Cocktails and Dreams

The task was to write anything about the topic "Cocktails & Dreams" for the November 3 meeting

October 28, 2010 Cocktails and dreams. © GregW

It wasn’t the question Geoff had expected.
Why don’t they have any clothes on, or Why are they white, or How come they look so sad, would all have been questions he could have sounded clever about.
They had been dawdling through the Herculaneum and Pompeii statues, him lost in the brilliance of the long dead craftsmen, her, a bored and ignored seven-and-three-quarters year-old niece picking at the frayed stitching of his trouser leg. 
Kylie was the mostly likable result of his sister Cheryl’s misadventure in the Pacific Islands. Geoff had agreed to child-mind this afternoon to give her a bit of a break.  Its what brothers do, so he had been informed.

The act of being tour guide for this button-nosed munchkin was not chosen as an interesting outing for the little lass, but as an opportunity for Geoff to tick this Leeds museum event off his must-do list before the rare marble figures left town on the rest of their national tour.
Geoff and Kylie were having a break, sitting on one of the padded benches the city had placed a bit away from the statues for comfortable observation and reflection. They both sat hunched a little, one sipping hot black coffee and the other sucking very hard at a blue slushy through a small straw, because the wide one with the scoop on the end was only for little kids.
Geoff knew which battles were best won and which were best left as a life lesson.
“Uncle Geoff?” she whispered,
“Yes?” he answered in a less hushed tone, taking another sip.
Kylie smiled and in a confident voice said “All of the boy’s pricks are broken off. Can we go and find them?”
A cloud of spat coffee preceded Geoff’s “WHAT?” , a word he immediately regretted uttering.
“I want to look for boy’s dicks!” she answered with glee having now gained Geoff’s full attention.
“Cucff, Ka, Gargh,” Geoff spluttered at her calmingly.
“Look for pricks, look for dicks” she was bouncing and singing as Geoff became suddenly aware of how popular this museum was.
“Kyles, sweetie, listen to me”
“Come on Uncle Geoff, lets look for the boy's willies” her strident voice piercing the space.
“They are not here sweetie.” Thinking on the run, he added “They are under hundreds of tons of volcanic ash on the other side of the world.” He hoped this information would give her pause for thought and give him a chance to think of a distraction.
“Oh” she said, the sing song gone from her tone but the dreaded kid question already forming on her lips
“Why?”
Geoff took a second to think, what he needed was a quick re-direction.
“Well, a long time ago" he started slowly, "before a big volcano exploded in Italy, people fought with each other and chased each other away from their homes. When the winners had chased all the people they didn’t like away, well, they didn’t want to see images of the losers everywhere, and sculptures are like pictures arn't they?  So they broke off the noses, arms and things and pushed them over” He could see as he spoke she was losing interest. 
Job done he thought, but at the same time doubting his sister's parenting.
They returned quietly to their slushy sucking and coffee sipping, although the latter was done with more care.
“But Uncle Geoff?”
“Yeees?”
“If the arms and noses have been stuck back on some girls, why haven’t the dicks been stuck back on the boys?”
“Because nobody could find any of them” was the best answer Geoff could come up with.
Of course he knew this wasn't going to be the end of it. Sure enough, for the rest of the afternoon Geoff endured a relentless toddler interrogation.  He was quizzed on the number, the size, ball inclusion, and the frequency of willie smashing, with varying tones of fascination, at embarrassing volumes and in awkward public transport moments, all the way home to mummy.
“Thanks so much for giving me a break” smiled Cheryl as she gathered her progeny from Geoff at their doorstep.
“That's okay, and no, I won’t come in” added Geoff before the question was put. “I am totally buggered. I don’t know how you do it every day. Anyway, I'll see you next week at Dad’s.” he reached over and kissed her goodbye and tussled Kylie’s hair.
“By the way, if I was you I’d brush up on everything you know about the phalluses of statues” he grinned as he walked away down the front path.

Getting home an hour later it was a relief to kick off his shoes, grab a beer and throw himself at the sofa. The beer was a due reward and he kicked up the foot-rest, pulled out his phone and started to scroll through his messages. There was a raft of them and he set about sorting out the work enquiries from the face and tweet crap that he always meant to hide but never got round to.
His third beer opened and all the work emails and messages done, he noticed a vid file from an old Uni mate of his, Keith.
Keith was now a seismologist on the oil rigs and travelled a lot so they didn't keep in touch much but he had sent Geoff an Italian video news article.
“Bugger me, bugger me” was all Geoff could repeat time and time again as the video rolled showing divers off Palermo blowing the sand off hundreds and hundreds of broken off statue penises laying on the sea floor. Keith had annotated some wry comments but Geoff couldn’t believe the coincidence. “Bugger me” he heard himself repeating.
He went to play the vid again to convince himself he did see what he had seen but the door bell rang. Dropping his phone he stumbled to answer the hammering. He was concerned a little now, who pounded on a door like that ?  He glanced through the glass and saw a UPS bloke standing with a digital signature box and a vacant look on his face. Oh yeah, UPS men pound on doors like that.
“Got a delivery for you...Sign here” Geoff looked and saw the screen indicating a delivery from Cheryl. Why would she have sent me something today? he was thinking as he awkwardly signed the little plastic screen..
“Okay, where do you want them?” the UPS bloke asked. As Geoff looked up he saw a tipper truck reversing up his drive and jacking it’s load to dump about two tonne of what looked for all the world like thousands of broken-off male genitals right at the front of his door. "STOP IT " he yelled and raced out to vainly grab at the tipping truck. He tripped and as hundreds of stone cocks started to fall on top of him he felt a stream of strangely cold urine run down his legs.
Adrenalin pumping he woke, jumped up and looked down at his trousers.  His last beer had spilt in his lap, a puddle of foam rolling over the leather sofa.
Two stupid cock tales , of course it had to be a dream he thought as he grabbed the spilt can and went soggy-legged into the kitchen to get a cloth.

(geddit?  cock tales....cocktails ,  and dreams......oh, never mind)