salton sea story

"oh, where'd you study abroad?"

"outside london."

this is true, but it isn't the truth. the truth is that three months before i boarded the plane, i met an overeducated man. i leaned closer. he said, "i saw europe." he said, after a pause, "you should see europe." i filled out the paperwork and stepped into an older, browner world. 

my tutor -- that's what they called them -- was named tudor, with a d. tudor poured me milk tea and said that americans were riff-raff. i went to see my redheaded friend in shoreditch. he was life-sized and grinning; the girls wore sequined headbands. i thought, i need to get to the city. 

after we sign the lease, my roommate has a nervous breakdown. sometimes you move from brown to blue too fast. i remember the documentary i'd seen in the british town, the film with the sky. it's new year's day in southern california, and when i leave i don't tell her where i'm going. 

minutes pass, dozens of them, with the windows down. in the 1950s bombay beach was a boomtown. now it's the site of a documentary about the death of the american dream that took the top prize at the tribeca film festival. will my time here be marked by beauty, lyricism, empathy, and invention? probably. but also, this is home. 

it starts with pool at the biker bar, where the wood-paneled wall is lined with dollar bills. i tape one above the piano. we go back to shorty's house and do jello shots, the dogs winding around our legs. 

at 5 a.m. i sneak out, stand on the beach salted with small carcasses. pesticide runoff is always a possibility in a casino without walls. sometimes, fish die. sometimes, the mountains flush purple in the distance. sometimes, you don't care that your roommate has stolen a thousand dollars from you and won't open the door. so what if the film will later be cast as problematic. so what if tudor is probably right about america. the inland sea recedes, leaving a soft grey shadow.