Hot Stew

sit by the fire. He looks around at the pictures on the walls. They are, for the most part, drawings, watercolors, and prints of hunting scenes. Fox hunting, game-bird shooting. There’s a corkboard with notices pinned to it advertising a local yoga class, an amateur production of Ibsen’s Public Enemy, and an anti-fracking campaign group, also called “Public Enemy.” Another notice advertises a new fitness scheme in which people from cities come out to the countryside in the evenings and weekends and work on farms instead of going to the gym. They can shift bales of hay or do scything or heavy lifting, and they pay the farmer rather than the other way around. There’s an app for it. Lorenzo takes a photo and sends it to Glenda. She’ll see the absurdity. He’s missed her these last couple of months. He wonders what she’ll think about the show when she sees it. She was so eager for him to go for the audition and then afterwards, for him to take the part, but she hadn’t read the script. She didn’t know about the kinds of things he was required to act out. A couple of days ago he had to film a scene in which his character held down a prostitute, someone who was new to the brothel, while she was raped by two men. The character, although she had no lines, was meant to be fourteen, but for legal reasons was played by a young-looking eighteen-year-old. While filming, the director kept instructing Lorenzo to hold the girl’s wrists tighter, tighter. “We have to believe that she can’t get away. You’re holding her so loosely she could easily escape.” Lorenzo had queried the direction on the grounds that he didn’t want to hurt the girl. “Oh god, I’m fine,” she said, happily. “Go for it.”

A couple of weeks ago, Lorenzo attended a preliminary press conference about the show. There was already a lot of hype surrounding it and some early trailers. At the press conference one of the show’s creators was asked about the violence: the graphic portrayals of violence, physical and sexual. The journalist asking the question then added an explanatory comment which contained the phrase “the current climate.” The show’s creator, who was called Nick and had been the silent man at Lorenzo’s audition, responded that he saw the project as “fundamentally feminist.” When asked what he meant by that, he responded with the assertion that if we accept sexual violence is an epidemic within society, that it happens everywhere all the time, then we have a duty as artists and writers to show it in all its horror, and that if artists and writers don’t show it in all its horror then they were doing a disservice to the victims of sexual violence, and in fact if they “cut away” the implication was that there was something shameful about being the victim of violence. In other words, we have a duty to bear witness.

Lorenzo was sitting at the end of the long table. The famous actors and producers were towards the middle. As Nick said these things Lorenzo turned in his seat and paid close attention to his facial expressions and body language. He was pleased with himself, there was no doubt about that. Lorenzo thought it unlikely that Nick was motivated to create this TV show out of a desire to address sexual violence in society.

The content of the TV show was making Lorenzo confront all sorts of things about himself he hadn’t thought about in years.

Lorenzo had a girlfriend at school. He was handsome and popular and he had a vulnerability about him that drew girls closer to him. He had lots of offers. The girl who became his girlfriend was one of his best friends. Her name was Anabel, and soon after her sixteenth birthday, when they were both in Year 11, she told Lorenzo that she was in love with him. She watched a lot of BBC adaptations of Jane Austen novels so, although they were young, she declared her feelings in overblown terms. The proposition had not occurred to Lorenzo at the time but it was a natural enough progression. They already spent much of their time together. People around them were getting boyfriends and girlfriends and, although Lorenzo never spent much time thinking about girls, when Anabel made the suggestion, he realized that if he were to have a girlfriend, as he probably should at some point, he would want it to be someone like Anabel. At first, very little changed. But soon, when he went round to her house after school, instead of watching TV or getting on with homework, they sat on the couch kissing.

Lorenzo has always enjoyed kissing and regrets its relegation in adult life to foreplay. He and Anabel began their relationship with nothing but kissing, and hours were spent rolling around with each other.

Lorenzo generally got an erection during these episodes and after a while Anabel began to reach down and hold his penis, first over his clothes and then beneath them. He followed her lead and reached down and touched her between her legs, where it was hot and wet. He found coarse hair and neat folds of soft skin. He most enjoyed the feel of her breasts. She had truly wonderful breasts, even then, and certainly now. Lorenzo and Anabel are still friends. He fondled her breasts with both hands and gently squeezed her nipples, which made her moan and sigh. He remembers liking this.

After they had been boyfriend and girlfriend officially for six months, and celebrated a six-month “anniversary” with a trip to the local Odeon, Anabel mentioned to Lorenzo that her parents were away for the weekend and would he like to stay over? He said that he would, knowing what was implied and expected.

They began in the usual way. Music from the hi-fi cut through the silence and dulled any embarrassing sounds. Anabel suggested they investigate a rack of wine bottles