Caught with The New Yorker Under the Bed

Oh, the shame! The humiliation! I thought I was being so clever and discreet.

“Where did you get this? I know it’s not yours. Did someone from work give it to you? Was it Ted, from Creative? I knew I couldn’t trust that fucker.”

Busted. There was no use trying to deny it to my wife. Initially, I tried to offset the damage and redeem myself by showing her my Google search history, but that only made things worse.

“But you hate The New Yorker; you think it’s pretentious as fuck.”

“Yes, I hate it – I hate to love it. The writing is good and I was reading it to help me write gooder. I’m sorry. You caught me. Please don’t tell anyone, especially my mom. She’ll accuse me of putting on airs.”

My wife and my mom text one another regularly, which is good, most of the time. However, the next day, my phone rings.

“Hi, Mom. How are you? How’s the weather?” We chit chat for about five minutes, before switching subjects.

“So…your wife tells me…”

“Hold on, Mom. I can explain.”

“So, you think you’re hot shit because you can sit down and read an entire 9,000-word article with ten-dollar words?”

“Wait, Mom…”

“Your father and his father both read Big Jugs, for the articles. That not good enough for you?

“You know, I picked up a copy, just to check out this trash mag for myself. You should be ashamed. How could you? Your father didn’t work his ass off so you could defile yourself with The Talk of the Town! That doesn’t even make sense. None of us live in New York City. Who cares what goes on there? What kind of dirty magazine is this, anyway? I don’t get it.

“Are you turning into some wannabe New York snob, like their mascot – some snooty New York asshole looking at some dumb butterfly through his stupid glasses?”

“It’s a monocle. Oh, no.”

“I DON’T CARE WHAT IT IS! IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT IT IS!”

From that point on, I kept my mouth shut and took the L as my mom delivered a blistering lecture that included a revisionist family history and a few digressions on class culture. I just hope all of this will be forgiven and forgotten before the family gathers next Thanksgiving.

“Hi, Grandpa. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Tom. It’s good to see you. So…your dad tells me…you get your rocks off with…The New Yorker? “

Author’s note: This is entirely a piece of fiction. First, if I were to read The New Yorker, I would read it, in shame, away from home, in a corner, at the public library. Second, my mom is actually a very open-minded and reasonable person and wouldn’t have said any of the things above. Third, my dad didn’t read Big Jugs; he read Penthouse. Grandpa read Big Jugs, for the articles.