Calendar of Regrets

April

January February March April May June July August September October November December   & & &149' ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 150 b & LANCE OLSEN ' ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 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. & calender of regrets ' b 151 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 onehundred -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 . . . 152 b & LANCE OLSEN ' 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...