The Vessel

I haven’t thought seriously about the vessel in at least five years. But as of late, I’ve had reason to think of it again. To examine it, to feel its shape, to remember its movement in the dark. The neck and joints of the urn. The nails and cross of the mast. The peach-pink, olive-green, the red and the white.

I watch, from a third perspective, as men watch the vessel move and briefly, I am confused. I can’t immediately pinpoint what so fascinates them. It takes a moment before I remember that they don’t know me, they only know and only see this vessel, and what the vessel represents.

That I am the vessel is not worth denying. I am this drumming of puckered skin, grayish brain and bones, this mouthful of ash. That the vessel is vital is also not worth denying. The vessel takes me here and there, now and forever. But taken alone, and seen in isolation, the vessel mounted on the wall casts a shadow too dark for me to breathe easily.

It’s not all bad. Most times, I register first the fear and the innocence in the glance and I sympathize. I remember being there. I remember getting tangled up in the thorny maze of a conventionally unattractive face. Isn’t it funny, how attraction works? Thinking about past passions, my specific interest has felt random, incidental, even. That realization is a healthy one, because when I am transformed into object, my ego plays less of a part, and in that vacuum, humor and compassion can flourish.

Of course I remember the pull of the fantasy, the pouring of the vessel. I won’t begrudge it. But it can’t be left at that. If it could, I wouldn’t be writing this. What I no longer understand is what is said—no, proclaimed—to get ahold of a handle of the vessel, to shake its contents. Women are too this, too that. Women should this or that. Women demand too much. Women give too little. Don’t even get me started on the aesthetics of the vessel, which is a subject that we have failed and that has failed us. On the assembly line, examining options, my gloved hands pass over a floral jumpsuit of Monsanto cotton, a muscled arm of swords and skull tattoos, wombs jug-shaped, vessel-in-vessel, fallow, pulpy, brimming, empty. Femininity and masculinity both bore me to bits. I don’t want to be one or the other. I don’t want to be “neither” or “both”, to be a forced blend, a compromise.

I don’t know anymore, what’s expected of me, what is expected on account of the vessel. I don’t know anymore, why I can’t simply do what I want, in good faith, good-naturedly. More importantly, I don’t remember why I need to care about any of this. Is that growth, or is it giving up? Is it confidence, or cope? Is it only longing?

I have this daydream in which I am grievously injured in front of a crowd of men. Punctured like a balloon. Blood puddled on the sidewalk, wet to the touch. Would they remember then, the real purpose of the vessel?