Dirk would dearly love to know what it is about him that makes people act like this around him, like he's made of eggshells and glass, or else shrapnel and napalm. He likes to think he makes himself pretty clear, with his words if nothing else, but then over the years he's been told it's his face, he's been told it's this or that or whatever other thing he says or does... there's a certain point where a man has to just embrace the fact that something's fucked and that something is him.

Okay. Well.

This is a hot, vexatious mess. Literally no one has given him the same answers to anything. He's going with the theory that no one knows anything, and he's got his ear to the speaker end of a long and absolutely useless game of telephone.

"I haven't heard that one before. Guess I just gotta..."

Do everything his damn self.

"... try everything."