Ugh, no hand soap. Again.

If there's one thing living in Spain will teach you, it's that hand washing isn't priority número uno in public spaces.

Luckily, as someone who grew up here, this is no surprise to me. As Gang Starr once said, "I'm not new to this, I'm true to this."

In other words, I carry soap sheets wherever I go.

As I was standing at the sink in the shopping mall bathroom last week, lathering one up between my hands, the door cracked open and a head peeked around.

Big brown eyes rimmed with bright blue eyeshadow appeared from under a blunt-cut fringe. A smattering of adolescent acne decorated soft, rounded cheeks and a set of metallic braces twinkled between pink glossy lips.

Either retro makeup is back in style or rubbing my hands together had sent me ricocheting back to the mid-80s…

We regarded each other for a moment.

"¿Puedo pasar?" May I come in?

Her delicate, childlike voice softly penetrated the silence of the empty bathroom.

"Sí, claro." Of course.

I smiled and gestured to the vacant stalls and the rows of mirrored sinks behind me.

I wondered if she mistakenly believed from the outside that this was a single-person bathroom. Or maybe she thought I was a cleaner. It wouldn't be the first time a Spaniard had seen my complexion and automatically assumed I was the help.

I was otherwise a little perplexed as to why she would ask.

She hesitated slightly as she stepped around the door.

"Bueno, es que… soy trans."

Well, it's just that… I'm trans.

What I'm about to say may sound strange to some, but here goes:

The ladies' bathroom plays a surprisingly significant role in girlhood.

I'm not talking about the one at Grandma's house that had peach-coloured wall tiles and a clamshell soap dish. The one where you dealt with your first period or made a clumsy first attempt at shaving your legs.

Nor am I referring to the ones in fancy restaurants that are always eerily empty when you go to check your appearance on a date and freshen up with their expensive sandalwood toiletries.

I'm talking about the public toilets that double up as makeshift community hubs for women — the grubby little social sinkholes you find in nightclubs, bars and airports that offer a brief moment of tranquillity as you hear the commotion fade to a muffle behind the closing door.

Restrooms with precarious toilet seats, broken flushes, and "love urself babe ur perfect" scribbled in eyeliner on the inside of the stall.

I'm willing to bet that anybody who has used a public ladies' room has had at least one memorably positive encounter with someone they've met inside.

What's so special about it? I hear you cry. Men have bathrooms too and nobody bats an eyelid. If anything, the less said about them, the better.

On a functional level, nothing at all.

In fact, the ladies' very often sucks in comparison to the men's. A victim of long queues, scarce toilet paper, and the most unflattering lighting known to man.

However, we're not talking about serviceability. If we were, we wouldn't have a leg to stand on. What I'm referencing is much deeper than that. Much more visceral.

I once undid a drunken stranger's bodysuit in a nightclub bathroom so she could relieve herself before going back out to tear up the dancefloor. If you've any idea what a bodysuit is and where its fastening is located, you'll understand why that's a tall order.

I've witnessed countless girls take their drinks inside and leave them unattended by the sink without any concerns over getting roofied.

There's nearly always someone giving an empowering pep talk to a broken-hearted friend who needs a boost of confidence.

Blister plasters, boob tape, and tampons are handed out like Werther's Originals at a Women's Institute meeting. Pleasant conversation dapples the air. Strangers become new best friends.

Outfits are readjusted, hair is coiffed, perfume is shared, and doors with faulty locks are guarded to prevent accidental walk-ins. Those who are desperate are permitted to jump the line.

It's where the power of sorority is comfortably displayed. Raw and unfettered. Pure and permeating as only it knows how to be.

The girls' bathroom is one of the few places where female vulnerability isn't preyed upon. Conversely, it's often bolstered and allowed to exist without any need for justification.

Sure, it's where you go when nature calls. But it also acts as a cocoon-like environment — somewhere you can retreat to when you want to feel… safe.

Nat, why are you waxing lyrical about the loo?

Well, because this recent encounter brought about a rather bracing realisation for me, a conventional woman with an uncomplicated identity who fits comfortably within the margins of the archetype.

I realised that the person peeking her head around the door and looking at me with questioning eyes wasn't merely asking for permission to enter the room.

She was asking for permission to belong.

She was giving me the power to accept or reject her appeal to exist freely for a moment in a space that, for many people like me, is a place of comfort and for many people like her, is commonly associated with hostility and consternation.

The alignment of our biological sex and gender identity affords people like me the confidence to take up space in social settings where others, with less streamlined identities, may feel reluctant.

Of course, uncertainty is a perfectly natural phenomenon in adolescence — kids are constantly trying to make sense of themselves and explore how and where they best fit in a world governed by grown-ups. And this kid, who looked to be some 14 or 15 years old, is no different.

However, this situation was unique because it didn't focus on the implicit social hierarchy that comes with a significant age gap. This wasn't just a child asking an adult for permission to do something.

Instead, our respective positions on the spectrum of womanhood were what was forcing us to weigh up the other's existence.

It was as though she believed that within a shared space her identity would somehow encroach on mine; so announcing that she was trans and verbally acknowledging our differences would help me to legitimise her humanity some.

She asked me if she could come in because there may have been a chance that I wouldn't have wanted her to.

And that is so devastating to me.

"Bueno, hija, ¿qué más da? Pasa, pasa." So what, kiddo? Come on in.

I headed over to the hand dryer.

"Ay, muchas gracias!"

She smiled sweetly and walked past me in her fishnet tights and patent Dr. Martens.

Transphobia is not an alien concept in countries that operate under organised religion or have a traditional set of social values, such as Spain.

Vox, a prominent far-right political party has been consistently vocal about their disdain towards transgender people and their desire to prevent their access to base-level human rights. Transgender people are bullied and vilified and persecuted by conservative political parties and their followers all across the nation.

Adults berating other adults is one thing, but what happens when this toxic, nefarious behaviour trickles down the totem poll and falls upon the shoulders of children?

Children are sacred

"Los niños son sagrados" (children are sacred) is a phrase you see and hear typically in response to the mistreatment of children in any form.

Children are revered in Hispanic culture, so why was this particular child so acutely aware of the controversy surrounding her identity? Shouldn't the innocence we try so hard to preserve in children include transgender children too?

Shouldn't she be able to exist as comfortably as her peers do?

Had I voiced an issue with her coming into the bathroom, there is no doubt in my mind that she would've turned away and left. And that's what bothered the hell out of me. It upset me that she felt the need to even mention it.

Because who am I? I'm not important. I have no authority over public spaces or gender identity whatsoever.

I don't care what people do in the privacy of a bathroom stall. I don't stop to intimidate them or pass judgement.

I'm just a stranger washing her hands at the sink. Luckily for this girl, I'm a kind stranger. Someone whose cup of compassion and understanding runneth over.

But the fact that she felt the need to ask stirred up feelings of pity and rage in equal measure.

I felt incensed over the fact that this harmless individual possibly has and probably will experience some sort of social repudiation at the hands of a narrow-minded loser who minds other people's business more than their own.

As if growing up isn't already fraught with feelings of insecurity and a heightened awareness of your differences from others. As if being a teenager in today's world isn't like wandering into the seventh circle of hell with gasoline shorts on.

Sure, the world is a big, scary place. But the girls' bathroom is something else entirely, and it should stay that way.

I felt a wave of maternal protectiveness wash over me as I thought about how she must feel on a regular basis. Physically, she was long-limbed and lofty but yet she seemed so small and defenceless.

A kid.

Just figuring herself out, one day at a time.

When she came into the sink area, she told me she liked my outfit — I told her that I have my own clothing line and was wearing one of my newest designs. I offered her a soap sheet and asked her about her makeup — her parents had bought her an eyeshadow palette from KIKO for her birthday recently. I've never been any good with eyeshadow. She doesn't go a day without it.

So there we were.

Just two gals chopping it up in the girls' bathroom, enjoying pleasant conversation with someone we'll probably tell our mums about before returning to the monotony of our everyday affairs.

I suppose that these are the situations we need more of. Just witnessing humans being humans and doing human things.

So often bigots behave as though those they feel prejudice towards are some sort of subhuman entity that needs to be exterminated to restore a sense of harmony and order to the world.

In reality, we're all just people. Trying to just get by and get on with things before we shuffle off this mortal coil once our number is up.

Coexisting peacefully really isn't as complicated as it's made out to be. Being kind to others is far from difficult. We're all different, and that's fine — it doesn't need to be fire and brimstone and bloodbaths and battalions.

So when you meet someone different from you, just share the soap.

Don't work yourself into a lather over it.

Natalie S. Ohio is a British-Nigerian LGBTQ writer who enjoys writing about the queer experience. For more content like this, check out her other LGBTQ+ articles here!

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