We are incredibly excited that this month’s story is an excerpt from Andrew Boryga’s hilarious and already-acclaimed new book, Victim.
“It was summer, I was very, very brown, and Nic was very, very desperate.” So explains Boryga’s narrator about getting a fancy new writing gig after a viral essay launches him into the stratosphere. Read on for a taste of this hustler at the top of his form, plus some pretty sweaty media suits.
And grab a copy of the book here.
-The editors (suitless)
The train ride to The Rag’s offices in Brooklyn that morning took me well over an hour from the Bronx. I refreshed my Twitter notifications like a cratering junkie scraping to pass the time. Even days after the story was circulated, it was clear it had blown up. It was also clear, at least to me, that I had transformed from an aspiring writer trying to break his way into the game to somebody. A blue check mark appeared next to my name on Twitter. The number of followers I had crossed the threshold from respectable to enviable. A hashtag based on the piece’s title “Why She Had to Go” had even been spawned after others online read the piece and were inspired to share stories about their own exes who proudly espoused progressive ideals online that proved empty in real life.
I felt like I was in the center of a big room with a massive audience of people clapping for me. It was, basically, a legal drug. A high so good and strong that it allowed me to box out, like a blue chip center, any doubts, any reflection on Anais’ words. In my mind, I wasn’t a fraud. I was making moves up the food chain. And, clearly, my moves were working.
By 59th street, my train car filled with the sharp suits and skirts crowd. Coffee cups encased in fancy sheaths with ridges. Glossy leather briefcases and purses. People reading from carefully folded copies of The New York Times. As the train crossed over into Brooklyn, the suits were replaced by hipsters. Their jeans black and stuck to their bodies like skin. Their shirts bright and the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Canvas bags on the shoulders. Fragile looking bicycles with curved handle bars. They clutched worn novels, books of essays, and in the hands of a white woman in a loose, purple dress standing up in front of me, the latest issue of The Rag. I saw my story’s title in small letters on the corner of the cover. A reader, a real reader, out in the wild. I was thrilled. But I was also grateful that she had no idea who I was, because I had no interest in actually talking to her. No interest in making it even clearer that Anais was right after all. I was writing for people like this. Was that a good thing? I didn’t want to answer that. I focused on what was the good thing: the place I was heading, the meeting scheduled, the opportunity in front of me.
The Rag had recently relocated its offices from Midtown Manhattan to Brooklyn in an effort to “refresh” their brand and better connect with their new core audience. The offices were now housed in a large warehouse, right next to a wooden pier that overlooked the water and downtown Manhattan. The Rag’s logo was spray painted on the door of the building. In the center of the lobby was a large desk that looked like it had been cut right out of a tree. A man with a gold earring in his ear and a colorful paisley shirt asked for my name.
While I waited for Nic, I looked up at the unusually high ceiling. The air ducts, vents, and wires were exposed as if the construction workers had just walked off the job. On the far wall was a line of framed issues of The Rag. On closer inspection, I saw they spanned fifty years, back to when the magazine was first started. I walked down the row until I got to the very last issue. The one with my story in it. And now it was here, on a wall, just like the platinum plaques hanging in record labels.
“A fantastic piece,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to a slender white man with a shark blue blazer, a gray T-shirt with Biggie Smalls’ face plastered on it, tight jeans, and crisp white sneakers. Nic Ossof. The head of the magazine—the man who saved it from shuttering like so many other publications and figured out a way to build a profitable online operation in addition to keeping the print edition afloat. His face had graced the covers of several magazines profiling his rise, his foresight, and his ability—in spite of the critics who suggested he was, at the same time, watering down the magazine’s legacy—to mine value out of viral stories and turn clicks into online subscribers.
“Really,” he said. “We were so moved by it. Especially me.”
I smiled.
Nic took me up an elevator. The doors opened to a mammoth sized space with desks all along the walls. Sitting in them seemed to be the exact same sorts of people I noticed on my train, down to the canvas bags and bicycles. In the center of the room was a theater-like setup with chairs and a stage. “For our big meetings,” Nic said. He took me through the kitchen, where a long table boasted a bevy of snacks: Peanuts, popcorn, M&M’s, granola, dried fruit. He pointed to four shiny spouts next to an Italian espresso machine. “Kombucha, locally sourced craft beers. You’re free to take as much as you like. We find that it only helps the copy around here.”
I detected a rasp in his voice and was reminded for a second of the frat boys I’d come across at Donlon. The ones who wore shades every day of the week to hide eyes weakened by late nights of formal dinners, boat parties, and private hook-up sessions with sororities masked as events. We continued down the center of the space, which buzzed with conversations, clicking sounds, the shutter of a camera somewhere far off. A Tribe Called Quest song played softly on the speakers.
Nic led me to a desk where a woman sat. Her outfit—tight ponytail, sophisticated glasses, white blouse, dark skirt—seemed distinctly at odds with the casual dress of everyone else in the place. As if, perhaps, she’d been a holdover from the publication’s previous iterations, despite the fact that she seemed to be in her early thirties at most.
“Rebecca,” Nic said, “Look who’s here.”
She looked up and squinted. I looked at her silver name tag on the desk and everything crystallized for me. We’d never met. Never so much as spoken on the phone. But seeing her in person, the pointedness of her stare, made me understand just who I was dealing with.
When it became clear she also had no clue who I was, Nic cleared his throat.
“It’s Javier Perez.”
Rebecca’s eyes widened. She stood quickly. “Javier. So nice to meet you.” She shook my hand.
I felt like being petty and reminding Rebecca of all the times she’d ignored my emails. All the times I’d “circled back” on late payments for stories, but never heard anything for weeks. I had the power in my favor, after all. Nic, her boss, was impressed by me. But in spite of her clear reservations about me, I felt that I still needed her. Better to deal with the devil you know, I figured. So, I told Nic that working with Rebecca had always been a joy.
She forced a smile. “Likewise,” she said.
Nic led me to the only enclosed office in the space. A large room surrounded by glass walls. A table was plunked in the center facing a big screen on the wall. I watched as titles of Rag stories jumped up and down on the screen. I was reminded of the times Pops would take me to horse races in Puerto Rico in a decrepit stadium that smelled like cigarette ash. The horses on the dirt track galloped and passed each other until one came out as the winner. Afterward, most people let out a groan while a few smiled and headed to the cashier. I looked for my story, which still, after five days of being out in the world, held the number one spot.
“Like I said, it was a fantastic piece,” Nic said. “And it’s obviously the sort of thing our online audience is looking for. Take a seat.”
He directed me to a leather lounge chair. I wanted to take a picture of the screen. I’d had a feeling that many people were reading my story, but now there were concrete metrics to put next to that feeling. A way to judge just how good it had been. “So those are real time readers?”
Nic was eager to explain. “Yes. The system tracks every eyeball on our website and spits out the data. We keep a pretty close watch on it. It’s the future of our industry—which is not something everyone gets. But I do. Print will soon be dead, sadly. Online is king. We need to make sure we’re getting as many people looking and clicking and sharing as possible.”
I was spellbound watching the numbers churning on the screen. I wanted nothing more than to take the screen home. To sit in my apartment and watch the numbers go up and down. To see in real time just how many people were spending time with my words.
Nic sat. Behind him the streets teemed with people walking with a purpose. Cars zipping in and out of lanes. Cranes swiveling in the sky. I thought about Anais. About what it must have been like for her to see this view at work every day and then come home to the one we had together. I shook off the thought before it could pull me in any deeper.
“That is where you come in,” Nic said. “We’re always on the hunt for people who can drive traffic to our site. Voices that readers feel compelled to click on. People with the kind of stories that make it hard to resist. Stories that touch on the pulse of our culture.” He gestured up at the screen. “You seem to have that ability. It is also true, I’ll admit, that we’ve been looking to diversify this place a bit more. We don’t just want our team to be a bunch of white people from well-to-do families. That’s so, like, twentieth century media, isn’t it?”
He looked at me pointedly. I knew he was trying to earn points. Trying to signal that he was hip and down with the beloved d-word. By then it had spread from colleges and radical circles into corporate America, into seemingly every institution there was. Like the “conversation” online, it had become a wave. A wave that coincided so perfectly with my rise you would have thought I planned it. “Diversity” was no longer just some activist chant. It was a full-throated demand. A necessity accepted by everyone. Too many industries, including the media, were too white and everyone had suddenly come to an agreement on this. Everyone suddenly had to show their commitment to change in order to stay relevant. Everyone in the writing world had also agreed that hiring a token writer or editor and fast-tracking them to stardom was a perfectly fine solution.
I wonder sometimes: If Nic had met me in the dead of winter—when my skin was paler and I looked more Brazilian or sort of vaguely European—would he still be enamored with me? We’ll never know. Because the fact is, sitting there before him in his office, I was blessed. It was summer, I was very, very brown, and Nic was very, very desperate.
I saw my window. All of my training and experience, the college essays, the column for the college newspaper, the LTC, the lessons from Mr. Martin, the college essays, the LTC, the column for the Bulletin, the takedown of Anais, all of it, was to prepare for this.
“It is so twentieth century,” I said to Nic. “I’m glad to hear The Rag is willing to do the work of changing that. Take action instead of just talking about it. There’s just too much talk out there.”
Nic nodded like a puppy. “Yes, exactly. Too much talk. We gotta do the work, right?”
“Well. Not me. You have to do the work. It’s not up to us.”
I felt like a dominatrix. I felt like my ancestors, who had cleaned buildings and chopped sugar cane, were cheering me on in the afterlife. Pa’lante, nino! Pa’que tu lo sepas.
Nic sat back in his chair and smiled—a happy customer. “Javier. My man.” He crossed his hands. “Listen. Why beat around the bush? We want you to join us as a full-time staff writer. How does that sound to you?”
I wanted to jump up, to exalt like I’d just scored a touchdown. But I thought about Pops. I kept it cool. “It sounds enticing. I’d like to know more.”
Nic seemed concerned that I wasn’t smiling from ear to ear, that I wasn’t shaking his hand, or perhaps kissing his expensive tennis shoes. “Well, sure. What else would you like to know?”
I crossed one leg on top of the other. “Money is important. But also, what sorts of stories would I be expected to write? I’d only really be interested if I had free rein to write what I’d like.”
Nic adjusted his jacket. “That sort of roving latitude is usually reserved for more senior folks, but we can work something out down the road. For the time being, we’d really like you to continue focusing on diversity issues. Race, social justice, police interactions. The hot-button things. We think it would be excellent to have someone like you who not only writes well but also represents some of the minority, underprivileged communities at the center of these stories, sharing your perspective on them.”
I got a kick out of the thought of one man trying to write about the entirety of the minority experience in the United States. Trying to capture all there was to capture. While everyone else on staff, ostensibly, wrote about the experiences of white people. It was an inherently dumb job. But also, for me, a perfect one.
“You’d continue to work with Rebecca,” Nic continued. “You like her, right?”
I smiled. “I do.”
“Good. She can be a stickler. But she’s got a good head on her shoulders. And a sharp eye for what a piece is missing.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I can see that.”
“Great. Well, we’ll get into numbers, but I imagine you’ll find the salary quite comfortable. Also, I should mention that we have generous bonuses for our writers who drive the biggest readership. I’d bet you’ll rack up a couple of those a year, too.” Nic smiled. “Then of course, you’d be able to work from here. Everyone loves this space. We have regular happy hours. And I’m a sucker for treating people for drinks and food at the end of long days. There’s a Michelin starred Korean barbecue place right down the street.”
I thought about that woman on the train. About the very real prospect of running into readers. Of having to chat with them, or even people like Rebecca every day. Having to live up to who they thought I was. The Bronx was, ironically, safer. The Rag wasn’t sold there. No one cared about what I did or what I wrote. I was still just Schoolboy. Weird Javi, writing his little, insignificant stories. The Bronx is where I needed to be. I glanced at the story leaderboard, my brown hands, and remembered who the fuck I was.
“As nice as that all sounds, I live in The Bronx, Nic.”
“Of course. Well, like I said, we pay well. You could move somewhere closer. We could even help you find something nice around here. This neighborhood is really–”
I cleared my throat. “The thing is, I have no intention of leaving my community behind like that, of abandoning them. After reading my latest piece, I would think you’d understand, right? I refuse to be just another gentrifier, taking up the space of some other person of color who can’t afford to be here anymore. Some people are comfortable with that,” I said, looking him up and down. “But I’m not.”
Nic pulled at his collar. I loved to see him sweat.
“Absolutely. Gentrification is just terrible. My doorman is a great Dominican guy. His family used to live in the neighborhood and he told me they all eventually got pushed out. Moved upstate. He misses them, it’s sad.” Nic sighed. “Of course, I give him an extra big tip during the holidays every year. Feels like you need to do something in that situation, right?”
I smiled inside. This fucking guy. But on the surface, I remained cold. My face did not flinch.
Nic picked up a pen and bounced it off the desk a few times. “You know what? Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Forget I even asked. Where you work from is not important at all. As long as you’re writing for us, we’re all good.”
-30-
Andrew Boryga is a writer who was born and raised in the Bronx, New York and currently lives in Miami with his family. His debut novel, Victim, was published in March by Doubleday Books. His non-fiction writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and many other outlets. He has also taught writing to elementary school students, college students, and incarcerated men.