The Bidet

Living somewhere else has a way of changing your definition of normal.

I first encountered a bidet when I moved to Italy in college. At the time, it was mostly a curiosity. I understood vaguely what it was for, but I can't honestly remember whether I used it at all. If I did, it certainly wasn't regularly. It was just one of those unfamiliar things that came with living somewhere else.

Years later, on one of our first tours in 2009, the subject came up again at a villa. One of the women in the group announced that she had a bidet in her bathroom and wasn't entirely sure what, if anything, she was supposed to do with it.

This prompted a lively discussion.

At the time, I found myself having a surprisingly frank conversation about bathroom technique with a woman at least ten years older than I was. I was younger then, and perhaps a little more reserved about discussing such things with ladies.

But we had questions.

Do you face the wall or away from it?

Do you fill the thing up? Do you just splash around?

What exactly do you do with your clothes, which suddenly seem to be everywhere they shouldn't be and are in very real danger of getting wet?

All excellent questions.

And remember, this was 2009. We did not have AI available to provide a discreet step-by-step consultation. There was Google, of course, but eventually we arrived at an answer ourselves: Use it however it works for you.

Before we go any further, I promise there will be no video tutorials included with this Journal.

When we moved to Portugal in December 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, the bidet became a fixture in my life. (Pun very much intended.) And somewhere along the way, I changed.

I love my bidet. There. I said it.

I am genuinely unhappy when I don't have one. Every time I return to the United States, I find myself trying to approximate its function, short of simply getting back into the shower. Nothing quite works.

At home, my bathroom has a stack of little cotton towels specifically for the bidet, each one used once and then tossed in the laundry. Talk about fresh.

And without getting into too much detail, because there are limits even for the Resonate Journal, this is the epitome of clean. With toilet paper alone, there is always that lingering question: Are we done here? One more round? Just to be sure? Sometimes the quantity involved seems sufficient to threaten the plumbing of every apartment in the stack.

There is, however, an environmental argument hiding in all that toilet paper. Producing it takes trees, water, and energy, and using a bidet can dramatically reduce how much of it we use. So I can apparently claim environmental responsibility while discussing my bathroom habits. Who knew?

Bidets come in different designs and with different traditions. Some have a simple faucet. Some direct the water upward. In other parts of the world, a handheld sprayer next to the toilet does the job. Japan, where bathroom space can be precious, has perfected the toilet seat that does practically everything short of making your coffee.

My architectural training tells me the traditional bidet is ridiculous. Bathrooms are expensive square footage, and here we are dedicating a substantial chunk of it to a second porcelain fixture beside the first one. I don't care. There is nothing quite like the real thing.

And yes, many people face the wall when using a traditional bidet. I can't. I'm too tall, and my knees hit the wall. So much for cultural assimilation.

And since we're apparently discussing everything: yes, you use your hand. There is soap involved. Think shower, not drinking fountain. And yes, you still wash your hands afterward. I feel that should not need saying, but since we've come this far together, let's be thorough.

Europe also introduced me to an entire supermarket category called “intimate wash.” This is perhaps where I reveal myself simply to be a dude, because I still find myself staring at that shelf wondering why ordinary soap isn't sufficient. There are still mysteries I have yet to understand.

What I do know is that once you get the rhythm down, the bidet becomes completely ordinary. And wonderful. You feel completely clean, you use dramatically less toilet paper, and very quickly something that once seemed like a peculiar European bathroom fixture becomes something you miss whenever it isn't there. I would never willingly live in a house without at least one bidet. I'd actually prefer one in every bathroom.

That progression fascinates me because it is one of the things travel does best. It introduces us to ways of living that initially seem strange simply because they are not ours. Some we try and leave behind. Some we appreciate without ever adopting. And every once in a while, something becomes so normal that we begin to wonder why we spent the first half of our lives doing things another way.

Travel has changed me in plenty of ways. Sometimes through a great work of art, an encounter with history, or a genuinely profound cultural revelation.

And sometimes through plumbing.

Je t'aime, mon chéri.