a long time ago.

Welcome to the land of tomorrow, folks. To my vessel. My luxury liner docked in Bombay Beach. The inside of my head for the next twenty minutes…

And now, without further ado, my first exchange with the Tribe…

Am I on the air?

Indeed you are, my good man. Let Destiny hear what you're thinking.

I, uh… I just finished my latest project. I think I've got something important going on.

You're an artist?

Engineer.

And your name is…

Josh. Joshua.

What do you have to share with us this otherworldly morning, Josh Joshua?

You know how we all sometimes feel like we're suddenly cut off from everything?

Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

How you'll just be like sitting there in your room, or maybe walking down the street, and this like Saran Wrap of isolation will suddenly enfold you without warning?

We've all been there, friend.

I decided to build a remedy.

For solitude?

An anti-loneliness device. Yeah. It hasn't been easy. The parts are hard to come by. I have to wait for them. But they always find me. People bring them. They know what I need.

How long have you been laboring at this Suez Canal of belonging?

I, uh… Time gets funny sometimes, you know? Last week it was 1986.

And your device works… how?

The key is it's designed to block out the loneliness waves. It goes right to the source. Others have missed that. It's subtle.

How many ergs are we talking about here?

Thirty-five hundred. But that's not the breakthrough. The breakthrough is it all comes down to… You listening?

We all are.

If it's broken, dude, fix it. And if you can't fix it… make it SPIN.

You're off the air with Jolly Roger. Speak and we shall listen.

You know how you hate men, but you love ‘em, too?

They're bastards, honey.

They can't help it. All that testosterone. All that meanness living in their fucking bloodstream. But those beautiful blue eyes, too, you know? Jesus. They can burn right through a goddamn iron-plated heart.

Where are you hailing from this night-morning?

Minneapolis.

It's later than you think out there, huh? Can you see the red sun beginning to rise outside your window? The first dog walkers hitting the streets even as we speak? Sanitation trucks… Street cleaners…

They fucking treat you like mold spores.

We're back to those Beelzebubs in guy-clothing?

They cheat on you with your best friends. Rob shit out of your drawers. Steal food and beer from the fridge. Tell you shit you want so bad to believe you say what the hell and so you do.

Even though you don't, not for a second…

You see the news last night?

Do you know what Lord Northcliffe once said about that illustrious subject? The news, said he, is what somebody else wants to suppress. All the rest is advertising.

I've been counting.

Have you?

In the last twenty-four hours alone? Some asshole torches his girlfriend's house with three kids where they're sleeping cuz she'd told him to go fuck himself. In a park in Laredo, eight teenagers rape this middle-aged chick out for a jog just to see what it feels like. In Hoboken, this housewife gets beaten to shit for telling her old man Jon Bon Jovi is drop-dead gorgeous. See what I'm saying? The news ain't the news no more.