Not the way we do. As a refuge, as a moment of silence, as an interlude through mirrors, through cold. As a breathless moment with which to blot on two coats of lipstick and splash cold water on the cheekbones. As an enclosure– as four walls, however flimsy, between which one can perform a range of sensible rituals. Anything, or almost anything, can be produced from a woman’s purse. Miniature scissors, blades as narrow as a sparrow’s beak,a Tide pen, a compact mirror. Rarer: medical gauze, a Phillip’s-head screwdriver, a small well-thumbed statue of the Norse god Odin, a folding knife. Yes, a woman could be doing anything inside those four walls: lopping off loose threads, lifting stains from fabric, dressing a wound, lifting her palms in supplication to pagan deities. 

In moments of profound suspension we gather and swirl like a maelstrom, at once generous and cruel. If there exists a lipstick in my bag that complements, precisely, the shade of your skin, you may have it now but not forever; you may have a folded stick of spearmint Extra gum, an unnerving shade of neon green; you may have the Advil I was saving for six hours from now because I recognize that crying out look in your eyes. I’ll sew your ripped seam closed and promise you that whoever exists on the outside is not worthy of you; I’ll spritz perfume on your wrists until this shithole smells like a Victoria’s Secret on Mount Sinai. In this moment it’s exquisite: the tenderness I feel for you, how I would peel for you a small mountain of tangerines, the pith disintegrating to white under my nails. I’ll never see you again, in this life or the next, but of course this does not need to be explained. The brief sweetness of these encounters has in its roots the kind of grace that angels do not touch; humans melt together and detach, leaving never so much as a scar. Do men use bathrooms? Have they ever crouched on a dirty bathroom floor to read a friend’s message on a cracked phone screen: it’s possible im overestimating my role in all this but everything feels so desperately important these days, have they ever sucked in panicked breath, pressed an ice cube to a bloodstain, prayed for a miracle? The truth is that girlhood exists as a thousand crisis scenarios, as a thousand delicate humiliations held close. As a stricken smile, as a wineglass slipping out of trembling hands. Every head in the room turns at the sound of it breaking. 

Cut to another face in the glass. A vast slapdash night, made brutal and glittering by drink, slows for an instant inside a dingy club bathroom. A sea of legs and noise, a girl retching in a stall, a purse spilling meds and makeup, the tampon dispenser empty, always empty when most needed. She could be anyone; she could be you, bending to wash her hands in the stream of water. Her mind a thready haze of aftershocks, echoes, pulsing bass. She recognizes herself in the smudged mirror. Pauses to clear, with a firm gentle tissue, the mascara which runs blackly past her eyes. Yes there is grace too between these bathroom walls, for she emerges fresh, vulnerable, brave-faced. Into a world that dissolves rapidly between her fingers like sugar, melting. I do not think they know that texture, that sweetness and dissolution. No, forgive me, I do not think they do.