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Vessel didn’t have much to say about himself, but one thing that he could say was that few things touched him. In a way that could be seen from the outside, that is. Inside, it hurt and twisted and stung, but that was no one’s problem and it wasn’t worth being upset over. He learned that fairly early.
Like when in school, a classmate commented on his appearance – the way his hair was cut straight over his brows by scissors from the kitchen drawer, the way his cheeks were dotted with red and clusters of pus, the way he hunched and cowered as if to apologize for the sudden growth he didn’t ask for – with such easy nonchalance that he couldn’t help but join in on the laughter, feeling a little shaky, but oddly removed from the words that stuck to his skin without him realizing. Everyone around him had fun and he liked to be useful, like when they asked for his homework, then called him mumbled names he couldn’t catch when he raised his hand with the correct answer in class. After a time, his hand in the air had started to wilt when he was told not to be too smart, not to take up too much space and attention, let everyone else get a chance, not to feel too full of himself for how his brain worked seemingly without effort – he didn’t understand if he was allowed to feel good about doing well when it was all he had ever known, was simply how he was: low-maintenance and a pleasure to have in class, quiet and obedient, if not annoyingly shy and sensitive – how he sought to please and follow the rules because that meant he sometimes got praise that felt at least half-honest, if not stale with repetition and lack of care. He didn’t notice, just swallowed past the lump and tried not to flinch too badly when a ball was aimed at his face and everyone laughed as his eyes and cheeks burnt, even as he was chosen last and spoken about like he wasn’t even there in the gym with his gangly limbs, well aware that he was an utter and complete butterfingers and unable to say anything in his defense aside from repeated apologies with his gaze directed at the floor, trying to pretend his tears were from the abrupt impact of rubber on his skin.
Or when later, it had turned out that he had always been the joke, having been granted mercy by one of the nicer boys – or so he thought – and told that while he smiled and laughed, trying desperately to fit in, everyone else was amused by him and his oblivion of naivety. The name that elicited a roar of laughter among the group of boys in his class several times each day was his, some inside joke he couldn’t trace and could never figure out the root of, but accepted because he had no voice to ask either for an explanation or for them to please maybe not call him that if they could. He still smiled and laughed with them and didn’t doubt the words that flew around him and somehow always, always hit their targets somewhere deep within his chest, no matter how much his shoulders curled forward as if they could protect his softest, most shameful parts. He suspected there was something very wrong with him and figured there was no harm in being reminded, even if it wasn’t all that pleasant. He was taught that there wasn’t anything to be done about it, and there was no use in crying, even as he kept being hit by stray balls in PE and felt afraid to move, feeling eyes on him during the most mundane tasks because it felt - even when he wasn't at school and surrounded by his peers - that there would come a snicker from behind him to let him know that he somehow managed to mess up being human once again.
Or when, fumbling with his tie to look at least somewhat proper for his big recital, in his wrinkled, itchy shirt, he was told that he would go alone because he was busy and she wasn’t in the mood to sit with other parents and listen to bungled children's pieces when it all sounded the same to her each time anyway – ‘You know I never understood any of that’ – and he couldn’t push down the lump in his throat or roll the stone in his stomach over enough to give more than a nod and a shrug of his ever-slouching shoulders. The words rattled around in his head as he walked, finally landing in the tips of his fingers where they shook over black and white keys, flinching just a bit when the leg of a chair scraped the floor somewhere to his right amidst the crowd of strangers. His mind was blank, only past images came to him, reflected in the black sheen of the piano, of notes in front of him, growing more complicated over time, something close to pride in his instructor’s expression when he still managed to translate them onto nimble fingers that played anything and everything his ears could pick up, and the time he first took pencil and a torn sheet of lined paper and tried to make something that would be all his. Shifting on the bench, rubbing clammy hands on his pants in the anticipatory silence, feeling his throat bob, he knew every note that was to come, had written each, had played and played until his fingers were stiff and he was sure the chords were built into his tendons and joints, but they felt unimportant now as he pressed down on the first chord and wondered if any of it really meant anything or maybe it was once again that it wasn’t all that important and he let himself care too much about something without realizing the joke that always seemed to be at the core of everything he touched.
Or even later, when, nursing a too-warm, too-bitter beer of trying and failing to fit in, the joke was once again on him, on his high notes, his trembling stage fright - even with his face half-hidden - the crack in his voice, his limbs like that on the corpse of an octopus, dreams like that of a child’s yet unaware of the real world. Vessel sipped his drink and took the joke, didn’t fight back when there was nothing to defend. There was an elbow nudging him in the side and he flinched with a smile, wiped his nose with the back of his still-shaking hand, then laughed, dull like a stock sample, at, ‘Don’t you go crying again, mate. Learn to take a joke’. He was well-versed in jokes, but didn’t say that he understood few of them and had always thought that they were supposed to be entertaining, but all he ever felt was twinges of hurt that he couldn’t show and could only sometimes let out when he was alone in the dark. He just needed to lighten up and not ruin the good mood everyone else was in, high on the buzz of the scene and opportunities, slurred words and eyes of scrutiny aimed low between his awkwardly stuffed pockets, speaking in a teasingly sweet voice that once again felt like a joke he wouldn’t get. He mumbled apologies and hurried goodbyes, tugged his sleeves over stained fingers and rushed outside to flee from the nothing feeling, not even surprised or disappointed when relief didn’t come.
Or when his father poked his finger at an ad for an impossible and soul-killing job – for him and his nature and skills, anyway – looking into his eyes with that unconcealed but unspoken displeasure and said, ‘Well, it’s better than nothing’. Nothing, as in the only meaningful thing that Vessel had ever accomplished by – and quietly, in the background, for – himself. Back then, it was just starting to pick up, between small gigs and hand-painted and -sewn stage attire, and, if Vessel could be honest with himself – a rarity, lest he grew too used to allowing himself to feel – the carelessly chosen words stung. Not that his father noticed or remembered them a moment after they left his lips and he returned to his coffee and newspaper. He gave him one last bitter glance, another throwaway thought that should’ve meant nothing, as it did to him, but felt like another blow to Vessel, ‘I’ve not the faintest idea what you’re even doing’. It didn’t stop him from acting like he had all the answers despite not knowing a thing about him. That was the heart of it. He never cared to ask or tried to understand, and Vessel never told. It wasn’t new, but still left him curled up in bed that night, knees at his chest, head full of nothing, feeling like a silly child with too-high hopes, waiting for a kiss good night or a hand in his hair – both things he was too old for and that were always mindless acts to soothe her conscience, comfort someone other than him, closer to ticking him off the list of things to do than the genuine connection that should have come with the gestures – any sign that he was alright, that he was something, that he wasn’t just a joke he would never get.
So, whenever he stared numbly into space, laughed mindlessly, played along in a poor imitation of others around him, took pen and paper, dragged a blade, he wondered why he still bothered, why he couldn’t stop caring, why he was like this, why he couldn’t be someone better and more useful and less sensitive, someone who could take a joke when his entire existence was a joke anyway and everyone, even him, at last, seemed to be aware. Wondered if he could ever be worth the effort, worth the consideration, worth a genuine question or a second glance. Wondered if he really was nothing, like he felt, and was continuously reminded, matter-of-factness lacing every word that he probably took too seriously, when it was never that serious when it came to him and his feelings to begin with. Wondered if it only mattered in those minutes when it was an act wrapped up in a melody and propped up by a beat, when it was showing himself in exchange for the slim chance of being seen, closer to being a target for attempts at sympathy, a pitiful image to entertain, someone they would never know and forget the moment the lights were off. Wondered if he made himself nobody or if he had always been that and was just the last person to realize, the same as always.
So, he kept laughing, although the subjects escaped him, then felt later when he was alone, then chastised himself for it, then cried, then laughed humorlessly at another joke, looking in the mirror, then found himself sitting on the floor, turning the pages of his notebook, wondering when, if ever, he would feel that any of it – him – was worth anything.