In the anime series Nana, which I’ve written about for CF before, there’s a scene where Hachiko (Nana K.), elated over being asked out by a love interest, hops into the bathtub with her new friend and roommate, Nana O. They chat and tease each other, Nana O. gives Hachiko a little advice and encouragement, and the moment ends fairly casually with a cut to the next scene.

The friends-in-the-bathtub moment is a fairly common trope in anime and other visual narrative forms (I can think of two scenes in Girls alone), and understandably so; the physical intimacy and vulnerability of being naked together easily represents or translates to emotional intimacy and vulnerability. 

Even visually, these scenes are emotionally intimate – two faces in profile, facing each other, their silhouettes mirrored but their bodies obscured. Nana, in particular, uses this trope not only to demonstrate emotional intimacy between the Nanas, but also to show a lack of emotional intimacy despite physical intimacy when they later bathe with their respective romantic partners, their friendship strained by their story’s dramatic arc.

When I first read Nana as a 14-year-old, I remember being shocked and heartsick over that scene, and carrying its image with me for a long time. Not because I was shocked by the scene’s nudity (it’s definitely not the first nude scene in Nana) or the (lightly) implied sexual tension, but because I wanted what it represented: an intense, emotionally vulnerable, and loyal female friendship like Hachi and Nana O’s. And, even at the tender age of 14, I felt like I would never have it. Even now, at 26, I feel like I’ve spent most of my life in search of it. My therapist even calls it my “bathtub friendship,” like my own claw-footed white whale. 

And yet. 

I’ve learned that friendship is not a bathtub, but a constellation.