A Passion for Pleasure(118)
Like the woman who loves to play it, Egyptian Rat Screws is fast-paced, intense, and not for the faint of heart, but I promise a good time. So grab a deck, a partner, and your most colorful curses, and I’ll teach you the two-person version. ERS can also be played with more people, but I find one-on-one is the most intense… like any good romance, right?
The object of the game is simple: The winner ends up holding the whole deck. Of course, play can easily be transformed into something even wilder, such as Strip Rat Screws (Oliver’s favorite) or Drinking Rat Screws, a game our four best friends, Tessa, Lacey, Jocelyn, and Zoe, played a few times in college.
Before playing, the players face each other across a table and choose who goes first. Player One is selected arbitrarily—closest birthday, rock-paper-scissors, or the ever popular “least hormonal.” Leading off is no advantage, so save your voice for more important arguments, because there will be many. Each player gets twenty-six well-shuffled cards and may not look at them.
To begin, Player One flips the first card face-up on the table. If this card is a 2 through 10, Player Two puts her first card on top of the card on the table. Again, if that card is a number card, Player Two goes again.
The action begins when either player puts down a Jack, Queen, King, or Ace. When a face card is revealed, the other player must try to “beat” it by placing another face card of equal or higher value on top of it. Depending on the face card Player One has put down, Player Two has only a certain number of tries to beat it: one for a Jack, two for a Queen, three for a King, and four for an Ace.
If Player Two can’t beat the face card in her allotted number of tries, Player One gets all the cards on the table. (“Strip” ERS losers would shed one article of clothing; drinkers, take a gulp.)
If Player Two lays down another face card in her allotted tries, then Player One has the same number of tries to beat that card. (If more than two players are in the game, just keep moving around the table.) It’s not uncommon for the pile to grow to five or even ten cards, which results in a constant shift of power as each play becomes more and more valuable.
That’s it. Oh, except for the slap rule. And I don’t mean each other. When two of the same card is laid on the pile consecutively, the first player to notice can “slap” the pile and gets to keep all the cards in it. This is why it is very important that a player lays down his or her card without looking at it.
In the case of a simultaneous slap, whoever is on the bottom gets the pile. (Hint: Remove rings and clip nails; there can be blood!)
When I step back and look at the many aspects of Zoe’s character, it’s no surprise ERS is her favorite card game. In many ways, this riotous game is much like Zoe herself: hilarious, unpredictable, fast, wild, addictive, and irresistible fun. Enjoy!
From the desk of Nina Rowan
Dear Reader,
“I want to write about Victorian robots,” Fanciful Nina said as she ate another chocolate bon-bon.
“Huh?” Serious Nina looked up from alphabetizing the spice rack. “You’re writing a historical romance. Not a paranormal. Not steampunk.”
“But look at this,” Fanciful Nina persisted, clicking on the website of the Franklin Institute. “Here’s a robot… okay, an automaton, to use the historically correct term, called the Draughtsman-Writer. It was an actual invention by the eighteenth-century Swiss engineer Henri Maillardet, and it can produce four drawings and three poems in both French and English. Look, you can watch a video of it! How cool is that?”
“You can’t just write about something because it’s cool.” Serious Nina arranged the paprika, parsley, and peppercorn bottles. “You have to have a reason.”
“Coolness is a reason.”
“Coolness is a reason for a teenager to wear ear-cuffs. You are writing a historical romance novel. You need much more than coolness as a basis for your story. You need intense conflict, sexual attraction, danger, and agonizing goals that tear your characters apart before they overcome all obstacles and live happily ever after.”
“But—”
Serious Nina frowned. “Focus and figure it out. Conflict. Emotions. Anguish. Happy ending. No robots.”
“Okay, there’s a war going on, right?” Fanciful Nina pushed aside her bon-bons and hauled out her research books. “Rich with possibilities for conflict and emotion. Did you know that in 1854, scientist Charles Wheatstone invented a machine that transmitted messages in cipher? It drew the attention of Baron Playfair, who thought encoded messages would be useful during the Crimean War, and they submitted the machine to the British Foreign Office. How cool is…”