Drop Something, Sport?*

So my boss is dropping by in a minute to borrow some money. He rang me - I suppose because walking the 20 metres to my office would seem too much like hard work - and was most apologetic about having to ask. It's not like if he didn't give it back I wouldn't know where to find him.

Anyway, it reminded me of how at different times of our lives Grumpy and I both used to work with this guy called Dropsy. Dropsy would come ambling into work at about 9.30, usually with a bag of something greasy for breakfast, and often by the end of the fortnight he'd be broke. So he'd shamble over to wherever I happened to be and say, "Don't spose you could lend us a tenner could you, hb?" And I'd always oblige because I liked him and he'd always give it back. Oh yeah, and there was also that time he reminded me if I didn't cough up he'd send the boys round.

Three stories about Dropsy:

(1) Dropsy lead an interesting life. He had a black and white, soft-focus photo of a porn-star on his wall - it was autographed; she'd signed it for him when he'd gone to a Sexpo. (I've never been to a Sexpo, but my favourite thing about them? They're always advertised as having child-minding facilities.) Her name was Hypatia Lee and just about every time I went round to Dropsy's cubicle for a chat, he'd point to the picture of Hypatia and tell me, "Doesn't she look like a real English lady? She has a classic peaches and cream complexion. You wouldn't know it to look at her that she's a porn star, would you?" He was as proud of that photo as though he'd arranged the shoot himself.

(2) Dropsy came round to my cubicle one day to confess he'd cheated on his wife. Like, five years before he told me. The idiot had hooked up with a woman in another city and told her his name and address and phone number - suggested she look him up sometime. To his utter bamboozlement she took him up on the offer and called him at home. His wife answered the phone and when this woman told the wife who she was, Dropsy was astounded to find himself being chased through the house with a carving knife. Life often seemed to take Dropsy by surprise. What never seemed to be a source of wonder to him was the fact that he was still married.

(3) One night Dropsy convinced Grumpy and I to come to the Southern Cross Club with him so he could play the pokies. We'd all been drinking and Grumpy and I had pretty much had enough. We sat in the lounge and watched the strange and depressing display of people with their ice-cream buckets full of 5 cent coins spending the night neither looking left nor right, but straight ahead at the machine. At least with TV the ads remind you that you might like some nourishment, some sleep and perhaps even a cleanliness break. But the pokies suck you into a world beyond the reckoning of time and hunger. (In those days we thought the internet was just a passing fad.) Next thing we know Dropsy's reappeared - he's won $2,000! And what's more, he wants to buy us the most expensive drink in the house. We didn't want the most expensive drink in the house, we wanted to go home. But Dropsy started to get a little narked so the three of us sat in the flashing, binging, tinkling - by this I mean suave - environs of the Southern Cross Club and sipped on our cognac. It was a really classy evening, Dropsy-style.


*Yeah, my breakfast.