The Young Man and the Sea

Written 06-07-14. Nothing bad happened to him yet he thought and his face had no lines, no signs. Or, he thougt at other times the bad things that had happened were so bad they had stopped him from feeling way before the feelings touched his face. Most of the time he was very quiet. Looking at himself in the mirror he couldn't tell if he was bored, or numb, or what.
He loved to fish. He didn't remember it but before his mother left, she used to read him a Chinese version of Cinderella with a magic fish. He didn't remember the story but he loved to fish.
After his mother left, for all the years before his father emigrated to New York, he lived with his grandmother in a city by the sea which he has also forgotten. Most days he and three friends escaped from school and went to the seaport to watch the boats dock and unload huge mounds of fish. He longed to go on one of those fishing boats and he made friends with an old fisherman by helping unload, who promised he would take him out to fish, but never did, or if the did the young man with the unmarked face that was maybe sad did not remember it.
Some nighst he fell into a sleep that was so deep it reminded him of being dead, or underwater. It reminded him of actually being a fish, or maybe of swimming in his mother's womb.
That sleep often ended, oddly, in a scream that woke him up, wet, as if he'd actually been under water. He woke terrified by this memory he couldn't remember at all, not until he heard his father tell it to one of the elder friends over several cups of wine too many.
"He was born at home. We had him at home because if he had been a girl we were going to kill her."
His father laughed. "He doesn't know how lucky he is. It wasn't because he was happy that he laughed.
But the young man who was not sure whether or not he was sad, or why it was whatever feeling woke him in the night didn't show on his face, did not remember.