She doesn’t quite believe she’s real and seeks evidence of her corporeality moment by moment.

A Philosophy 101 parlor game: How do you know you exist? The problem is I don’t know that I exist, or if I do, for how long, and so I must continually tug at myself.

Sometimes I look as though I’m searching for a bug in my hair or a flake of dandruff. My mother tells me to stop. “Do you know how you look?” she says. “If you could see yourself now, you’d know why no one ever asks you out on a date.”

Oh, mother!

Twirling my hair helps me concentrate. My hair is as close to my brain as I can ever get—on the other side of that impenetrable wall, that’s where I live, under this luxuriant cover, this animal pelt. And what you call a twirl sometimes is not a twirl at all. It’s more of a waterfall of hair.