{"id":21011,"date":"2016-02-27T10:54:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-27T14:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=21011"},"modified":"2016-02-27T10:54:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-27T14:54:33","slug":"a-curious-device","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2016\/02\/27\/a-curious-device\/","title":{"rendered":"A Curious Device"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"empty-toilet-paper\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSo, is anyone going to bring up the masturbator thing in the bathroom?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhoa, wait. What?\u201d Did I leave a dildo in the bathroom? No, no way<\/em>. Then it hit her.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, you mean the bidet? I was wondering if anyone would mention it. Masturbator? What makes you say that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI dunno, it\u2019s just weird I guess\u201d Cheryl replied. \u201cWhen did you get it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of days ago. The pipes are old and the toilet kept clogging. I read online that getting a bidet can help. It cuts down on paper use.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWait, so you don\u2019t use paper anymore?\u201d Neil asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I still use paper. But just\u2026 less. Because\u2026 ya know\u2026 it\u2019s like, cleaner before\u2026\u201d This was a lot harder to explain that she\u2019d anticipated. Poop. Spray. Wipe. For some reason saying that out loud seemed much more embarrassing in the moment than when she\u2019d practiced to herself before the party.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don’t use as much paper\u00a0because you’re already clean. You just have to dry off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, how does it work?\u201d someone chimed in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just hooks up to the water supply and attaches to the toilet seat. The knob controls water pressure. So, if you’re gonna use it, start slow.\u201d She laughed a bit, realizing how embarrassing it was to give that warning.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 it\u2019s cold water?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it\u2019s cold. But you get used to it really quickly. After a couple times it doesn\u2019t even bother you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re trying to tell me you shoot cold water at your asshole, and it doesn’t bother you? What the fuck?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what\u2019s it like?\u201d Folks were starting to get curious. This was kind of exciting. Like having some exotic pet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like it. It\u2019s\u2026 refreshing? I definitely use less toilet paper. And it\u2019s a real time saver. And obviously I feel a lot cleaner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thought of feeling clean\u2014not just getting rid of dirt or shit but all the different ways a person can feel clean\u2014 brought up unexpected memories. She remembered a vingette in a book she\u2019d read long ago,\u00a0T<\/em>he Girl in the Tangerine Scarf<\/em>, a novel about a family of Muslim Americans facing Islamaphobia and culture clash in the Midwest. The passage she remembered was a discussion about dirty American buttholes, and how water was the only way to become truly clean. The father in the story, if she remembered correctly, had pointed out the irony of Americans\u2019 belief that they were the more civilized society, while they walked around with shit in their ass cracks all day.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much was it? I heard they’re expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome are I guess, but mines a pretty basic setup. No heated seats or butt dryers or anything. It was like $25 on Amazon. That\u2019s the only reason I bought it. I figured if I didn\u2019t like it, it wasn\u2019t a huge investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI use those wet wipe things. They\u2019re pretty good, and you can just flush \u2018em.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wow, we’re doing it,\u00a0<\/em>she thought.\u00a0We’re talking about how we clean our asses.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe if you have decent pipes, but mostly they don\u2019t disintegrate and they clog up the plumbing really bad. And I\u2019m not keeping poop napkins in my trash.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI dunno, it seems like a good way to get yeast infections or something,\u201d Chris retorted, their nose wrinkling.<\/p>\n

This was starting to get intense. She felt on the defense, like she was personally invested in this piece of plastic that cleans your butt, like she needed to shield it from the naysayers.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, a lot of doctors think it can lessen lots of infections. Because\u2026 ya know, it\u2019s cleaner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI dunno. I think it might be kind of nice. I wonder why they\u2019re not more\u00a0popular in the states. When I went to France last summer they were everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you use any when you were in France?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNah, too intimidating. The ones I saw were separate from the toilet, and I wasn\u2019t really sure how to do it. I sorta thought I might end up drenched in poop water. Pretty silly now that I\u2019m saying it out loud.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re pretty common in most parts of the world\u2014Europe, South America, Japan\u2026 I think Americans don\u2019t like them because we\u2019re all so puritanical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso homophobia. Because, of course, anything that touches your butt is gonna turn you gay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone chuckled a little. Some of the obvious discomfort eased a little.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, does it… feel good?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. I mean, it doesn\u2019t reach the level of arousal<\/em> or anything, or not for me at least. But it feels good. Sorta like when someone scratches your head, or when you take your watch off and the skin is all soft and touching it feels cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

An uncomfortable silence settled, and someone stood up and announced they were going to get a beer. Two others followed. The hostess wondered if she\u2019d committed some faux pas<\/em> by explicitly saying that the bidet felt good. Yes, obviously I did. People do not typically express pleasure over spraying their buttholes with cold water in decent company.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Time passed, and the conversation on anus-cleansing practices gave way to more respectable topics like Supreme Court decisions and new additions to Netflix. The party was starting to wane, empty beer bottles on every surface, the pile of coats getting smaller and smaller. She walked toward the kitchen to start sorting bottles and then she heard it\u2014the unmistakable sound of the bidet. Someone had given it a go. She smirked, and averted her gaze when the user left the bathroom. She was strangely embarrassed that she knew someone had just used it, even though she wasn’t terribly embarrassed to own\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

When the party was over, the guests gone home, she laid in bed thinking over the conversation about the curious device that performed a basic, everyday, yet unspeakable function. A device that, to her mind, was far preferable to the toilet paper tyranny that so often goes unchallenged. But she was absolutely convinced that the whole thing had made at least a few guests bidet curious. The gospel was spreading. It was only a matter of time. The bidet revolution had begun.<\/p>\n

Britney is on Twitter<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSo, is anyone going to bring up the masturbator thing in the bathroom?\u201d \u201cWhoa, wait. What?\u201d Did I leave a dildo in the bathroom? No, no way. Then it hit her. \u201cOh, you mean the bidet? I was wondering if anyone would mention it. Masturbator? What makes you say that?\u201d \u201cI dunno, it\u2019s just weird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1931,"featured_media":21012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22846,10382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experimental-format","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2016\/02\/empty-toilet-paper.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1931"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21013,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011\/revisions\/21013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}