🔥 Speaking freely & playing dirty
Chapter 12 of Firewords Issue 17
This is it. We’ve reached the end of our adventure-themed edition. We’ll be taking a break from our fortnightly emails while we catch our breath, but we’ll return soon with the compiled digital edition of Issue 17 available to purchase. We’ll also (finally!) be releasing our fear-themed Issue 16, which we never quite got round to putting out last time.
In this final batch from Issue 17, two writers take us on very different adventures, both centred on the art of connection: one through clumsy but charming attempts to bridge language gaps abroad, the other via a game that becomes a quiet battleground for attention, memory, and something close to intimacy. In both, every word counts.
Roughing It In Europe, a poem by Robin Helweg-Larsen
A History of Scrabble, a story by Joe Marshall
Roughing It In Europe
a poem by Robin Helweg-Larsen
One two three four Is OK, but you need more: Un deux trois quat’ If you want a welcome mat En to tre fire With the krone getting dearer, Bir iki uç dirt Selling off your jeans or shirt Wahid zoozh teleta arba In a cafe by the harbour Üks kaks kolm neli For some food to fill your belly; Jeden dwa trzy cztery Language may be shaky, very, Uno dos tres cuatro But they’ll love you if you’re up to Eins zwei drei vier Trying freely, laughing freer.
Robin Helweg-Larsen was raised in the Bahamas and educated in Jamaica and at Stowe. He has lived and worked in several countries and now reads, writes and edits poetry (largely formal). formalverse.com
Artwork by Jay Carter, an illustrator from Lancashire who enjoys creating bold, colourful images, often finding inspiration in books, films, history, nature and travel. jaycarterillustrator.com
A History of Scrabble
a story by Joe Marshall
SAUCY. A good follow-up. A Double Letter Score for the S and a Double Word Score totalling 22 points. If his opponent has a good Scrabble game (or if she Googles it, like Len has just done) she’ll know he could have taken 30 points with YUCAS. Really he needs her to be a good few points ahead, too, else she may well quit once she’s caught on. Finally, and crucially, he needs her to be at least a little observant - else his advances go unseen altogether. And what then? He’ll simply be sitting on the couch playing Scrabble with strangers, with half an eye on the box, letting his tea go cold and sharing the occasional grunt with his wife on the other side of the room whilst she stares into the oblivion of her phone, sunk into the folds of the armchair - her chin against her chest, her eyes glazed, fingering her way through the comments section of the Daily Mail.
Annie_033 plays a disappointing YAWN off Len’s Y for a mediocre 15 points. It is not a sexy response and it is a criminal waste of the W. Jilted but not deterred, Len is pleased to reply with a quite subtle PETS. It is almost innocuous at this stage of the game. Later, against the filthy tapestry he is set to weave it will be unmissable and, Len believes, quite seductive. The tension is tantalising, but he is not going to get too hot and bothered just yet.
Len picks up an E, a U and a V to find his opponent has played WILTING across two Triple Letters for 23 points. It is another passive response and utterly plain. Len feels a damp swell of disappointment but will not be discouraged.
Many years ago, in the year or so after Len and Sue first met they would spend whole weekends playing Scrabble and cards. They played on the beaches of Bordeaux with sandy bottles of Biere D'or and in warmly lit pubs after long, wet walks along the Pembrokeshire coast. They would sit and play together for hours accompanied by stories of their futures, the hot sun or glowing goals, impromptu kisses and fits of laughter.
Len prepares LURED for a meagre six points. It is no RUDE, nor his old-faithful LEER, but it is quite suitable for this stage of the game and he has set enough in motion to imagine a creeping curiosity developing in his playmate. He thinks Annie_033 might be biting her lip - not erotically - it’s just a tic, but he enjoys it nonetheless. Len sets down the U, the R, the E and finally the D. It is a raunchy word. It demands the use of the entire apparatus of her throat, tongue and the roof of her mouth. It is a verb, too, and one that unconsciously brings to mind an active individual and a passive one - a leader and a follower, a lurer and a luree. Annie_033 replies with GRANT. Len is wary of reading too much into her reply - but he cannot help but let out a short breath as he shifts forwards and backwards in the sunken seat of their old sofa.
Years after they met, Scrabble was pulled from the shelf mid-way through a tired evening when one of them insisted they couldn’t suffer staring at the TV any longer. One would unpack the board and the stands and find a hat or a bag for the tiles and the other would open a bottle of wine or put the kettle on and return to a half-cleared kitchen table with two glasses or two mugs. And the fog that permeated their evening would lift, and they would be reminded of the games they played in Corsica and Glencoe and Vienna - and the plates that they shared and that evening in Zaragoza when they bolted, hand in hand and without paying from the restaurant with the rude waiters. With renewed spirits they would pencil in trips to the Isles of Scilly and San Sebastian and Palermo that may or may not come to pass.
It is time to up the ante. Len follows up PLEASE, and then, yes - success - he has picked up the X; the eight-point fulcrum of his game. There is a pregnant pause. She is surveying the board now - he is sure of it - she is looking back over his words, over LURED, SAUCY, PETS, HITHER and TASTY. The only question that remains is whether she quits and reports him (it has happened before) or carries on the game. A minute later Annie lays BALLOON across a double word for 18 points. Len blushes. He cannot help but imagine her lying on a sofa not so far away, wondering what Leo35 might be like in real life, where he is, and if he is so outrageous and so daring in person.
These days, the board is in a box somewhere under the bed or in the back of a cupboard. The last games they played went unfinished - moves took an age, underhand comments followed unimpressive words or passive capitulations and “just give me a minute!” was snapped at silent sighs when moves took too long. The once happy evenings in which their games were played were revised by tepid resentment; evenings spent in instead of out, despite Sue’s objections that fell on deaf ears and diminished over time, a weekend in Morecambe that should have been a week in Marrakech but for a project at work that Len couldn’t give up. And so the board would sit on the table, half-played, for several days before one of them tidied it up and put it away to the silent relief of the other until one day it came out and was put away again for the very last time.
Len’s tea has indeed gone cold. Dion Dublin is laughing supportively at a young couple's attempts to turn a one bed semi into a three bed let on Homes Under the Hammer. A thick, slow rain falls against the window. The house shakes a little as a bus carries on up the road. Sue’s toe twitches a familiar twitch, she sniffs a familiar sniff and swallows a familiar swallow and Len cannot help but smile at the scene as he settles again into the sofa and into the lurid glare of his phone.
~
The game reaches a climax. Annie plays HOT to Len’s PLAY, and LICK to Len’s TOOL. With a flood of dopamine, Len lays PLOUGH onto the digital board and shifts again in his chair. He cannot help but let out a small grunt at the sight of Annie’s 8-pointer YUM.
On the other side of the room Sue registers a noise. Perhaps he wants the channel changed. He can bloody well wait, she thinks, as she waits, biting her lip, for Leo35’s carnal crescendo.
Joe Marshall is a therapist in training, writer and runner living in Sheffield. This is his first publication. @joemarshall16
Artwork by Micha Frank, a 3D artist and developer based in Berlin who turns ideas into digital experiences that catch your eye. michafrank.art
Thanks for reading!