Adam Gnade

 It’s easier to write about a place once you’ve left it. Out here on the farm, the chickens clucking in the dust, the garden full of wasps buzzing and life, I can see California. I can see palm trees in the red dusk and cars in beach parking lots. The sea smell, the fog at night; the onshore breezes and low coastline. There’s the waffle cone hut I hated and the boardwalk at Pacific Beach Drive and my characters Joey Carr and Tyler Monahan standing on the seawall like the last men on earth, watching the dark blue ocean, wind-chopped. It’s chilly and windy—October—and they’re wearing sweatshirts and jeans and sharing a 32-ounce beer in a brown bag. (Miller Highlife. Warm, flat. They don’t care.) And what are they talking about? Joey’s telling Tyler about Playas de Tijuana, the beaches by the bullring, the corrida’s colosseum walls, the ruined shacks on the sand like Beirut and the fish markets, the border fence stretching out into the sea. I hear that too. Word for word. When I’m back home in San Diego, I can’t see the place. But out here, halfway across the country, it’s right there and I’m going to TAKE IT.