My phone buzzes and a message from the co-managing editor pops up on my screen: “Julia’s wondering when you might submit to the Nass,” she says and I type out “Never” with a period at the end. Never again, that is. But then I change my mind, because I don’t want to be a pain in the ass. So I say “maybe when I’m less busy” instead. That is probably a half-truth anyway. 

I’m on the Pomona Freeway in LA County, going 65 miles an hour. My friend is in the driver’s seat, and he’s pretty confident despite the overwhelming number of commuters in the early afternoon hours. I know no one would trust me with a car, especially a rental. And I’d be a bitch about it too, if they made me drive. The European mind can’t comprehend 14 lane highways, they say, but that’s not what concerns me, at least not in this instant. The Aux is playing “American Teenager” by Ethel Cain, which I requested, so I’m singing along. It’s a hot summer day, but in early March, and I’m looking out the window at the palm trees and billboards passing by like little guard towers, observing the stream of cars flowing beneath. 

The billboards in LA are peculiar, I note to myself. They all seem to follow a specific pattern, advertising for one industry only. A man in a well-pressed suit and glasses smizes at me from above and asks if I was hurt in an accident, which I wasn’t, so I deem his offer irrelevant. I’m sorry, Mr. Sweet James, not today, I whisper. He lets me know he’s voted Number One in the country, but he doesn’t explain by whom. We drive away and I say goodbye, slightly entertained by this interaction. But it only takes two seconds until I see the next one, a man dressed in gray this time. He’s less verbose than Sweet James, he simply asks “Car Accident?,” but I’m afraid I can’t help him either. His name is James Wang, representing James Wang Law, and he doesn’t claim to be voted Number One, but he does tell me that he has a 5-star rating, and speaks Spanish as well. Lo siento, James Wang, I can’t really take you up on the offer. Maybe some other day. We keep driving, hoping that no other James pops his head up, but it doesn’t take long until I’m advertised another insurance lawyer. 

And they just keep coming. Badly Hurt? Let me help you. Car Insurance? Truck insurance? Hurt on the road? Motorcycle insurance? Number One in the State. Number One in the Country. Voted Number One five years in a row. Jacoby & Meyers. Morgan & Morgan. Fucking Sweet James again. 

I’m dying to see a McDonalds ad. 

The Pomona Freeway is not for beginners, I conclude, and I marvel at this entire industry that seems to dwarf all the others in the highway’s vicinity, despite being built on the premise of people getting badly wounded. They’re hyenas atop a mountain, waiting for a drop of blood, sniffing around on the sidelines. They desire you to fail. I entertain this thought for a while. What if I lean forward, and yank the steering wheel to the right, just for a split second. What if I give these hyenas something to prey on? 

“I really want you to submit, Otto,” reads the next text from the co-managing editor, and this time it isn’t just Julia who wants to see me write. But how can I write anything with the hyenas looking at me all the time?

I pull up my assigned reading for my Austrian Literature class instead. This week it’s Stefanie Sargnagel, an author writing about writing. She hates everything she does for money. She hates writing, mostly. She wishes to slice off some kids’ fingers at the ice skating rink. She won a ‘Bachmannpreis’ for this story. Maybe I’ll yank the steering wheel when we get closer to the carpool in front of us. That’ll take out more than fingers. That’ll give me something to write about. 

I know I’m not a good writer. I’m barely a writer at all. I’m mostly just okay at this stuff that I do. Amy March from Little Women said “I want to be great or nothing.” I submit this piece slightly after the deadline, silently hoping that no one I know will ever get to read it. My friend keeps driving over the speed limit, silently hoping he won’t have to call Sweet James at the end of it. I’d like to choose to be nothing, because how could I be great with hyenas bearing their teeth at me? I’d like to drive at the speed limit too. People would honk.

The co-managing editor urges me to think back to the last time I had an idea for a piece. That turned out great, she thinks. Maybe I just need a little nudging. A Tesla honks 20 feet away from our car and I think about how I’m only trudging along the freeway of alternative journalism. Sargnagel’s narrator would be thrilled to see that Tesla crash into someone. She would be fascinated by Sweet James and the rest of them. 

My favorite thing about this Austrian reading assignment is Sargnagel’s desire to write literature without the weight of literature resting on her shoulders. She wants to create something mundane, something that doesn’t collapse under the enormous pressure of innovation, and the search for the spectacular. The banality and the crudeness of the piece, her excitement at the sight of fresh blood oozing from a drunk’s wounded forehead scares me, not because I find it disturbing, but because I relate to it on some level. She incorporates this bloody, repulsive, borderline tragic event into a piece about her own grouchiness towards life in general, and wins the audience award. If only the Pomona Freeway had something horrid to offer that I could incorporate, maybe I could win the prize for best piece in this week’s Nassau Weekly. 

Who am I kidding?

I look up at the next billboard and it’s a copy of the September 10, 2023 Issue of the Nass, titled “The Very Hungry Frosh.” That can’t be, I say with my mouth agape. Has our reach really expanded so far West? But that goofy ass design is so fundamentally Nass, that there’s no doubt left in me. In the issue itself, Sofiia Shapovalova’s piece, “Godless,” pierces a hole in my lungs, and gently whispers “great or nothing, Otto. Great or Nothing.” Like Sweet James and James Wang Law, 48 years of Nass history shiver with anticipation as an idea starts forming in my head. Will he do it again? Will he write something so mediocre that it sets back student journalism by a decade? 48 years of Nass history that includes maybe five pieces of mine. Some are okay, some I wish were never published. And God knows, some that the Nass would be a much higher quality magazine without. The ones I don’t hate are almost worse in a way. They have a short little blurb at the top, claiming to be rated 5-star, and available in Spanish as well. If you could quit it with the growling, Hunter from October 5, 2023. You’re just as much of a hyena as James Wang from James Wang Law. 

We’re near the outskirts of LA when Sargnagel’s “Ich-Erzähler” meets up with a friend to comfort her after a rough breakup. Her narrator is being a proper friend, she says all the things one needs to hear when broken up with. But truly she’s just bathing in the drama of it all. She’s a sucker for a good story. She thinks she may write about this friend for the “Bachmannpreis.” Maybe that’s the trick to writing, I think, take something ordinary, like a friend’s breakup, and accentuate the drama in it enough so that it becomes a story. Maybe I’ll write something about LA Highways and injury lawyers. Sweet James can duel James Wang. They can call each other for legal help if they get injured. 

When I pitched this piece I’m writing right now, someone suggested I pretend I ruined the Nass’s reputation with something I wrote in the past. A junior editor even sent me a New Yorker article called “My Life Is a Joke.” I tried not taking it personally. He says it’s about a woman, who dies, gets resurrected, and then gets invited to speak at a conference. He says the question is how can we go on after reaching rock bottom. The Nass wants me to pretend I did. Maybe I have. My piece will probably be labeled fiction on the website anyway. Whatever. 

Sargnagel ends her short story by ordering pasta at a furniture shop’s restaurant. She says it doesn’t taste like anything. Exactly how she likes it. 

The reason I hate writing is that everything I write turns into something it’s not. Hunter started out as an observation about dogs at Balkan borders, and so-called “Border Hunters” in my own country. It ended up being a story about my father. But the truth is, he never said any of the things I made him say in the piece. He never even thought any of those thoughts. I wanted it to be great. I wanted it to be Godless. I wanted it to be everything the Nass ever was, innovation, authenticity, and a bit of a spectacle. I wanted to stare Sweet James in the eye and scream “who’s Number One in the country now, bitch.” A part of me wishes I had just eaten my bland, furniture-shop-restaurant pasta as it was.  

We get off Pomona Freeway at the next exit and soon we’re in downtown LA where billboards are sparser, but arguably more creative. One just says “You can’t escape rush hour traffic, but you can escape prediabetes.” That makes me giggle. Maybe one day I’ll escape the weight of alternative journalism, and I’ll just write for the Nassau Weekly like a normal person. Maybe one day I won’t overplay the drama of it all, and instead of yanking the steering wheel and slicing off some kids’ fingers, I’ll just drive at the speed limit, down Pomona Freeway.

We get out of the car at the first In-N-Out we can find. Above it stands another injury lawyer’s giant billboard, which somehow found its way downtown, away from the highway and the other hyenas. His name is Ali. He’s asking one simple question. “Who hurt you?”

I’m not exactly sure what to say to that. No one. Not really. I hurt myself. I hurt myself every single time I submit to the Nass. I hurt myself each time I take a line from a song I like and make it the title of a piece, even though it’s only vaguely relevant to the piece itself. I keep doing it anyway, because I want to be great. I’m nothing. I’m food for the hyenas. I’m a hyena myself, on better days. I hit a vape that a friend got me before I enter the restaurant. It’s a clear vape. She says it was the only one they sold at the store. Literal air that kills.  But at least it doesn’t taste like anything. Exactly how I like it.