Here’s a public bathroom confession: staring at that light bulb with its accidental face is the most honest moment you’ll have all day. That smudged, glowing thing sees you, really sees you, in ways you’ve been avoiding. Sartre knew it. That slow dissolution when you look too close, when familiar becomes alien. We spend our whole lives running from mirrors, from porcelain ledges, from those quiet moments when the machinery of self-deception stops humming. But there it is: a 60-watt truth in fluorescent purgatory. The face lights up. And for one perfect second, you remember you’re just meat with questions, alone in a bathroom, contemplating a lightbulb.
I lean all my weight on the porcelain ledge, I draw my face closer until it touches the mirror. The eyes, nose, and mouth disappear. Nothing is left. Brown wrinkles show on each side of the feverish swelled lips, crevices, mole holes. A silky, white down covers the great slopes of the cheeks, two hairs protrude from the nostrils: it is a geological embossed map. And, in spite of everything, this lunar world is familiar to me. I cannot say I recognize the details. But the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which stupefies me: I slip quietly off to sleep.
Nausea