What She Doesn't Know...

Another NaNo excerpt for your reading pleasure!


Jeffrey got out of bed and closed the door, then began rooting through the pile of clothes to find his jeans and t-shirt from earlier in the day.  Once dressed, he took another deep, calming breath before heading out to face his mother.

He found her sitting on the couch, flipping through the channels on the television.

“You know, it’s really a waste to have so many channels," she told him.  “You really only need the basic cable package.  I don’t know why you insist on having all of these extra channels.  I mean, you work all day, so it's not as if you need to have that much variety.”

“I don’t always work during the day,” Jeffrey said.  “Sometimes I work at night, and it’s nice to have options.  Daytime television on basic cable sucks.”

"Still, you could save a lot of money if you just cancelled all of this - Jeffrey!”  His mother dropped the remote, then scrambled to pick it back up.  She frantically pressed buttons until the channel changed, then stood up and glared at her son, hands on her hips.  “Jeffrey Adam Richards!  You have pornography!”

Jeffrey couldn't stop himself.  He laughed.  He laughed so hard that every one of his poor injured muscles started to hurt.

“I don't know what’s so funny, young man!  This is... This is smut!  I raised you better than that, Jeffrey!  I can't believe that you would allow such, such, filth into your apartment!  It's dirty, it's disgusting, it's degrading to women!  You - you - you -” She stammered, lost for words.  Her face was red, as red as the pillows on Jeffrey’s couch, and still, he kept laughing.

“You stop laughing right now, young man!  Stop it!  Stop!  And get rid of that, that, filth!  You should know better!”

“Mother, get over it,” Jeffrey managed to say, pulling himself together a bit.  “It’s just porn.”

“Just porn?  JUST PORN?  Look at the things those poor girls are doing!”

“I did look, and I do look, frequently,” he said, enjoying his mother’s discomfort.

She stammered and stuttered, fuming but unable to form any actual words.

“Did you honestly expect otherwise from me?  I’m twenty-eight years old, as you keep reminding me, with no girlfriend and no prospects for marriage - if I don’t subscribe to the Playboy channel, I’ll just buy the magazine, or worse, download free porn from the internet.  At least this way those ‘poor girls’ are getting paid for what they do,” he said.

His mother just stared at him.