God is at Lassens

I watched a woman in Uggs and a matching lavender yoga set curse the heavens. She motioned toward the glass doors over and over, as if the automatic sensors could not register her little yogi body. The doors ignored her. Nothing worked on the Sabbath—that was the whole point. Tightly wound fists formed at the end of her arms, turning them into two extended gavels that pounded in tandem with each word she yelled at the towering white letters that spelled out Lassens.

Sitting in my 2003 Subaru Outback L.L. Bean Edition, forearm steadied on the wood-paneled steering wheel, I peered through my phone, filming her. Whenever I told people my Subaru was an L.L. Bean edition, they would ask, “What makes it an L.L. Bean edition?” I would gesture toward the many L.L. Bean logos displayed in and outside of the car and say, “Those, I guess.”

My friend sat next to me with his hands supporting a Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready on his lap, rendering him useless as a second camera operator. He was not as enthralled by my perverse Sunday outing as I had hoped. I could feel him searching for commentary to add to the angry yogi scene, and was thankful when he chose silence.

I filmed a couple next. They taunted the sealed Lassens doors with a burst of laughter. All the air was expelled from their lungs, forcing their bodies into the shape of aggressively butted cigarettes. The woman, first to regain composure and restore herself upright, playfully pushed the man in a way that implied, We’ve been here before. His lips met her forehead as she looked down at her phone, presumably searching for another grocery store.

The couple scurried back to their car, off to be in love at a different business, one that upholds the separation of church and state.

A head of fluffy dishwater-blonde hair bounced into frame. He wore navy joggers that the wind pressed into his legs, and he had a melodic walk, as if subtly dancing to a Polka song that only he could hear. There was a sliver of skin exposed between his pants and socks—I once heard a stylist refer to that as a skin sandwich. A fashion faux pas. Embarrassing. Determined to avoid any further public humiliation, he noticed the store’s closure before meeting his reflection in the tinted glass and, in one swift motion, redirected to Walgreens.

A shopping list intended for Lassens cannot be fulfilled by its adjacent convenience store, which is why the Walgreens Redirect remains one of my favorite responses to a Lassens Rejection. The Polka Walker’s diversion is a denial of his own needs, a feeble attempt at saving face.

I made the mistake of trying to explain this to my copilot, who suffers from a disease that compels him to dilute everything with optimism or else he’ll die.

“I dunno,” he said. “Maybe he just wanted a snack, or like a bottle of water or something.”

I ignored him. He raised a congealed slice of pepperoni pizza to his mouth, his puffer sleeves letting out sharp squeaks as he fidgeted. His jaw made a hollow clicking sound with each bite. I could hear his tongue prying the solidified cheese from his molars. A mood-altering winter breeze slipped into the car when I cracked the window a couple of inches. I lit a cigarette to escape my sensory prison.

My 2003 Subaru Outback L.L. Bean edition was a Craigslist find. It came with 167,703 miles and engine oil that was the color of squid ink instead of its natural, uncorrupted amber hue. The mechanic I hired for a pre-purchase inspection alerted me of the metallic shards in the oil. He said it was caused by the pistons grinding against their encasements without proper lubrication, most likely a consequence of infrequent oil changes. He said he wouldn’t even pay a quarter of what was offered, that the car wouldn’t last longer than six months. I paid my private mechanic $200 in cash, and once he was out of sight, I told the sellers—a couple with aspirational carelessness—that I’d like to buy it. They didn’t clear out their personal belongings, so I inherited guitar cables, a phone charger, and two lip glosses.

I had big dreams for this car. I envisioned folding down the backseats and sliding a makeshift camping bed into the empty cargo space. Strapping a board to the roof rack for a sunrise surf. However, both of those activities take place at destinations that sit beyond the ten-mile limit I set for myself out of fear of breaking down. My reckless purchase was spoiled by logic. The mechanic’s $200 death sentence loomed over every errand I ran. I stuck to routes I felt comfortable being stranded on. Avoided freeways. It was essentially a humongous golf cart.

Previously, I drove a Murphy, a Sandy, and a Greg, but this car remained nameless. One of my friends who pays for Hinge revealed to me that he doesn't save his dates' phone numbers. “Never name the puppy,” he says.

My copilot paused his pizza gnashing to ask, “Wait… so why do you do this?”

I pointed out another couple walking by to dodge the lousy inquiry, insulted by his lack of whimsy. A classic Echo Park pairing: two “creatives” in their late-20s who likely work freelance and have no concept of what day it is.

We’ve lost sight of weekends in Los Angeles. I look to the Sabbath as one of the last remaining strongholds that preserve the sanctity of the weekend. “We’re closed because we’re Mormon,” isn’t explicitly stated on Lassen’s website. They have a more worker-centric, but still God-coded, explanation: “Since everyone needs a day of rest, we are closed on Sundays.”

The Freelancers stood in front of the glass doors, grieving their loss, unaware of what they just gained: mandated rest and worship. They returned to their car carrying this gift.

A delayed response to my Copilot’s earlier question spilled out of me, “I sit outside of Lassens to feel close to God.”

He watched the Freelancers get into their car. A slice of pizza floated to his mouth. My confession proved to be unmoving.

I continued on, “When I’m out here and I’m watching people walk up to those closed doors—that’s God. That’s God, right? He’s right there, sabotaging plans. And it fills me with this religious fervor that’s never come easy. Watching them get rejected, watching Him derail - even if it’s just for a few minutes, it’s almost proof He is here or something.”

He gnashed. Jaw clicking.

“So much of my childhood, and even early teens, was spent being indoctrinated by priests and nuns and family and friends or whatever, developing faith. And I thought maybe the God stuff flamed out in college or something, like logic tightened its grip. I’d be a serious adult. But I’m realizing that all the Bible verses and homilies and prayers and confessions, it all calcified into this Catholic guilt that I carry everywhere.”

Another bite.

“And that guilt clogs all the arteries that could otherwise be filled with the fun, mystical LA stuff. I can’t bring myself to engage with astrology or manifestation or one of those light and energy programs where they call people Starseeds. I have this weird block that’s not even rooted in logic. I feel guilty.”

“Starseeds,” he mumbled back to me through his mouthful of pizza.

“Yeah… Starseeds.”

He swallowed. “So you can’t be a Starseed because you know Bible verses?”

“I guess... Like, I remember this one verse from Ecclesiastes, about meaninglessness. It says something along the lines of, ‘I have seen all things done under the sun, all of them meaningless, a chasing after the wind.’ The guy writing that, he’s claiming the entirety of human effort, like everything on earth, lacks meaning without God. All of Ecclesiastes is about that. He’s suggesting this is all meaningless without God or faith or whatever.”

I broke the long pause with another confession: “I don’t know what I’m getting at.”

“Chasing wind?” My passenger’s jaw opened wide, inviting his index finger to etch at a molar.

“Yeah.”

Silence returned. I chewed on the doughy contents of my half-baked monologue. He nodded toward the entrance, suggesting someone was approaching.

A woman on borrowed time slumped into our line of sight. Wrinkly skin sagged and swayed from her face as she crept toward the entrance with a gentle troll-like stride. A silver pouf of hair held on for its life with each gust of wind. I raised my phone to film her, and my passenger said aloud what was privately causing the uncertain look on my face:

“This one feels kind of fucked up.”

I knew what he meant. A part of me wanted to run out of the car and save her from wasting any more precious time. I thought of how many earthside steps she had left, how approximately seventy of those would be cashed in on a fruitless visit to Lassens, and how I would be immortalizing those very steps on my iPhone.

I considered the guaranteed horrors our Walking Miracle had endured over the course of a life well-lived. Failed job interviews. Health scares. Depression (both personal, and The Great). Outliving your friends and family. Heartbreak. Phone scammers. Dead pets. Typing something that’s meant for Google into a Facebook status bar. War.

With every step the Walking Miracle took, a parade of thoughts came and went. I thought about the many things that could destroy a person, things that could test one’s faith. I thought about how a Mormon-owned health food store being closed on a Sunday would pale in comparison to the many obstacles she overcame to make it here. I thought about the Tiny Yogi’s fury. The Polka Walker’s performance. The Freelancers' gift. I thought about the careless couple who sold me the car and the mechanic who sold me the truth.

As the thought parade marched on with greater intensity, a muffled voice forced its way through the thin crack in my window, stopping it cold. A man dressed in cop cosplay, the kind of uniform they prescribe to security guards to make them appear armed with more than just a flashlight and pepper spray.

I met his eyes, my phone cemented in its filming position, still tracking the old woman. The parking lot cop motioned toward my hand and asked what I was doing.

I looked back toward Lassens and thought about how this activity spawned from nothingness, about how my nameless Subaru was a sporty hearse carrying around my dead dreams of going anywhere beyond a ten mile radius of Thai Town, about how I said goodbye to this car before it was even registered under my name, about the many things I said goodbye to before they were mine as if I were guaranteeing their departure.

For six months, I documented rejection in all its minor variations, fumbling my way toward meaning and falling short. The sum of these spectacles amounted to nothing more than hundreds of recordings that lie dormant in an album titled LASSENS.

The security guard tapped gently on the glass, breaking my trance once again. I swapped out my phone for car keys and turned the ignition. The window sank into the door. He asked the question again. As I started to form a response, a gust of wind rushed in.