SOUL! An Excerpt & Update
An excerpt from my previous piece for Compound Butter Magazine's Escape issue, in anticipation of my next in their upcoming (now preorderable) Play issue.
This week Compound Butter announced the opening of preorders for their upcoming “Play” issue. The magazine lanyards food & art through unique perspectives, layering creative writing with stunning artwork. Each issue funnels that creativity through a single-word prompt to see what new chemistry can be concocted: “Play,” for 2024. Previously, in 2022, it was “Escape.”
Compound Butter holds a special place in this roomy but occasionally hollow-feeling heart because it’s the first place I ever published a piece of writing (not including my various attempts at self-published work, such as what you’re reading now). Its creators and editors, Jessie and Jaya, were shockingly supportive of my raw, personal entry from the cold, about escaping my apartment during the pandemic in my 2015 Kia Soul!, and realizing more with each mile tread how truly little I had seen of, and so how little I knew about, LA, the city I’ve always called home, even when I lived elsewhere. Our communications in the edits eventually struck up one of those unlikely new friendships of adulthood, that now seems a much longer thing than it is.
Below is an excerpt of “SOUL!”, my story from the “Escape” issue of Compound Butter. You can order that issue here to read it and many more fun and fancy-free works of escapism. I have another story, kind of a play, totally different from that story and everything I’ve ever written, but also something I’ve always wanted to write, upcoming in their “Play” issue. You can preorder that here.
To the story I’ve also added some relevant photos of my intrepid little hamstermobile on its many journeys (more often than not into the desert). And there’s a brief addition/update/epilogue/LOTR-esque appendix to its storied legacy following the excerpt.
Thanks, support Compound Butter, enjoy, and for the appropriate ambiance while reading the piece, click here.
I pull over onto a precarious canyon turnout in Malibu — a lonely, gusty cliffside parking lot in Palos Verdes — the bridge on Sunset over Silver Lake Blvd at 7am — a palm-shaded picnic area in San Pedro — into the shadow of a towering boulder pile in Joshua Tree — a lucky spot near Tacos Villa Corona in Atwater on a bustling Saturday morning — each place until now as foreign to me as everywhere else I’ve never been, despite growing up here(ish) — and as the engine dies my sturdy little car says, “Aw, we’re here already?”
I give the steering wheel a reassuring pat.
My intrepid Kia Soul! is up for pretty much anything. Which is good, because this is LA: your car is your lifeline. It’s not the only way to get around, as has been declared often by many — millions of people take public transit daily, many ride bikes, scooters are…you know… also there (dumped ubiquitously and haphazardly at every intersection), and despite what Missing Persons says, people do walk in LA — but in the city of sun and sprawl, the car still rules.
All to say: back in the pre-times, my car was already one of the single most important objects in my life. But in the last couple years, it became a whole lot more.
(NOT Titane-more, to be so, so crystal clear — a thing I wouldn’t have to clarify in the absence of Titane, but here we are.)
It was my co-pilot, sidekick, DJ, my rocketing escape pod from the impenetrable pandemic bubble. Heck, my car was my bubble: a fun-sized, solitary, portable extension of my apartment that allowed me to safely see the world again; before unveiling LA, my supposed hometown, to be yet another place I’ve never really known at all.
“Good morning!” I say with automatic, half-genuine cheer. Phanny’s, a long-lived breakfast & lunch counter serving coffee and burritos to the early surf & stroll crowd, opens at 7am, and I have arrived on-the-dot. I get a yellow-paper-wrapped sausage burrito and a plain black coffee, jump back in the car, and head directly to the beach. I park on Redondo Blvd: a long, broad, sloping road that runs parallel to the water and provides plenty of parking, benches, and, crucially, excellent views. From here you can look south to where the beach meets the towering, craggy stone of the luxurious, gated, fog-clung cliffs of Rancho Palos Verdes (“PV”, for short); or look north, along the beach boardwalk, beyond gaudy estates and apartments to Redondo Pier, a kind of odd, looping pier that’s home to the legendary Tony’s seafood restaurant, an ever-present lineup of fishermen, and once upon a fairly recent time an old school, under-pier arcade (“Fun Factory”) that boasted classic skeeball and pinball machines and an actual Tilt-a-Whirl carnival ride. Growing up, my grandparents would drive my brother and me down here for an afternoon of fried shrimp and arcade games, always with a detour into Torrance to see their old West-side house where my dad and aunt spent their earliest years. But back then it never registered that this was LA; it was a faraway destination for irregular fun, and once we woke up after the car ride home, it was a dream.
I grab one of the empty concrete benches facing the water from higher up the hill that Redondo Blvd ascends (for maximum viewage) and unwrap my prize for waking up early and driving 45 minutes down the gloriously empty 110 highway. The burrito — sausage, egg, cheese, hash brown, salsa — is easy greasy beautiful, and especially on this overcast morning with a bracing breeze and the fuzz still draining slowly from my brain and this view, it is absolutely the most perfect delectable godsend of a thing I can imagine. About seven bites in, a long, humming sigh escapes me. I close my eyes and let my other senses flood with the salty air, the half-heard conversations of the earlybird passersby on the sidewalk behind me, the steady *whump-tshhh* of the waves, the incremental temperature increase as the rising sun goes to work on the AM overcast. It’ll be warm later, but another cutting gust blows by to remind me that later is not now. I take refuge in another bite. It really is a good morning.
Soul!
…is the official Kia model designation for my car. Not a “Kia Soul.” A “Kia Soul!” (Yelling it while punching a fist into the sky is highly encouraged.)
The exclamation point is one of a number of goofy, unnecessary, but endearing aspects of my vehicle — along with the “Panoramic” sunroof and mesmerizing LED floor speaker lights — that, added up, pushed me to finally buy the thing (along with a not-insignificant degree of impatience). These are not the qualities I’d recommend anyone else look for in a car, but when left to my own devices, I am an incurable romantic. Or a sucker, depending on your perspective.
Plus there was something about owning the “party hamster car” that really cut me right to the funny bone. If you don’t remember the original Kia Soul commercials, they’re truly one-of-a-kind: Kia really came out for the Super Bowl and asked the whole country if they wanted to drive the preferred vehicle of a gang of rad, bad hamster bros (The “HAMSTARZ”) who loved sweatsuits, LMFAO, and Entourage (this last was not explicit but I can only assume). Clearly I, at least, never forgot.
(Again, to be just so, so clear for everyone else out there: do not buy your car for the bit.)
(...unless it’s a really good bit.)
Aside from its general goofiness and constant party atmosphere — I’m convinced the car is rigged to play Party Rock Anthem because I do not remember adding it to so many playlists — it’s the right car for LA. Nearly as ubiquitous as the Prius, the Altima, or any variety of Toyota pickup, the Soul is small enough to park easily, zippy enough to dip, dodge, and weave through traffic (safely!), and comfortable enough for longer day or weekend trips. It just flat out works here. I mostly commuted in it for a couple years and it did the job with aplomb.
So yeah. I liked my funny, sturdy, comfy little hamster-mobile.
And then, you know…2020.
The tires crunch as I pull onto a dirt turnout on the narrow, winding, treacherous Latigo Canyon Road, smack in the middle of the Santa Monica Mountains. I’m on the downslope of a tall hill past the residential area; it’s just road then dirt then a long way down, here. I look out and see no grand estates, no highways, very few people (mostly cyclists), only the bright warm sun on rolling hilltops and the glint of the distant Pacific as the last vestiges of the marine layer burn to wisps and then to nothing. Not even the occasional unmuffled Mercedes or BMW ripping down the road under the command of a maniac who played too much Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition can break this moment.
In other words, it’s the perfect place to enjoy my breakfast burrito.
Does that undercut the majesty? Maybe. I don’t think so. For me, the two — the view and the meal — are a dynamic duo. Because the joy of food doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The burrito is a basic masterpiece of steak and eggs and fire-roasted salsa, from Old Place; a casual, rugged bar and steakhouse that seems to have worked very hard to change very little (in a good way). On its own the food would be more than tasty enough. But here, taking slow bites while sitting on my rear bumper, watching the coastal mountains slowly wake up, it becomes part of an enduringly memorable moment.
The decadent final debris-filled scraps of burrito eventually disappear. I take a deep, satisfied breath of not-city air, another sip of coffee, return a quick wave to a cyclist, and open a book.
As I mentioned, you can read the rest in the “Escape” issue of Compound Butter.
Since I wrote that story, my Soul! and I have gone on to many further journeys throughout LA — obviously, this being LA, and the Soul! being my car. I do nothing but take journeys in my Soul!, even if it’s mostly just to and from work up in Montrose. The fella’s had a little work done, a neglectfully belated oil change, a recall to install a system that should hopefully catch an exploding engine malfunction before it happens (hopefully), a second recall to fix a notorious vulnerability that makes it absurdly easy to steal Kias and Hyundais from around the year 2016. Every once in a while a weird ticking sound comes from the dashboard that stops the second I think I’m going to do something about it. The moonroof lining is loose. The color-changing speaker lights sometimes refuse to turn off; and they’re dimmer than they used to be. Our boy’s aging.
But still does the job, with aplomb. Gusto, even. I don’t go to the desert as often anymore — the lack of a six-figure salary makes renting solo Airbnbs…shall we say, a disadvantageous proposition (read: stupid) — but I’ve gone at least a few places with it in tow. San Diego, a few times, always a nice drive, made nicer by my lack of day job and incorrigible urge to detour as often as possible to all the cute eateries and cafes and scenic vistas between the sunshine cities. There were a couple drives up into Central California, to Visalia, where a couple good former coworker friends grew up in the shadow of the Sierras near Sequoia National Park, and where a couple cross-country friends had recently relocated (that’s an existential lightning bolt of a story yet to come). And last year there was a drive up the coast to Carmel-by-the-Sea, a cloying little Disney-fied town that I do not like, though luckily surrounded by places that I enjoy much more.
That trip was…interesting.
I have a lot of patience for the road. I’ll take flat fields and farmland and dusty plots swirling with gusty devils and a yellow-striped grey ribbon stretched out ahead of me anytime. Because if I’m looking at all that it means I’m going somewhere, somewhere different, and I’m on my way, and I’ve always fundamentally believed that everywhere between where I’m from and where I’m going has the potential to hold something fascinating, or at least something unexpected. I read a lot of adventures growing up, and I was an avid reader. I read a lot of adventures even for an avid reader. And the thing about adventures is that they can begin anywhere.
But today, even for me, this drive has been testing.
Five-and-a-half hours is somehow the longest drive you can take in a car. It feels like it should go faster, should feel shorter — hey, it’s not six hours — but it’s not. A five-and-a-half hour drive always takes five-and-a-half hours, no more, no less. I coax that red needle further up the speedometer, hoping to cut some time down, the farmland around the 101 a diminishing blurry green. Drives are great for thinking, but today I’d rather not. I’ve been in a funk; big life questions to answer, to start acting on, but I know if I start working on them in the old upstairs, I’ll spiral. I’m supposed to meet friends today, they don’t need that. So no think, only drive.
Gas is getting a little low, though. Sign says, “Last [picture of gas pump] for 25 miles.” The Soul! gets about 22-25 MPG on the highway, and from where that needle’s hovering on the dash, I’d say I have at least a gallon left. Probably. Better not chance it. I take the exit to a little town whose name I miss, gonna pop a little gas in and be on my way.
Except, the gas station isn’t here, by the freeway, I guess. I drive east, away from the 101, across a long stretch of raised black road over cracked rocky earth that probably acts as a bridge when it rains enough. About a mile or more ahead there’s a small cluster of trees with a few buildings, a water tower barely jutting out over the top of the leaves. I think, “This is how it happens in ‘In the Mouth of Madness.’” Adventure, anywhere.
The small excitement falls away once I reach the trees and the town beyond, replaced by a small dread. There are a few dusty homes jammed with vehicles and a school with a 20-foot fence and a number of boarded up businesses along the main road as I creep down. The only souls I see are a pair of inscrutable men on a covered bus bench, whose heads turn to watch me pass in perfect synchronization. I continue on, wondering where the hell this gas station is. I pass it the first time, and only turn around when I realize I’ve actually left the town, and I know it’s in there somewhere. What I thought was just another relic of this apparently bypassed place is, theoretically, a working gas station, with a pair of rusted pumps in front of a signless white building, the windows barred and painted over. Signless, except for a small, black “Open” rectangle in the window, that might have been put up today or left there 50 years ago. As I begin to pull over I suddenly think, “If I go into that building, I’m not coming out.”
Instead I step on it. Back down the main road, past the ramshackle storefronts and the highly-secured school and the synchronized bus bench men, whose heads follow me the other way, racing with tumbleweeds back to the paved bridge road over broken earth as a church bell starts tolling somewhere in the town behind me. It’s not on the hour. I flee the eerie town amplified by today’s paranoia, back to the safety of the freeway, thinking it’d be better to call Triple-A than to have stayed there one more second, but hoping I can coax just 25 more miles out of the Soul! If an adventure had begun in that place, it would not have been a pleasant one. Lovecraft wrote adventures, too.
I make it the 25 miles, past San Lucas and nearly to Pine Canyon, to the next gas station, one of those massive Valeros servicing casuals and commercials alike. I’ll make it to lunch in cloying Carmel-by-the-Sea, late, where we’ll eat country club food at one of the many restaurants in town with identical pan-ethnic menus (you can tell a restaurant is serving country club food when “sand dabs,” the blandest whitest fish that ever touched a plate, always served under a lemon-caper sauce, are on the menu). But we’ll also visit a Frank Lloyd Wright house and take silly beach pictures and stay in a sneaky little hilltop cabin in Carmel Valley, and the next day make the scenic drive down the coast and over the towering bridges to Big Sur, where we’ll spend a refreshing couple hours hiking to a treacly waterfall and back. It is always worth a five-and-a-half-hour drive and a potential Lovecraftian trap to see old friends.
Eventually I’ll look up the town I stopped in that day, partly just to make sure it exists. It does: “San Ardo.” And from the info and images I pull up, it’s a pleasant enough place, one of those hardscrabble Central CA towns whose entire business is agriculture. I’d caught it on an off day, for it and for me. Oh well, just paranoid.
Still won’t be stopping for gas there, though.
