Foreign Bathroom Series

Chapter One: Bidet

Names have been changed to protect the innocent (also embarrassed).

I peered deeply into the strange toilet. Along the side of the foreign commode several buttons and settings looked back at me, questioning my every move. To make matters worse, I couldn’t even read it.

No English.

What to choose? Back home I have one setting—flush. But here? So many options. It was a good thing that this was just practice. Call it a “dry run.” The panel had ten options. The first one looked promisingly like water. I pressed the button and listened for the sound of a successful flush. To my horror, a robotic arm extended from the back of the bowel and paused ever-so-briefly.

“Bidet,” I yelled (out loud mind you). And, faster than I could close the lid, the little arm began spraying water.

Upon closer inspection and further use, the electronic bidet in our hotel bathroom also had a seat warmer, temperature setting for the water, and a speaker that played the comforting and bladder stimulating sounds of a flowing stream.

Some friends we were traveling with met up with us later that day. I asked James what he thought of the toilet in his room. With a crooked smile and a breathy giggle, James said that he though the bidet was, “very accurate.”

anthony forrest