The Glorious Account of the Happy Apocalypse

I always suspected that Pirates were cool. The way they get to spend so much time on the ocean, see things that are unimaginable. They travel even when they’re sleeping. Always going somewhere. Sure they’re smelly. But cool. I remember when I was a little girl, curious and entertained by the televisions that only a few years ago we all thought extremely primitive, sitting down and watching Captain Jack Sparrow on those Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I loved the way Captain Jack would stumble and even though the movie knew it had to make him somewhat bad, he always came through when it mattered. And Elizabeth. She was the butterfly I eventually wanted to be. She started as a beautiful damsel and transformed herself into the Ocean fearing Pirate that sometimes I still want to be. And would if it weren’t for my people. It makes me feel old now, eesh, I must be closing in on 45 since I was only 4 when the last one came out. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was well before we even seriously considered the end.

            Retrospect is really brutal, you know? I mean you gradually understand it more and more. The first time it hits you it’s frustrating. My first real love, other than those puppy loves of elementary school, was Tyler Burdick. He was handsome, as I suppose all initial obsessions are. I only saw him from a distance but he carried himself so confidently. My father had raised me to love and fear the ocean, to keep it clean, to fish from it, so it’s no surprise that Tyler was a surfer. I remember you could tell the really hardcore surfers from the others by the severe tan-line across their neck. It was a silly superficial reason: he was handsome and good in the ocean. I guess there are worse reasons but after high school, I realized what a fraud he was. He spent so much time in the water, surfing and yet he drove around in a gas-guzzling truck, he didn’t participate in any of the beach clean-ups, he couldn’t tell you the difference between any fishing knots. Couldn’t tell you the difference between a dropper loop and a nail knot. He went inland like most, there isn’t a whole lot of space, food here if you don’t know how to live off the ocean. Mostly just desert.

            The pirates drop anchor in our deep blue bay quite often. It’s a great bay for them. Seal Rock is a beacon for them, stained white from the bird shit, and a boulder reef extends past it for a hundred yards, curving in like the tip of a clipped fingernail. The walls of reef block the northerly swells in winter, completely sheltering what is left of the sand from the ocean rising. The ships strike me as comical. Some are still the high priced motorized yachts, the ones that used to be for the mega-rich and meant as a lavish getaway. Where they were once all white, the pirates have made them more suitable, smearing them with dyes from the oceans and the places they’ve traveled. Browned from the constant mixing. They look the color of dead kelp. In the middle of the ships, they erected impromptu masts, welded on by who knows what. They work though. I had forgotten how crafty people can be when it’s necessary.

            Usually, they come in the morning when the sun lifts over the mountains and blanches Seal Rock, which is more of an island during the winter morning high tides. The ocean is the shiny grey of a fogged mirror, reflecting but indistinctly. The only color comes when they ride the backs of the diminished waves, the limpid green surge as it dies on the beach. They beach their boats underneath the eroding cliff. There used to be a hotel here, with it’s well-cultivated rose gardens and walkways, but they are gradually falling into the sea, the rebar sticking out of the impotent sidewalk provides a great place to hang welcome signs for the pirates. They waddle up the beach, their legs accustomed to the undulations of the sea. My kids laugh at them. Run up to them. They don’t get too close because they are still menacing looking. But then they smile, their candy rotten smiles and the kids ask them where they’ve been, help the fellas to tie the boats up.

            Each boat seems to have one or two that are especially adept. We don’t walk too far up the canyon, cross where the highway has crumbled into the stream, and we in the low caves of the Aliso Valley. It’s one of the few places that went unharmed in the Great Riots. I remember people looking for gasoline everywhere, no one wanted to light anything on fire and waste the stuff. But if you break enough things, something is going to explode. Some had already moved the fertile mountains, to the north where they could more easily grow food. The rest were just stubborn idiots, who had refused to believe that the shortage of oil was not a government conspiracy. More than anything, I think that they were angry that they were proven stupid more than there was no oil left. Some of the Nuclear power plants still gave off electricity, some of the wind turbines did too. But without the oil to man the big trucks, there were no options to fix those power plants and turbines when they fell apart. Gradually, they did. I saw most of this, acquired as many batteries as possible, but I ended up giving them out to people who needed them to make their way in the nights, in the broken down houses. Some started to stay around with me. The pirates would be able to see our lights in the night and they would come in the mornings, stay for a few days.

            They’re great storytellers. The pirates are. I thought they would have that ridiculous accent that I remembered from television, the “garrrr, matey” crap. That’s not true. They’ve an accent that is like the American the way that Irish is to the British. It’s much more in singsong and lyrical. They have the habit of turning everything into a fabulous tale. Sure some are violent, but that’s because not as many other coastal clans welcome them like we do. I made sure that we opened our arms to everyone, and since, it’s been pretty good. I think being a woman makes it a lot mellower more welcoming. Occasional rumbles between people happen. Mostly it’s just between the pirates themselves. Stuck on the jerry-remodeled ships, they tend to build up animosity. Amongst our clan they can wander about the trees and up the river. But everyone comes back. We don’t play games, but when it’s night and there isn’t much to do, we laugh and play. We tell stories ourselves. Now they are mostly what it was like before. Men and women laugh at the silly things that they used to have. The stuff that they tried to buy to make them more whole.