A Girl Walks Into a Bar...

Yes, I know that just yesterday I promised a blogging hiatus. But I had an experience tonight that was both out of the ordinary and frustrating—an irresistible combination for a blogger. So, since I felt like writing about it anyway, I figured I might as well post it here. I hope you forgive me for yesterday’s misleading post. I guess I will now add a disclaimer to the disclaimer: I am on a break from blogging—unless something so blogworthy happens that I am necessarily compelled to violate my self-imposed exile.

Ok, so now on to the story…

Tonight I went to a bar for the first time in my life. Before you start ranting about the moral deterioration of today’s youth, I’ll relieve your concern by telling you that, no, I was not there to drink myself silly or to meet guys. In fact, I was quite resistant to the idea of going, as I had never planned to enter a bar, at all, ever. The reason I was there was because my creative writing teacher told us at the beginning of the semester that we had to attend a reading of fiction and write an essay on it at some point over the course of the semester. Of course, being good college students, my entire class left it till the very last second, and now the essay is due on Monday. So we all scrambled to find a fiction reading that was free and not too far away. And we did. There was to be a reading at an Irish pub right near my school tonight at eight. So a few friends from class and I decided to go. Beforehand, we did some research about the bar where it was to take place, since none of us are 21 yet and we wondered whether we would have trouble getting in. After looking it up, we hopefully determined that because it holds weekly fiction readings (as well as Irish language lessons), it was really not a bar, but rather a dimly lit cultural center that also happens to serve alcohol.

We got there tonight just on time, at 2 minutes to 8. The pub was small and narrow with a low ceiling—and the only part of my assumption that turned out to be correct was that it was indeed dimly lit. The only other people there were two college girls from another school who also needed to hear a reading for a class. My friends and I situated ourselves on a leather couchish thing against the wall near the small platform where a shtender with a microphone waited expectantly for the absent author to appear. We had ample time to observe our surroundings and comment on the novelty of actually being in a real live bar, because the author was late. It was fun for a few minutes, but then it got later--and the author still didn’t come. We started getting worried, and we asked the bartender (a normal-looking 30ish lady with a thick Irish brogue) whether the author was coming. She said that she didn’t know, because she “just provides the rrumm” (room or rum?) so we sat back down and chatted amongst ourselves. After we had waited about 40 minutes a few girls left, but two of my friends and I still waited hopefully—because we really needed to hear the reading tonight in order to write the essay in a timely fashion. At 9:01, over an hour after the reading was scheduled to begin, we finally gave up hope and left. The End. Great story, no?

Overall, it was an extremely frustrating experience, because not only did I go to a bar for nothing, and not only did I waste over an hour of my incredibly busy life, but I still have to take even more time to find another reading to go at some other point! Now it looks like I have to go to yet another bar tomorrow night to try again (two bars in two nights—I don’t know what has become of me!). To try to look on the bright side, I guess it can count as an interesting experience. Maybe I’ll even get a short story out of it someday. My creative writing teacher would be pleased.