Two. One marked Men, the other Women.

Now, on paper, that sounds civilised, doesn’t it? It sounds modern. Two separate spaces – one for the sons of Adam, one for the daughters of Eve.

But here’s the thing: they’re identical. Same single stall, same weary sink, same trembling little air freshener gasping out its last citrus breath.

And yet – they must be divided.

Because to allow men and women to share a bathroom would be like allowing wolves into the monastery. It would be the end of grace.

The men’s bathroom… by God, it’s not a bathroom – it’s a crime scene. It’s a mausoleum of broken dreams. Every surface sticky with regret. You open the door and it smells like a thousand dead sandwiches and one man’s last chance at dignity.

And so the women – the good, pure women of accounts payable – they get their own sanctuary. Their little Vatican. Their Holy of Holies. A place where the candle still burns, where the air smells faintly of lavender and the promise of tomorrow.

And then sometimes… one of the men… will cross the line. He’ll sin. He’ll wander into the women’s bathroom.

He’ll step over the threshold as though storming paradise, phone in one hand, Starbucks in the other.

And in that moment, he experiences heaven. Clean air. Folding paper towels. Hope.

But when he leaves, something changes. The room knows.

The next woman who enters, she can feel it. She doesn’t see anything wrong, but her soul begins to scream. She can sense that something has been violated. That the angels have fled. The bathroom sits there, shaking, whispering, ‘Don’t touch me. I’ve seen things.’

And this is what we men do. We take.

We take everything. The land, the oceans, the remote control, the bathroom.

We can’t even let women have that – a single stall to bleed in peace.

No, we must stride in there like kings, leaving behind the scent of a breakfast sandwich and despair.

And if – if a woman ever dared to cross into our lavatory?

She would not return the same. She’d emerge with eyes like a war veteran. She went in to change a tampon and came out speaking Aramaic, her hair blown back, muttering about the horrors of mankind.

That’s the thing about the bathrooms.

They stand across from one another like two kingdoms at peace – men and women, each with its little sign, its promise of order.

Identical tiles, identical fixtures, identical lights humming the same eternal hum.

And yet, somehow, they are not the same.

One has been spoiled by touch, by appetite, by the chaos of men. The other lives only by the fragile illusion that it is untouched.

But the illusion never lasts.

Eventually, the doors open, and the air between them mixes – lavender meets despair – and you realise there were never two bathrooms at all.

Only one.

Just one – with delusions of grandeur.

At my office, we have two bathrooms. was originally published in The Haven on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.