Seat of Power
This essay appears in Silly: Stories in Ordinary Time.
My first encounter with a bidet was in 1985. I was a teenager at the time and my mother and I were on a two-week trip to Spain sponsored by my high school Spanish club. We had just checked into our hotel room in Madrid after a long overnight flight from Chicago.
I stepped into the bathroom and was immediately taken aback by what I saw. The walls were covered in a salmon-hued tile while the floor was a black linoleum with pinkish flecks of glitter embedded in a random pattern. Yes, it was an affront to 1980s design sensibilities and an eyesore in the first degree, but that’s not what puzzled me.
As my eyes adjusted to the scene, to the left was a perfectly normal, though somewhat antique-looking, toilet. To the right, however, was what appeared to be another toilet-like device, but one lacking a proper seat on the rim or a tank in back. I was flummoxed as to what it was for. I monkeyed around with the faucet on the thing and was rewarded with water shooting out the rear of the bowl.
“Mom! Come here a second,” I called out.
She popped her head in the door and, patient woman that she is, explained to me in as little detail as possible what this porcelain mystery gadget did. I immediately got the picture—and what a weird picture it was to a sixteen-year-old boy from Iowa who grew up being advised to never squeeze the Charmin.
* * *
Decades later, I discovered the Spanish model was only the prelude. In 2016 when Sean and I traveled to Japan for the first time, every hotel we stayed in featured an all-in-one bidet toilet by a company called Toto. The Japanese had turned personal hygiene into a high-tech leisure activity—complete with music to encourage the user at every step.
I know it’s childish, but each time I used the thing, I’d whisper excitedly under my breath: “Did you hear that Toto? We’re going home! We’re going home!”
I tend to use humor to avoid uncomfortable thoughts—and sitting on a toilet with more touchpad controls than my car—and with pictograms of water spraying in… uhh… rather personal places—well, it made me a trifle nervous.
As the days of our trip wore on, curiosity finally got me in the end—in more ways than one.
Once I became accustomed to the idea of a toilet seat that washed, dried, and—for all I knew—perfumed your nether regions after doing your business, I decided I rather liked it. It seemed a bit more, I don’t know… civilized?
I mean, come on. No matter how top-shelf your toilet paper might be, it’s still akin to using a piece of dry toast to scrape peanut butter off a shag carpet.
I’ll let you sit with that visual for a moment.
You’re welcome.
* * *
Once we’d returned home from Japan, it was back to the usual Cottonelle Ultra Comfort that Sean insists we buy. And, though I’ve never been a “dog person” as it were—I sort of missed Toto.
Nearly four years passed until 2020 came. Among the assorted calamities of that dreaded pandemic year, one that swept the nation was the Great Toilet Paper Panic. The hoarding was comically unreal. Fortunately, I tend to buy in bulk with things like that, so we were set for a while. Still, I wondered what we might do if things got serious.
My thoughts drifted back to Toto once again. Out of curiosity, I researched their line of toilets and bidets. I eventually stumbled across a series called “The Washlet.” This was an aftermarket toilet seat that one could install on an ordinary US-style toilet and have all of the features and functionality of the more standard Japanese all-in-one jobs.
It washed you. It dried you. I wasn’t sure, but it might even sing you a lullaby if you were having trouble falling asleep at night. It looked amazing. Better yet, the installation instructions read like something I might be able to handle on my own.
I brought the subject up at dinner that evening with Sean. He peered at me over his bowl of pork fried rice, chopsticks poised in mid-air, and raised one eyebrow.
“A bidet seat? Really?”
“Well, I thought I’d order one for the master bath first and see what I think. Besides, if the toilet paper shortage gets any worse, it’s either this or the spray nozzle on the kitchen sink. Let’s face it—neither one of us is limber enough to climb up on the counter without throwing out our backs at this age.”
“Hmph…” was his only reply and he returned to shoveling rice into his mouth.
That’s all the approval I needed.
* * *
A few days later, the UPS man arrived with my delivery from Amazon. I spirited it upstairs to the bathroom, unboxed it, and laid all of the parts out. After a careful reading of the instructions (yes, I am one of those people) I rolled up my sleeves and tackled the project.
Surprisingly, the installation was much easier than I’d imagined, given my rather checkered history with DIY plumbing projects. As I recall, it required a record-low three profane comments—only one of which involved the F-word. Once finished, I cleaned up the mess and ran downstairs to get batteries to put in the remote control for the contraption.
It was now time for the ultimate test. I dragged Sean upstairs so I could show off my handiwork. As I explained to him what each button did, he looked at me with an expression of escalating alarm—a bit like the one my therapist used to get as he penciled something in my chart and said as gently as he could, “I think we need to bump your sessions up to twice a week.”
Once I’d finished reviewing the operating instructions with him, I beamed proudly and asked, “So, do you want to try it first?”
His eyes narrowed as he looked at the remote control in my hand.
“It sprays water where? Uh, no. I’ll leave you two alone to do… whatever it is you’re planning to do.”
He turned with a sniff of disdain and headed out of the bathroom.
“Well,” I called out after him. “If you do want to use it and have any questions, let me know.”
“Silly,” echoed back up the stairwell.
Fine. Who needs him anyway? Let’s take this bad boy for a test drive.
I won’t go into any of the gory details, but once I took a seat, I was quite proud of my new purchase and my amateur plumbing skills.
And as far as the operation of the Washlet itself? Let’s just say if Dorothy had a Toto like this, she’d never have left the farm in Kansas in the first place.
And now that I have one in my home, too?
There’s no place like it.
