honda element fanpage

At Six Flags, we ascend the vertical tracks of what was once the fastest and tallest roller coaster in the world. Holding hands feels odd as on a second date. At 500 feet into the sky, I thought it made sense. 

“Are you scared?” Ethan asks 10 feet from the apex.

“No,” I say, grasping his hand so tightly my nails dig into his skin.

Before plunging to the ground, Ethan breathes in a million trees that paint New Jersey forest green. I hold my breath, focusing my attention on the gray parking lot below.

“Honda Element!” I point to it, letting go of his hand. Ethan laughs and tries to find it. Too late. Nosedive.

* * * *

I have reason to believe I am being stalked by a discontinued crossover SUV from a popular Japanese car manufacturer. I first noticed them following me around my hometown. My family had once owned the same car. From LA, I moved to Portland. There, they multiplied underneath skis and mountain bikes. So I moved to New York City, where no one drives but still there are cars everywhere. I see them on my way to work, through windows at diners, on smoke breaks outside a bar. No matter how far I go, how small I make myself, the Honda Element is there behind me. After reporting these stalkers to the police a few times, just for them to welfare-check my apartment, I decided to hunt them myself. Step one: become an expert.

The Honda Element was only in production from 2003 to 2011. Its boxy exterior is not to be confused with others of the era, the Scion xB or, god forbid, the Kia Soul. The Honda Element is unique because of its bi-parting cargo doors that open outwards to create one large entrance into the vehicle, ideal for car-camping, hauling furniture, teen sex, etc. The roofline arch was even designed to mimic the subtle curve of a surfboard. 

The Element is divisive in its aesthetics and appeals to a specific kind of person. Its marketing specifically targeted the rugged individualist, the outdoor enthusiast with a unique lifestyle. “With 64 seat configurations, no one drives their Element the same exact way.” Imagine this, followed by the iPod commercial with millennials dancing in a warehouse with white wire earphones. Only 325,000 were manufactured from the Ohio factory. To this day, the car has a cult following for the same reason that middle aged men love a ’63 Corvette or rich women love a Birkin: the unique design, craftsmanship, and exclusivity that comes with owning something rare. In the end, it went out of production for good. Its parts were incompatible with other Honda models. You can throw a Civic mirror on a cousin Accord, but every Element part could only fit its twin. But this meant that all parts today are sourced from a small buyer-seller community, one that I successfully embedded myself within without even owning one. 

I created an instagram account called @hondaelementfanpage. I post photos of each one I come across. I hashtag egregiously like a millennial, presumably the target demographic for this nostalgic car: #element #hondaelement #elementlife #nyc #ca #pdx #honda #rare #adventure #city. The followers flood in. Element owners from across the country came to my page. They tag me in their photos, and ask if I can feature their customized car. I oblige and even add “DM submissions to be featured!” to my bio. 

A user in Minnesota creates custom Honda Element parts and deals them over Instagram. He messages me, assuming I am a man.

“hey man. I have a custom wing deflector, spoiler and some spare parts for sale. let me know if you need anything in raleigh or durham area“

“don’t need anything right now but will keep in mind bud,” I say. I do not own a car and I’ve never called anyone ‘bud’. 

“do you have any element connects or friends in NYC?“

No response.

I found that most were nice people and true to the fandom. A man imported a 2011 model to Kazakhstan and uploads drone videos of it on the highway. Another sells bootleg Element stickers with the Honda logo on a toaster, the apt nickname for the car.

In order to fall asleep every night, I ritualistically scour the internet for a new image posted under #hondaelement. I look at every profile associated with an element. Determined to find at least one stalker based in New York City, I scroll until my eyes become droopy and my brain turns off. These guys are professionals in hiding.

Each driver looks deceivingly harmless. A man collecting bottles to recycle, a flower delivery service with branding on the window, even ones with liberal bumper stickers to feign authenticity. I once saw an Element staking out my apartment. With a blink, he disappears. On that road trip to Six Flags, Ethan and I kissed every time we saw an Element on the New Jersey Turnpike. Now, he begs me to stop death-glaring every driver just minding their business. We do more fighting than kissing.

For years, I would catch a glimpse of the car on my way to anywhere. I have developed the ability to identify the Element by seeing a section as small as 8 square inches. I know every model and the paints available for each year. Over this period, I took inventory of the Elements in my neighborhood. There are five:

1. 2005 Cargo Khaki with Warm Gray exterior panels. Parks by the 9th Precinct on 5th street. Could Stalker be working with the NYPD?
2. 2010 Royal Blue Pearl. No exterior panelling (discontinued in 2008). Parks near the Stuytown Trader Joes. Has “For Sale” sign in window since last April. Side mirror held together by duct tape.
3. 2005 Sunset Orange Pearl or possibly 2006 Tangerine Metallic. Always parks by 11th and 2nd Ave. Saw owner driving once, white female, mid-60s. Small white dog.
4. 2006 Rallye Red with modified Charcoal exterior panels. Seats have red upholstery. Parks by Tompkins Square Park or the Key Foods on Ave A.
5. The Classic 2006 Alabaster Silver Metallic with Warm Gray exterior panels. Parks directly cross from my apartment, even on street cleaning days, without a ticket. The same model my family had when I was a kid.

* * * *

When I was in middle school, my brother and dad would pick me up after school on Fridays. Because I looked up to both of them, I felt very cool when they came in our Honda Element while everyone else was picked up by their mom in a mini-van or took the bus. I would be especially excited on Fridays because this meant I was tagging along to my brother’s driving lesson from dad. My mom would be at work, missing all the fun. But at least she got to eat on her lunch break, instead of using it to pick us up from school all the other days.

Dad would drive Alec and I to a fast casual lunch spot like Panda Express or Chipotle. Then we would go to a very specific parking lot in a business complex that had just completed construction and was otherwise unoccupied. I would sit in the back seat sipping a fountain soda. Alec up front in his hoodie and glasses. Dad in a polo, jeans and new Common Projects sneakers I don’t know how he found out about. 

I am not too sure why our family owned a Honda Element because we didn’t surf, ski or golf. We went to Joshua Tree on a day trip once as a family when I was 8. I remember reclining our seats back completely flat, and looking up at the bright stars through the rear moonroof. My dad removed the glass so we could see better and smell the toasty desert air. We opened all the doors and the hatchback to welcome the warmth. It was no longer a car, but a metal shelter. It was a place as important as a home, as healing as a hospital and as hopeful as a church. One of my favorite memories was in that car, my whole small family together, on that night. The kind of memory you hope you might briefly relive before you die. 

The squeak of cheap tupperware cuts the silence. Mom offers out pre-cut persimmons and mango in the same container. Alec and I say no. My dad tilts his head sideways and opens his mouth wide. She drops two slices inside while his hands are busy in the trunk.

“Alec, help me take this table out,” he says.

Alec groans, “There’s a table?”

Embedded in the floor of the trunk is a hidden table with fold-out legs. My mom rummages around the remaining contents of her cooler bag. No matter where we are, she will always set the table.

Alec folds out the legs and hits his shin 

While dad unloaded the table mom opened up her cooler of cut fruit. She brought my dad his favorite fruit and he kissed her on the cheek to thank her.

alec tells me a story about slender man and how he loves to eat little girls in the dark. i believe him completely. i tell my dad that alec is scaring me. 

rugged/tenderness-dialogue; alec telling a story and narrator believing; alec teasing narrator, father going out of car

That was the only time we really used the car for its intended purpose. Maybe it was an aspirational purchase. Maybe my dad really did think of himself as a “rugged individualist.” To us, he was a guy who worked in consulting.

Alec was really good at driving. He barely needed to be taught. After a few Fridays in the parking lot, he was driving us home. It was very illegal as he didn’t even have a permit. Alec was careful not to make any mistakes, exaggerating checks of his blind spot. Nervous, I kept look-out for any cops. But Dad sat up front playing with the radio, content in facilitating the crime. The truth was that Alec and I both got off on breaking the rules. This was something we inherited from our dad.

When we were in grade school, our dad always came home on Thursday night and left on Sunday. I forget the age I stopped asking where he was traveling to. I would ask my brother, “Is Dad coming back tonight?” And he would respond in a sharp tone, “How the fuck would I know?!” I mimicked his hostility every time I wondered where my dad was, which was often. It seemed like Alec got more angry every year.

At some point, I stopped wondering because it made no difference. His work became more demanding, we saw less of him, and so widened the fracture of our family. The only good feeling was the change in our finances. We stopped shopping at Ross and started eating at restaurants on weekdays when mom was too tired to cook after work. Dad even bought mom a Louis Vuitton bag that she adored, even though she felt very guilty at the price, mentally calculating what it would cost in Rupiah. She wouldn’t even let me put the purse on the car floor, it had to stay on the seat next to me.

”Mom, there’s like no space.” 

“It’s too nice to go on the floor. Too much money,” she says, nervously checking her blind spot, backing out of a parking space at the mall.

“He should buy you more than a bag,” I mumble under my breath because I know she’ll be mad. She flicks my ear. Someone honks.

When Alec went to college, I was just entering high school. There were weeks that would pass without seeing my dad. Worse, there were months that would go by without seeing my brother. He took the Honda Element with him to NorCal. 

I started working a part time job, going to parties, and even got my first boyfriend who drove me anywhere. On the rare weeks my dad was home, I wasn’t even there to see him. I wondered if the fact that I was rarely home made him think that he didn’t need to be either. Maybe he started it. He would tell us that there was a “major client issue” or “problems with the go-live.” No matter his excuse, this left my mom home alone on the weekends. She would be awake when I got dropped off, wasted on a Friday night, faintly smelling like smoke.

“Mom, you didn’t have to wait,” plopping myself on the couch.

”I wasn’t! I was finishing my show!” She watched Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on TV until I came home.

She makes a comment that I smell. I assure her it wasn’t me, but the people I was with. I tell her smoking is gross. She believes me. She believes everyone.

When it came my turn for driving lessons, Alec had already totaled the Element during his sophomore year of college. I would have paid to repair it, but I didn’t have enough money saved as a Forever 21 cashier. I always wanted to learn to drive in that car, with my brother in the backseat drinking a soda. No one in my family saw how special the car was. 

Alec moved on and bought a used Lexus. My dad had bought a brand new all black BMW 5-series with the custom license plate “B NUM 1”. I felt like a douchebag driving it around. He kept it in mint condition, as if it were a loaner vehicle. He never kept any belongings inside, besides an air freshener and garage remote. Mom’s car always had napkins, coins, water bottles, random pens, hand sanitizer, and a lot of crumbs.

When Dad picked me up for my fifth driving lesson after school, I popped the trunk to put my lacrosse stick and cleats in, just as I would with Mom. I was shocked to find that his trunk was not empty like the rest of his car, but had navy blue heeled sandals with sand on them and a white travel makeup bag. My dad, who was sending emails on his phone in the driver’s seat, realized I was in the trunk and quickly opened his door. I dropped my stuff and shut the trunk before he came around. 

Standing next to the car, he said “You can just put that stuff in the backseat!”

I muttered about my cleats being dirty and asked if we could get banh mi. I knew better than to bring anything up. My heart drops into my stomach with a familiar feeling of suspicion and anxiety.

“Sure, sweetie. I have to send one email before we go.”

I wait on the passenger side – staring off into a block of blue lockers, thinking about how I’m going to manage looking at what’s inside the bag. I want to check if it’s mom’s stuff, but I already know it isn’t. I know all of mom’s stuff. 

At our favorite Vietnamese restaurant near our old apartment, dad and I talk about the school newspaper for which I’m the editor-in-chief. He asks how I am strategically positioning that as an achievement in my college essays. He does not know that during fifth-period journalism, my photo editor and I smoke cigarettes in the neighborhood across the street. Ever since Kristen got two of our writers into whippets they have been sending in their articles late. I have to talk to her about that. 

Dad continues lecturing about colleges and potential majors while I recall everything he said about his last trip to Chicago, questioning if any of it was true. He advises on a dual-major in journalism and data science. I nod vacantly, wondering if he has a real girlfriend or a sugar baby. I remember the last time my mom sobbed. I think about the tapes in his suitcase a few years ago and my eyes well up. I say that the media-tech program at NBC would be a good internship. My tear ducts temper. It’s easy for me to talk about college and ignore everything for a moment. His intelligence and work ethic may be the only thing about him I could trust. 

The driving lesson is fine. The hardest parts are parallel parking and taking too long to merge. I illegally drive the mile and a half back home from the same business complex Alec did, but with much more calm and ease. I even change the radio station while merging lanes. In four years, I grew far more accustomed to immorality compared to back then.

In our garage, I take my time collecting my belongings so Dad will go inside first. He stalls by pretending to look for something near the back of the car, checking boxes and arbitrary drawers. I pop the trunk from the driver’s side. He beats me. By the time I get out to collect my lacrosse stick and bag, they are the only things left in the trunk.

With heavy steps, I head inside, closing the garage door with the clicker on the wall. Hung next to it are three small hooks overcrowded with miscellaneous spare keychains. I see a black scuffed plastic key with the Honda logo on it and put it in my pocket.

* * * *

I was certain the Honda Elements would follow us if we went to a restaurant nearby, so I insisted we go to the Upper West Side for our anniversary dinner. I already knew Ethan was fed up with my fixation, but I couldn’t risk it. I had already run into the creep who drives the ‘05 Cargo Khaki on my way to the gym that morning. I told Ethan to meet me at the L-train and we would travel together underground, where they couldn’t see us. 

I sit next to Ethan on the L-train to the west side. He is almost a decade older than me. After two years of dating, we discuss moving in together, adopting a dog, and naming it Nipomo.

“If we get a dog, should we get a car too? You know in an Element, the seats latch up against the walls and there’s this huge open space as big as a pickup truck,” I ramble. “It actually won Dog Car of the Year in 2007.”

“It’s not this stop but the next,” Ethan says, changing the topic and checking his watch.

Ethan knows better than to entertain the topic of purchasing a Honda Element. A quirk he found charming when we first met was now an obsessive and neurotic flaw. We met off a dating app when I was 22 years old. It was summertime and I was so new to real life. I screenshotted his profile and sent it to my closest girlfriends for safety before showing up to his apartment at 11 o’clock at night. I never meant to have a relationship with him. During what I deemed “The Inevitable Slutty and Chaotic Era” or “The Unavoidable Older Man Era,” I climbed five stories of his walkup that was situated on top of a Lower East Side speakeasy. He opened the door midway into eating a banana. “Hey.” I immediately laughed at the sight of him, and felt comfortable, mirroring his nonchalance. He asked if I wanted a spicy margarita. I agree. 

“Okay. I’m going to make it really spicy.” 

He moved with purpose, never second guessing where he was going or what he was looking for. He was confident, stoic, and mysterious. I had so many questions for him, but at that moment, it felt like I didn’t need to ask them. We made small talk and discussed where we both grew up and went to college. I soon realized these questions were not getting me any closer to knowing him. Somehow, his quiet distance was comforting to me. We drank outside in still humid air and sat in silence. I was so happy to not say anything. We kissed. My shame in having sex with him on the roof the first night we met had calcified that I was to never enter a relationship with this man. 

Before we went to sleep, we talked for hours. I asked how he made money. He told me he quit his job because he was miserable and started an electric scooter company. He traveled the world after his last job as a consultant, coincidentally the same company my dad worked for, and found that scooters were the most exhilarating way to see any city. He played music from a playlist he made while traveling to Vietnam, Morocco and France. We found that both of our fathers had cheated on our moms and hypothesized how that impacted our personalities today (not very well). We talked about hoping to reject our own natural distrust while accepting our fathers as human, not the heroes we once saw them as. It was easier for him than me. I discovered infidelity as a child, he, at 18. Not to mention that I was seemingly being haunted by my childhood in the form of a Honda Element.

I felt so close to him, despite the way he spoke in as few words as possible. While Ethan and I had been hooking up late after the bars, barely exchanging any words, I was dating actual men who took me to dinners at a reasonable time and openly communicated how they felt about me. Unfortunately, I always held some feeling that Ethan might be the only person who might understand the pain I felt. We started dating seven months after that, only after plunging 500 feet into New Jersey. I held off as long as I possibly could. 

From the L-train, we transfer to the 2/3 to get uptown. While he scrolled on his phone, I caught a glimpse of a text thread he had with “Jacqueline,” a name I felt sounded inherently skanky. My recurring feeling that he is cheating on me with a younger woman makes my heart drop. It’s a familiar feeling that I’ve felt a thousand times over, even as a child, on behalf of my mother. I talk myself down. I remember that his new sales manager is named Jackie, who is in her late 30’s and married. Then I speculate him having an affair with a married employee who he gets along with because they are closer in age. Ethan and I fight about my theories every month. He has done his best to reassure me every time I start up about it, but I know he won’t for much longer. I talk myself down again and convince myself she isn’t that pretty. I linger in distrust and then a rush of invigorating paranoia – that feeling of being followed. I see her in the corner of my eye – the older woman who drives the orange Element that parks on 11th Street.

She sits there, in gray curly hair, an orange puffer jacket with her small Maltese in a carrier. She looks forward at the subway map, avoiding eye contact with me, as if I wouldn’t recognize my own stalker. I tell Ethan who she is.

“You know you sound insane right now,” he says.

“No shit, but we have to follow her. Right now.” 

“We have a reservation.”

“I’ve never been this close, just come with me this one time,” I say, attempting to whisper but coming to a yell.

“One time? Once a month it’s some new emergency where I’m tracking some box on a scooter. I’m done with this,” at full yell.

I see the orange lady stand up and move toward the doors preparing for the 72nd street stop. I ask Ethan one more time to come with me.

“If you follow her, I’m not coming with you. Not now and not ever again,” he says. “Please just put this behind you.”

The doors open. I weigh my options until the very last second. I step out of the car, and say that I’m sorry. It wasn’t the way I expected to sabotage the relationship. But it happened. I figure that it’s not that bad – that he was a one night stand who was never going to be my husband anyway. 

I turn around and scan the platform for the tangerine. I’m never on the Upper West Side. I don’t know why anyone would be over here. I follow her for seven blocks to a pharmacy. She lines up for medication while I loiter in the makeup aisle. She breezes past me while walking out. Her dog looks at me and lets out one high-pitched yap. I turn the other way in case she looks at me. She continues.

Another five blocks and she walks into an apartment building with ornate white columns, baroque sconces and a bright blue carpet. She speaks to the doorman for a moment and goes upstairs. I wait and hope this isn’t where she lives. I could be here all night. A woman in a wheelchair exits the building and is loaded into a handicapped cab. I see the signage above the glass doors now, “Assisted Living.” What could this woman possibly want by stalking me?

She comes out twenty minutes later without the paper bag of medication or her dog. She looks at her watch and darts nine more blocks uptown. 

She combs her hair using her hands on the last block, takes a deep breath before landing in front of an ornate church. I am across the street, watching her enter through the side door to the basement of the church instead of the main steps. I get closer and try to make out why she is here. There are stained glass cathedral windows, at least 15 feet tall, growing in size every step closer.

The basement level has another set of commercial windows that start a few feet below ground level. With shades covering half the window, I crouch down on the sidewalk, holding the black iron fence like jail cell bars. Through glass, the lady pulls a chair into a circle of others. This is it. This is the meeting of the Element gang members viciously taunting me with voyeurism. My chance to confront all of them together. I storm my way to the steps of the ground floor entrance. A man with a scruffy beard is about to close the door.

“Hey, here for AA?” he asks, sizing me up.

I furrow my brows and nod my head no. I extend my neck to look inside, no glass. The individuals are seated across from one another. Each of them looks earnest and a little bit sad in their own way.

“The main entrance to the church is that way, around the corner. Have a good night.”

For the first time, I am struck with the slim possibility that these people are simply living their individual lives with nothing to do with me. I can’t fathom my own self-involvement. I even consider that I had the wrong woman on the train the entire time – I had only seen her once, after all. 

I decide to sit in one of the large chain coffee retailers which are always the last to close. I order a chai latte and plot my next move. I decide that I still have to confront her. Even if this was an AA meeting doesn’t mean that she isn’t part of another team of stalkers. I notice across the street is the Mediterranean restaurant I was supposed to go to with Ethan. I wonder if leaving him was a mistake. I check the @hondaelementfanpage and scan for any new comments, likes or follows that could provide a clue. Nothing. I check Ethan’s instagram page to see if he follows Skank-Jackie. He doesn’t. 

I order another tea and they tell me they are closing in half an hour. I look out to the street, at cars driving up Amsterdam. Not a Honda Element in sight. 

As the workers start closing up, I see the basement door open and several people trickle out. I toss my drink and rush out, eager to catch up to the lady. I cross the street towards the statuette of Saint Brigid. The people outside are exchanging goodbyes or lighting up cigarettes and continuing stories. Orange puffer and I make eye contact while she flicks a lighter. I smile and wave, signaling I’d like to talk to her.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Could I ask if you’re following me?” I take a milder approach than what I had initially intended, given the circumstance of where I am meeting her.

“No, but you sure as hell are following me!” she says in a scratchy and nasally New York accent.

“I wasn’t– I thought you were–“

She cuts me off. “Listen, people confuse me with other people all the time. I just have one of those faces.”

“I am quite certain you and a group of people have been following me in the same car–“

 “Honey,” her tone becomes combative, “there’s eight million people in this city and I unfortunately got fucked with a face that looks like every other old white lady!” She takes a drag of a gifted cigarette.

“You have the orange one, on 11th street, and there’s the other one on Av–“

She takes one step closer and lowers her voice. “Listen to me. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s not here.” She sounds like she has given this advice many times before.

I walk away slowly, turning back once to get a final glance at her facial structure. I pace aimlessly for a few blocks reliving our encounter, wondering if it was all my own paranoid fabrication. I am bumbling aimlessly as it begins to drizzle. I go to the nearest avenue and try to hail a cab to no avail. I pause on a random corner and order an Uber to my apartment.

In a nondescript vehicle, my driver and I silently ride down Fifth Avenue in wet traffic. I try, for the first time in a very long time, not to look for any car in particular. I attempt to watch the city pass by through eyes unharmed and unguarded. I imagine I am back in Joshua Tree, reclined and breathing warm air. I am staring out with childlike wonder, fearless and naive. Passing me, the aged and ornamental architecture of the city. Gothic revival hotels and brutalist museums. Slowly, I imagine colors separate from the object. Shapes of red found in brake lights and deli signs now disconnect from their post. Textures of brick, plaster and pavement all become smooth and reflective like glass. My world becomes a liminal rendering of neither city nor desert. I’ve extracted pattern from paranoia. I no longer feel suspicion, conspiracy or fear. I am finally clean, alone.

Through the back window of the car, I gaze at the traffic conquered. The city’s details are resuscitated. Right then, my driver rear-ends the car in front of us. My neck, which was turned left, aches with whiplash. I hold my right shoulder as I exit the car, both parties parked in the bus lane, which has returned to red. The other driver is apologetic, saying she is from out of town, driving a loaner vehicle. I look to see if there’s damage to her car – a shiny black BMW 5-series.