What is the thing that happens in a friendship that isn’t an absence of sex? The thing added, that’s maybe only between women. Not a matter of our organs or whether we were born with them or what we do with them. It’s this: a particular kind of glory that happens when we share our suffering and are seen. There’s a rising—a cry, a rush, a beating of wings together. An exaltation. I’m loath to connect womanness with suffering, or suffering with greatness, but there it is.
