NSFW

Lucy Kirkwood

WHO    Sam, twenty-four, ‘a working-class, university-educated boy from outside of London who now lives in Archway’.

TO WHOM    Miranda, middle-aged editor of Electra magazine.

WHERE    Miranda’s office.

WHEN    Present day.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED    Sam is an aspiring journalist. At the start of the play he is working for a men’s magazine called Doghouse. One of his tasks has been to choose the winner of Doghouse’s ‘Local Lovely’ competition. But when it transpires that ‘Carrie, eighteen, likes Twilight books and theme parks’ is actually only fourteen and has not given consent for her picture to be used, Sam is forced to take the rap and loses his job. Here, nine months later, having split up from his girlfriend and desperate for work, he is being interviewed by Miranda for a position at women’s magazine Electra. As a test of Sam’s suitability, she has shown him photographs of famous female celebrities and has asked him to draw red circles on what he considers to be the flaws on their bodies. She also wants him to reveal what it was about his own girlfriend that he found repulsive. The speech that follows is his response.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

•	The objectification of women is equally noxious in the women’s magazine as it is in the men’s.
•	Sam is sensitive and kind. He does not make judgements about people according to the way they look.
•	He was and still is very much in love with Rona, who is six years his senior.
•	He is dedicated and hardworking. He says he spent his teenage years largely revising.
•	The present work climate, in which talented graduates are forced to take jobs as unpaid interns and for which they are overqualified.
•	NSFW stands for ‘not safe for work’ and refers to the kind of material you would not want to be seen browsing in public.

WHAT HE WANTS

•	To feel connected.
•	To feel complete.
•	To be back with Rona.

KEYWORDS  love  gone  soulmate  funny  beautiful  brave  fearless  together  connected  shared  secret

Sam

I can’t think of anything. I’m sorry.

Beat.

I’d like to be able to but. I loved her. I do love her. I actually can’t right now deal with the idea that she’s gone, that I might not ever wake up with her again, or go on holiday, because I think, sorry if this is a bit, but I think she’s my soulmate. Stupid things like I love watching her eat, the way she eats is so… and she’s funny and beautiful and. Brave and – like, we were on the Tube once, it was really crushed and there was this man, he wasn’t like a tramp, he was in a suit, he had a briefcase, and she realised this man had taken his, you know – his… penis, out, through his flies, and he was sort of, rubbing it on her but the Tube was so packed you know, so people didn’t notice, but when she saw it, she started shouting really loud, ‘Look at his chipolata!’, till everyone was looking at them – and you’d think that would be really embarrassing, wouldn’t you? But I just loved that, she’s just, fearless and what happened is the whole Tube, together, starting chanting at him, we’re all chanting together at this man, ‘Chipolata! Chipolata!’ and I thought: I actually feel like part of something, you know? For the first time in my life I feel like I’m part of something, like we, people, together, can change things. People can stand up and stop shit things happening. Because that’s what it was like when I was with her, I felt… connected to the world, and all the things the world could be if we were just, better versions of ourselves, so it’s like that better world was sort of a shared space that existed in both our heads, so there was like a world, that we lived in together, that we’d helped to make and it was just for us, it was our secret. We had a secret and we lived in it together and –

– and that’s it, really.

I just really –

– love her.