The Club and The Ballroom, a WeWrite
The fabulous prompt section At The Club was written by @Zeldacroft.
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At the Club
by @zeldacroft
The club lights flashed and waved to the beating music. They washed the dancefloor in neon colors, in time to the heavy vibrations of the giant speakers. Surprisingly, Toby admired the bright lights, how they illuminated the huge space and modern architecture. Though he found himself nursing a headache at the bar.
Jan from accounting had organized the “bonding time” for the office, saying how it’d bring everyone closer together. Toby had been devoid of any good excuse, so now he was stuck between a beer, clubbers, and Jan, with her volume louder than the pounding speakers.
“And so that’s when I said, ‘Kevin, that’s the wrong variable!’” She snorted in laughter at her own joke. Toby managed a smile. “You see, he made a simple mistake!”
“No, I get it. I think Susan’s around here somewhere, she’d appreciate hearing it too.”
“That’s a good idea, but I can tell her on Monday!”
Toby took another drink. He liked Jan well-enough at work, but tonight was proving a little more difficult.
“That does bring up a good point, though. I haven’t seen many people from the office here." Scanning the room, she asked, "Do you think they're stuck in traffic?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Toby answered, knowing full well it was more a case of empty promises. Still, there was something about the disappointment in her eyes that struck him. “But hey, you got some of us here.”
She gave a small smile and looked around again, this time lingering towards the lights.
“Hey, let’s go dance!”
Before Toby could gently protest, she’d swept him onto the floor, beer and all.
The Ballroom, 1978-ish
by @owasco
Edgar wouldn’t be holding a flimsy cup half-filled with an undrinkable drink in this wretched, smelly, ear-splitting cavern if it weren’t for his nephew’s having gotten a job here. The box office was cold, crowded, dirty and sordid. Shuffling among drunkards in close quarters was not Edgar’s idea of desirable social contact. Still, he somehow managed to end up at Denny’s ticket window, and was proud as the dickens as Denny counted out the right change from the five dollar bill Edgar had just handed him. The kid had employment that he could get himself to, follow the rules, collect a paycheck and, best of all, love, something Edgar feared he would never see. Edgar and Denny stood on either side of the thick glass window and beamed at each other stupidly, long enough for the patrons behind Edgar to begin to grumble.
“Have fun Uncle Edgar!”
Edgar made his way into the austere lobby and stood before the wall covered with white-punched-in-black-tape names of all the couples who had married here, Roseland Ballroom. The place was nothing like the elegant club pictured in the treasured photo of his parents dancing on their wedding night in what his mother called "the most romantic place in the world". They had danced that night to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. He found his parents' names, Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Viscardo, and for a moment could feel the grandeur of the past.
Now, a massive, rotating, many-mirrored ball hung from the ceiling and a merciless disco beat nearly drove Edgar mad. He would have to endure this squalid place for another hour; it was his turn to help Denny navigate the subway home after work. Someday Denny would do it all on his own.
Edgar positioned himself near another seemingly ill-at-ease man on the periphery of the massive dance floor, and overheard a woman coyly say “That’s a good idea, but I can tell her on Monday!” then pull the man by the elbow into the gyrating bodies on the disco dance floor. Edgar was grateful no one would be doing any such thing to him.
"He looks like a fool out there" Edgar said to his warm drink.
"He sure does, doesn't he?" a petite woman to his right responded cheerfully. She made a "come in!" gesture toward the lobby and eight others, still dressed for the office, boisterously joined her. Edgar stood there uncomfortably while the new group joked about the couple Edgar had just been watching on the dance floor.
"It's about time those two got together!"
"If we hadn't got stuck in traffic they'd still be avoiding each other like they do at the office."
"Toby dances like a baboon!"
The woman offered Edgar her hand. "Elsie Stafford. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Do you come here often?"
Edgar said the easiest thing there was to say in what he would forever more think of as the world's most romantic place.
"Would you like to dance?"
Some of you may remember Edgar and Elsie from a previous WeWrite of mine.
https://steempeak.com/freewritehouse/@owasco/phantom
@carolkean was my partner for that WeWrite. Here's her continuation of my part:
https://steempeak.com/wewrite/@carolkean/phantom-we-write-12-with-owasco
My thanks to @deirdyweirdy for her WeWrite this week which greatly influenced mine:
https://steempeak.com/wewrite/@deirdyweirdy/we-write-14-at-the-club-moonstruck
Which do you think is more corny?
I loved helping my mother punch my name into black tape to make labels for my stuff when I went away to camp. This is how the names of couples who had married at Roseland Ballroom were memorialized in the lobby, on strips of hard black plastic tape with the names punched out in white. I searched and searched for an image of the display case but could not find one. It really existed though, until the day Roseland closed in 2013, a nearly 100 year run. I wonder where all those names went.
Here's a bit of history of the ballroom, that I tried very hard to remain true to, but the details on what exactly went on there between the years of 1950 and 1980 are sketchy. This is the best account of Roseland's history that I could find:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000620211420/http://www.roselandballroom.com/histofroseland.htm
I hope you enjoyed my story! Thank you for reading it!
Poster image: Roseland Ballroom - eBaycard, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30478888
Street image: William Gottlieb, 1948
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Reading your entry, I see once again what an unmeasurable abyss separates the native from a nonnative speaker. Your phases are so much more flexible and the word usage is so gentle, rich and, at the same time, precise as if you are doing the open-heart surgery on the body of the story.
For example, "squalid place".
(of a place) extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.
I never heard of this word before. Yet, what is especially priceless is that out of all the possible synonyms describing the same thing you pick the word that is most precise and the most fitting stylistically by ear. This seamless aerobatics is what makes every "friking fernet" envious. )))
YES - @owasco is a pro at eamless prose and choosing exactly the right word.
Precise. No excess verbiage. Prose that is pleasing to the ear!
With so many writers, even published, even NYT best selling authors, I find prose that rolls like a square wheel. It just grates on my ears. These are native English speakers, too.
Poets write the best prose. And maybe musicians -- those who hear the cadence, the rhythm, those who may think to read their words out loud (for only themselves to endure!) - #ReadingOutLoud is a painful tool but great for making you see if your prose is clumsy or full of words that could pruned out.
Excellent commentary, @mgaft1, on an excellent story!
I love, love, love the true-life story of the Roseland Ballroom! Thanks for including the history, @owasco!
woman you know I love you right?
This is the first time I ever researched something to fit it into a story. I knew I wanted their names in white punched black tape (so Mr. and Mrs Edgar Viscardo are up there twice), and thought that would be easy, but the timeline of Roseland had me switching things up quite a bit. So now Edgar and Elsie have had to meet when they are in their thirties and forties, will have had no children of their own but be very close to cousins and such. It was an interesting exercise and helped me the author be less in charge of the action in the story.
I keep a strict limit of 500 words for wewrite stories and write them in wordcounter. (This one may be a few words over I made some edits without checking in word counter first) This super helps with economy of word and especially thought. There can be nothing extraneous or gratuitous if you want to get a story told in 500 words or less. It's fun to go through and cull the diversions out.
Thank for that #readingoutloud tip. I'll check it out.
xo
OMG I forgot about the word limit!
500 words
Oh man I blew it. Off to go count my words, AFTER I posted 'em.
Nothing gratuitous! I am doomed!
Thank you for the kind words and your encouragement, and I love your research and the way you let the story reshape itself as needed to fit the form... 500 words, I forgot, I forgot, but you did not - I have much to learn. Thank you again!!
I don't think it's a hard and fast rule, just more of a courtesy! You won't be disqualified! Oh I have so many wewrites to read. I think I've read two of them so far this week.
I'm so far behind too - but I did revise mine down to 500 words. Thank you. Less is more!
Will we ever get caught up reading...
There are days I can't bear to read another blog post, and somehow I still read just a couplethree more.
I actually READ the pieces I upvote and comment on. Every. Single. One.
People comment on posts they haven't read?
Oh my.
I've been guilty of speed reading and missing a detail here and there, but not to read it at all - well, that would explain the excess of brief comments like "Great story."
Oh dear. As if reading and catching isn't daunting enough, being obligated to offer PROOF of having read the whole thing would really scare off commenters, wouldn't it?
Better to read a few in-depth than to skim a multitude, right?
Yeah @carolkean. I know the good stuff once I see it. Now and then I read some stuff where it makes me cringe stylistically. And then you read @owasco and it's like a balm on your wounds. )))
Oh my goodness! like a balm on your wounds I'm delighted with this comment!
Great line - and well earned!
Wow thank you! Interesting comment @magaft! I revise and revise my non-freewrite stuff so that they will be more readable for a non-native speaker. Sometimes I have to leave a turn of phrase as is, knowing it will not be understood, just because it's so perfect - colloquiallisms can say the unsayable. But for the most part I try to be so grammatically simple that all of the ESL readers on steem are not confused.
Also interesting that you choose the word "squalid" to talk about. That word was slow in coming to me and made its way into the story towards the end of my two days of putting this thing together. I probably even found it finally when I looked something else up in a thesaurus.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! And of course for your continued support of my musings.
Don't take me wrong. It's readable. But it's more like LOUIS XIII cognac than a Budwiser. I read it slowly and enjoy every little gulp. )))
Again with the high praise! I'm blushing! Thank you for taking that time.
This is great! A wonderful idea to give us the backstory on Edgar and Elsie and, you are so gracious to reference my corny little tale. I look forward to writing with you again;)
Love at first sight trumps a long simmering love at the office though, don't you think? I get the prize for corny. There should a a #corny tag.
It was SO MUCH FUN to try to put elements of both yours and @zeldacroft's stories into mine. I have to hold three perspectives in mind and can see so much more. Thank you both.
Oh yes! To answer your question, @owaso -- which is "more corny," your story or @deirdyweirdy's -- define "corny" first! You both left me smiling. If it's corny to find a bright light in a dark world and deliver warm fuzzies to your readers, let's plant more corn!!!
No. Not gonna judge one story to be any more "corny" than the other. I love them both, and I need the feel-good stories more than ever, this month!
Somebody read every word I wrote I see. Thank you for that. That was kind of a note for @deirdyweirdy, whose entry was uncharacteristically warm and fuzzy and she seemed to devalue it for that.
So yes! More corn! Love vicariously!
Cool entry! Had a bit of a different approach for my continuation 😄😄
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Thanks, There have been so many entries this week I have only read half of them so far! I'm on it this morning. So happy to have you writing with us!
It's an honor. I'm alongside really good writers and I'm just a newbie. ^^ Still much left to learn... have a fantastic week ahead! ^^
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Thank you!
Awwww, stuck in traffic - who knew it could lead to Edgar and Elsie meeting!
I love the vintage, retro poster and the time and place you evoke.
And the final line, of course.
#LoveIt!!!!!!!
Great job on both parts, @zeldacroft and @owasco. Both evoke their time and place and connect so well. I am always amazed be this intriguing project, but will stay a cheerleader :)
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 20/25 - need recharge?)
Thank you Sharon! I'd love to have you write with us, but can understand. I didn't think I could do it either and resisted any kind of finish the story contest for well over a year. Now I absolutely LOVE them. Thanks so much for the curation!
You can find the community announcement on Discord :) and it has also been shared on our FB Page and Twitter feed.
Thank you thank you thank you my peeps
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