I once dated a girl afraid of air. The only thing she ate were Wild-Style hot dogs from Top Pineapple on the LES, and when word got out that the Top Pineapple manager was a torch-carrier at Charlottesville, she cried so hard she threw up. "Fuck my stupid Nazi hot-dog life!" she screamed into the toilet bowl. I held her hair back and my own breath in and wished I'd done a better job cleaning her bathroom the night before. I was addicted to tidying up the messes that the little hells inside her made: brushing hot dog bun crumbs off her cheeks, sewing up the plastic tarp she often covered herself with when she went outside, keeping a verbal out-the-door checklist. Umbrella for the villainous wind? My body as a shield?

It was beige work. I took the same attitude toward it that my Polish grandmother did to the carpeted floors in her old home. She'd push her ancient, fifty-pound vacuum against the fibrous grain, the little curls changing back and forth from white to gray depending on direction. She'd go for hours. It was gorgeous and unnecessary. Eventually, my sisters and I would beg her to stop.

Mam pewien zamiar, she'd always respond. Loosely: I have intention.


***


After three days the girl afraid of air went back to eating the Top Pineapple Wild-Style hot dogs because the alternative was eating nothing at all.


***


Later at the ward for really hungry girls (we were supposed to call ourselves women), my roommate Mattie confessed in group that there actually was something she unabashedly loved eating: smash burger patties. Mattie said she often dreamed of holding a plate while they fell from the sky. She'd dart back and forth, stacking them on top of each other until they became an infinite tube extending into heaven. And sometimes she could lean forward slightly and lick one, but that was all she ever got.

"That's kind of phallic," someone said.

Across the room, the girl who chewed on the knee of her sweatpants whenever she was sitting down started crying and snotting into the already-wet mess of her leg. Everyone was graceful and ignored her.

Mattie thought for a long time. "I never imagined it like that," she said eventually. "But I think you're right."


***


When I tell my friends about the girl afraid of air they call her "the hot dog girl" instead. At some point in growing up I lost the ability to name my own stories. They became these wild horses that ran away from me, and then got caught and slaughtered for dog food.


***


By July the heat in the girl afraid of air's apartment was thick enough to chew. We went on dates to her bathtub, which we'd fill with ice, because she couldn't do AC units or fans or open windows.

"Want to see something?" she asked. We were sitting folded up in the tub, our knees kissing.

"What?" I said.

"You can't freak out," she said. "You have to promise."

"Okay. Will you tell me what it is, though?"

"You'll figure it out," she said. "Ready?"

She inhaled and held it. I almost slapped her at minute three because I was so scared, but then she grabbed my thigh and squeezed it, and I forced myself to be still.

Six minutes later, I was reborn on her exhale. All the goosebumps on my body weren't goosebumps, they were particles of love turned into hardened grains of sand, and the grains of sand were thrusting themselves out of my skin to touch hers in thousands of terrible Vegas weddings.

"Oh my god, oh my god," I kept saying. "That was really scary."

"I knew you'd like it," said the girl afraid of air into my neck.

"Why would I like it?" I said, and I was crying because I really did.


***


On the sixth anniversary of our release from the hospital, Mattie and I had a picnic in Central Park.

"I was thinking about the hot dog girl recently," said Mattie. The coin slot between her front two teeth was stuffed with strawberry bits. "That was such a crazy story."

"Mmm," I said.

"Do you ever think about the hot dog girl? Or know what she's up to?"

I decided to lie. "I think she got scurvy," I said.

"Like the pirates?"

"Yes."

"That's an ancient disease," Mattie said solemnly. "Why did you dump her again?"


***


What I never told Mattie: the girl afraid of air had actually been the one to dump me, after I'd accidentally sighed on her too hard.

"I hate that you have to be alive," she said. "I wish you didn't breathe at all."

"That's horrible," I said.

She shrugged. "I don't blame you for not trying to understand me," she said. "But maybe we shouldn't do this."

I started hyperventilating, then turned away so she wouldn't have to feel it. I needed a vacuum to push or something. She gave me painter's tape and told me if I needed a task to calm down, maybe I could seal her windows?

"Now you should go," she said when I was done.

I left her alone on the floor eating the Top Pineapple Wild-Style hot dog I'd grabbed for her on my way over. She was chewing carefully, making sure the air around her face stayed put.

I was so sad and I wanted a hot dog so badly. I walked back to Top Pineapple. The teenaged cashier had shouldered the fallout after everybody found out about the manager. He'd been scrubbing FASCIST SCUM graffiti off the front windows that morning, sweaty and concentrated.

The place was bright and empty. I forced myself to the yellow counter.

"What can I get you," the cashier asked flatly, and I mourned for the breeze in his words.

.