PORCELAIN MAN

The labor and delivery nurse handed him to his mother after cautiously swaddling him, as if he’d break. Truth is, he would’ve. Blue veins trellised over his eggshell skin covering his hollowed out torso. His mother took his vase shaped body in her arms, for the first time in her life terrified. Every day she poured as much cosmic love inside him, insulation from a world that would soon break him. She wrote on the back of all birthday announcements to not send gifts that could shatter her son; no skateboards, no baseballs, no BB guns, also to please not attend the actual party.

The doctor examined him for his six year checkup, making notes on a padded clipboard, “Well, he certainly shouldn’t do gymnastics, but fresh air would do him good.”

Reluctantly, the mother clothed him in bubble wrap, filled a stroller with packing materials, and paper springs to absorb the shock of the sidewalk. They watched children in the park dressed in their Sunday best like picnicking albatrosses. After lunch, the children swooped in with a field hockey ball. There was a moment she wished her son was out there too, still, she declined their invitation for him to join, if she couldn’t trust herself, how could she trust anyone?

Entering professional life, his smooth, unblemished hands made people avoid shaking them. His secretary at the lamp warehouse suggested he go into hand modeling, trying to dissuade his desire to build an indoor bungee jumping platform for team building exercises.

He’d sit in his office, waiting for an invitation from his employees, who all went ax throwing and paintballing after work. He overheard the stories they told of their nights in the big city, chasing cabs through slippery streets, and going to jazz clubs full of dangerous wine bottles, and a trumpeter who could reach a decibel range that shattered glass.

An incoming phone call at his desk startled him out of a daze. He slipped from his seat, tumbling across the double-carpeted floor, and smacked into the bookshelf of inventory reports.

His secretary heard the noise and barged into the room. When her employer rose, she noticed a healthy amount of dust and shards crumpled underneath him, and a small hairline crack was already developing on his backside. He asked her if he did it again, would she mind picking him back up. “Do you have a Humpty Dumpty kinda death wish or something?” she asked. He had the look of a lead poisoned maniac, writhing around, ordering her to go online and place an order for eighty eight skateboards. “Everyone working here should have a taste of this,” he said, ripping out one of the shelves with audits from 2001 to build a slide. A trail of white dust started following him around the room. It sounded like a bowling league during a thunderstorm behind the closed doors. She began filling the company’s Amazon cart. He called her again when she grabbed the dustpan, deciding to go back and overnight some superglue, and maybe a display case his size if things got too out of hand.