Prompt: Write a story that includes someone dancing in a bar.

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: Well this was quite the little tale, and quite the funny one too at that. I really enjoyed the setup there and the way that it was all brought across. I think it works wonders to establish a little bit of a potential problem before that just gets dialed right up to the extreme for a really neat finish.

Anyway let's get right to it,

I didn’t know what was happening until it was too late.

Jackie and Ethan and I were only there to interview the manager for a journalism project. Ethan did all the asking, and Jackie and I looked wide-eyed around the bar, taking it all in. Jackie’s grandma was extremely strict, and my parents were, well, Asian. It was already my second year of college and I still had never been to a real bar.

Honestly, it wasn’t that much to take in.

“Okay, that’s the last question,” Ethan said, shutting his laptop. He peered at the manager’s name tag. “Thank you, Mr. Ryan.”

“No problem.” Ryan looked between me, Ethan, and Jackie. “You guys getting a drink?”

Well that does seem to be a pretty normal looking start there, just going about a little bit of interviewing and with it all finished up they're just doing their best to finish that off and now relax a little here.

“Oh, no,” said Jackie. “We’re both underage.”

“You, sir?” Ryan asked Ethan.

“No thanks.” Ethan was 21, but he had a strict no-alcohol rule.

“Rules are rules,” said Ryan, pointing to the poster behind him. MINIMUM ORDER TO BE SEATED. “Someone has to get something.”

Ethan looked at the menu and sighed. The cheapest beer was $7, and we were college students.

“Here, Ethan,” I said, handing him my credit card.

Hmm well this is an interesting direction to start with, both of them fully refusing that alcohol there and then running into not being able to pay for that too. Quite the set of conundrums developing here.

“It will look sus for you to have beer charged to your credit card, Aspen,” Ethan said, slapping Ryan a crisp ten dollar bill. “We can just throw it away. At least we got the interview.”

When Ryan came back out with the beer, I couldn’t help but notice how tasty it looked. I mean, I had never even been in the same room as beer before. My family also had strict rules. No dating, no drinking, no drugs, no getting B’s. Well, in my first year of college I’d already broken the last rule.

“This is such a waste,” Ethan said, getting up to leave.

Then I had a thought: What was one more?

“Let me try a sip,” I said when Ryan left.

“No, Aspen,” said Ethan.

OOoh well that doesn't look great, having to hide the transaction for one and then also now unable to resist it after going through all that to try and avoid said alcohol, this looks like a resistance that is fast crumbling here.

I lunged for the beer. “I want to try it! You paid, and I want to try beer.”

Ethan looked the other way and awkwardly rubbed his neck. “This is a bad idea, Takahashi.”

I opened the screw and brought the bottle to my lips. It smelled heavenly. Was it going to taste heavenly? If my mother were here, she’d faint on the spot.

And then I drank it.

Bitter at first. Then a sweet linger, then a fruity linger.

It tasted heavenly.

“How does it taste?” Jackie asked.

Well looks like that taste is turning out to be quite good there after all of that. Looks like the alcohol is going to definitely get fully consumed although I have a feeling we're about to see a few consequences from this.

I didn’t know how many sips I’d taken, but the bottle was two-thirds full now.

“Try a sip,” I said, handing it over.

She drank a sip then almost instantly spit it out. “Gross! How can people like that?”

I drank another sip. “It tastes pretty good to me.”

Ethan looked uncomfortable. “I’m going to the bathroom. Aspen, go get a drink of water. Your face is getting pretty red.”

When he left, I eyed the beer. This is what my parents never wanted me tasting? Why? What was wrong with it?

“I’ll get you the water,” Jackie said. “I need to rinse out that awful taste.”

Well looks like that's the more normal reaction there, at least from what I've heard, I have no clue alcohol tastes like personally. This is definitely setting itself up quite neatly here, looking forward to seeing how this goes down.

While she was gone, somehow I drank the whole bottle. I don’t know what overcame me; whether it was the years of strict rules that finally caught up to me or the excitement of finally being in a bar, but I wanted justice. I wanted a good taste of something. And when I got it, I felt satisfied. Proud, even. I even asked the man next to me for some of his beer. He gave me the rest, laughing the whole time.

“Oh God, Aspen,” said Jackie’s voice behind me.

“Uh?” I turned around.

“You shouldn’t drink before dinner, your stomach is completely empty,” said Jackie. “And you’re already low on iron. Aspen, you look drunk.”

“Drunk” was the only word in the sentence I understood.

Well that definitely sounds like its enough to get someone drunk there from the looks of it and poor Aspen is slowly starting to feel the effects of it all. Well here come those consequences.

Oh God, am I drunk? What would my mother think now?

“What happened to her?” Ethan’s voice wandered over to me. “Aspen, what the hell? What happened to the rest of the bottle?”

The room was glowing. Maybe I was in Heaven. I stood up slowly, using the bar to hold me steady. I wasn’t drunk, I was just happy! Ethan was way overreacting.

“What did you say?” Ethan said. “Aspen, your words are totally slurred.”

“I like this song,” I said. Well, it came out more as iliiiikethissoohongggg. I couldn’t remember the name, but I kept hearing the words “uptown girl.” Didn’t I know this song?

Well looks like that's about to go in quite the hilarious direction although at the same time its probably not great for poor Aspen to suffering through this ordeal right here.

“What’s the name of the song, Aspen?” Jackie said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I looked dizzily at her swirling face. “She’sloooookingsofiiiiiiineeee.”

“Yeah, she’s drunk,” Jackie said. “We need to take her back. Now.”

“Come on, Aspen,” said Ethan, grabbing a hold of one of my arms. Jackie took the other.

“Lemmefinish!” I said, breaking free.

“People are staring,” Jackie said. “Aspen, you did something illegal. We could be arrested!”

Welp that's about what you expect from someone that has achieved that level of drunk and we're about to hit some proper horror stories here now. Its all falling apart completely but I suppose at least Aspen is temporarily happy.

Before I knew what was happening, I stood on the chair and belted the rest of the words. The people around me started laughing and cheering for me to dance.

“ASPEN, NO!” yelled my friends.

“Jusssstbecauseeee, I’minlooooooooove,” I sang, dancing atop the bar. This is what it felt like to have fun? Why didn’t my mom want me to? I spun around and almost fell over. The man who caught me winked. I threw him a finger gun and skipped to the end of the bar. Distinctly, I heard bottles crashing and Jackie and Ethan screaming. I heard my mother sobbing. I heard police sirens.

“I LOVE BEING DRUNK!” I sang.

Then everything went black.

Well that's about what you can expect with that ending. Loving the vibes there as the person notices it all falling apart but is much too happy to do anything but keep on dancing until the alcohol fully catches up and its all over.

Aaaaand that's it for this one.

Overall: Overall I think this is a lovely piece, makes you get a nice good laugh and you get a little sense of the misadventures one can have when it comes to alcohol. Quite nicely done there!

As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.

Stay Safe
Kate

Hi!!

Dropping for a quick review here! I want to start out by saying that I really enjoyed reading your story! It was so humorous and funny, it left me with a smile on my face!

However, there are a few things I want to point out.

“Rules are rules,” said Ryan, pointing to the poster behind him. MINIMUM ORDER TO BE SEATED. “Someone has to get something.”

Ethan looked at the menu and sighed. The cheapest beer was $7, and we were college students.

I didn't understand why they chose to stay at the bar, they had come for their interview, they got their interview, nobody wanted a drink, they could have just left, why did they stay?

“It will look sus for you to have beer charged to your credit card, Aspen,”

I feel like you should change sus to suspicious, it jars a little in my opinion, it feels to much like slang.


Also, even though your work is perfectly fine just the way it is, I want to give a little advice that I think will help elevate it even more - these are just suggestions,

1) consider adding some description, Jackie and Aspen are coming to a bar for the first time, it is natural that they will watch everything carefully. Some description like "a low murmur of conversation filled the air, the lighting was low and amber, the tables dark and sticky. Patrons sat, slouched over their strongly smelling glasses....." will really help add a lovely depth to your story.

2) you can make the start even more punchy. You can start by saying something like, " I blinked my eyes open, tired and exhausted, the light shined too bright, it hurt my eyes. My head throbbed, my mouth felt pasty. Disoriented and confused I turned too quick and fell felt down on my face, the cold hard floor greeting me to painfull reality."

The story can start out with her waking up hungover and maybe even arrested and then make its was through the previous events. Perhaps she wakes up on her friend's couch confused and amnesiac and stumbles towards her friends and they tell her she got drunk and the the light shines and she remembers what had happened the previous day.


Overall, I loved your story, the flow is beautiful, it is short but really well done.

Everything expressed is my opinion, accept or reject whatever you want.


Take care!

--KB